Since we have relegated the arduous task of thinking — that key determinant that differentiates man from beast — to our leaders, we need to accept its consequences as well. The Babasaheb Ambedkar controversy, conveniently aroused six decades after an innocuous cartoon (look carefully, it is clear that Jawaharlal Nehru is whipping the snail, not Ambedkar) was published, is really an investment in a future that says the following: if yesterday’s leaders are today’s gods, tomorrow’s gods will emerge out of today’s MPs. [Read more]

I’ve written enough about religious fundamentalism — go through this blog and you’ll see enough on both. What I’m more concerned about is the spilling out of religion on our streets, holding average people to ransom. What bothers me is how a handful of interested religious groups can wreak havoc on average people, burning or banning a book here, driving an author out of a country there, or declaring fatwas of death on thinkers, writers, painters. [Read more]

Since September 15, 2008, when Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and the world teetered over the edge, the religion of money has been challenged by the poor reeling under the onslaught of corrupt decisions by vested interests, the intellectuals wondering whether capitalism as is being practiced in its corrupted form today is the right developmental model for nations, and the vested interests who are wondering how to weaken the light that threatens to expose the darkness surrounding centuries of inter-generational wealth creation. [Read more]

It is clear as daylight that the rising spirit of India is not acceptable to the archaic powers of this great nation. The smothering of humour by Mamata; of books, art and films by fundamentalists; of information by the government; of development by naxalites…all these are examples of a larger, darker force that’s seeking to crush the growing aspirations of India.
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We banned Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, and provided the moral justification for a barbaric fatwa on his head by Iran’s then spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. [Read more]