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A History of Caste – Koenraad Elst

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Caste Batman Meme

In an inter-faith debate, most Hindus can easily be put on the defensive with a single word—caste. Any anti-Hindu polemist can be counted on to allege that “the typically Hindu caste system is the most cruel apartheid, imposed by the barbaric white Aryan invaders on the gentle dark-skinned natives.” Here’s a more balanced and historical account of this controversial institution. – Dr. Konraad Elst

Merits of the Caste System

The caste system is often portrayed as the ultimate horror. Inborn inequality is indeed unacceptable to us moderns, but this does not preclude that the system has also had its merits.

Caste is perceived as an “exclusion-from,” but first of all it is a form of “belonging-to,” a natural structure of solidarity. For this reason, Christian and Muslim missionaries found it very difficult to lure Hindus away from their communities. Sometimes castes were collectively converted to Islam, and Pope Gregory XV (1621-23) decreed that the missionaries could tolerate caste distinction among Christian converts; but by and large, caste remained an effective hurdle to the destruction of Hinduism through conversion. That is why the missionaries started attacking the institution of caste and in particular the brahmin caste. This propaganda has bloomed into a full-fledged anti-brahminism, the Indian equivalent of anti-Semitism.

Every caste had a large measure of autonomy, with its own judiciary, duties and privileges, and often its own temples. Inter-caste affairs were settled at the village council by consensus; even the lowest caste had veto power. This autonomy of intermediate levels of society is the antithesis of the totalitarian society in which the individual stands helpless before the all-powerful state. This decentralized structure of civil society and of the Hindu religious commonwealth has been crucial to the survival of Hinduism under Muslim rule. Whereas Buddhism was swept away as soon as its monasteries were destroyed, Hinduism retreated into its caste structure and weathered the storm.

Caste also provided a framework for integrating immigrant communities: Jews, Zoroastrians and Syrian Christians. They were not only tolerated, but assisted in efforts to preserve their distinctive traditions.

Typically Hindu?

It is routinely claimed that caste is a uniquely Hindu institution. Yet, counter examples are not hard to come by. In Europe and elsewhere, there was (or still is) a hierarchical distinction between noblemen and commoners, with nobility only marrying nobility. Many tribal societies punished the breach of endogamy rules with death.

Coming to the Indian tribes, we find Christian missionaries claiming that “tribals are not Hindus because they do not observe caste.” In reality, missionary literature itself is rife with testimonies of caste practices among tribals. A spectacular example is what the missions call “the mistake:” the attempt, in 1891, to make tribal converts in Chhotanagpur inter-dine with converts from other tribes. It was a disaster for the mission. Most tribals renounced Christianity because they chose to preserve the taboo on inter-dining. As strongly as the haughtiest brahmin, they refused to mix what God hath separated.

Endogamy and exogamy are observed by tribal societies the world over. The question is therefore not why Hindu society invented this system, but how it could preserve these tribal identities even after outgrowing the tribal stage of civilization. The answer lies largely in the expanding Vedic culture’s intrinsically respectful and conservative spirit, which ensured that each tribe could preserve its customs and traditions, including its defining custom of tribal endogamy.

Description and History

The Portuguese colonizers applied the term caste, “lineage, breed,” to two different Hindu institutions: jati and varna. The effective unit of the caste system is the jati, birth-unit, an endogamous group into which you are born, and within which you marry. In principle, you can only dine with fellow members, but the pressures of modern life have eroded this rule. The several thousands of jatis are subdivided in exogamous clans, gotra. This double division dates back to tribal society.

By contrast, varna is the typical functional division of an advanced society—the Indus/Saraswati civilization, 3rd millennium, BCE. The youngest part of the Rg Veda describes four classes: learned brahmins born from Brahma’s mouth, martial kshatriya born from his arms; vaishya entrepreneurs born from his hips and shudra workers born from his feet. Everyone is a shudra by birth. Boys become dwija, twice-born, or member of one of the three upper varnas upon receiving the sacred thread in the upanayana ceremony.

The varna system expanded from the Saraswati-Yamuna area and got firmly established in the whole of Aryavarta (Kashmir to Vidarbha, Sindh to Bihar). It counted as a sign of superior culture setting the arya, civilized, heartland apart from the surrounding mleccha, barbaric, lands. In Bengal and the South, the system was reduced to a distinction between brahmins and shudras. Varna is a ritual category and does not fully correspond to effective social or economic status. Thus, half of the princely rulers in British India were shudras and a few were brahmins, though it is the kshatriya function par excellence. Many shudras are rich, many brahmins impoverished.

The Mahabharata defines the varna qualities thus: “He in whom you find truthfulness, generosity, absence of hatred, modesty, goodness and self-restraint, is a brahmana. He who fulfills the duties of a knight, studies the scriptures, concentrates on acquisition and distribution of riches, is a kshatriya. He who loves cattle breeding, agriculture and money, is honest and well-versed in scripture, is a vaishya. He who eats anything, practises any profession, ignores purity rules, and takes no interest in scriptures and rules of life, is a shudra.” The higher the varna, the more rules of self-discipline are to be observed. Hence, a jati could collectively improve its status by adopting more demanding rules of conduct, e.g. vegetarianism.

A person’s second name usually indicates his jati or gotra. Further, one can use the following varna titles: Sharma (shelter, or joy) indicates the brahmin, Varma (armour) the kshatriya, Gupta (protected) the vaishya and Das (servant) the shudra. In a single family, one person may call himself Gupta (varna), another Agrawal (jati), yet another Garg (gotra). A monk, upon renouncing the world, sheds his name along with his caste identity.

Untouchability

Below the caste hierarchy are the untouchables, or harijan (literally “God’s people”), dalits (“oppressed”), paraiya (one such caste in South India), or scheduled castes. They make up about 16% of the Indian population, as many as the upper castes combined.

Untouchability originates in the belief that evil spirits surround dead and dying substances. People who work with corpses, body excretions or animal skins had an aura of danger and impurity, so they were kept away from mainstream society and from sacred learning and ritual. This often took grotesque forms: thus, an untouchable had to announce his polluting proximity with a rattle, like a leper.

Untouchability is unknown in the Vedas, and therefore repudiated by neo-Vedic reformers like Dayanand Saraswati, Narayana Guru, Gandhi and Savarkar. In 1967, Dr. Ambedkar, a dalit by birth and fierce critic of social injustice in Hinduism and Islam, led a mass conversion to Buddhism, partly on the (unhistorical) assumption that Buddhism had been an anti-caste movement. The 1950 Constitution outlawed untouchability and sanctioned positive discrimination programs for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Lately, the Vishva Hindu Parishad has managed to get even the most traditionalist religious leaders on the anti-untouchability platform, so that they invite harijans to Vedic schools and train them as priests. In the villages, however, pestering of dalits is still a regular phenomenon, occasioned less by ritual purity issues than by land and labor disputes. However, the dalits’ increasing political clout is accelerating the elimination of untouchability.

Caste Conversion

In the Mahabharata, Yuddhishthira affirms that varna is defined by the qualities of head and heart, not by one’s birth. Krishna teaches that varna is defined by one’s activity (karma) and quality (guna). Till today, it is an unfinished debate to what extent one’s “quality” is determined by heredity or by environmental influence. And so, while the hereditary view has been predominant for long, the non-hereditary conception of varna has always been around as well, as is clear from the practice of varna conversion. The most famous example is the 17th century freedom fighter Shivaji, a shudra who was accorded kshatriya status to match his military achievements. The geographical spread of Vedic tradition was achieved through large scale initiation of local elites into the varna order. From 1875 onwards, the Arya Samaj has systematically administered the “purification ritual” (shuddhi) to Muslim and Christian converts and to low caste Hindus, making them dwija. Conversely, the present policy of positive discrimination has made upper-caste people seek acceptance into the favored Scheduled Castes.

Veer Savarkar, the ideologue of Hindu nationalism, advocated intermarriage to unify the Hindu nation even at the biological level. Most contemporary Hindus, though now generally opposed to caste inequality, continue to marry within their respective jati because they see no reason for their dissolution.

Racial Theory of Caste

Nineteenth-century Westerners projected the colonial situation and the newest race theories on the caste system: the upper castes were white invaders lording it over the black natives. This outdated view is still repeated ad-nauseam by anti-Hindu authors: now that “idolatry” has lost its force as a term of abuse, “racism” is a welcome innovation to demonize Hinduism. In reality, India is the region where all skin color types met and mingled, and you will find many brahmins as black as Nelson Mandela. Ancient “Aryan” heroes like Rama, Krishna, Draupadi, Ravana (a brahmin) and a number of Vedic seers were explicitly described as being dark-skinned.

But doesn’t varna mean “skin color?” The effective meaning of varna is “splendor, color,” and hence “distinctive quality” or “one segment in a spectrum.” The four functional classes constitute the “colors” in the spectrum of society. Symbolic colors are allotted to the varna on the basis of the cosmological scheme of “three qualities” (triguna): white is sattva (truthful), the quality typifying the brahmin; red is rajas (energetic), for the kshatriya; black is tamas (inert, solid), for the shudra; yellow is allotted to the vaishya, who is defined by a mixture of qualities.

Finally, caste society has been the most stable society in history. Indian Communists used to sneer that “India has never even had a revolution.” Actually, that is no mean achievement. – Hinduism Today, 1 September 1994

› Dr. Elst is a Belgian scholar who has extensively studied the current socio-political situation in India. Keenly interested in Asian philosophies and traditions from his early years, he has studied yoga, aikido and other oriental disciplines.

Caste Reservation

The fallacy of human agency and the perils of algorithmic grooming – Sreejith Sreedharan

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Who decides what AI knows? Whose values shape its reasoning? Which languages, histories, and knowledge systems are marginalised by the data it learns from? Which voices are amplified, and which are effectively erased because they do not belong to profitable markets or dominant cultures? – Sreejith Sreedharan

We have built an entire civilisation on a comforting assumption: that each of us, as individuals, freely determines our own thoughts, values, and choices. That we are the authors of our own minds. That our decisions are wholly and unmistakably ours.

