Counting Castes, Counting Controversies: Supreme Court, the Census and the OBC Question
Cycles of Power and the Indian Civilisational Ethos
The history of every nation is a story of rise and fall. Power ascends, consolidates, fragments, and gives way to new arrangements. This rhythm is as natural as the change of day and night or the turning of seasons. No empire, ideology, or ruling order has ever been permanent....Read More
Iran: An Ancient Civilisation with a Living Soul
Iran’s history stretches over 2,500 years, making it one of the longest continuous civilisations in the world. From the rise of the first Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great to the rich cultural flowering of later dynasties and the complex modern republic of today, Iran’s...Read More
15 January: Celebrating the Birth of Martin Luther King Jr.
Every year on 15 January, the world remembers and celebrates the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968)—one of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century and a global symbol of justice, equality, and non-violent resistance. Though officially commemorated in...Read More
Lohri 2026: Celebrating Harvest, Hope, and Community Across North India
Lohri 2026 is being celebrated with great enthusiasm across North India, marking the arrival of the harvest season and the end of the harsh winter chill. Observed annually on 13 January, Lohri is more than a festival—it is a vibrant expression of agrarian life, seasonal tran...Read More
The First Torchbearer: How Savitribai Phule Forged India's Path to Liberated Learning
Today, we correct the record to honour a luminary whose name is the very synonym of courage and transformative education in India: Savitribai Phule. While her husband, Jyotirao Phule, is rightly celebrated as a visionary, it was Savitribai who, with unwavering resolve, became ...Read More
The Undying Flame: Celebrating Mirza Ghalib on His Birthday
Today, as the calendar marks a date in the latter days of December, the air in the lanes of Old Delhi seems to carry a faint, refined echo of Persian couplets and the melancholic melody of Urdu ghazals. It is the birthday of Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan, known to the world simply...Read More
Raising Citizens or Raising Believers? The Changing Purpose of Education
Education has never been a neutral enterprise. It reflects the values a society seeks to preserve and the future it hopes to build. At its best, education prepares individuals to think critically, participate responsibly in public life, and respect diversity. At its worst, it ...Read More
The Long Shadow of Hate: What Polarisation Does to Everyday Social Trust
Polarisation is often discussed in the language of elections, parliaments, and television debates. It is measured in vote shares, hashtags, and headline-grabbing confrontations between political rivals. Yet its most corrosive impact is felt far from these arenas, in the quiet,...Read More
Communal Narratives and the Everyday Erosion of Indian Pluralism
Indian pluralism was never an abstract ideal; it was a lived, everyday reality. For centuries, people of different faiths, languages, castes and cultures shared neighbourhoods, festivals, livelihoods and public spaces. The Indian Constitution later gave this lived experience a...Read More
Ambedkar’s Final Message: Let Not the Caravan Roll Back – A Bitter Truth That Still Burns in 2025
On that sweltering Delhi evening of 31 July 1956, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar was a broken man in front of his most trusted aide, Nanak Chand Rattu. His body had almost given up; every movement was painful, but the agony in his heart dwarfed the physical torment. What he dictat...Read More
Religious Polarisation and the Everyday Erosion of Social Harmony
Religious polarisation is no longer an occasional eruption in India’s public life; it has seeped into the ordinary rhythms of everyday existence. What was once limited to political speeches or election seasons has now permeated neighbourhoods, workplace conversations, social...Read More
Beyond Quotas: A Comparative Look at Representation for Marginalized Groups in India, the U.S., and the World
The debate over how to integrate historically marginalized communities into a nation’s economic mainstream is one of the most complex and contentious in public policy. At its heart lies a fundamental question: is it enough for a state to simply prohibit discrimination, or mu...Read More
The Making of Modern Bahujan Politics and Its Global Parallels
Bahujan politics in India is not a mere electoral phenomenon—it is a historic social movement rooted in centuries of exclusion, resistance, and the quest for dignity. Emerging from the struggles of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and religiously m...Read More
The New Rural Economy: Aspirations Beyond Agriculture
For decades, India’s rural economy was synonymous with agriculture. Villages were imagined as landscapes of fields, farmers, and monsoon-dependent livelihoods. But the India of the 2020s and 2030s is experiencing a profound transition—a silent but powerful socio-economic c...Read More
Cultural Crossroads: When Indian Heritage Meets a Globalized World
India has never been a stranger to cultural encounters. For two millennia, its ports welcomed Greeks, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Portuguese, and British; its mountains absorbed Buddhist monks from China and Zoroastrian refugees from Persia. Sanskrit travelled to Java, chilli cros...Read More
