To be held at the beaches of Kozhikode, the four-day literary extravaganza, Kerala Literature Festival 2022 will have eminent personalities like Jeffry Archer, Arundhati Roy, Chris Kraus, and Wendy Doniger as its attendees.
Free speech liberals should accept Navyana’s legal right to not publish Joe D’Cruz’s book, but nonetheless condemn its actions with the same vigour as they protested Penguin's decision regarding Doniger's book
Hindu and Hindutva are easily conflated, particularly since a rising Narendra Modi in India’s political discourse has raised the ire of those ideologically averse
Wendy Doniger's supporters and detractors have set up the discussion so far as a clash between Hindutva and a secular viewpoints. The book's ideas and approach have been all but lost.
Zealots shout ‘offence’ at every sentence they dislike while self-declared progressive intellectuals throw about epithets like ‘Hindutva apologist’ and ‘Hindu fascist’ to anyone who dares challenge the currently dominant story about Hinduism and the
Now Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti (SBAS) targets Wendy Doniger's On Hinduism, listing limericks, doggerel and even statements about ' the Sangh’s complacency' with British rule as "objectionable passages"
Important questions brought up by l'affaire Doniger remain unanswered
A response to Nivedita Menon. L'affaire Doniger is not about ‘free speech’ but about going beyond the colonial ‘scholarly’ tradition.
Jakob De Roover’s empathetic account of the imagined ‘Hindu boy with intellectual inclinations’ born in the 1950s needs to be read with another imagined growing child: the
The many strands entangled in l' affaire Doniger involve issues that are too important to be left to the predictable and somewhat stale rhetoric about Hindutva fanatics or lamenting the role of the Indian government and judiciary
If there was ever a time for the judiciary to redeem itself and to end the ambiguity about free speech, the time is now, when press freedoms stand at a critical crossroads.
A 'lynch mob, and intolerant pseudo-secularists, in the name of freedom of expression, are crying from rooftops and demanding freedom of defamation....The withdrawal of this book is an outcome of a valid, legal battle'
'Petitioning Members of both houses of the Indian Parliament to reconsider and revise Sections 153 (A) and 295 (A) of the Indian Penal Code'
Delhi-based bibliophiles send a legal notice to Penguin, charging it with " extra judicial killing of books and authors", demanding that it either recommence publication of The Hindus or surrender its copyright to the Indian public.
'A publishing company has the same obligation as any other organisation to respect the laws of the land in which it operates, however intolerant and restrictive those laws may be'
'Even though there was no fatwa, no ban, not even a court order, you have not only caved in, you have humiliated yourself abjectly before a fly-by-night outfit by signing settlement.'
That Penguin has decided to pulp Wendy Doniger's The Hindus should come as no surprise...
Statement by National Book Critics Circle on Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus
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.