It is a beautiful idea. It is also, in the strictest sense, incomplete.

A person does not begin life as a self-made thinker. A child inherits language, class position, family habits, cultural assumptions, religious background, and ideas about success long before the child has the capacity to question them. School extends that inheritance. Peers reinforce it. Media saturates it. Daily routines harden it. By the time a person begins to call a belief their own, much of the mental architecture has already been installed by forces outside their control.

That does not mean agency is an illusion. People still choose. They still judge. They still resist. But agency operates inside conditions that were not selected by the individual. Human freedom is real, but limited, shaped, and unevenly distributed.

Artificial Intelligence has entered this already conditioned environment and begun to alter it at scale and speed.

The loud concerns around AI diminishing or even replacing human agency are understandable. Yet the argument often misses a deeper point. Human minds have never developed in a vacuum. They have always been formed by institutions, social norms, and inherited systems of belief. The real question is not whether conditioning exists. It always has. The real question is what kind of conditioning AI now produces, and who controls it.

For the first time in history, a technology can do more than distribute information. Writing preserved knowledge. The printing press widened access to it. The internet made vast quantities of it available to nearly everyone. But none of these systems democratised the capacity to reason with information. They expanded access to data, not necessarily access to judgement.

AI changes that status quo radically. Used well, it can act as a reasoning companion. It can explain, translate, compare, summarise, test assumptions, and scaffold thought. A first-generation learner in a small town in Odisha or Oaxaca can now ask questions and receive a level of intellectual engagement that once belonged largely to elite classrooms. That is a real shift in the conditions under which thought develops.

This is why AI carries such promise. It may become the first technology capable of raising the cognitive floor rather than merely expanding the speed of execution. It can help more people reason, write, learn, and participate in knowledge systems that were earlier closed to them by geography, class, language, or institutional access.

Across philosophical and spiritual traditions, many thinkers have argued that a civilisation advances when knowledge and capability become more widely shared. Not equal outcomes, but a more even base of epistemic standing. A society cannot remain intellectually healthy if only a small minority has the tools to think clearly while everyone else is left to consume, repeat, and comply.

AI may be the first technology capable of helping build that base.

But that promise sits beside a more troubling reality. The AI systems shaping public life today are not neutral infrastructure. They are products. They are built within business models, commercial incentives, and institutional assumptions that reflect a narrow set of priorities. Frontier AI remains concentrated in a relatively small number of firms and research ecosystems, even if development is becoming more global. That concentration is a red flag, as it shapes what these systems know, what they optimise for, and what kinds of users they are designed to serve.

The result is not a plural expansion of human possibility. In many cases, it is a worldview encoded at scale. English-language dominance, Western institutional habits, and the logic of engagement and monetisation influence how these systems respond, recommend, and rank. The hidden power here is not simply technical. It is cultural and political.

Algorithmic conditioning works differently from older forms of cultural conditioning. Traditional conditioning was often coercive, but it was visible. People could argue against it, form counter-cultures, or reject it outright. It had friction. That friction gave some room for reflection.

Algorithmic conditioning is more adaptive. It studies what a person already prefers and returns it in refined form. It offers convenience while narrowing the range of encounter. Personalisation can reinforce existing habits, reduce exposure to disagreement, and narrow the range of ideas people encounter. It creates the feeling of discovery while quietly reducing surprise. The recommendation engine does not simply show people more of the world. It often shows them more of themselves.

The deeper concern is not that a feed is mildly curated. It is that repeated curation trains attention, and attention shapes thought. A person who is continually shown familiar positions, familiar styles, and familiar emotional cues begins to treat familiarity as depth. The system does not need to coerce. It only needs to keep rewarding what already works. We already see this pattern in everyday choices, from mundane chores to the people we choose to lead us.

That is why the AI governance question is critical and matters so much. The real influence lies in the algorithms, where design choices quietly become societal outcomes.

Who decides what AI knows? Whose values shape its reasoning? Which languages, histories, and knowledge systems are marginalised by the data it learns from? Which voices are amplified, and which are effectively erased because they do not belong to profitable markets or dominant cultures?

These are civilisational questions, not technical ones. Yet they are being resolved today with limited public oversight and little democratic participation from most of the world.

There is still a meaningful opportunity here. AI can widen access to reasoning support, lower barriers to learning, and help more people participate in intellectual life with greater confidence. It can serve as a tool for epistemic levelling if it is designed and governed with that purpose in mind.

But that outcome is not guaranteed. If the systems that shape thought at scale remain concentrated in a handful of corporate hands (or governments), the result will not be liberation. It will be a more efficient consolidation of intellectual power, dressed in the language of empowerment.

Governing AI for the good of all humanity is not a nicety, but a necessity. Public institutions cannot treat AI as a neutral utility while its incentives shape what large populations see, repeat, and accept. The systems that mediate thought now require scrutiny equal to their influence. Transparency, language inclusion, dataset diversity, and accountability are no longer niche policy concerns. They are core conditions for preserving plural thought.

The debate we need is not whether AI threatens human agency that never fully existed. It is who governs the algorithmic conditioning that now shapes thought, and whether that power serves human development or merely corporate advantage.

That debate is not happening at the scale and with the intention it should. It urgently must. – Firstpost, 22 August 2026

› Sreejith Sreedharan is a technology analyst and author. He works on organisational AI readiness and created the AI Instinct Index®, a psychometric diagnostic designed to assess behavioural readiness for AI adoption and adaptive capacity in constraint-heavy environments.

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If Arunachal is ‘South Tibet’, let’s talk about Tibet – Utpal Kumar

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Xi Jinping Caricature

One hopes Beijing realises that the law of diminishing returns has set in. If it doesn’t and continues calling Arunachal Pradesh “South Tibet”, then Bharat should be ready to send another message: “Dear Beijing, if Arunachal Pradesh is ‘South Tibet’, let’s then talk about Tibet.” – Utpal Kumar

Former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, in his book How China Sees India, recounts an extraordinary conversation between Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1972.

“India is a highly suspicious country,” Zhou told Kissinger. “It is quite a big country; sometimes it puts on airs of a big country, but sometimes it has an inferiority complex.”

Kissinger had a ready explanation: “It has been governed by foreigners through most of its history.”

“Yes,” Zhou replied, “that might be one of the historical factors.”

Then came the most fascinating—and revealing—recollection. Zhou told Kissinger about a tea party the then Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had hosted in his garden. Among the guests were two Tibetan lamas. Then, suddenly, another figure appeared in Tibetan costume: a woman.

“Do you know who she was?” Zhou asked.

“Madame Binh?” Kissinger guessed.

“Madame Gandhi,” Zhou replied, provoking laughter.

It was Indira Gandhi, dressed entirely in a Tibetan attire.

“That was something that Nehru was capable of doing,” Zhou recalled. “I was speechless (when) confronted with such a situation. It was impossible for me to say anything.”

There, compressed into this seemingly innocuous episode, lies much of the tragedy of Bharat’s early engagement with China. Nehru apparently thought he was making a charming cultural gesture towards his Chinese guest. Zhou saw it as an affront to China’s conception of itself and, perhaps, further reason to suspect that Bharat harboured ambitions regarding Tibet.

Ironically, Delhi was doing all this to impress Beijing. For decades, and particularly during the first 15 years after Independence, it repeatedly sought to win China’s confidence, only to produce results that were often the opposite of what it intended.

The failure was as much intellectual as political. Until relatively recently, most scholars who presented themselves as China experts, particularly in academia, tended to be Sinophiles. They admired the Chinese system and civilisation, were often in awe of them, and even appeared reluctant to subject Beijing’s worldview and actions to sufficiently rigorous scrutiny. The result was that Delhi continued making mistakes without undertaking adequate course correction.

At the heart of the problem, therefore, was an inadequate understanding of the Middle Kingdom mindset. Indians tended to see China through an Indian prism. They assumed that conciliatory “Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai” rhetoric could foster a genuine sense of fraternity. The Chinese interpreted conciliation differently, more as a weakness that should be exploited.

The Chinese political worldview has been starkly different from that of its southern neighbour. Historian R.C. Majumdar explored this in an article in the Organiser in 1965: “It is characteristic of China that if a region once acknowledged her nominal suzerainty even for a short period, she would regard it as a part of her empire forever and would automatically revive her claim over it even after a thousand years whenever there was a chance of enforcing it.”

Then there was another Chinese characteristic that Tibetologist Charles Alfred Bell wrote about: the tendency to first make “mild” claims and “then to wait a bit and if it passes without objection, to say or do something stronger”.

Seen against this backdrop, Delhi’s recent decision to formally identify 27 places in Arunachal Pradesh by their standard Indian names deserves attention. Predictably, Beijing has reacted sharply, describing the exercise as “self-deception” and warning that it runs “counter to the improving momentum in bilateral relations and could complicate efforts to properly handle border issues”.

The indignation is revealing. China has spent years weaponising nomenclature. It has issued Chinese names for places in Arunachal Pradesh, which it claims as “South Tibet”, repeatedly using maps, terminology and administrative declarations to bolster its territorial claims. Now Bharat is answering in the same language. It has realised that maps are not innocent pieces of paper in territorial disputes. It now understands that names are not merely labels. Cartography, nomenclature, infrastructure, administrative control and diplomatic repetition are all instruments through which states reinforce claims and seek to establish political facts.

Beijing, being a past master of this nomenclature game, has always understood, and even weaponised, this exceptionally well. What’s heartening is that Delhi now appears to understand it too. The timing makes the message even more significant. Xi Jinping is expected to visit Delhi next month for the BRICS summit. The older Indian diplomatic instinct might have been to postpone anything remotely provocative. The usual Indian thinking would have been: why create unnecessary friction before such an important visit?

Not anymore.