Reverse Migration in India: A New Civilisational Cycle Begins
India is on the threshold of a silent but significant socio-economic shift — a reverse migration wave, where the movement of people will increasingly be from cities back to small towns and villages. This phenomenon is not merely a reaction to economic pressures but a natural...Read More
The Age of Compassion: Why Empathy Will Define India’s Future
In a country of 1.4 billion people speaking more than 1,600 languages, where a billionaire and a daily-wage labourer can live 500 metres apart, the idea of a shared future often feels like a polite fiction. Yet something quietly revolutionary is happening across India: empathy...Read More
The New Middle Class Anxiety: Jobs Without Security, Growth Without Stability
India’s middle class has long been seen as the backbone of the nation’s economic rise—ambitious, industrious, aspirational, and increasingly urban. But beneath the outward confidence lies a growing, uneasy truth: the middle class today is experiencing a new and pervasive...Read More
Bridging the Urban–Rural Divide: India’s Next Social Revolution
India’s story of development has long been narrated through two parallel realities—one defined by the glass towers of cities, the rush of metro stations, and the spread of digital industries; the other by the agrarian rhythms of its villages, inadequate infrastructure, and...Read More
The Crisis of Loneliness: A Silent Mental Health Epidemic in Urban India
Loneliness, once seen as a personal emotion confined to the elderly or socially withdrawn, has emerged as a silent epidemic across urban India. In cities filled with people, noise, and movement, an increasing number of individuals—young professionals, homemakers, migrants, s...Read More
Indira Gandhi: The Iron Lady Who Shaped Modern India
On 19 November 1917, a daughter was born to Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamala Nehru in Allahabad. They named her Indira Priyadarshana. From her earliest years she lived inside the whirlwind of India’s freedom movement. While other children played with dolls, young Indira organized...Read More
Bahujan Movement in India and Its Global Parallels
The Bahujan movement in India is one of the world’s most profound struggles for social justice, dignity, and equality. Emerging from the deep-rooted structure of caste hierarchy, it represents the voices of those historically placed at the margins—Dalits, OBCs, Adivasis, a...Read More
The Eternal Light: Understanding Guru Nanak Jayanti and Prakash Utsav
A Beacon for Humanity
In the serene landscape of the Punjab, under the canopy of a starlit night in 1469, a light dawned that would forever change the spiritual map of the world. This light was Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of Sikhism. His birth anniver...Read More
The Vanishing Public Intellectual
Why India’s Thinkers and Writers Are Going Silent
Once, the Indian public sphere was enriched by voices that questioned, provoked, and illuminated the conscience of the nation. From Gandhi and Tagore to Nehru and Ambedkar, from M.N. Roy to Amartya Sen...Read More
Faith, Power, and the Nation: A Journey from Compassion to Control
Religion, in its true essence, was never created to divide or dominate—it was a moral compass meant to guide human conduct, to ensure justice, compassion, and welfare of society. Every faith, from its origin, sought to uplift humankind. Whether it was the message of equality...Read More
Mother Teresa: The Saint Who Gave Humanity a Human Face
In the long chronicle of human history, few figures have managed to awaken the moral conscience of the world as powerfully as Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje (now in North Macedonia), she left behind the comfort of her Albanian home and ...Read More
Pen Against Prejudice: Sir Syed's Fight for Modern Education
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) was a visionary reformer who dedicated his life to the educational and social advancement of the Muslim community in 19th-century India. His legacy is profoundly embodied in the Aligarh Muslim University, an institution that stands as a testamen...Read More
The Happiness Puzzle: Why Does Finland Flourish While India and Neighbors Lag?
What Makes a Nation Happy? Finland's Secret and India's Challenge
The World Happiness Report, published by the University of Oxford's Wellbeing Research Centre in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, is ...Read More
Diwali: The Eternal Festival of Lights - Origins, Tales, and Significance
“When you light up another’s path, your own path gets lit up effortlessly too.” — Ancient Indian Proverb
Diwali, also known as Deepavali, is more than just a festival, it is a profound experience that illuminates the hearts and homes...Read More
Breaking the Sacred Thread: Ambedkar’s Declaration of Independence
On October 14, 1956, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the principal architect of the Indian Constitution, made a profound statement against social injustice by embracing Buddhism in a historic mass conversion ceremony, marking the culmination of his lifelong struggle against caste oppressio...Read More
Terrorism and Beyond Terrorism: Jammu & Kashmir’s Unfinished Struggle for Normalcy
For more than three decades, the word terrorism has become synonymous with Jammu and Kashmir. It has dominated the headlines, shaped the policies of successive governments, and influenced how the rest of India perceives the region. Yet, for all its devastating impact, terroris...Read More
