W.E.B. Du Bois’ Enduring Admiration of Mahatma Gandhi Stems from a Shared Belief of Nonviolence
In May 1929, Gandhi received a letter from W.E.B. Du Bois, the Black American scholar and civil rights activist, via British missionary C.F Andrews. Du Bois expressed his pleasure at meeting Sarojini Naidu and Andrews, requesting Gandhi to contribute a message for Black people in his magazine, The Crisis. Gandhi
One Year of Gaza War | Shashi Tharoor Writes: What Qualifies as ‘Genocide’ Depends on Which Side You Are On
Palestinians bid farewell to relatives at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, following an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, on October 1, 2024. | Photo Credit: Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg In his famous 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, George Orwell wrote about how language was being corrupted in
With the Nobel Prizes Facing Mounting Criticism, Do They Still Remain Relevant In An Era of Global Research?
Every October, a handful of scientists get woken up by a phone call to find out they have won a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, physics or chemistry. Startled and bleary-eyed, they throw a shirt on over their pyjamas, join a video call to Stockholm and try to explain
O.P. Sharma Photography: Pioneering Indian Pictorialist’s Artistic Vision and Legacy | Retrospective Exhibition 1950s-1990s
The first thing you saw at the retrospective titled “O.P. Sharma & the Fine Art of Photography: 1950s-1990s” (September 5 to October 3)—organised by the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts in collaboration with Art Heritage, at Shridharani Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi—was not a photograph. It was a watercolour,
“Bhakti Is A Matter of Fire and Blood’: Jerry Pinto on Translating Bhakti Poetry, Its Challenges, Rewards, and Cultural Bridges
It is hard to find a form of writing that Jerry Pinto does not revel in. He started as a poet. His 2006 biography of the Bollywood dancing star Helen (Helen: The Life and Times of A Bollywood H-Bomb) changed that. These light-hearted literary avatars were pushed aside by the tender
Ahead of Her Times: Freedom and Feminism As Seen Through Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s Eyes
Autumn 1947, New Delhi. British rule in India had ended. Cyril Radcliffe had drawn a line dividing the subcontinent into two. In the violent Partition riots that ensued, half a million people died and 10 million fled. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay arrived at the newly created Relief and Rehabilitation Secretariat in New
Nobel Laureate Han Kang Declines Celebration Amid Wars in Ukraine and Gaza
Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for her craft, the South Korean writer Han Kang was immediately faced with her sense of political responsibility. A writer is not an isolated being lost in the island of literature. She is a political being who lives in the midst of the world
Baba, Bollywood, Bishnoi and Brand Mumbai: How a Politician’s Murder Shook Mumbai’s Power Corridors
In this photograph taken in July 2013, then Congress leader Baba Siddique is flanked by actors Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan at an Iftar party in Mumbai. | Photo Credit: PTI This story has all the elements of a crime thriller. Former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique (66) was killed
Book Review of 2024 JCB Prize Longlist The Distaste of the Earth
Exotic Landscape (1910), oil on canvas by Henri Rousseau. | Photo Credit: Wiki Commons Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih’s enigmatically titled new book, The Distaste of the Earth, retells a Khasi folktale of star-crossed love. Similar to Funeral Nights (Context, 2021), which offered a documentation of the Khasi people’s traditional stories and cultural practices tied around
The restless traveller: A vignette | A Bengali Story in Translation
He was walking through an impassable thorny way. At one stage he turned back and saw millions of steadfast gazes fixed upon him. An incandescent lustre of seething excitement and expectation radiated from those gazes. It filled the traveller’s heart with an intoxicating pride. With a smile of profound satisfaction,