There is a certain irony here because Beijing itself has repeatedly demonstrated that summitry does not require strategic restraint. Xi’s 2014 visit to Bharat coincided with a serious confrontation in the Chumar sector. Even as the Modi government rolled out the diplomatic carpet in September 17-19, 2014, troops of the People’s Liberation Army were confronting Indian forces along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

China has, for years, mastered the art of what former Indian envoy to China Vijay Gokhale would, in his latest book, China’s Wars, call the Chinese “talk-and-take” strategy—“the selective application of force at the times of China’s choosing, while simultaneously forcing a desirable outcome through the negotiations”. Beijing has long understood that territorial disputes are fought not merely by soldiers but also by historians, diplomats, mapmakers, bureaucrats and propagandists. Repeat a claim often enough, publish it on enough maps, give places Chinese names, incorporate them into official documents, and wait for opportune moments to let these changes concretise.

Now, as the Arunachal Pradesh episode shows, Delhi too is responding to the Chinese challenge—soldier to soldier, diplomacy to diplomacy, maps to maps. It has realised that merely having civilisational, constitutional control over a territory is not enough. The country also needs to fight and win the narrative war.

The bigger challenge now is consistency. Beijing plays a long game. Delhi should be ready for that and resist the temptation to judge its China policy through individual summits, temporary border disengagements or carefully worded joint statements. It must cultivate strategic patience of its own.

For decades, Bharat’s China policy was haunted by the hope that one more gesture of goodwill might finally persuade Beijing of Delhi’s peaceful intentions. As Zhou Enlai’s story about Indira Gandhi shows, merely having good intentions is not enough. It is also paramount to send the right message.

This is where Delhi’s Arunachal Pradesh messaging is important. One hopes Beijing realises that the law of diminishing returns has set in. If it doesn’t and continues calling the Indian state “South Tibet”, then Bharat should be ready to send another message: “Dear Beijing, if Arunachal Pradesh is ‘South Tibet’, let’s then talk about Tibet.” – Firstpost, 10 August 2026

Arunachala Pradesh Map

Arunachal Pradesh is the official Indian name for the state, which means “Land of the Dawn-Lit Mountains” or “Land of the Rising Sun” in Sanskrit (derived from Aruna meaning dawn/sun and achala meaning mountain). Historically, the region was known as the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) before being renamed and becoming a union territory in 1972. 

In August 2026, the Government of India formally identified 27 specific places within the state with their standard Indian names on the official Survey of India map to counter Chinese renaming attempts. These locations include:

  • Strategic Border Areas: Long Ju, Maja, Jairampur, and Thag La (site of the 1962 war).

  • Mountain Passes: Bisa, Dzo La, Riza La, Pukur La, and Thag La. 

  • Historical Memorials: Jaswant Garh (Martyr Jaswant Singh Rawat) and the Sher-e-Thapa Memorial. 

  • Geographical Features: Sambho Sarovar (high-altitude lake), Bara Kundun, and Chhota Kundun. 

  • Villages and Settlements: Dhan Bari, Pritnagar, Teritnagar, Ramnagar, Sagar, Padma, Jyotinagar, Baisakhi, Chhota Ropuk, Bara Ropuk, Shivaji Nagar, Sunpura, Kamlang Nagar, and Buddhamandir. 

While China refers to the region as Zangnan (Southern Tibet) and has issued multiple lists of alternative names, New Delhi rejects these as “fictitious” and maintains that Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India.

India’s Independence: The overlooked forces behind freedom in 1947 – Nilantha Ilangamuwa

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Gandhi, Nehru & Azad

India did not become free because the British suddenly accepted the moral case for self-rule. Independence emerged from a far more turbulent convergence of anti-colonial resistance, wartime exhaustion, economic crisis, political calculations, communal mobilisation and growing doubts about the Raj’s ability to command obedience. – Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Unlike many countries that count their independence by anniversaries, India has developed a peculiar habit of counting its freedom in ordinal numbers. The United States, for example, celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2026, marking two and a half centuries since independence. India, by contrast, calls 15 August 2026 its 80th Independence Day, although the country became independent in 1947 and this is therefore the 79th anniversary of independence. The language of the 80th Independence Day suggests a continuous national ritual in which each passing year is another instalment of a story already settled. Yet India’s independence was anything but settled. It was born from an extraordinary collision of anti-colonial resistance, imperial exhaustion, famine, political calculation, communal mobilisation, ideological disagreement, international pressure and personal rivalries.

The British Empire did not simply relinquish India because the moral case for independence had finally become irresistible. By the end of the Second World War, Britain faced a more practical question than whether Indians wanted freedom. It was whether Britain still possessed the political, economic and coercive capacity to govern India indefinitely. Independence was therefore both a nationalist victory and the retreat of an exhausted empire.

Few episodes expose the contradictions of British rule more brutally than the Bengal famine of 1943. Crop failures, the 1942 cyclone, wartime disruption, inflation, procurement policies, transport constraints and the loss of rice imports after the Japanese occupation of Burma all played roles. But political decisions made during the crisis cannot be separated from the catastrophe. Churchill’s government prioritised the demands of a global war in which India was treated as an imperial resource while Indians had no equivalent political authority over the allocation of those resources. Indians were being asked to participate in the defence of an empire whose political system did not give their lives equal weight in the calculation of wartime priorities.

Churchill-Tharoor Quote

The surviving record becomes darker still when the language of imperial officials is examined. In his diary, Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery recorded Churchill making a remark about Indians “breeding like rabbits” during discussions over famine relief. Amery was so appalled by Churchill’s attitude towards India that he wrote privately that, on the subject of India, Winston was “not quite sane” and compared his outlook with Hitler’s. Millions were starving while the allocation of ships, grain and other resources was being argued over in terms of military necessity, imperial priorities and competing claims on British shipping. The famine was therefore not merely a humanitarian disaster. It exposed what imperial government meant when the population affected by a decision had no sovereign authority over it.

Churchill did not merely oppose a timetable for Indian self-government. He opposed the underlying historical direction. He famously declared that he had not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. For Churchill, empire was not an incidental possession. India remained one of its essential foundations.

India’s side is no less troubling. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad remains one of the most consequential figures to disappear into the background of the conventional independence narrative. His opposition to Pakistan was not based on a denial of Muslim identity. He argued from within an Islamic intellectual framework that a Muslim had no reason to surrender India because political territory could not be divided neatly into the pure and the impure. He regarded the whole of India as his political inheritance. For Azad, Muslim identity and Indian nationhood were not incompatible propositions.

Azad believed that Congress had been offered a constitutional route that could have preserved Indian unity while accommodating substantial political autonomy for Muslim-majority regions. Nehru’s insistence that the Constituent Assembly would ultimately be free to alter the arrangement, Azad argued, gave Jinnah the opportunity to claim that the safeguards offered to Muslims were unreliable. In Azad’s judgement, this was one of the greatest tragedies of Indian history. He went further, arguing that Nehru had committed an “almost equal blunder” in 1937 and that the consequences of Congress’s decisions in the United Provinces helped give the Muslim League a new lease of political life. Partition, in this reading, was not simply the inevitable result of an ancient Hindu-Muslim antagonism. Political decisions made by nationalist leaders helped narrow the alternatives.

Azad himself differed from Gandhi on war and strategy. He regarded non-violence as a policy rather than an absolute creed and argued that Indians had the right to fight if circumstances required it. He also warned Gandhi that Japanese forces approaching India could not simply be regarded as enemies of the British rather than potential enemies of India. He found himself in the extraordinary position of having earlier urged organised opposition to Britain while later warning that Gandhi’s proposed strategy, once Japanese forces approached India’s frontier, was dangerously unrealistic.

Gandhi could regard non-violence as a moral principle, while Azad could regard it largely as a political method. Nehru could view the Second World War through the global confrontation between fascism and democracy, while Azad insisted that India’s own freedom remained paramount. C. Rajagopalachari openly dissented from Congress policy and argued that accommodation with the Muslim League might unlock the constitutional deadlock. Jinnah moved from constitutional politics towards a mass-based demand for Pakistan. Patel pursued political calculations that Azad regarded as falling short of Congress’s professed nationalism.

Meanwhile, even some Europeans concluded that loyalty to justice required opposition to empire. Annie Besant, an Englishwoman, became one of India’s most prominent advocates of self-government. Benjamin Guy Horniman, another Englishman, identified so closely with Indian political grievances that he publicly aligned himself with the nationalist cause. American missionary Samuel Stokes went further, adopting Indian practices and entering the nationalist struggle.

Then there was Shapurji Saklatvala, the British-Indian communist politician whose political relationship with Gandhi was far from harmonious. Saklatvala belonged to a political tradition that viewed Gandhian methods with suspicion. Constitutionalists, revolutionaries, socialists, communists, religious nationalists, secular nationalists and advocates of non-violence disagreed profoundly about what freedom should produce. The British Empire was weakened not by one argument but by the accumulation of contradictions.

An empire claiming to fight fascism could not indefinitely deny political freedom to its largest colony. A government demanding Indian resources could not easily explain why Indian political authority remained subordinate. A state dependent on Indian soldiers could not ignore changing loyalties within the armed forces. By 1946, the Royal Indian Navy revolt demonstrated how dangerous that transformation could become. It was not the sole cause of British withdrawal, but it was an unmistakable warning that the coercive foundations of colonial rule were becoming unstable. The empire had survived earlier rebellions because it could rely upon the obedience of its soldiers and police. That obedience could no longer be taken for granted.

The deeper meaning of 1947 is therefore not that one man defeated an empire, nor that one organisation liberated a nation, nor even that Partition was unavoidable. India became independent because an enormous imperial structure had been weakened from several directions while Indians themselves were arguing fiercely over what should replace it. That is why the overlooked history matters. It asks why an empire that proclaimed liberty ruled India for so long, why famine coexisted with imperial priorities, and why the Raj ultimately lost the loyalty on which its power depended. The flag raised in 1947 represented freedom, but also the end of several competing visions of what India could become. Some disappeared with the empire. Others disappeared with Partition.

