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The Eiffel Tower controversy and Hindu monastic practice – Bhakti Mamtora

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Swaminarayan monks at the Eiffel Tower, Paris.

The Eiffel Tower episode and its subsequent media coverage reveal how personal religious disciplines can be rendered as demands for accommodation. This is especially the case within the context of French secularism, or laïcité, wherein public expressions of religiosity might have made people upset. In this environment, a little-known monastic vow can be easily misinterpreted. – Prof. Bhakti Mamtora

A visit to the Eiffel Tower by a delegation of monks representing a global Hindu religious denomination on Sept. 5, 2026, has raised broader questions about accommodating religious observances in public spaces.

Eiffel Tower workers protested with a one-day strike after tower management allegedly replaced some women employees for the duration of a 20-minute visit by monks from the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, or BAPS.

As a scholar of South Asian religions, I have studied the Swaminarayan Sampradaya, a religious community founded in India in 1801, for nearly a decade. BAPS is one of several denominations within the group. I argue that at the center of this controversy lie different reactions to a long-standing Hindu religious practice known as “brahmacharya,” which the monks of the Swaminarayan Sampradaya follow.

While it is often translated as “celibacy,” the practice is aimed more expansively at developing inner control over one’s senses to attain spiritual perfection and immerse oneself in God.

The discipline of ‘brahmacharya’

Brahmacharya is described in many premodern Indian texts, including the Yoga Sutra, dating to the early centuries C.E. This text outlines eight successive stages of yoga aimed at reaching mental tranquility through focus on God. Progress toward higher stages of yogic practice—such as “asana,” postures; “pranayama,” breathwork; and “dhyana,” meditation—hinges on the steadfast observance of “yama,” a code of conduct governing the yogi’s interaction with others. The practice of yama includes avoiding violence, dishonesty, theft and greed, and cultivating brahmacharya.

In this text and others, brahmacharya involves physical and mental practices that are observed differently by lay and monastic members of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religious communities. Lay disciples typically uphold the vow of brahmacharya by maintaining fidelity toward their spouse. For monks and nuns, it often takes the form of absolute celibacy.

From ancient times, various monastic orders have followed a more expansive form of brahmacharya, one that restricts eight types of engagement with the opposite gender. This includes not only physical and verbal but also mental contact, where “mental” means sustained, deliberate thought. Through this practice, monastics endeavor to lead a life that is focused on God.

Textual explanation and practice

Brahmacharya in the broader sense is an important practice in a foundational text that I have studied, called the Swāmīnī Vāto, which explains the core teachings of Swaminarayan, who lived from 1781-1830 and is revered in the Swaminarayan community as God.

The Swāmīnī Vāto notes the central position of brahmacharya among the five vows that Swaminarayan Hindu monks take upon initiation: overcoming desire, greed, taste, attachments and ego. Swaminarayan monks, who practice the eightfold version, see it as an important way to help eradicate all traces of desire and remain singularly focused on God.

By relinquishing marital relationships and family ties, Swaminarayan monks explain that they also seek to reduce claims to private attachment on their time and attention, allowing them to dedicate themselves more fully to devotion, spiritual counseling and other social work. They move from place to place, meeting devotees and traveling between temples, conducting rituals and addressing religious congregations consisting of both men and women.

In all such public spaces, they avoid direct eye contact with women, as that is understood as a form of connection, without requiring women around them to alter their presence or behavior.

According to BAPS theologians and textual traditions, brahmacharya is an individual choice, not a moral critique of others. While monks have relinquished family life for themselves, they recognize and support the family as central to people’s lives and practices.

Eightfold brahmacharya follows a similar logic: Monks adopt the discipline focusing on their own attention, desires and conduct, but they do not expect this of others. The discipline does not make a judgment about the worth of women. This ideal is made explicit in BAPS texts that affirm women’s equal spiritual standing and entitlement to religious practice and liberation.

The controversy

The current leader of BAPS, Mahant Swami Maharaj, consecrated a new Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Bussy-Saint George, a suburb of Paris, on Sept. 6, 2026. Leading up to the consecration celebrations, the community’s delegation of 100 monks visited the Eiffel Tower. Following the visit, their centuries-old monastic vows became the center of controversy.

