RIVANCH

This post is a continuation of the previous critique of the Preamble to the Constitution of India . It was pointed out in that post, that the Preamble overlooks the possibility of conflict among the values celebrated in the Preamble, such as liberty, equality, and fraternity. A third criticism of the Preamble is related to this criticism in the previous posting, but carries it further. One now needs to move beyond the point that the Preamble does not recognize the possibility of conflict among the various noble ideals it espouses, and Hindu ethical theory does so, to recognise that such conflict can arise  within the same ideal , and not only just among ideals. Men and women, for instance, may have different conceptions of what gender equality means. The same could be true of what workers and their employers think about fraternity. Citizens within a country may similarly have different understandings of what should be meant by liberty. Thus one needs to draw attention now to a subtler

The genocide of Kashmiri Pandits has been one of the darkest phases of post-Independence India. Hundreds of Pandits were selectively killed. Their women suffered even more; they were molested and gang-raped, often in front of their own family members, including kids, and in worst cases even made to cook and eat the food laced with husband’s blood. And if this were not heinous enough, some of them were cut into half with a wood-cutting saw while they were alive. It took a film — Vivek Agnihotri’s  The Kashmir Files  in this case — to make people realise the magnitude of the tragedy: What we saw in January 1990 wasn’t just an exodus, it was a genocide. As this article was being written, Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin wrote in a tweet: “Watched The Kashmiri Files today. If the story was 100 percent true, no exaggeration, no half-truth — then it is really a sad story and Kashmiri Pandit must get back their right to live in Kashmir. I don't understand why no film was made on the exo

Award-winning Malayalam author TD Ramakrishnan didn’t write his first novel until he was 42. In 1992, while working as a guard in the railways, often his thoughts ran wild. There was a lot of time on his hands too. From Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms in China to the fall of the Soviet Union, Ramakrishnan read everything possible to deeply understand the multiple philosophical dimensions of human behaviour. His keen interest in economic reforms took seed in the form of a fictional narrative that is  Alpha , in which thirteen scholars embark upon a human experiment to leave their life in India behind to live on an anonymous island as primitive human beings for 25 years. Translated for the very first time into English by Priya K Nair, an assistant professor of English in Kerala,  Alpha  has till date sold close to 15,000 copies in its original language. Ramakrishnan is also the recipient of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award and the Vyalar award. The following is an extract from the inte

In the backdrop of the release of the film  The Kashmir Files , the issue of Kashmiri Hindus’ genocide around three decades ago has come to the fore again. But this wasn’t the first genocide of Kashmiri Hindus. We, as a country, have conveniently forgotten another Hindu genocide in Jammu and Kashmir which was no less horrific and tragical than what happened around three decades ago. During 1947-48, the Pakistani army and the Muslim tribesmen had invaded Jammu and Kashmir. Thousands of Hindus and Sikhs were indiscriminately killed, raped, maimed and brutalised. According to various estimates, more than 50,000 Hindus and Sikhs lost their lives. The tales of brutalisation where victims were innocent Hindu and Sikh civilians are unparalleled in modern human history. One of the biggest massacres during that period took place in Mirpur (which is now in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) which has a Hindu and Sikh population of around 40,000. There are some memoirs which throw revealing light on th

One man succumbed to bullet wounds and some people were injured in a clash between two groups in Madhya Pradesh’s Raisen district, police said on Saturday. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visited the injured in Hamidia Hospital in Bhopal. He also announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakhs for the kins of the deceased. Speaking to ANI after meeting the injured and taking stock of the situation, the chief minister said, "One person has died while two persons are critically injured. Stringent action will be taken against the perpetrators. We will make sure that injured are given free treatment. Rs 5 lakhs will be given to the family of deceased, Rs 2 lakhs to severely injured and Rs 50,000 to moderately injured," he said. The incident, in which people from both sides used sticks and stones and also resorted to arson and firing, took place in Khamaria Pauri village, some 115 kilometres from the district headquarters, an official said. “Two shops and three two-wheelers were bu

It seems as though we need to set our watches in the immediate aftermath of each electoral victory of a BJP reinvented and reshaped by Narendra Modi and comprehensively transformed into an indomitable election-winning machine by Amit Shah. Punctuality has new synonyms: Left. Liberal. Woke. Secular. Pluralist. The idea of India. Occurring like clockwork since 2014. In the overall reckoning, the BJP’s serial electoral victories appear trivial in comparison to the nationwide phenomenon of a wide gamut of these usual suspects going berserk on the dot. Predictable. Unfailing. Like time. The phenomenon is a surreal inversion of an anguished King Lear’s lament that melts the hardest rock, “Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?” What is it about Narendra Modi that brings out the absolute worst in these usual suspects? Knowing their record, we trust their answer at our own peril. But the real answer is their own substantial and prolonged record itself. Their project of

In mid-2019, online learning platform Unacademy approached Testbook, a government exam preparation app, for acquisition. The talks as always were led by Unacademy’s ambitious founder Gaurav Munjal, known for his get-it-done, no-nonsense, approach. When the founders of Matrix Partners-backed Testbook said they did not want to sell, Munjal was not amused. “Finish them off,” he told a human resources executive, according to a person directly aware of the matter. As he couldn’t acquire Testbook, he wanted to bleed it dry. Munjal instructed his team to hire almost all of Testbook’s educators. Unacademy recruited about 20 educators, 90 per cent of them. Testbook did not reply to a query seeking comment. In another case, when an entrepreneur turned down an acquisition offer, Munjal threatened to shut that company down, said no investor in town will fund it, and used language that he is “now not proud of,” said another person who was involved in the negotiations. Munjal, an unabashed fan o

So far, it lived largely in one’s imagination. The sightings were too rare to determine whether it is mythical or real, like the abominable snowman or the unicorn. For Hindu nationalists, they were too good to be true. For the cabal of the convenience of orthodox Muslims, Left, and so-called liberal intelligentsia, who bestow upon themselves the mantle of “secular”, this creature was too rare to bother about. Any trace of it and It would be bullied and shamed into submission or oblivion. But perhaps for the first time since the advent of social media in India, a patriotic and progressive Muslim voice is getting louder. A brave new generation of Muslims is bravely taking on the hypocrisies and fear-mongering by radicals in their own community and the ‘secular’ intelligentsia which has been enabling it for decades. #oldpost pic.twitter.com/SJDNYd7vHP — Amana Begam Ansari (@Amana_Ansari) March 6, 2022 They are exposing rampant Hinduphobia by a powerful and vocal section of the M

The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL) has released a recruitment notification inviting applications for Junior Engineers, Assistant General Managers and other posts. Interested candidates can submit their online applications through the official website of MMRCL - mmrcl.com. The application window is open till 15 April. Eligibility Criteria Age limit: Candidates applying for the posts should be below 40 years of age. However, the upper age limit will be relaxed for "deserving, internal, and deputation candidates", according to the recruitment notice. MMRCL will also give relax the upper age limit for reserved category applicants. Selection Process The MMRCL will select candidates on the basis of a Personal Interview round. It is to be noted that candidates will be shortlisted on the basis of their eligibility/ experience in the relevant field. “Candidate may be asked to submit any other documents required by the scrutiny committee and he/ she is liable to pr