Churchill’s government prioritised the demands of a global war in which India was treated as an imperial resource while Indians had no equivalent political authority over the allocation of those resources. Indians were being asked to participate in the defence of an empire whose political system did not give their lives equal weight in the calculation of wartime priorities – The Pioneer, 17 August 2026

› Nilantha Ilangamuwa is a policy analyst and columnist based in Columbo.

Last Bristish troops leave India at Bombay (1948).

Humanity and the forgotten dream of world unity – Gautam Chikermane

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Sri Aurobindo

Just as an individual does not lose individuality when united with the divine but fulfils it, nations too flower to their fullest and freest expressions when united—this is the spiritual goal for a planet currently being crushed by rapidly fragmenting geopolitics. – Gautam Chikermane

On India’s Independence Day and Sri Aurobindo’s birth anniversary on August 15, 2026, there are two phenomenon the world seems to have forgotten: the idea of man as a transitional and evolving being as defined by Sri Aurobindo, and the geography (India) that gave birth to that spiritual inheritance five millenniums ago. Lurking in the dark shadows of progress, the rich age of the mind continues its onward march but the crude era of physical dominance continues; the latter through military may even be hijacking the fruits of development ripened after centuries of West-dominated conflicts.

In Sri Aurobindo’s universe, a nation is not merely a contract of individuals coming together, it is equally and more accurately, a society expressing itself through what he redefined as “collective being”. Such a society has a collective mind, a collective soul, a collective swabhava (essential nature) and a collective swadharma (law of action flowing from swabhava). We can term it ‘spiritual geopolitics’ that has become the psychic undergirding of the surface drama being enacted by principal actors in the form of collective beings expressing themselves as various nations.

When we reframe nations as beings rather than borders, we find in them not the drive of perfected statecraft, impeccably articulated by Ved Vyasa, Sun Tsu or Clausewitz, but the differently-evolving parts of the state: the physical, the vital, the mental and the psychic, each demanding and finding its individual place in the collective consciousness, each incomplete without the other. In 2026, it is the vital parts of the collective beings that are dominating this devolutionary pause in the larger evolutionary discourse.

Replacing progress with regress, we are being gaslit by emotive and vital streams of consciousness through actions of states and powered by nonstate actors such as US Big Tech, both of which are being aggressively embraced by humans stripped of geographical limitations. The slow, deliberate and decisive geological time-treads of evolution towards what Sri Aurobindo defines as the ‘supramental’ seem to have paused under the weight of the physical and the emotional. The grease of war is seeing humanity slip a few steps. It is fumbling, its spiritual aspiration lost to material fall, its ideas of security drowned by the forces of warring technologies.

The question he would ask, therefore, is not who is fighting the righteous war but from which stage of consciousness are the collective beings acting from: the illumined mind, the awakened soul or the desire-seeking vital. Amid the bombings of soldiers and civilians alike, the answer is clearly skewing towards an ego-driven ambition that, in a bid to create history, has chosen to forget history.

Beyond the strait, if Sri Aurobindo were writing today, he would observe the US-Iran war as much an occult phenomenon expressing the repeated rise of asuric forces to counter humanity’s spiritual evolution as a surface conquest and control of chokepoints or energy economics through an ethics-challenged power play. The US-Iran war is an axiomatic paradigm, part of the bigger tensions around the US-Russia-China rivalry that is showcasing itself through the Eastward shift of power and potentially the emergence of a new world order where the US-led West stands strategically softened, still in the play but seeking the dominance that has vanished.

To Sri Aurobindo, the US would be a vital-mental civilisation of tremendous dynamism, built on individual liberty and pragmatic energy, but with a persistent confusion between its national interest and a universal ideal. Its danger is not tyranny of the old imperial kind but a subtler one. It is the tendency to mistake its own particular form of life—technological and military dominance, market democracy, soft power, or once-robust institutions—for the only legitimate form of human progress, and to press this uniformity on other collective beings in the name of unity.

He would see Russia as a wounded and defensive vital ego, a civilisation with a real and distinct soul-nature shaped by centuries of hostility that continue till today. Apart from security, the collective being that is also the world’s largest geography has not yet found the peaceful, self-assured expression of its swabhava. Triggered by great power dominance and pitched against the US and the EU, its swadharma is constantly in a reactive mode. Its current assertiveness, the annexation of territory, the appeal to civilisational destiny, would strike him as the vital being’s attempt to recover dignity through force because it has not yet discovered a freer, more inward form of national stability.

As far as China goes, Sri Aurobindo would view it as an old and formidable civilisation-state whose genius lies in collective ordering, cultural continuity, and disciplined mental organisation capable of remarkable internal coherence. Its risk, in his terms, would be the opposite of America’s: not chaotic individualism exported as universal form, but a centralised harmony imposed from above, in which uniformity masquerades as unity. That is, a well-organised mind and a disciplined citizenry now experiencing wealth and economic success that has not yet let the deeper soul of its people, or of the nations within its orbit, breathe freely.

All three, he would argue, are playing a very old game: alliances, deterrence, balance of power, sanctions, spheres of influence. In other words, power. This is essentially the same mechanism as the historical struggle between empire-by-conquest and confederation-by-mutual-interest that he analysed in his essays in The Ideal of Human Unity, an unstable equilibrium, not a true unification, because it is built on calculation of force and self-interest rather than on the discovery of a common soul-life.

The solution Sri Aurobindo would point to, as he did in his August 15, 1947, article for All India Radio, would be in last three of the five dreams he had for India and its role in global affairs: “A world-union forming the outer basis of a fairer, brighter and nobler life for all mankind.” The momentum of this future existed then, as it does now, if India can develop a statesmanship not limited by current facts and surface events. It must build the physical resilience to endure headwinds, the emotional strength that sustains vitality, and the mental argumentations backed by material power to lead the world to peace, prosperity and progress.

The challenges before us today are not very different from those eight decades ago, when the vacuum of peace was filled with global institutions, all of which have failed to sustain, constantly in need of repair, with temporary changes to quieten voices rather than fix the problems. The institutions, particularly the United Nations, that can sustain humanity’s tomorrow cannot stand on the debris of yesterday; they need to be reimagined, not reformed—a new body to replace the UN, as the UN once replaced the League of Nations in 1946, which replaced the Concert of Europe in 1914.

Three characteristics would define the future. First, for institutions to be born and to sustain, the 195 collective beings would need to function as federations of equality rather than be vulnerable to the fragilities of self-interest; if anything, the latter must be embedded into the former.

Second, each collective being would need to attend to its own inner swadharma rather than importing from others; the powerful would need to prevent themselves from being intoxicated by their outer powers and resist the temptation to impose their models on others. The US and the EU would need to temper their universalising impulses and embrace the wider diversity of planet earth; Russia to secure identity through inner strength rather than territorial assertions; China to let its internal harmony become more inclusive outside borders; India to build its physical and vital strength to reach the higher recesses of the spiritual and become a medium of Sri Aurobindo’s dream.

And third, to understand that administrative or economic unification is merely the scaffolding that can handhold collective beings towards peace; it is a necessary component of getting there—but it is not sufficient. Real unity requires a change of consciousness, a transmutation into something more than the national ego or an idea beyond consumption dominance, geopolitical grabbing or coercion under the threat of a nuclear bomb. As he wrote in Savitri:

I have found the atoms from which he built the worlds:
The first tremendous cosmic energy
Missioned shall leap to slay my enemy kin,
Expunge a nation or abolish a race,
Death’s silence leave where there was laughter and joy.

The bomb may have created some external unity, forced by the weight of destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Surely such a unity cannot sustain; below the word, collective beings continue to simmer at the asymmetry. Tehran seeking a nuclear deterrence and Washington D.C. preventing it, or Islamabad and Pyongyang sabre rattling around their nuclear bombs are parts of that strategic simmering of disunity.

In all this, it is difficult to see the individual and the collective, the spiritual and the material as a unified divine expression. But in one line Sri Aurobindo merges them seamlessly. “I may now see myself as a creature contained in the universe,” he wrote in Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, “but when I come to self-knowledge, I see too the universe to be a thing contained in myself.” Just as an individual does not lose individuality when united with the divine but fulfils it, nations too flower to their fullest and freest expressions when united—this is the spiritual goal for a planet currently being crushed by rapidly fragmenting geopolitics. Guided by Sri Aurobindo, global unity is what India aspires for, moves towards and will lead the world into. – Firstpost, 14 August 2026

› Author and journalist, Gautam Chikermane explores the unholy trinity of money, power and faith. He is the New Media Director at Reliance Industries Ltd and a Director on the Board of CARE India. 

Indians with their flag.

Muslim Testimonies: The Plight of Women in Islam – Virendra Parekh

VOI

Indian women want changes to Muslim Personal Law.

It is nearly impossible for non-Muslims, especially Hindus, to understand the powerful influence that religion exercises on Muslims. In the Indic traditions, religious books are part of an individual’s cultural heritage and exist to guide him in his moral and spiritual quest. In Islam, religious books exist to command and control every aspect of man’s life, spiritual and material, on promise of eternal pleasures in heaven or everlasting pain in hell hereafter. – Virendra Parekh

That Muhammad, founder of Islam, was a progressive reformer for his times and his teachings improved the lot of Arab women is a fashionable belief in many elite circles in non-Muslim countries. Shruti Anerao in a recent book, Muslim Women: Through the Prism of Muslim Scholars, examines its veracity in the light of writings of Muslim scholars, which point to the opposite conclusion: Islam regards women as inherently inferior to men, and taking advantage of its injunctions they are ill-treated, oppressed and exploited in ways beyond the imagination of average non-Muslims. Each of these scholars was born of Muslim parents and brought up in accordance with Islamic tradition in an almost wholly Muslim society. No outside influence shaped their perception until they came of age and began to doubt the justice and humanity of what was going on around them. They write from direct first-hand knowledge of Islam and Muslim society.

