Category Archives: Politics

Democracy and violence

In popular belief, democracy is about positive practices: freedom, justice, equality. The democratic processes take us closer to those goals. I have written numerous articles on different positive aspects of democracy earlier. However, if you look at it, in practice, democracy is not just about positive achievements. A lot of its success depends on its ability to keep negative outcomes away. Continue reading

Citizen media and mass media

Albert Einstein had said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. People’s media is as old as civilization. It has always been there, while mass media came up only after renaissance. The dis-empowerment and injustice reinforced and sustained through mass media has always been resisted by civil initiatives for creating alternative modes of communication and information. Continue reading

Philosophy of riots

Riots are essentially modern and urban in nature. Historically, even in the worst riots, such as the ones post Babri, rural India was mostly quiet. Have you wondered, why it is so? This can be explained using clash of identities theory. Indians carry several identities, like religion and caste. Every once in a while these identities clash, leading to mass violence, especially when political leaders play identity based politics. Continue reading

A revolution apart

Other than the uprising, 1857 also marked a lesser known revolution in India. It was the year, the Calcutta, Bombay and Madras universities were established. ‘Revolution’ may be equated with violent and rapid change, but this was ‘the revolution‘ that was proactive, the changes which they unleashed were slow and incremental, but forward-looking. Continue reading

Lessons to learn from the Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal is undoubtedly, the most magnificent mausoleum on earth. It indeed is one of the greatest wonders on earth. But history cannot deny the fact that the Taj Mahal is magnificently useless. Taj Mahal shows all that had gone wrong with the Mughal rulers. Continue reading