Sparsh

1- Half-life of the Coal Child : Not many know that the dangerous and suffocating rat mines of Meghalaya are worked by 70,000 child miners. Following them into hellish pits, Kunal Majumder exposes the dark veins of an exploitative industry. 2- Glory, piety and politics : With Pakistan’s two main political parties looking exhausted by being made to play a continuous game of cat and mouse with the establishment, the new generation of young Pakistanis began to look elsewhere. 3- A Short History of Rebellion" : TSI discovers that most fade away or come back ‘home’. Some do make history–for better or worse. 4- Interview of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad given to the famous journalist Shorish Kashmiri for a Lahore based Urdu magazine, Chattan, in April 1946. 5- Of grids and groups : An alternative view of "open" and "closed" societies. 6- Over 200,000 Narmada Dam oustees still to be rehabilitated ; A crime that goes unpunished for 25 years. 7- Killings of Ahm...

For Starters, Abrahamic religions are primary monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam practiced in the West. They are more based on faith and blind submission than free will. Eastern religions have Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Shinto, Taoism and Confucianism. Let us start over with an analogy. Eskimos have nine names for snow because they know different kinds of snow. Now no other language can have nine names for snow; Same is true for Eastern religions. That's because they have deep understood due to analysis on the human consciousness and religion. Now the West has all the words for science. In the East we have to coin words for scientific terminology; East don’t have it. Since a lot of metaphysical scrutiny has been done on human consciousness and nature, eastern religions have evolved more than their Western counterparts. As far as religion is concerned the whole world will have to follow the East, because East has worked deep down into the interior most be...

How many of you have heard this Latin word sine die (which means without a day or postponement for an indefinite time)? Well, it was a buzzword around BHU three decades ago during our time. Between 1967 and 1975, there was a period of violent demonstrations, resulting in closure of entire university for about 2-3 weeks every year. Till 1967, our university was known as internationally reputed central university. Students flocked to the university from all over India as well as from abroad. The political trouble started when Vice Chancellors were political appointees by ruling (Congress) party. To challenge the government,opposition Bharatiya Jan Sangh/RSS) party started violent demonstration. A typical sine die ran like this: Just after Diwali vacation was over, there was daily political speech given by a local street leader. Sponsored by the opposition, he stood just outside university’s main gate and delivered profane against, govt., VC and university administration. A small passerby...

This article give my crude ideas on justice at this point of time. For clarity, I have neither read the book " The Idea of Justice " by Amartya Sen nor " A Theory of Justice " by John Rawls. Justice is both personal and social in every aspect. Both of aspects are interdependent and produce effects that change the path of society and individual respectively. The rule of law is directly taken by man from nature. Hence, it always go in hierarchical structure rather than equality for all. Hence, providing justice to all is a complex phenomenon. We have to know the difference of revenge and justice. People want a scape goat as the front face to accuse swiftly and get a justice. One can certainly defend domination in the name of freedom, but those oppressed by such a view or practice of freedom would say that not all freedoms are equal or equally worth defending. Oppressed has more sense of justice than oppressor, hence concept of justice should be studied always fro...

Religion should improve the life of mankind. The war on religious purity will fail if warrior fail to underestimate the power of humanity and love. Too much stress on morals make us immoral. Prohibition produces duality in us where our mind says 'No' and sub conscious says 'Yes' luring us into the addiction of things. So, let the life flow in the reigns of mystery, spontaneity and be full of love. I have just finished 17 pages of  book written by Osho on Tao and completely feeling ease with my inner soul. See this beautiful paragraph --- One rule of the mind is, when you try very hard to do something, that something loses its edge. This is how we lose the edge of our happiness. What happens is instead that the edge of our unhappiness remains razor-sharp. We suffer so much misery in the world not because there is so much misery but because there is a fundamental error in our way of life. We do not want to touch unhappiness so its edge remains razor-sharp; and we are ...

Today Muslim world is deeply divided along the lines of separation between passionate liberalism and firm conservatism. Most of the Muslims do not debate with Non believers on Islam. They react and then huddle up behind flimsy and lopsided historical and national narratives about what being a Muslim is all about. That doesn't solve the problem of stereotyping of Muslims. I personally assume, Muslims as individuals capable of accepting cultural norm of others very easily and Islam as an institution going towards reform very slowly. This article is not be beginners guide for learning about Islamic cultural aspect. It is the first part of our essay that is focusing on current cultural environment in Islamic world. For beginners [ History of Islam ] Arab world is the cradle of Islam and all the problems emerged in Islam can be studies better by understanding the mindset of Arab region. Arab countries are depending too much on religious books and have failed to educate a generation o...

Life is seldom dull for the dissident like me. With too much energy combined with weak concentration forming restlessness is the disease thriving in me. So the seasons of either extreme energy or laziness surrounds my aura. I assume that mine cultural, social, economic and national background takes away the liberty to define myself. I will always be bounded by my social network, no matter what happens in the future. This identity question is really big and complex. I always think my past and say: Here lives a man amongst us who will stand up and question thyself " Who will right the wrong?" ; There was a man who dared to inspire change or spoke his hearts out while hurting the beliefs of his friends and strangers. Blog has become a part of my identity now. I love to write but unable to write or read these days. These days, I love my status updates on facebook. Entertainment is huge component of Facebook but its thinking component is much less than in blogging. Twitter is much...

1- The Dance of Indian Democracy covers about a democratic form of governance, a liberal constitution, and secular public institutions in India since 1947. 2- The email Interview with Anupama Rao is largely about her new book, The Caste Question: Dalits and The Politics of Modern India . Anupama Rao is an Associate Professor of South Asian History at Barnard College, New York. 3-The Southasian Idea debates intensly on Development and Violence: Some Clues? : How does one characterize the Indian state and understand its actions on the issues of development. 4- Over at An Academic View of India, Vikram highlights key differences between the US and India in the way their higher ed institutions interact with the community at large . Extending the discussion with more opinions by Prof. Abi at nanopolitan and Rahul Siddharthan at Universities and cities ; 5- Contract Workers at IITK: A Response to Commonly Held Misconceptions : Rahul Verman is attempting to understand various a...

I try to understand the phenomenon constituting of violence, power, truth and justice in the daily happenings. Blasphemy is must for progress of the civilization. Ideas behind traditions must be challenged to know if they are true and relevant — and if we cannot challenge an idea, we cannot know validity of following the traditions in the society. Today, I want to publish without fear or favour and look at the world without the filter of 'faith'. USA administered Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Soviet suppression through Gulag, Hitler's cruelty in the Holocaust, Islamic persecution of Bahai faith, Ahmadiyya community and non-Muslims, discrimination in Hindus on the basis of caste, Israel's action against Palestine, South African apartheid with root of racism, fight of Christianity against evolution theory and countless other struggles shows the dark side of the world in last 60 years only. They are the recent events existing in the minds of last generation. They...

We defend peoples right to say something, it doesn't mean that you have to agree with it or even respect it. Culture and religion is much too important a matter to be disposed of in ritual routine or lost in an inconclusive debate. This post is dedicated to the Indianhomemaker conclusion on the free speech demand : Whenever we think we are stopping someone from hurting our sentiments by curtailing their freedom of expression (right or wrong), we also empower someone (e.g. the government, extremists, or even religious leaders) to shut our own mouths. 1- Olivier Roy is professor at the EHESS and I was quite impressed by his insight on the religious issues in this article . It emphasize that everyone is faced with the need to invent, define, and objectify what religion means to them. Olivier points out some interesting facts on the dependence of religion on the culture. Today's religious revival is first and foremost marked by the uncoupling of culture and religion, whatever the...