India, This Side

The rising threat to Indian languages

The missing Census 2021, the NEP, and the rapid growth in AI have endangered them.

Counter Culture

Oscars 2023: What’s fair got to do with it?

We see the Oscars wins as ours, a validation of our tastes, but that is it. Fair play has no role.

Prathyush Parasuraman

Vinod Kumar Shukla: A poet in a novelist’s shirt

The PEN/Nabakov award for Shukla is an acknowledgement of a unique and extraordinary talent.

India, This Side

Why Indian democracy needs more ‘unlettered’ literary figures

Those courageous voices would bring the republic back to the norms envisioned in the Constitution.

Counter Culture

Kochi-Muziris Biennale: A throbbing rigidity

Does India’s first and only arts biennale take itself a little too seriously?

Prathyush Parasuraman

Economic Perspectives

Adani-Hindenburg saga raises concerns over exposure of LIC, public sector banks

There are dangers in public institutions blindly supporting the rapid growth of corporate groups.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

INDIA, THIS SIDE

Bhakti: Then and Now

Today, it is directed at a living person who communicates through an elaborate digital set-up.

More stories from Columns

The latest fuel prices being updated on a board in Karachi on February 16 after the government hiked prices of petroleum products.

Pakistan likely to go the Sri Lanka way, default on external debt payments

Faith in a reformed IMF being an instrument for global governance in times of crisis is misplaced.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

A still from Fursat.

‘Fursat’: When big directors wield the small phone

One only wishes that Vishal Bhardwaj’s film had come with the whisper of a story that moved us, too.

Prathyush Parasuraman

End of a roll: The curious rise and fall of Adani stocks

The manufactured anger against Hindenburg for revelations about Adani share prices is quite strange.

Sukumar Muralidharan

allah islam hindi book hilal ahmed

Allah Naam ki Siyasat: On political Islam in India

Hilal Ahmed’s book will go a long way in educating everyone about Islam’s values and vision.

The title page of “Gitanjali” in English translation, which won its author Rabindranath Tagore the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

The Indian ease with translation and multilingualism

It cannot be understood by an ideology that thinks of every “other” as an enemy within.

Charles Simic, as a critic, reproduced entire poems of the poet, giving one the space to marinate in even the smallest image.

Can there be something such as an honest critic?

The critic is a persona largely missing from India’s classical music and dance scene.

Prathyush Parasuraman

Delhi Police personnel detain a student after the Students’ Federation of India‘s announcement to screen the BBC documentary, India: The Modi Question, at the Jamia Millia Islamia campus in New Delhi, on January 25.

A new phase of censorship creep in India

A proposal to amend the IT Rules 2021 and the ban on a BBC documentary are part of a larger trend of Internet censorship, growing since 2014.

The cover of Ekakini.

The rediscovery of Ekakini, an iconic Hindi work

Hindi literary circles are all agog as the first lesbian novel, from 1948, is republished.

A still from “Pathaan”.

Shah Rukh Khan: The new action hero on the block

With Pathaan and Jawan, will he use his stardom to rewrite the genre or will the genre rewrite him?

Prathyush Parasuraman

Punjab National Bank became the second-largest public sector bank in the country after the government announced that it would merge Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) and United Bank of India with it, in 2020.

Is a reversal of bank nationalisation on the cards?

Calls for privatisation have grown louder just as public sector banks clean up their balance sheets.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

The great Indian family

A strict population control policy sounds good on paper, but it ignores sociological correlations.

The covers of collections of Kishwar Naheed and Parveen Shakir.

From the heart, from Pakistan

Rakhshanda Jalil’s series introduces Pakistani women poets to Hindi readers.