The Daily Guardian
While political colonialism had long been done away with, it had been replaced with Western/European imperialism, whose relationship with other cultures was the same as that of the erstwhile colonizers, namely “colonization of the imagination of the dominated”…
Continue reading The European origins of cultural coloniality
The Daily Guardian
The word modern was not only a reference to the time that something belonged to, it was equally, and perhaps more importantly, a reference to the period it did not belong to…
The Daily Guardian
From the first week of May this year, the Sino-Bharat standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh has hogged the news cycle despite the Covid-19 pandemic and, perhaps, rightly so. While experts on the subject are better placed to comment on the goings-on at the border, this author is interested in the big picture significance…
Continue reading Bharat, China and civilisational conviction
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…
Openthemagazine.com
The substrata of Articles 25-30 of the Indian Constitution have always been at the heart of Bharat’s national discourse even before the Constitution came into force on January 26th, 1950. This should come as no surprise given that faith has been central to the history of this ancient land, as recognised even by the framers of the Constitution. Therefore, contemporary debates and controversies surrounding Articles 25-30 are but a continuum of a civilisational legacy…
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 …
Yukti 