The greatest trick a religion ever pulled was convincing people it wasn't a religion at all. Walk into any drawing room in Delhi, Mumbai, or Bangalore and mention you're proud of India's Hindu heritage. Watch the temperature drop. See the sudden interest in phones,
Someone checks their phone and sees a friend's vacation photos. Nothing dramatic—just standard social media fare. Beach, sunset, cocktail with a tiny umbrella. But instead of scrolling past, they stop. They start calculating. How much did that trip cost? How did they get the time off? Why
Cultures are the battlefield where civilizations rise and fall – the quote seen earlier on this platform applies well as one moves to observe the current crises that our society has been enveloped in. Certain elements who parade around proclaiming to be the torchbearers of culture and linguistic pride – are rather
Your cousin gets into Harvard. The whole family shares the Facebook post. Your aunt calls everyone she knows. Banners are put up. And you feel it too - that swell of pride, that sense of "we made it." But here's what you don't realize
You've probably seen it. A Western pundit on Twitter, hand-wringing about "the dangerous rise of nationalism" after seeing footage of Indian students celebrating their country's space mission. An op-ed warning about "authoritarian nationalism" in Vietnam for not adopting Western-style democracy fast enough.
Change is real. It is the only reality that we experience at every moment, whether it's steady or abrupt. It is something we see, experience and feel. And how we navigate it says a lot about us. We are conditioned from childhood to tackle change; we are taught
There you were, scrolling through your feed, feeling good about sharing that inspiring story of Fatima Sheikh—India's pioneering Muslim woman teacher, a forgotten hero finally getting her due. You hit "share" with that warm glow of righteousness, didn't you? Because this is exactly
Why do subcontinental Muslims remain so restless, so perpetually aggrieved, even after getting exactly what they demanded? Pakistan was supposed to solve the Muslim problem. Two-nation theory, partition, separate homeland—problem solved, right? Except the problem didn't go away. If anything, it got worse. The Muslims of the
Ancient India figured out separation of church and state three thousand years before America did. Most people think the varna system was just about "caste" hierarchy. Wrong angle entirely. Varna doesn't mean caste. The varna system was in truth, the world's first institutional framework
India gained independence in 1947, but Hindu temples didn't. You know how sometimes people inherit the bad habits of those who they consider their superiors without realizing it? India did that with British colonial policy, except the bad habit was seizing control of Hindu temples and the inheritance
Here's what I've been thinking about lately: we're witnessing the quiet extinction of self-determination, and most people don't even realize they're participants in their own effacement. It starts innocuously enough. You're scrolling through your feed when an algorithm
As the world moves forward, a visible spectrum of political echo chambers is now being observed, undergoing oxymoronic fusion. While most religious circles navigate themselves through the recurring dynamics in social paradigms, less thought surfaces when it comes to the Hindus. Be it the Islamists, Christians, Jews or Sikhs, what