Veteran writers like Nayantara Sahgal, Kiran Nagarkar and Jeet Thayil have been overlooked by the jury while shortlisting for the JCB Prize for Literature.
The courts may have effectively circumscribed Sec 153A and 295A of the IPC by limiting the circumstances under which they may be invoked, yet as long as they exist in a form that allows for anyone to file a police complaint, their job is done.
As writers organise for the ban on The Satanic Verses to be lifted, the battle to undo the damage of the past quarter century has begun. It is time for India to wake up.
At 84, SH Raza is still painting the form that has obsessed him for three decades, the circle, or, to use his preferred expression, the bindu.
I returned last year to India after seven years in the United States, in NYC. Since then, I'd been living in Bangalore, Bombay and New Delhi, in that order. I wanted to, as the Talking Heads song puts it, "find myself a city to live in".
He would take his colour, brushes and canvas outside to paint and talk with his love. He would stand close to the window and paint, keeping an eye on his muse.
They say the violin mimics the human sound. In his case, it was that of love, of longing. He didn’t know any other way of loving.
Younger people do not have much progressive beliefs; a 2017 survey found that one-third of young people opposed inter-caste marriage.
The pandemic has made it clear that virtual learning is here to stay. In the West, the big question is whether it will dilute the quality of the college experience and education. In India, which grapples with digital divide, the question remains whether this will reach most people at all.
Even after two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, many 'informed' individuals in India continue to deny the virus with unscientific claims and unfounded data. The latest? Omicron will end the pandemic.
Across Asia there are deeply entrenched obstacles to a mode of higher education that is liberal in multiple senses – disciplinary and epistemological but also social and political.
The two incidents in the recent past, one in Mon district of Nagaland and the other at Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh, undermined the core principles democracy and federalism.