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The Hindus Live In Small And Dark Houses Or Finding The Roots Of War In Textbooks – The Pakistan Episode
The minds of children are usually shut inside prison houses, so that they become incapable of understanding people who have different languages and customs. This causes us to grope after each other in darkness, to hurt each other in ignorance, to suffer from the worst form of blindness. Religious missionaries themselves have contributed to this […]
In Defense Of Doubt Or How Intellectual Walls Have A Terrible Way Of Leaking
Someone threw an egg at historian Wendy Doniger during a lecture in London in November 2003. Seven years later Wendy Doniger threw a book back at them. But more about this scholarly debate in a bit. — Reading Raymond Schwab’s masterpiece The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East 1680 – 1880 one […]
Deconstructing Kashmir-Part I: In The City Of Temples: Negotiating Identity Through A Divided Jammu
Are you Muslim? It has become near impossible for me to know how best to answer that question. The response must be carefully negotiated in a part of India where whether you are Hindu or Muslim determines if you are welcomed or suspected. The process begins as I check in to a hotel. There are […]
A Mosque Too Far: Rusafa On The Barbarian Plain
The first time I saw the image I did not realize that it would significantly change the way I looked at the world around me. It was a drawing of an 8th century shrine to a Christian saint somewhere deep in the Syrian steppe, then known by the Greek speaking world as ‘The Barbarian Plain’. […]
The Persistence of Ayodhya: Wounds & Resistance
I was asked to remain confined to my room. The men from Indian intelligence were polite but firm. As they questioned me in a small tea shop in a neighbourhood adjacent to where the Babri mosque once stood, I could see they were unsure about precisely what I represented. I looked Indian, spoke Hindi, and […]