It is nearly impossible for non-Muslims, especially Hindus, to understand the powerful influence that religion exercises on Muslims. In the Indic traditions, religious books are part of an individual’s cultural heritage and exist to guide him in his moral and spiritual quest. In Islam, religious books exist to command and control every aspect of man’s life, spiritual and material, on promise of eternal pleasures of the heaven or everlasting pain of the hell hereafter. The Quran remains for all Muslims, not just traditionalists, the uncreated word of God Himself. It is valid for all times and places for the whole of the mankind; its ideas are absolutely true and beyond criticism. To question it is to question the very word of God and hence blasphemous. A Muslim’s duty is to believe it and obey its commands. This explains the hold of Ulemas on the Muslim society as interpreters of the Quran and custodians of its knowledge and traditions. It also explains the enormity of the task facing reformers: Any question about a dogma, any talk of reform can quickly be portrayed as questioning the word of God, punishable with terrible consequences. Indeed, from the early eighth century to our own times, this has been the fate of many who just raised a question. Shruti Anerao’s book has to be viewed in this light.

From the horse’s mouth

Wafa Sultan, the Syrian lady doctor and author of A God Who Hates, says that Muslims hate their women because their God does. Her grandfather held her grandmother responsible for the disgrace of not having a son. So, he forced the woman who bore him five children to find for him a beautiful girl to marry. After the wedding, the poor lady was reduced to the status of a servant in her own home. As a medical student at Aleppo University, Wafa stayed with the family of her brother’s friend, Ahmed and Huda. She often wondered how Huda, a very beautiful woman with green eyes, pink skin and blond hair selected such a short husband with a pendulous belly and skinny limbs. Huda shared her experience of their first night. “When he came into her room, she began to shudder. The wedding guests were all waiting outside the door for the proof of her virginity. The bridegroom swooped upon her like an animal and emerged from the room a few minutes later with a piece of cloth.”

As a medical student and later as a practitioner, Wafa came in direct contact with women from a large cross section of society. She could sense the fear in their eyes. Once she won their confidence, horrendous stories of their sexual exploitation tumbled out. Many had been raped, most by male members of their family, usually the fathers, brothers or in-laws. Unmarried women who became pregnant as a result of the rape were killed, in most cases by the rapist himself to keep the scandal from spreading. No doctor was required to obtain a death certificate; witnesses were sufficient.

A shocking aspect of this grim reality was that the victims could not expect sympathy from any quarter. A woman came to Wafa’s department with many circular burns the size of a small coin on her thighs and abdomen. Answering the doctor she said her husband used to stub out his cigarettes on her body “to punish her for being stupid.” The male doctor—repeat, doctor—laughed and said, “You must deserve it, he wouldn’t do it if you weren’t stupid!” Fatima, a thirty-year old widow was diagnosed with a three-month pregnancy. She had four children when her husband died five years ago. Her brother-in-law was raping her every day as he fed the family since the death of his brother.

Fatima implored the doctor to end her pregnancy anyhow as “my son would kill me if he knew about it.” The doctor performed the operation without anaesthesia as she did not have enough money to pay. The operation was extremely painful and she nearly died while undergoing it. But the doctor would not forgo even a small part of his fee.

Amal, a doctor, ran to an eye hospital with chemical burns in her eyes and on the face. First she said it was boiling water that caused the burns, but later she confided the bitter truth to her friend. Amal’s brother, fifteen years younger than her, had poured a fuel bucket on her face when she insisted on going out without his permission. Her mother, when told about the incident, chided Amal, “You got what you deserved. I have warned you more than once about going against your brother’s wishes. Now you know.” Even if a woman is educated, mature and capable of taking her own decisions, she is not allowed to do so.

If you thought that this picture is confined to some countries or some sections of the society, think again. Jean Sasson in her trilogy comprising Princess: A True Story, Princess Sultana’s Daugthers and Princess Sultana’s Circle, unveiled how even women of royal family lived a life of isolation, loneliness and humiliation in an authoritarian and patriarchal society.  Sultana was a Saudi princess born to uncountable wealth.

Tahmina Durrani, the wife of the powerful Pakistani politician Mustafa Khar, right hand man of Zulfikar Ali Butto, was born in an influential family and lived in high society. In her autobiographical book My Feudal Lord, she describes her childhood. “Apart from my father, brother and a few close relatives, men were alien creatures, and from my earliest moments I was trained to avoid them. My childhood was encumbered by a lengthy list of don’ts, all designed to maintain an inviolable distance between myself and the masculine world: never wear makeup or nail polish. Do not look at boys. Avoid modern girlfriends and avoid any girlfriend who has an elder brother. Never visit a friend without special permission and without your nanny. Never pick up the phone. Never go out alone with the driver. Never stand around the kitchen with male servants.”

Compliance with this code of conduct, however, did not get her a happy married life. Tahmina had left her husband and a daughter to marry Mustafa. The reward: Mustafa scolded her every time she remembered her child and missed it. When her political fortunes were down, Mustafa would take it out on servants and wives. In a month of Ramzan, the servant was five minutes late in bringing the food. Mustafa beat him until he was unconscious. Then came Tahmina’s turn, who was then pregnant. Mustafa questioned her as if she were a criminal and a liar. No answer would satisfy him. “Suddenly, he threw me down on the bed and jumped on me. Sitting astride my belly, he slapped me repeatedly with his open palm, forehand and backhand, … he pulled my hair, thrusting my head from side to side, … suddenly, he leaped off me. One hand clutched my long braided hair and jerked me off the bed and onto the floor, … he threw me against a wall, picked me up and threw me against another again and again. Something burst in my ears, I felt an agonising pain in my eyes. Something split. Something swelled. Then the pain merged into a deep sense of agony….”

We have described this heartrending incident somewhat in detail, because it is not an isolated incident. Merciless beating of women by their husbands and other relatives is a common occurrence because it is rooted in beliefs and attitudes inculcated relentlessly across centuries and geographies.

Even worse is the contempt in which girl children are held, total control exercised on every aspect of a woman’s life by persons other than herself and a complete obedience routinely expected from her in everything. It is meant to snuff out any spark of freethinking, any chance of scepticism and any possibility of rebellion. When Wafa Sultan shouted at a mullah in a TV debate, “Be quiet! It is may turn!” it sent shockwaves across the countries. How can a woman dare shout at a man?

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, an Iranian American political scientist in his book, A God That Hates Women, tells us that in his family girls were considered “the most difficult of burdens and most worthless things.” In Syria, Iraq and other countries of West Asia, the role of a woman, determined on the basis of religious books, is mostly limited to taking care of home, husband, family and bearing and rearing children. Education beyond elementary level is a waste of time, a dispensable luxury. Dr. Rafizadeh’s mother secured high grades in school, but her mother declared one day that she would not be going to the school from the next day. As she put it, “Why should you keep studying if you are eventually going to stay at home? You are meant to wash asses of your children, to clean, cook and take care of your family. Girls are born to stay at home and please their men.”

Even here, a girl cannot expect to select a suitable match. He would be chosen for her by others, usually elder males in the family. Amira, Majid’s mother, was compelled to marry a 39-year-old man, 24 years older than her. On the night of her marriage, she was forced to follow his wish to consummate the marriage. As Tahmina Durrani puts it, “The common belief is that a woman is an instrument of man’s carnal pleasure; if the woman ever indicated that she felt pleasure (in sexual relations), she is a potential adulteress and not to be trusted; to think independently is a crime that he has a right to punish.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali says in her book, Infidel, that in her childhood she was taught to be an ideal wife, a barri (pure, chaste). Among other things, “If her husband is cruel, if he rapes her and then taunts her about it, if he decides to take another wife, or beats her, she lowers her gaze and hides her tears. And she works hard, faultlessly. … If you long for love and comfort, you pray in silence to Allah to make your husband more bearable.”

What the Book says

Remarkably, every perpetrator of atrocities justified them by invoking commands of Allah in the Quran and precept and practice of the prophet in the Hadith. Like many feminists from this part of the world, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali initially attributed this mind-set and conduct to a misinterpretation of Islam and teachings of the Prophet. However, when they managed to learn Islam from the original sources through authentic translations, they were forced to change their opinion.

Ibn Warraq, a Muslim of Pakistani origin and author of a highly scholarly work, Why I am not a Muslim, had no such illusions. He quotes chapter and verse from the Quran and Hadith to show that Islam is deeply anti-feminist. Islam is the fundamental cause of repression of Muslim women and remains the major obstacle to the evolution of their position. Islam has always considered woman as an inferior creature in every way: physically, intellectually and morally. This negative vision is divinely sanctioned by the Quran, corroborated by hadiths (anecdotes of the Prophet) and perpetuated by commentaries of theologians, custodians of Muslim dogma and ignorance.

Islam regards woman essentially as a sex object created by God for the pleasure of man. It looks upon woman physically, even nakedly. The primary meaning of the word aurat is female genital organ and that of nikah is coitus. The Quran says “Your wives are your fields, so go and plough into your fields whichever way you like” (Surah 2.223)

Islam adopted the legend of Adam and Eve from the Old Testament and adapted it in its own fashion. Quran (4.1 and 7.189) says that the Allah created mankind from a single soul and therefrom he created its mate. From these, Muslim theologians have concluded that man was the original creation—womankind was created secondarily and for the repose of man. The rest follows from this. “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend their property (for the support of women). So, good are obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah has guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart; and scourge (beat) them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them.” (Quran 4.34). No wonder, under Shariat, a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man and a daughter’s share in parent’s legacy is half that of a son. Islam explicitly forbids certain professions to women: head of state,  head of the armed forces, imam, and judge.

Equally, in numerous hadiths on which are based Islamic laws, we learn of the woman’s role—to stay at home, to be at the beck and call of man, to obey him (which is a religious duty) and assure man a tranquil existence. “If it had been given me to order someone to prostrate themselves in front of someone other than God, I would surely have ordered women to prostrate themselves in front of their husbands,” says a hadith. Omar, the second caliph, said, “Prevent women from learning to write! Say no to their capricious ways.” Ali, the fourth caliph, said, “The entire woman is evil and what is worse is that it is a necessary evil.”

