The June 2008 issue of Pragati is out. Download your copy now.
This issue carries a modified version of my article on the perils of lending intellectual defense to terrorism.
For the original article, see below.
This blog refuses to let me have a peaceful vacation. I’m gone for four days, blasts erupt in Jaipur and the blogsphere is frenzied. Fellow-bloggers steal my thunder by taking the concerned citizens brigade apart. I’m with both Nitin and Yossarin on the useful idiots remark but my concern is more fundamental. And I’m not [...]
We are witnesses to far gorier atrocities than this.
On the day he decided to run away, 9-year-old Coli awoke on a filthy mat. Like a pup, he lay curled against the cold, pressed between dozens of other children sleeping head-to-toe on the concrete floor. His T-shirt was damp with the dew that seeped through the [...]
Thanks to a reader who brought this article to my notice. I read William Dalrymple now and then. To me, he is nothing beyond a sophisticated intellectual nuisance who being biased, accuses others of it.
Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, Dalrymple courageously asserts the Mughal rule was not blood soaked. Sample his reasons: [...]
Comes from Taslima Nasrin who has fled from India.
The Government (of India) is no better than religious fundamentalists..
I know I’m a little late in picking this storyup.
An exhibition on Mughal emperor Aurangzeb at the Lalit Kala Akademi in Chennai was abruptly closed down and the paintings taken away by the police after protests that some of the depictions were objectionable and a distortion of history.
According to Foundation Against Continuing Terrorism (FACT), which [...]
Really, Salman Rushdie should stop butterflying among his numerous muses and write more such delightful prose. It’s an 8-part article. It is not without its faults though. Rushdie alternates between showing Akbar’s cruelty and his own fascination for the "secular" Akbar.
Ah! And he shows how Jodhaa was merely Akbar’s love-phantasm.
Presenting a few excerpts.
I didn’t want to blog about the controversy around Jodhaa Akbar simply because it doesn’t deserve the attention it is getting. The opinion I’ve heard about the movie is that it is an expensive and lengthy bore–at the least. Taking liberties with history is nothing new to Bollywood. Jodhaa Akbar is just the latest after [...]
Two news items. Similar theme, different content. Starkly different reactions.
Item 1:
Over 100 Hindus staged a noisy mock-slaughter of a cow outside the British parliament to highlight legal loopholes that they say allowed authorities to euthanise a temple cow last year.
The protestors staged the mock-slaughter on Wednesday as Hindus in India’s holy town of [...]
Many thanks to a reader who brought to my notice M.F. Hussain’s interview with Tehelka. Readers of this blog know my views on Hussain. The interview is interesting because this is the first piece I have read where Hussain gives us a bit of insight on his own understanding of his art. This is a [...]
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