The Daily Guardian
The Bhoomi Pujan for the proposed Shri Ram Temple in Ayodhya is scheduled to take place in five days, marking the culmination of a five-century old indigenous movement to reclaim a site which is of both religious and civilizational importance…
Continue reading The places of Worship Act 1991, decoloniality and indigenous rights
The Daily Guardian
Last week, this author had the occasion to take part in a virtual panel discussion on the intersection between faith and law organised by the department of law of a Pune-based institution. The specific theme of the discussion was the continued relevance of the Bombay High Court’s well-known and widely debated judgement in The State of Bombay v. Narasu Appa Mali (1951)…
Continue reading The deep-seated coloniality in the Indian legal system
The Daily Guardian
Two days ago, legendary West Indian cricketer Michael Holding delivered a powerful message on the ongoing #BlackLivesMatter movement which has taken the United States of America by storm and has started a global conversation on racism, in particular with respect to the stereotypes associated with members of the African community in predominantly White countries. While there are several relevant threads from an Indian perspective to pull from Holding’s heartfelt and deeply emotional message, following are the excerpts which this author wishes to focus on for the purpose of this piece…
Continue reading Addressing transgenerational trauma through history education
The Daily Guardian
Last October, this author was invited to take part in a public debate at a leading National Law School in Southern India (not “South India”) on the topic “Do We Need a Nation-Wide NRC?”…
Continue reading Civilisationalism and Ethnocentrism: What’s the Difference?
The Daily Guardian
In the previous piece, this author had contended that the use of (a) “ancient land” to refer to this country in the Objectives Resolution of January 22, 1947 by the Constituent Assembly, and (b) “Bharat” in Article 1 as a synonym for “India”, was proof that the framers of the Constitution were conscious of the civilizational heritage and legacy of the Republic of India/Bharat…
The Daily Guardian
In the last piece, this author had presented a broad summary of historian Radhakumud Mookerji’s book The Fundamental Unity of India to understand how indigenous scholarly voices, which existed well before 1947, saw Bharat. In reading and interpreting works of history, it is critical to understand that history has always been a fertile battleground…
The Daily Guardian
In the previous piece in this series, this author had promised to examine the narrative presented by Indic voices in relation to the indigenous identity of Bharat and its fundamental unity as the basis of its statehood, and contrast it with the treatment of such voices by the colonisers as well as the colonialised native elite. One such Indic voice, whose scholarly works mandate reading by everyone who is interested in Indian history is the legendary historian Radhakumud Mookerji …
The Daily Guardian
Be it an individual or a people, neither must cede or surrender to an external entity the inherent and hence fundamental right to self-definition or self-determination. To give up this most intimate form of agency is to externalise the locus of one’s consciousness and its most tangible product–a crystallised identity. This alienation then takes a life of its own and is extremely difficult to reverse and reclaim …
The Daily Guardian
For quite a few decades now, decoloniality has emerged in Latina America as a powerful critique of the Eurocentric or Western-centric nature of the Post-colonial discourse. Broadly, as a construct, decoloniality posits that despite legal and physical decolonization of former colonies, overt and subconscious coloniality: (a) persists in the State institutions inherited by Post-colonial States; (b) affects their thinking at the societal level and (c) manifests itself even at the level of an individual. …
Continue reading The Nation State, Decoloniality and the Non-Nation State