According to the famous and much revered philosopher Al-Ghalzali (1058-1111), whom professor Montgomery Watt describes as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad, “She should stay at home and get on with spinning, she should not go out often, she must not be well informed, nor must she be communicative with her neighbours and only visit them when absolutely necessary; she should take care of her husband and respect him in his presence and his absence and seek to satisfy him in everything; she must not leave her house without permission.…”

Wafa Sultan points out that in Islam, every relationship is essentially a power equation. The nature of relationship between God and Man in Islam is that between the ruler and his subject, master and slave, husband and wife, father and son. Woman is a property of man, a child is the property of his father, a slave is the property of his master and a labourer is a property of his employer, she says.

These injunctions are enforced with the threat of eternal punishment of burning in hell. In Muslim teaching, hell is intensely real and very close. You could feel the flames at any moment. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book, Infidel, describes how young minds are filled with fear of hell to mould them into resolute Muslims. “Quran lists hell’s torments in vivid details: sores, boiling water, unimaginably intense thirst, peeling of skin, burning of flesh, dissolving bowels, the everlasting fire that burns you forever because as flesh chars and your fluids boil you grow a new skin. You will go to hell unless you obey.” Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the foreword to Ayaan’s book says that, “Ayaan told me that she was not completely free of her repressive upbringing until she had lost all terror of hell.”

Contrast it with the condition of women in pre-Islamic Arabia. Khadija, the first wife of Mohammad, was a wealthy and successful merchant in Mecca, rode horse, hired Muhammad for her trade caravans and proposed marriage to him. The tenth-century Arab historian Al-Tabari, gives a vivid picture of the independence of aristocratic women before Islam. Women swore allegiance much as men, took part in negotiations with the new military chief of the city, i.e. Mohammad himself, and were often frankly hostile to the new religion, he says, in his account of Hint bint Otba, the wife of Abu Sufyan, the head of an aristocratic merchant of Mecca.

The cage and the way out

Ayaan Hirsi Ali compares the psychological conditioning in Islamic culture with a cage and calls Muslims as prisoners suffering from the Stockholm syndrome. She exhorts intellectuals and rational Muslims to be like Voltaire and work for their own enlightenment. The power of reason and individual responsibility, she hopes, will free the minds of individual Muslims from the burden of the hereafter, the constant feeling of guilt and temptations of fundamentalism. They should learn to become responsible for their problems and the areas where they lag behind.

History tells us that authoritarian regimes based on fear and violence appear to be very strong from outside, e.g. the Church in the Middle Ages, Mao’s China, Brezhnev’s USSR. But their rigidity proves their undoing. They implode from within. Man’s yearning from freedom and the quest for truth cannot be suppressed for long, however great the fear.

Enlightenment is catching up with Islam also, slowly but surely. Despite efforts of Ulemas, many Muslim countries have made considerable progress in the fields of education and public life. Winds of change are blowing even in citadels of Islamic orthodoxy like Saudi Arabia. Women are certainly not tied down to their homes, husbands and children as much as the orthodox would want them to be. At the other end, thousands of people in most conservative countries are leaving Islam in droves. The process is greatly aided by the revolution in information and communication brought about by technology. Thought control is becoming virtually impossible. (Thought manipulation is a different thing altogether, of course.) Yet the ease with which the theocratic regime in Iran crushed the women’s movement for reforms, the way Taliban imposed Sharia rule in Afghanistan as recently as the last decade highlights the enormity of the task before reformers.

Shruti Anerao’s book is a must read for Hindu women who have long been easy targets of a massive and systematic love jihad. It explains the tragedy that befalls many Hindu women who marry Muslim men in the mistaken belief that “what happened to others will not happen to me. My Abdul is different.” This book will help them understand what to expect from a Muslim husband after the veneer of amiability wears off.

Muslim Women Book Cover

Muslim Women: Through the Prism of Muslim Scholars. Author: Shruti Anerao. Publishers: Akshaya Prakashan, New Delhi. First Edition: 2026. Pages: xxiii+175. Price Rs 395 (Amazon).

From Troy to Tehran, the Troyjan horse still shapes global politics – Kadira Pethiyagoda

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Troyjan Horse

The false promise tactic deployed at Troy, and which Odysseus regrets, mirrors one used by Western and Northern Europeans from the 15th century onwards to colonise the world. Although deception is inherently woven into warfare, the scale and systematic nature of colonial deception set it apart. – Dr. Kadira Pethiyagoda

The defining themes in Christopher Nolan’s new epic are trust and regret. The main character, Odysseus, regrets many things, but perhaps most overarching is his regret at the fundamental breach of trust that was the Trojan Horse. The Greeks exploited the trust of the Trojans in order to obtain a victory they were unable to win on the battlefield.

Matt Damon’s Odysseus laments this lie as helping to plunge the world into darkness, a mistake that may be made again in the distant future (differing from Homer’s original). Damon’s character was correct. Two and a half millennia later, Western and Northern Europeans would use deception as a key tool to dominate the world. The trust of indigenous civilisations and peoples would be breached over and over again in order to defeat and subjugate them—from the Spanish deceiving the Aztecs to the British surreptitiously taking control of Indian kingdoms they had promised to ally with.

Throughout the Odyssey film, we are told of Zeus’s law, xenia, the welcoming of strangers—an act underpinned by deep trust. Odysseus holds the principle of trust dear, even plucking his bow to warn prey when hunting. But the backstory to the Odyssey is one of deception. The Greeks told the Trojans that the enormous wooden horse they had left on the beach was an offering to the gods and a peace offering to the Trojans. The Trojans, presumably trusting that no one would cynically exploit sacred rituals, brought the horse inside their fortified gates. The Greeks, some of whom had been hiding in the horse, then proceeded to open Troy’s gates from the inside so that the city could be ransacked and the kingdom toppled.

Both the ancient Greeks and Trojans were Mediterranean, polytheistic peoples who interacted more with the civilisations of West Asia than they did with the tribes of Western and Northern Europe. The ancient Greeks engaged in more diplomatic, economic and cultural exchange with ancient India (e.g. Greco-Buddhist art) than with Bronze Age Britain. Nevertheless, the tactic deployed at Troy, and which Odysseus regrets, mirrors one used by Western and Northern Europeans from the 15th century onwards to colonise the world. Although deception is inherently woven into warfare, the scale and systematic nature of colonial deception set it apart.

In the 1500s, after landing in Central America, the Spanish conquistador Cortés pretended to be an ambassador sent by the world’s most powerful king to deliver greetings and establish trade. He knew the Aztecs would adhere to their codes of conduct, preventing them from attacking a peaceful envoy. The Aztec ruler Montezuma welcomed the Spaniards, lodging them in the palace of his late father. Within one week, they had taken Montezuma hostage inside the very same palace. Within one century, 56 million indigenous people had died as a result of European colonisation of the Americas.

Colonisers would go on to use several Trojan horse-style tactics. Merchants, surveyors and missionaries gathered strategic information before conquest. The Great Trigonometrical Survey mapped the Indian subcontinent, providing military and administrative knowledge. The British East India Company arrived in 1608 as a trading enterprise. By the late 18th century, it had become the dominant political power. The British often posed as allies of one South Asian kingdom in its struggles against another.

At Plassey, they secured the defection of Mir Jafar and other elites, defeating Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah. British troops presented themselves as providing ‘protection’ for local rulers, who ultimately ceded control over foreign policy, becoming effectively dependent. Under the guise of law, Governor-General James Broun-Ramsay, better known as Lord Dalhousie, invoked the Doctrine of Lapse to annex states such as Satara and Jhansi because adopted heirs were ‘unrecognised’. By the time they left, the Empire had extracted an estimated $64.82 trillion from the Indian subcontinent.

In Sri Lanka, unable to defeat the Kandyans in the First Kandyan War, the British posed as liberators to persuade local elites to turn against their king in the Second Kandyan War. They promised that their Buddhist religion, customs and domestic power would be protected—that nothing would change except that they would pledge allegiance to the British Crown. These promises were not kept. Within three years, dissatisfaction contributed to the Uva-Wellassa Rebellion, or Third Kandyan War, which the British suppressed with scorched-earth tactics: land confiscation, deportation of people, and widespread destruction of crops and villages.

Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British Crown increasingly justified imperial rule under the moral Trojan horses of ‘good government’ and the ‘civilising mission’. They painted themselves as the benevolent protector of India’s women from oppression via sati.

Today, covert action is often the preferred initial method of warfare by major powers. In the 20th century, many NGOs and media entities entered countries with apparent humanitarian agendas, only to act as Trojan horses for the foreign policy goals of the states that influence them. Prior to the Libya regime-change war, a foreign-educated researcher claimed that Gaddafi’s troops had been supplied with Viagra to undertake mass rape to justify intervention—something later found to be baseless. In India, the Centre for Policy Research had its foreign funding credentials revoked after allegations that funds had been used for ‘undesirable purposes’. Most recently, during peace negotiations, the US decapitated Iran’s leadership.

In the Odyssey film, Odysseus warns that the Trojan Horse tactic and the ensuing shattering of trust and xenia would lead to the end of the era of civilisation. In Game Theory’s Grim Trigger strategy, an initial betrayal of trust by one player triggers permanent mutual distrust and the restructuring of others’ behaviour. Today, theoretically honourable doctrines such as Responsibility to Protect have had their legitimacy permanently hobbled by deceptive intentions. Trust between states is non-existent.

However, the very fact that the world’s indigenous civilisations and peoples were often trusting enough to be deceived by such tactics demonstrates that another way of thinking may be possible—one that returns moral codes to the conduct of world affairs.

› Dr. Kadira Pethiyagoda is a former diplomat, political advisor and geopolitical strategist.

