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Indian Secularism: History, Form and Understanding
The long history of heterodoxy has a bearing not only on the development and survival of democracy in India, it has also richly contributed to the emergence of Indian secularism, and even to the form that Indian secularism takes, which is not exactly the same as the way secularism is defined in parts of the…
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An Italian Folktale: The Salamanna Grapes
There was once a king who had a very beautiful daughter of marriageable age. A neighbouring king had three grown sons, who all fell in love with the princess. The princess’s father said, “As far as I am concerned, you are all three equal, and I couldn’t for the life of me give any one…
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J Sai Deepak’s Book and What’s Happening in India Today
If you are following Indian politics, chances are, this is what you have been hearing: the country is taking a right-turn, prime minister Modi leading millions of his followers towards Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation), and majority of the population succumbing to his ideology. That does not tell the whole story; in fact, it barely touches…
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Chachnama: The First Muslim-Conquest of India
The Arabs of the seventh century, inspired by their own version of Islam, poured out of Arabia and spread east and west, overthrowing decayed kingdoms and imposing the new faith. They moved fast. In the west, they invaded Visigothic Spain in 710; in the east, in the same year, they moved beyond Persia to invade…
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Do You Have the Right Posture for Meditation?
ORDINARILY we think of meditation as an activity involving our minds, but in truth meditation is initiated by assuming a specific gesture with our bodies. This gesture or posture forms the literal base on which the focused inquiry of meditation ultimately rests and depends. If we build a house with a faulty foundation, we create…
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Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyam (1048 – 1131) was a Persian polymath. Born at Naishapur in Khorassan (today’s Iran), he made significant contributions to the fields of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and poetry. His poetry collection, translated by Edward Fitzgerald under the title Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, contains a selection of quatrains. The book remains one of the most…
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In Praise of Drinking Wine
Throughout recorded history humans have made life bearable by taking intoxicants. And, while societies differ over which intoxicants should be encouraged, which tolerated and which forbidden, there has been a convergence of opinion around one all-important rule: that the result must not threaten public order. The Native American pipe of peace, like the Middle-Eastern hookah,…
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