Culture

Be it the attack on the Gogamedi shrine in the Hanumangarh district of northern Rajasthan or the Neja Mela in the Sambhal district of western Uttar Pradesh, Hindutva’s systemic attack on India’s syncretic traditions, past and present, reveals its rigid and Brahmanical ideological orientation: imposition of a strictly hierarchical, exclusionary and structured notion of faith and practice

Unlike the North Indian Kumbh, the Bharatapuzha by contrast has never functioned as a Pan-Hindu pilgrimage centre. It has no historical association with mass ritual bathing, no priestly networks that regulate sacred time, and no inherited mythological mandate that binds the river to cyclical purification rites. The introduction of the Maha Magha Mahotsavam is a clear cultural imposition by Hindutva

By merging the mystic poetry of Kabir with the...

The onslaught on the syncretic Gogamedi shrine, that has, for 10 centuries (1,000 years) attracted Hindu and Muslim devotees alike—that too launched by an outside Brahmin influencer --is nothing but a hegemonizing project of appropriation and erasure

Uttarakhand is increasingly emerging as a hotspot of hate crimes

Bulla kee jaana main kaun na main moomin vich maseet...

I saw quite a few processions going towards the...

Her autobiography is a rare account of a woman’s journey in the deepest sense from Europe to India; from Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, to the Philosophy of Recognition or Pratyabhijñā, popularly called Kashmir Śaivism.

In the first part of this Book Baithak episode,...

Our self-styled “left liberal” intelligentsia, otherwise loud in denouncing Hindu majoritarianism, suddenly turned mute when confronted with Muslim right-wing pressure