Robert Clive meets Mir Jafar

Priyanka Gandhi’s ‘gaumutra’ slur – Reverse the Gaze

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Priyanka, Rahul and Sonia Gandhi

Both siblings of the Congress’ first family have been uttering openly mocking or borderline contemptuous anti-Hindu remarks for years now, revealing how Hinduphobia has become central to the party’s ideological core. As Congress’ reliance on Islamist, Christian, Marxist and neo-Ambedkarite fundamentalists has grown, and as its leadership surrounds itself with far-left radical voices, this hate for Hindus and their Dharma has crossed into dangerous territory. – Reverse the Gaze

When Priyanka Gandhi Vadra described the accomplished IIT Madras Director, Prof. V. Kamakoti, as a “gaumutra expert” on the floor of Parliament, it was not merely a throwaway insult. It revealed something deeper—a persistent strain of contempt within India’s secular political elite toward Hindu religious and civilizational identity, along with an impulse to judge and mock Hindus for the wide and diverse range of beliefs and practices that together constitute the Hindu tradition.

Let us examine what exactly is being mocked.

In the Hindu worldview, all life is interconnected and imbued with divinity. The cow is sacred in Hindu Dharma because it combines spiritual symbolism with practical, life-giving value, and its reverence is also deepened by its association with Bhagwan Krishna. Hindu tradition likewise extends reverence to other forms of life—for instance, snakes are worshipped during Nag Panchami, the blackbuck is considered sacred by the Bishnoi community—reflecting a worldview that sees the sacred in creation itself. Gomutra (cow urine), within this framework, has been used in certain Ayurvedic preparations and ritual contexts. One may debate its efficacy, but to reduce it to a slur is to dismiss an entire knowledge tradition without inquiry.

Prof. Kamakoti is not a fringe figure. He is a highly respected computer scientist who has contributed significantly to India’s technological capabilities, including leading the development of SHAKTI, India’s first indigenous industrial-grade microprocessor. He has approached the subject of cow urine’s medicinal properties through a scientist’s lens, citing peer-reviewed research and treating it as a matter for study. Around the world, scientists maintain personal faith alongside professional rigor. ISRO scientists visiting Tirupati mandir before launches is one familiar example. Spirituality and science, in the Dharmic tradition, have rarely been seen as mutually exclusive domains.

The deeper question is this: why are Hindu beliefs uniquely singled out for mockery?

Many older religions and indigenous belief systems across the world have long shared the Hindu reverence for specific animals and their byproducts. The cow’s sacred status transcends India; ancient Zoroastrians revered the animal, and Parsi rituals today still utilize sprinkled cow urine (nirang) for purification. Similarly, traditional African pastoralist communities, like the Maasai and Dinka, view cattle as sacred symbols of life and wealth. Beyond the bovine, indigenous peoples globally center their spirituality around animals, such as Native American tribes who revere the American bison as a sacred relative and provider, or Arctic Inuit who view the polar bear as a powerful spiritual guide.

This reverence frequently extends into traditional medicine, where global systems differ widely from modern biomedical norms by utilizing ingredients that outsiders might find unsettling. Traditional Chinese practices incorporate human feces and animal penises, while Arabic and Unani remedies involve camel urine and goat testicles. Indeed, as per an authentic Hadith (Sahih al-Bukhari), Islam’s Prophet prescribed camel urine and milk to a group of sick travelers—and in traditional Arab and Bedouin societies, camel urine is still consumed fresh directly from the animal or sold commercially in bottles to local users and visiting pilgrims.

Beyond medicine, cultural subjectivity heavily shapes global views on what is normal versus taboo, as seen in American dung-throwing contests and the consumption of bison testicles or beaver urinary secretions for food flavoring. Similarly, the very thought of European ‘delicacies’ like Scottish haggis—sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs minced and cooked inside the animal’s stomach lining—would make many outsiders throw up. This visceral divide extends to livestock and pets; Westerners view horses and domestic dogs strictly as companions, yet those animals are esteemed as traditional delicacies in parts of South America, China, and Northeastern India

What is sacred or therapeutic in one culture may be rejected in another, yet in most global contexts, such differences are treated with a degree of anthropological curiosity or cultural respect. In India, however, Hindu practices are often subjected to a unique, visceral derision that minority or external traditions escape.

This asymmetry points to a profound mental colonization. It reflects an implicit acceptance of supremacist Abrahamic doctrines that dismiss Hindu Dharma as an “incoherent” or “false” religion, or reduce it to a foreign imposition by “Aryan invaders” with a name merely coined by Arabs or Persians. This mindset did not disappear with independence; it was deeply institutionalized in academia, media, and politics, producing a class of opinion-makers who comfortably critique Hindu practices in crude terms while remaining intensely cautious and respectful toward other religions and cultures.

Ironically, this disdain ignores the fact that the Hindu intellectual tradition has long accommodated debate, inquiry, and plurality. From the logical rigor of Nyaya to the linguistic precision of Panini, and from Aryabhata’s mathematics and astronomy to Kanada’s atomic theory, there has never been an inherent contradiction between spiritual exploration and empirical reasoning.

Contrast this with the modern ideological certainties of Indian Nehruvians and Marxists, who are indoctrinated to believe that only they possess a “scientific temper.” This claim to an exclusive monopoly on reason rings hollow when their own belief systems operate with the zeal of blind superstition. Their cult-like obsession and unquestioning deference to chosen figures—whether Marx, Stalin, Mao, or Nehru—completely mirror religious dogma. Indian Communists continue this blind worship despite the historical havoc wreaked by Marxism and Maoism, causing millions to perish globally. The utopian society Marxism promises—arriving after a bloody revolution and endless class conflict to create a world where borders, police and armies are obsolete and everyone lives in perfect harmony—utterly flies in the face of human history and the human condition. While Marxist dogmas collapse against reality, the Dharmic pursuit of purushartha (purpose of human life) remains profoundly viable because it recognizes human nature and the fluid dynamics of the gunas, motivating humanity to strive for genuine, balanced harmony rather than an impossible commune.

This internalized disdain is not confined to academic theory; it manifests directly as a coordinated theological assault within contemporary Indian politics. Both siblings of the Congress’ first family have been uttering openly mocking or borderline contemptuous anti-Hindu remarks for years now, revealing how Hinduphobia has become central to the party’s ideological core. As Congress’ reliance on Islamist, Christian, Marxist and neo-Ambedkarite fundamentalists has grown, and as its leadership surrounds itself with far-left radical voices, this hate for Hindus and their Dharma has crossed into dangerous territory.

Specific instances lay bare this theological and cultural hostility:

Rahul Gandhi’s denigration of Bhagwan Vishnu, and his tendency to set the Hindu deities Vishnu and Shiva in opposition, deserves serious analysis and should not be dismissed as immature commentary. It ties in with other remarks made by him during his Bharat Jodo Yatra, where he praised Bhagwan Shiva’s all-embracing detachment while contrasting it with “priestly systems” that “divide and oppress” (interestingly, ignoring the far more rigid and hereditary nature of priestly structures in Christian and Islamic traditions).

This strategy directly aligns with Left-academic, evangelical and Dravidian theories that seek to balkanize Hindu society by painting Bhagwan Shiva as an “indigenous, non-Vedic deity” who was maliciously ‘appropriated’ by Aryan invaders. By isolating Shiva from the broader Hindu landscape, this narrative seeks to decouple the deity from mainstream Hindu traditions. But when the opportunity arises, the same network and its Islamist allies do not hesitate to mock the Shivling, the sacred symbol used in the worship of Bhagwan Shiva.

Rahul Gandhi has also mocked the Hindu idea  of  punarjanam (rebirth) and claimed that “people have the burden of lakhs of lives on their shoulders.”

Furthermore, the drama enacted in parliament by the Samajwadi Party, Congress, and other opposition politicians recently to highlight the theft of donations at the Ram Mandir shows exactly how the Overton window has shifted in Indian secular politics into openly Hinduphobic territory. A criminal-turned-politician, Pappu Yadav, dressed up in saffron robes, holding a photo of Sri Ram, sat down with a large tin box, and MPs like Rahul Gandhi sauntered up to him wearing sandals and put some money in that box, which Yadav then pretended to steal and run away. This deliberate act of portraying Hindu sadhus and saffron robes in a bad light—when the actual theft at the Ram Mandir was done by counting staff and certain supervisors involved in handling donations, not sadhus—was not lost on anyone. The sant samaj has rightly condemned it, although not as loudly and unitedly as one would have hoped. Can one even imagine the global outrage if a BJP MP staged a similar skit, this time caricaturing child sex abuse by madrasa maulvis or church pastors—abuse scandals that have repeatedly surfaced in such religious institutions across the world?

Ultimately, the Sonia-led Congress’ opposition to Hindu Dharma is not just political, nor is it limited to historical submissions of affidavits in courts claiming that “Ram is imaginary.” It has now morphed into an aggressive theological and cultural opposition to almost everything Hindu, mirroring the exact, uncompromising contempt held by a fundamentalist maulvi or pastor. The “gaumutra” jibe, then, is not merely an isolated political insult. It represents a coordinated, malicious attempt by a mentally colonized elite to demonize the very civilizational soul of Bharat —a dangerous campaign that sacrifices cultural cohesion for electoral appeaseability and threatens to tear the nation’s social fabric apart. – Reverse the Gaze, 3 August 2026

› Reverse the Gaze is an anonymous author on Substack.

Cow with urine.

 

Modi’s rulership on probation, should prepare for a million mutinies now – R. Jagannathan

VOI

Narendra Modi

The problem with the Modi government is that well-meaning decisions driven from the top may not seem as good on the ground. Among the younger crowd, which is not used to listening to authority, they may even be seen as an imposition rather than a solution to a problem. … The important thing is to change the government’s DNA from rulership to consultation. – R. Jagannathan

By letting Dharmendra Pradhan go, albeit reluctantly, the Modi government may have bought itself some time to recoup political capital and rework its political calculations.

But the time it has bought may be weeks, not months. For once triggered, the chances are that every major citizen grievance will now be aired in public. Some could also lead to Jantar Mantar.

Already there is an E20 Janta Party in the making, comprising vehicle owners miffed about what E20, petrol blended with 20 per cent ethanol, may be doing to their vehicles. Soon you could have farmers and other groups vying to get into the action.