BAPS has stated that it requested an early morning visit to minimize disruption for visitors or staff, given the size of their group. Moreover, in a comment to CNN, BAPS Paris noted, “It was never, at any point, intended as a request rooted in gender, and any suggestion to the contrary does not reflect the spirit or values of our fellowship or the delegation.” A small area of the observation deck was sectioned off, which is a common practice for large groups, but BAPS categorically denies requesting the removal of women employees.

The Eiffel Tower Operating Company, SETE, claimed that the delegation had requested a visit that would limit “interactions with women,” according to CNN affiliate BFMTV. The BBC reported that Ariel Weil, president of SETE, “blamed its managers for being ‘a bit overzealous’ in complying with the request without questioning whether it was ‘inappropriate.’”

In my view, the issue seems to be a disconnect between what BAPS requested and what SETE requested of its employees. Understanding the practice of brahmacharya helps explain BAPS’s request: The early morning visit likely would have limited their interactions with heavy crowds, including women. Indeed, BAPS monks’ practices have typically gone unnoticed before now, because they observe them on their own, without imposition on others, even in crowded spaces where women are present.

The episode and its subsequent media coverage reveal how personal religious disciplines can be rendered as demands for accommodation. This is especially the case within the context of French secularism, or laïcité, wherein public expressions of religiosity might have made people upset. In this environment, a little-known monastic vow can be easily misinterpreted. – The Conversation, 30 September 2026

› Prof. Bhakti Mamtora is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir, Paris

Scientist proposes conciousness might be the fabric of reality itself – Humans

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What is conciousness?

Consciousness remains one of science’s greatest unsolved mysteries, and that understanding it may require researchers to rethink long-held assumptions about the relationship between mind, brain, and reality. – Dr. Christof Koch

For decades, neuroscientists have searched the brain for the biological basis of consciousness, assuming our thoughts, emotions, and subjective experiences emerge from networks of neurons.

But what if that assumption is incomplete?

That’s the provocative question explored by neuroscientist Christof Koch of the Allen Institute in Seattle.

Koch recently presented his ‘challenges’ to our understanding of consciousness at the Bial Foundation’s “Behind and Beyond the Brain” symposium in Porto, Portugal, in April 2026—building on a body of published work that includes this 2016 paper in Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Koch explained to ScienceAlert that it may be time to rethink one of neuroscience’s deepest assumptions: that consciousness is something the brain produces.

Koch does not dispute the brain’s essential role in conscious experience.

Decades of research have shown that injuries, disease, anesthesia, and electrical stimulation can profoundly alter—or even eliminate—awareness.

Instead, he asks a different question: Does the brain create consciousness, or could it be shaping something more fundamental?

Despite remarkable progress in understanding how the brain processes information, neuroscience still faces a profound mystery, Koch argues.

Scientists can increasingly identify the neural circuits involved in perception, memory, emotion, and decision-making. Yet those discoveries still cannot explain why physical brain activity is accompanied by subjective experience.

As Koch writes in a new, as-yet unpublished essay shared with ScienceAlert: “Nothing in science explains how three pounds of matter, a piece of furniture of the Universe like any other, subject to the same natural laws, can love, hate, dream, imagine, fear or hope for its future.”

It isn’t the first time Koch has grappled publicly with this puzzle. In 2023, he conceded a 25-year bet with philosopher David Chalmers, admitting neuroscience was no closer to pinning down consciousness’s neural mechanism than when he made the wager in 1998.

To address that question, Koch turns to a philosophical framework known as analytic idealism, which proposes that consciousness may be a fundamental feature of reality rather than something generated by the brain.

Within this framework, the brain is viewed less as a producer of consciousness and more as a filter or shaper of conscious experience.

The ideas did not emerge from a single scientific experiment. Instead, Koch describes a deeply personal experience that fundamentally changed the way he thinks about consciousness and reality.

Several years ago, while sitting alone on a beach, he recalls the boundary between himself and the world dissolving, describing the experience as a timeless and universal reality.

In his essay, Koch describes the experience as “the most meaningful of my life,” writing that it “flipped my view of reality”.

