• What Schools Don’t Teach Us

    What Schools Don’t Teach Us

    It’s easy to complain about what schools don’t teach us. After all there are infinite things to learn, and a school — whether we like it or not — can only focus on a handful of them. Still, we can talk about some of the key ingredients of education which schools either leave out or… Read more

  • The Story of Indian Muslims Part 4: The Two-Nation Theory and Its Consequences

    The Story of Indian Muslims Part 4: The Two-Nation Theory and Its Consequences

    The fate of Indian Muslims was sealed in 1947 when, based on two-nation theory, they got divided in two countries: India and Pakistan, which later became three, adding Bangladesh to the list. It had come at the cost of bloody civil riots in which hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered and millions were left… Read more

  • Indian Mystic Poets and Their Poetry

    Indian Mystic Poets and Their Poetry

    India is known for its mysticism. Throughout ages, Indian mystic poets have created surreal poetry, taking us into the spiritual realm and treating us with their music and words. For instance, this is what Jim Corbett wrote in his book The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag: In India, where there are no passports or identity discs,… Read more

  • The Story of Indian Muslims Part 3: Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb

    The Story of Indian Muslims Part 3: Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb

    Indian history is coloured with endless stories of Hindu-Muslim conflicts, as we have seen in previous episodes. However, somewhere in the middle of it, there was a time and place when the two groups intermingled and created a culture which is known as Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb today. According to K. Warikoo, Professor at the Centre for… Read more

  • The Story of Indian Muslims: Part 2

    The Story of Indian Muslims: Part 2

    Note: To read the first part of The Story of Indian Muslims, click here. The decline of the Mughal state provided “one of the strong boosts” to strengthening the hold of orthodoxy and hastening the pace of Islamisation. Muslim divines widely attributed the loss of Kingdom to religious and communal laxity and pressed for a… Read more

  • John Stuart Mill on Freedom of Expression

    John Stuart Mill on Freedom of Expression

    The question of freedom of expression is not something that only our generation has been grappling with. It has a long history. Endless times it has been discussed and debated, and yet, here we are, unsure about how to answer this simple question: why is free speech important in a modern democracy? As Jonathan Haidt… Read more