The Prime Minister, realising that the Jantar Mantar protests were driven by Gen Z, those in the 15–29 age group, and their Instagram posts, has himself gone on Instagram.

While there is no harm in this, he should not assume that his presence on the platform will change perceptions about this government. Reason: the Prime Minister is himself showing his age, and putting it on repeated view for a younger generation may not work with Gen Z.

So what exactly should the government be doing?

One, and most important, it must choose engagement with the youth over action driven from the top. The Gen Z grouse is not about any specific issue but about those in power not listening to what they are thinking, what they want out of life, and which things must be prioritised.

Of course, future careers are a big issue in our country, but it will not end with that. This cohort wants to be listened to. Having tasted blood at its first coming-out party, Gen Z is not going to go back to its studies.

The problem with the Modi government is that well-meaning decisions driven from the top may not seem as good on the ground. Among the younger crowd, which is not used to listening to authority, they may even be seen as an imposition rather than a solution to a problem.

The government has to develop the habit of listening to the youth and other social groups and then coming to decisions, rather than assuming that its own good intent is enough to justify a decision, as is the case with E20.

At the very least, it must offer alternatives to E20, even if 100 per cent petrol is priced higher. While ordinary vehicle owners are not going to create a chakka jam at Jantar Mantar, fleet operators and taxi owners might well do so.

So this is one trouble the government should see coming right now, and it should choose to engage with those raising concerns about E20. It is of course true that offering two fuel options may take time to implement, but being heard is the important thing here.

Two, this is also a kind of taxpayer revolt. While the vast majority of citizens do not pay any income tax, they do pay indirectly through the goods and services tax.

They also pay ‘private taxes’ in the form of bribes to various officials at the state or municipal levels, whether for traffic violations, birth and death certificates, or hospital and other subsidised services.

Our definition of the tax-paying middle class needs to change from one framed by income groups to a broader definition that looks at the middle-class mindset: anyone seeking to write competitive exams and pursue higher education, or consuming packaged foods, for example, should be considered middle class.

The emerging consuming classes are the larger middle class, even if their income levels do not always indicate their membership of this group.

Three, as Santosh Desai argues in his Times of India column of 27 July 2026, for Gen Z the only government they have known is the Modi government, not least because it has been seen everywhere and is also seen to be winning many elections.

So it will demand maximum accountability from the Modi government, even if most of their problems are not created by the Central government.

The Modi government would do well to start the process of devolving power to state governments, and to ask the latter to further devolve power to local bodies, for this is where citizens most interact with the state. The state governments will start feeling the heat soon enough.

The message is not merely to the Modi government but to all state governments and municipal authorities, none of whom is actually delivering good quality citizen services. They will all be vulnerable, but as the party which dominates Indian politics both at the Centre and in many states, the BJP will face searing heat.

Four, the CJP protests did not have any overt caste undertones, but many of the students protesting the NEET mess-up, and the larger problem of a lack of career opportunities, were also worried about the creeping nature of educational and job reservations.

But anyone who tries to interfere with reservations as they currently exist will inevitably face a political backlash, which could well set off a caste war.

This is precisely what will sink the BJP’s boat, for it is dependent on a Hindu vote consolidation that subsumes caste. If we end up with caste-based conflict, 2029 will be an uphill battle for the BJP, especially since minority consolidation against it is a reality.

Five, all political parties now need to heed the call for better governance and citizen services. Till now, thanks to the government’s ability to offer freebies using the Jan Dhan–Aadhaar–Mobile facility, politicians have been busy emptying the exchequer to win elections.

While no one can discount the probability of a well-aimed freebie bringing in the incremental vote, future elections will be about freebie-plus, not just freebies. If NEET can cause a political convulsion, why not garbage and traffic jams and poor health services?

Six, the judiciary and the news media should not consider themselves free from large-scale scrutiny. At the Jantar Mantar protests, many journalists were given abusive treatment, sometimes even with physical jostling.

The judiciary has not yet been a direct target, but the students on the prowl at Jantar Mantar did not have much reverence for it either. In fact the term ‘cockroach’ itself came courtesy of a casual remark made by the Chief Justice of India.

So, to repeat, what should the Modi government, or any government at any level, do?

One, it should consider initiating huge reforms by consulting Gen Z representatives, among others, apart from experts. This does not mean only the CJP, but many more youth leaders and organisations who understand the pulse of this cohort. Other political parties and citizen groups should also be kept in the loop.

Two, there should be committees and consultations for reforms in agriculture, education, health, skilling, bureaucracy, judiciary and, most important, political reforms. The last is the biggest cause of corruption.

The judiciary should know that while the executive will be held accountable for its lapses, the judiciary itself is one of the worst-performing arms of the state. So too is the bureaucracy. These reforms will not happen in a day, but if Modi is smart he will use the opportunity to drive change in the judiciary and bureaucracy too.

Three, the Modi cabinet could do with a huge amount of spring cleaning. It clearly needs fresh blood, young blood, and this must be visible. Some performing ministers, such as Ashwini Vaishnaw, are clearly overburdened, and some others seem compromised.

Nitin Gadkari is one of the performers, but he was seen to be insensitive to the concerns of vehicle owners on E20. He does not need to resign, but he could, along with petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri, consider setting up a panel with the aggrieved parties to take a relook at the whole E20 plan, including the possibility of gradually separating E20 from 100 per cent petrol priced higher. Consultation is key to forward movement.

Already, even after Pradhan’s exit, the Modi government has missed two opportunities.

First, it announced the formation of a committee headed by Nandan Nilekani for fixing the exam system and its infirmities. But it could have done this in consultation with some Gen Z representatives.

Second, it named Pralhad Joshi as the new Education Minister. But he does not represent change. A younger face in the ministry, even at the Minister of State level, would have been better.

The CJP movement is ultimately not about NEET or Dharmendra Pradhan. It is about demanding a higher quality of governance and performance from all arms of the state.

The Modi government is on probation, but so is the system itself. How Narendra Modi navigates these challenges over the next few years will determine whether he gets to influence the 2029 elections or is pushed aside by a rising tide of dissent. India is again at the threshold of a million mutinies.

But this is not just a threat. If Modi navigates it successfully, his legacy will not only survive but thrive. The important thing is to change the government’s DNA from rulership to consultation. – TheJaggi, 26 July 2026

› R. Jagannathan is senior journalist and former editorial director at Swarajya magazine. 

India's GenZ

When rationalists don’t get Hindu philosophy – David Frawley

VOI

Shiva covers himself when Vishnu visits.

There is a great mystery of consciousness behind the visible world that is our real duty as human beings to discover and to realise. This mystery cannot be limited to biological patterns or to intellectual theories. We should not be content with mere outer views of life. – Dr. David Frawley

From Freudian academics to the modern media, the main examinations of Hindu deities, particularly of Lord Shiva and his family, usually give their primary attention to sexual implications. But in the process of focusing on this side—often to the exclusion of the rest of the teachings—the deeper meaning of these spiritual traditions easily gets lost.

We can forget yoga’s profound insights into the mind, consciousness and higher human evolution, as well as the subtle meditation practices taught to reveal these.

Tantric Yoga philosophy describes seven chakras from the base of the spine to the top of the head. The purpose of yoga is to raise our awareness from the root chakra below—where we are spiritually asleep in ego consciousness and physical reality—to the thousand-petal lotus at the top of the head where we can experience cosmic consciousness and self-realisation, the state of the Supreme Shiva.

The chakras indicate vibratory levels with the five lower chakras relating to the earth, water, fire, air and ether elements and the two higher chakras to mind and consciousness. The ascent through the chakras involves moving from denser to subtler vibrations, and developing a greater unity consciousness along the way.

We should not stop short at the first and second chakras, which rule over lower energies, but consider all seven chakras and their implications in examining yogic deities and practices, extending to higher realms far beyond physical reality.

We should not only consider the role of physical union but also the role of union with the divine, and with the unitary awareness behind the universe as a whole.

The symbolism of Hindu deities

It is true that Hindu deities provide a wealth of fascinating symbolisms that stretch the boundaries of our imaginations and are not easy to understand for the rational intellect. They are capable of diverse interpretations as they reflect the whole of life and all of nature in its mind-transcending magic and bewildering paradoxes.

But the primary implications of these yogic powers are relative to cosmological principles and higher states of awareness, which constitute the bulk of their traditional interpretations that are quite detailed and extensive. Modern scientists have noted these cosmic connections, with the entire universe as Lord Shiva’s dance of light.

Hindu deities, particularly Shiva and his wife Parvati, reflect the practice of yoga and the energies of all the chakras in their stories and teachings, starting with Shiva as Yogeshwara, the lord of yoga, ruling over asana, prana, mantra and meditation. Parvati is the ideal yogini and manifests the yoga shakti, the inner power of yoga that takes us from darkness to light, from death to immortality.

There is a great mystery of consciousness behind the visible world that is our real duty as human beings to discover and to realise. This mystery cannot be limited to biological patterns or to intellectual theories. We should not be content with mere outer views of life.

Recognising the primacy of ananda

It is time to move beyond such circumscribed views to recognising the deeper aspects of science, art and philosophy behind the yoga tradition and its extraordinary images and cosmic depictions. This affords us a greater appreciation of the yogis of India and their intricate teachings, not merely about the body and mind, but relative to the universal consciousness in which is infinite and everlasting bliss!

Bliss or ananda is the origin and goal of all as the ancient Upanishads so eloquently state. If we are sensitive to beauty, love or grace anywhere, it is only because of this divine ananda. May we all discover that ananda within and around us! It is much more than any media sensation and takes us far beyond the biases of the mind to a boundless vision and new creative insight at every moment. This is what higher yoga practices can lead us to. – Daily-O, 23 September 2015

› Dr David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Sastri) is an American Hindu teacher and author who has written more than thirty books on topics such as the Vedas, Hinduism, Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic astrology, published both in India by Voice of India and in the United States. 

Shiva in bliss.