Koch is careful not to present the experience as scientific evidence. Instead, he writes that it gave him “a view of Mind-at-Large” and prompted him to re-examine the metaphysical assumptions that had guided much of his scientific career, taking alternative philosophical perspectives more seriously.

He also acknowledges that such experiences are inherently subjective. But he argues they should not be dismissed simply because they are difficult to explain, suggesting they, too, are part of the phenomenon science is ultimately trying to understand.

In the essay, he points to developments in modern physics as another reminder that some of science’s deepest assumptions have already been revised. He does not argue that quantum physics explains consciousness. Rather, he suggests that the history of physics shows scientists have repeatedly been forced to rethink the nature of reality when new evidence emerged.

Koch argues that “our understanding of reality must be rebuilt on a simpler foundation, compatible with both the ‘objective’ outcome of empirical science as well as with ‘subjective’ experience.”

Koch argues that if current assumptions about consciousness prove incomplete, neuroscience itself may eventually require a similarly profound conceptual shift.

The ideas also have implications for artificial intelligence. If consciousness is not simply the product of increasingly complex computation, the path toward conscious machines may be more complicated than simply building increasingly powerful AI systems.

That does not mean future AI systems could never become conscious. Rather, he argues that the debate cannot be settled simply by making computers more intelligent or more computationally sophisticated.

Koch acknowledges that analytic idealism is not an established scientific theory but a metaphysical framework whose future depends on whether its ideas can be translated into empirically testable hypotheses.

As he writes, “The most important task for the future is to take these insights and translate them into empirically testable hypotheses.”

He argues that consciousness remains one of science’s greatest unsolved mysteries, and that understanding it may require researchers to rethink long-held assumptions about the relationship between mind, brain, and reality. –  Science Alert, 9 August 2026

Man meditating on beach at sunrise.

Can Devdutt Pattanaik save Hinduism from Western distortions? – David Frawley

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Devdutt Pattanaik

Make certain, Pattanaik is no detached observer, but has a vested interest in the very negative interpretations of Hinduism that he now seems to question. He has so far shown little interest in any defence of Hinduism whether by Indians or Westerners, much less promoting its deeper Yoga and Vedantic teachings. – Dr. David Frawley

Devdutt Pattanaik is a popular interpreter of Hindu sacred stories, what are now, not always respectfully, called “myths”. In an old article “From Macaulay to Frawley, from Doniger to Elst: Why do many Indians need White saviours”, he claims that “Indians do not really need Europeans and Americans to tell them what Hinduism, Sanskrit or Vedas were, are or should be.”

Attacking both Western critics and Western defenders of Hinduism

The title of the article appears appealing given the many Western distortions of Hinduism. Yet strangely, Pattanaik criticises both Western defenders of Hinduism as well as critics, lumping them both together as if they were two sides of the same bad coin, suggesting that neither understands the Hindu tradition.

Pattanaik would like us to think that he is honouring this tradition of great yogis that has suffered so much from colonial, missionary, Marxist and neo-modern misinterpretations. But in the majority of his own writings, he himself follows the current politically correct Western scholarship that denigrates Hinduism at a cultural level and downplays its deeper philosophical and yogic dimensions. His comments on Hindu gods and goddesses are often in terms of modern psychology and leftist politics, as if these deities were human beings with personal problems and social biases, not symbols of transcendent and cosmic powers.

Now Pattanaik is suddenly critical of the same controversial Western scholars like Wendy Doniger and Sheldon Pollock that he has previously defended. The mythological approach he uses is an approach they also use and is very different from India’s own dharmic school of thought. Is he questioning that mythological angle that he has so extensively promoted?

Looking deeper, Pattaniak’s article betrays a subterfuge. His critique of Western defenders of Hinduism appears more strident than his questioning of anti-Hindu views. Clearly Western scholars defending Hinduism are his main target, and by implication the defence of Hinduism itself.

India connections of Western interpretations of Hindu Dharma

Pattanaik makes a point that one has to be born a Hindu to be a real Hindu that is connected to “birth” and “geography”, no doubt to discredit any Western attempts to speak for Hinduism. This is historically easy to disprove given the numerous Hindu temples and kingdoms from Angkor Wat in Cambodia to Vietnam and Indonesia whose populace were not simply born Hindus in what is now India.

