2026

For long fellow journalists have been reassuring us sceptics that it is the Rashtirya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) which will soon unseat Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Man Friday Union Home Minister Amitbhai Shah for the two are becoming a liability to the RSS.
I have never taken this bait and the latest Vijay Dashmi address of RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat has only proved me right insofar as it showed how Bhagwat faithfully echoed whatever said or did.
Mohan Bhagwat’s traditional (…)

Prologue
AA. Early Warnings:
I/II. Make no mistake.
It’s an attempted mega-assault on the "India" that was brought into being by the epic Indian freedom struggle on August 15 1947, the day when the shackle of foreign colonial rule was finally shaken off.
Arguably, the most major as yet.
Universal adult franchise, along with "free" election, every five years or so, is one of the very cornerstones of the Indian political system — its much vaunted, even if flawed, electoral (…)

In the seminal book edited by Homi K. Bhabha titled Nation and Narration (Routledge, London and New York, 1990), the editor made a significant observation in his introduction: “The ‘locality’ of national culture is neither unified nor unitary in relation to itself, nor must it be seen simply as ‘other’ in relation to what is outside or beyond it. The boundary is Janus-faced and the problem of outside/inside must always itself be a process of hybridity, incorporating new ‘people’ in relation (…)

DOCUMENT
All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC)
Press Release
Date:22.10.2026
All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) vehemently and vociferously opposes the Union Cabinet’s approval of the sale of assets worth Rs52,748 Crores of the Public owned IDBI Bank to Canada’s Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd, It is highly condemnable that the BJP government continues its economic folly of monetizing public assets to the profit driven corporate interests, without the least of concern to public (…)

BOOK REVIEW
The Nature of the Ottoman City Water and Urban Space in Sofia, 1380s–1910s
by Stefan Peychev
Cambridge University Press 2024. 204 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-00-955885-3 Reviewed by Dale Stahl (University of Colorado Denver)
The Ottoman city of Sofia, Bulgaria, was once the center of the empire’s European domains, the provincial capital of Rumeli. It was also a city of water with a sophisticated hydraulic infrastructure of pipes, public fountains, thermal baths, and (…)

Abstract This article examines the intricate dynamics between economic growth and social justice in post-liberalisation India, a period marked by significant economic reforms initiated in the early 1990s. While these reforms have catalysed impressive GDP growth and attracted foreign investment, they have also exacerbated social inequalities and marginalised vulnerable populations. The article argues that the neoliberal development model, driven primarily by market-oriented reforms and (…)

In 2025, as Israel pulverized Gaza, leading jurist Navanethem Pillay, widely known as Navi, led a U.N. commission that found Israel guilty of committing genocide against Palestinians in the beleaguered strip. Israel bristled.
The former U.N. human rights chief also headed an international tribunal probing the 1994 massacres in Rwanda whose landmark ruling declared that widespread rape and sexual violence could constitute acts of genocide.
Closer to India, Pillay got into the bad books of (…)

“ No two fermions can occupy the identical quantum state.” This is the principle articulated by the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli when he introduced his famous Exclusion Principle. Simply put, two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
It is the ongoing protests in Delhi that bring this Exclusion Principle—a concept of profound significance in quantum physics—to mind. While these protests have infused new vitality into Indian democracy and stand as a testament to the (…)

Death has a peculiar power over public memory. It can transform a controversial individual into a symbol of sacrifice, heroism, or national pride, often making criticism seem not merely unwelcome but morally offensive. The death of a public figure can change the terms of a conversation almost overnight. Questions that once demanded answers become uncomfortable reminders of the past. Those who raise them risk being accused of insensitivity, bitterness, or an inability to let the dead rest. (…)

BOOK REVIEW Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India’s Road to Freedom
by Mithi Mukherjee
HarperCollins India Pages: 283; Price: Rs 799 The unprecedented non-violent mass movement led by Mahatma Gandhi led to India’s freedom from British colonial rule, right? Yes and no. Yes, because the statement is true; no, because the assertion is not the whole truth.
Offering a new global perspective on modern Indian history, historian Mithi Mukherjee covers new ground by identifying Asianism as the (…)