What can India offer?
[Published on outlookindia, July 05, 2007] Today, India has become a global player of significant political and economical impact. Europe and India are facing each other as equal partners in…
Read moreIndian View from Outside: Quotas, Rational & Moral?
[Originally appeared in New Indian Express Sep 11, 2015] Read Jakob de Roover’s piece on reservations on dailyon.in & on swarjyamag. From the perspective of constitution, constitution debates, check https://www.academia.edu/16478230/Caste-based_reservation_and_social_justice_in_India The problem…
Read moreDark Hour of Secularism: Hindu Fundamentalism and Colonial Liberalism in India
[Appeared in Making sense of the Secular: Critical perspecitves from Europe to Asia (Ed. Ranjan Ghosh), Routledge, 2013, pp 111-130] The relation between religion and politics remains one of the…
Read moreUS Commission for International Christian Freedom
[Originally appeared on firstpost: http://www.firstpost.com/world/uncirf-hypocrisy-protestant-worldview-not-religious-freedom-2237900.html ] The annual reports of the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) have long irked politicians and citizens from countries placed on its ‘watch…
Read moreRape of a Country — Jakob de Roover
[Appeared on niticentral.com ] Rape of a Country Jakob De Roover Imagine. A filmmaker travels to Belgium because she has heard about the pedophilia scandals in the country. She directs a…
Read moreSecular theme: cognitive stages of development — concrete vs abstract
1. The religious idea I am talking about in chapter 3 is this: Concrete and abstract characterize human thinking in the different phases of its development. By the time we…
Read moreThe Magic of ‘Radicalization’?
[Appeared in neweurope.eu ] After the Paris attacks came the questions: Is this violence caused by Islam or unrelated to religion? Are the perpetrators believers or madmen? Do they represent…
Read moreCaste Sytem III
1. As I have said before, my hypothesis is meant to guide the research and, as such, suggests that we find that the Brahmins will exhibit more of a heterarchical…
Read moreCaste System II
Two small points before I respond to your questions. One: all I have is a hypothesis that can guide research. In itself, it is not a theory and I cannot…
Read moreCaste hierarchies
1. You ask whether “there is a perception of caste hierarchies among Brahmins”. My guess is that there is no such general perception, even if, regionally, multiple Brahmin jati’s fight…
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