Yet the deeper question in all such discussions is the nature of the interpretations given, not the skin colour of the person advocating them. Most important is the methodology that such interpreters follow. Individual scholars are usually representatives of schools of thought that must be examined overall.

The denigrating approaches of such as Doniger and Pollack have prominent Indian supporters, notably Marxists like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, whom Pattanaik does not mention. Similarly, the view of Hindu Dharma by Western Hindus has its roots in teachers from India. The books of Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup have framed much of the defence of modern Hinduism. Yet this trend goes back to Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Lokmanya Tilak and India’s Independence movement that challenged Eurocentric ideas of religion, culture and history.

Mahatma Gandhi’s criticism of Christian missionaries is also relevant here. It ultimately is based upon Vedic texts that address the nature of the mind and the meaning of human life in a very different manner than dominant Western schools of thought.

Pattanaik has tried to place Hinduism’s Western defenders on the “right” of the political perspective, with its critics on the “left”, forgetting that right and left in politics are Western views, not Indian and neither is dharmic. He reflects the statements of anti-Hindu writers who routinely label Hinduism as right-wing and regressive.

Pattanaik further describes Western defenders of Hindu Dharma as “authoritarian” and “Abrahamic” in approach, as if they were presenting a distortion of Hindu Dharma. This is also nothing new. The same charge is made by Luytens’ Delhi against any Hindu groups in India that have sought to proudly promote Hindu Dharma. Such verbal theatrics only shows that he remains ambivalent about presenting Hindu teachings in a respectful manner. He does not otherwise criticise Abrahamic traditions.

Problems with ancient history

Pattanaik seems to have a particular problem with the historical view of the Harappan or Indus Valley civilisation as Vedic, as supported by Western Hindus. Yet, this is also the view of the Archaeological Survey of India and its former director general Prof. B.B. Lal. It is the view of the Geological Survey of India based upon Landsat Satellite photography and numerous ground water studies of the long dry Sarasvati River. It is the view of India’s great gurus today. To call it into question because it is also a view of white Hindus is neither accurate nor sincere. It suggests that Pattanaik does not like the idea of a history of India that gives prominence to Vedic and Hindu contributions.

Is sadhana necessary to truly understand Hindu Dharma?

Hindu teachings, as in the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads, have at their core a yogic pursuit of higher consciousness, including experiences beyond the human intellect and its limiting dualities. They hold that the physical world is but an outer aspect of a multi-dimensional universe of consciousness, with our inner self having many bodies and many births and ultimately extending beyond all time and space.

Pattanaik does not seem comfortable with such yogic spirituality, which Doniger and company routinely ignore or dismiss, though he throws a few Sanskrit terms around in order to sound traditional. He is particularly unhappy with my claim that Yoga sadhana should be part of any authentic interpretation of Hindu texts. Yet that is not merely my personal view, it is found in all the great traditions of India that emphasise meditation over mere book learning. If sadhana is not part of one’s study of Hinduism, one can only claim to have the view of an outsider.

Is Pattanaik changing his views?

Pattanaik’s article is a cover-up for his own errors and prejudices. It is an effort to surreptitiously disown his own past with Doniger and company, perhaps out of fear of being judged politically incorrect by these Western critics that he has often kowtowed before in the past. Attacking Western defenders of Hinduism along the way affords him the appearance of being a neutral observer, and makes it more difficult for him to lump with what Doniger and company castigate as the Hindu right that they usually decry as fascist as well.

Make certain, Pattanaik is no detached observer, but has a vested interest in the very negative interpretations of Hinduism that he now seems to question. He has so far shown little interest in any defence of Hinduism whether by Indians or Westerners, much less promoting its deeper Yoga and Vedantic teachings. While there is nothing wrong with changing one’s views, it is better to be honest about it and admit one’s mistakes. – Swarajya, 1 January 2017

Koenraad Elst & David Frawley vs. Wendy Doniger & Sheldon Pollock.

