Specimens of Philosophico-Religious Literature in Tamil: The Maṇimēkalai and the Nīlakēci

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya North-South Divide The story of Agastya, a north Indian sage, crossing the Vindhya hills and visiting south India (never to return), is well known. It has given rise to a proverb, Agstya-yātrā in Bangla and maybe in other north Indian languages. Like all legends it is without date. So, it has been interpreted as an allegory of the ingress of the north to the south, or, as a recent historian has said, ‘evidence of Aryan speakers’  movement towards the south’ (Noboru...

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Election Season and Return of Lord Ram

Ram Puniyani Lord Ram has served the BJP very well so far. It was the Ram temple issue around which seeds of the divisive politics were sown all over the country. The Rath yatra of Lal Krishna Advani precipitated deeper polarization and was followed by the trail of violence. The well planned Babri demolition further intensified the communal violence and the politics in the name of religion in the country. The reward of this was the strengthening of the electoral base of BJP, due to which...

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Confusions around the term Hindutva

Ram Puniyani On October 25 (2016) the seven member Supreme Court Bench started hearing to revisit ‘Hindutva’ cases. These are group of cases where the use of term Hindutva-Hinduism to be used during elections is to be opined. One such case was that of Manohar Joshi who in his election speech said that if he is voted to power he will work for making Maharashtra as the first Hindu state in the country. In another incident Bal Thackeray, Shiv Sena founder and supremo of BJP associate Shiv Sena,...

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Is there an undeclared Emergency Today?

Ram Puniyani  The decision to put a one day ban on Hindi NDTV, since withheld, came as a big jolt to the country. A major channel was asked to stop the broadcast. The charge was that its broadcast on Pathannkot revealed sensitive information regarding national security. On the same Pathankot issue this Government had allowed the Pakistan authorities to come to the same airport. The channel (Hindi NDTV) pleaded that its program was very balanced and nothing related to national security was relayed which was not on the public domain through...

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Can Compulsions Elicit Respect? Singing of National Anthem in Cinema Halls

Ram Puniyani Supreme Court Order on national Anthem (November 2016) has asked theatres to play the national anthem before a film show begins “for the love of the motherland”. This has yet again started the debate over the personal freedom and legal obligations in present times. This is in the backdrop of growing intolerance. The point is whether nationalistic pride can be injected by such legal dictates. Some commentators are arguing that this compulsion is a undermining of civil liberties....

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