Ganesha: A figure of great mystery, power, and paradox – David Frawley

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Shiva, Shakti & Ganesha

Ganesha represents the cosmic realisation of the Self as all nature, and can teach that infinite truth to us. But for this to occur we must also learn to go beyond the mind, something that most modern intellectuals with all their opinionated views are not likely to attempt. – Dr. David Frawley

Ganesha is a figure of great mystery, power, and paradox. We sense in his unusual figure something of the unknown, unlimited and mysterious, far beyond our human considerations. What are the secrets that he holds and what do they mean for us at the deepest level?

Ganesha’s arising or birth, if you could call it, appears very strange. It is said that his mother Parvati created him for her protection and asked him to prevent anyone from entering into her room. While Parvati was bathing, Lord Shiva approached, and Ganesha true to his role would not let him in. When Ganesha obstructed Shiva from entering, Shiva sensed an infringement on his power, fought with him and in the skirmish cut the boy’s head off.

Soon learning his mistake, that it was Parvati’s son, who was quite angry at his demise, Shiva quickly, sometimes it is said by chance, found the head of an elephant for Ganesha, put it on the headless body and brought him back to life. The story seems contradictory and arbitrary, like many Puranic depictions that have been the subject of denigration, if not ridicule.

Clearly, such bizarre tales are riddles for the mind to ponder, and not meant to portray literal events. They require a deep insight to unravel. This story has been analysed politically and psychologically, extending to bizarre Freudian and Marxist theories, but the inner meaning, which has nothing to do with sex or politics, has been missed altogether.

Symbolism of Ganesha

Ganesha symbolises the human soul and its latent aspiration for the infinite. Initially, the soul is bound to Maya or Prakriti, symbolised by Ganesha being created by Parvati (Prakriti) and seeking to protect her as her servant. The ignorant soul does not know Shiva, the transcendent reality beyond Maya. Shiva, therefore, cannot recognise the soul as his own.

In cutting off Ganesha’s head, Lord Shiva takes the soul beyond the human mind, its dualities and expectations—which is a common theme in deities with their head cut off, be it Hayagriva, Chinnamasta or Ganesha. In giving Ganesha the head of an elephant, Shiva connects it to the profound cosmic intelligence that is under his guidance.

Shiva is Pashupati or the Lord of the Animals that symbolises the souls bound to ignorance, ruling over them from his unbounded awareness. Ganesha as Ganapati or the Lord of the Group is the chieftain or head of the animals, the foremost of which is the elephant and indicates Shiva’s consciousness in manifestation.

The elephant relates to memory, concentration and the hidden wisdom of nature. Ganesha as the awakened soul learns the secrets of the universe and gains the ability to teach them to all who are receptive. Ganesha becomes the guide to the cosmic processes of birth and death, karma, and liberation, and holds all the vidyas or sacred ways of knowledge for understanding all existence.

Ganesha as the Guru

With the head of an elephant, Ganesha becomes awake as Shiva’s son, and functions as the great guru and the giver of wisdom through Shiva’s power within him. He gains access to the mantric energies of the cosmic mind, in which all the higher knowledge is stored, the omkara of Lord Shiva, which is Ganesha’s own word of power.

Such higher knowledge as Ganesha possesses cannot be transmitted to the mortal mind, put into ordinary language or logic, or confined to the parameters of mere human depictions. It requires going beyond the intellect and emotions to unitary awareness or samadhi, which rests upon a profound Yoga sadhana.

Ganesha represents the cosmic realisation of the Self as all nature, and can teach that infinite truth to us. But for this to occur we must also learn to go beyond the mind, something that most modern intellectuals with all their opinionated views are not likely to attempt.

To worship Ganesha, we must become Ganesha, which is to let go of our outer minds and embrace the unknown higher knowledge, becoming the entire universe and beyond, Shiva and Shakti, both within and around us. To do that we must become humble and let Shiva and Parvati enter into us. Jai Ganesha! – Daily-O, 24 August 2017

› Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri) is the director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies and the author of more than 30 books on Yoga and Vedic traditions. 

Ganesha Symbolism

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

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AI

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.

AI

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

VOI

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

VOI

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.

 

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.