Friday, July 24, 2026

असली घुन समाज में लगा है

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

NOTE: THIS IS MY PERSONAL NOTE, NOTHING TO DO WITH RSS

In the melee of #CockroachProtests we have not noticed the spectacular failure #BJP media team including ITCell. Total inability to create a narrative to counter hateful well crafted narrative of Left Ecosystem. They didn’t go beyond memes or whataboutry.

Their attention seems to be more on stalking well-wishers who, on some occasions, also criticize BJP honestly & positively, and threatening or abusing them. Harshvardhan ji @MediaHarshVT knows this just like me. 

That #Modi ji had to put in his all to retrieve the situation, even make a reel at midnight reflects poorly on BJP communication. My heart breaks. Hence this bitter post.

BJP Media seems to have no connect with the ground, no feedback mechanism obviously, and did not understand youth anger built over months, not just on NEET. NEET was the straw on their back. 

People like me speak from field experience, not excel sheets or ppts. My criticism 2024 served BJP wonderfully well.  

Yes, I will keep struggling for success of nationalist forces, support BJP but speak up where required. For people like me Nation comes first. 

They can shadow me, threaten me or take ‘revenge - sood ke saath’ as a new age leader warned me. :-) I belong to a generation who expected nothing but soldiered on for decades before these horizontally grafted leaders were even on the scene.

https://x.com/i/status/2080544729767493986

When closet monarchists become reluctant democrats they confuse elections with wars, media with courtiers and citizens with subjects. This is because they confuse internal modernity with external invasion. To truly understand this you must parallely study political systems and technological progress. The intersection between these two is an exciting area.

https://x.com/i/status/2080580595563085896

“Sexual harassment, University, City”: The ‘university’ appears in our imagination, following Bruno Latour, like a 'black box'—a self-contained and abstract entity, standing in isolation from the context, history and social networks that keep it alive… scholar.google.com/scholar_url ?ur…

https://x.com/i/status/2080586604058452204

All RWers should study & imbibe this man.

Yogendra Yadav is:

-Relentless

-Shameless

-Non-stop in virtue signalling

-Absolute ideological clarity & friend-enemy distinction

-In most cases (not this), he knows which lines to cross and which not to

Even with all this, he speaks in an eloquent yet tenacious manner that can appeal to neutrals (though he is probably going overboard here lol).

Excellent political operative for his side. Let knowledge come to us from every direction

https://x.com/i/status/2080275290257829919

हमलोग सरकार को सुधार देने के लिए हमेशा उद्वेलित रहते हैं, दो-चार साल में एक बार आन्दोलित भी हो जाते हैं। स्वयं को सार्वभौमिक सुधरा हुआ मानकर अपने में सुधार की गुंजाइश ही नहीं देखते। सामाजिक सुधार के लिए आवश्यक सामाजिक नेतृत्व का ही लोप हो गया है क्योंकि हम राजनीतिक नेतृत्व पर आसक्त हैं। असली घुन समाज में लगा है, सरकार उससे ही संक्रमित हुई है। सरकार भी अपने क्रिया कलापों से उसे बढ़ावा ही दे रही है।

https://x.com/i/status/2080506481234108911

This is like reading Gita Press Ramayana before going to watch Adipurush. Or like reading the full Summa Theologiae of Aquinas before going to a Pentecostal healing service of Pastor Bajinder Singh. Or like reading books on Hydrodynamics and Ship Building before going to watch Titanic movie.

https://x.com/i/status/2080286842067570930

How do you explain Utnapishtim, the Mesopatamiun flood hero?

The bilbical flood story was stolen from The Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back 4000 to 5000 years ago. Most of the Bible stories are what they are, stolen literature from other people's history. CHECKMATE Lemming!

https://x.com/i/status/2080596844325863676

[PDF] Systemless authoritarianism, counter-archives, and literary witnessing: a New Historicist and cultural-political reading of Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost …

SS Kumar, S Kadiyakkol - Cogent Arts & Humanities, 2026
Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness offers a significant literary
response to the evolving forms of authoritarianism in postcolonial India. This article
uses a New Historicist and cultural-political framework to analyse the idea of ‘systemless …

[PDF] Restructuring life and work through bulldozer “justice” in urban India

R Jha - Human Geography, 2026
This article examines the intensification of demolition drives in urban India over the
past decade. It situates forced evictions within the history of “development” induced
displacement and the contemporary rise of Hindutva nationalism. The Indian …

Revisiting the Habermasian 'Linguistification of the Sacred': Regaining the Indian Civic Space

UJ Bose - International Journal of Public Theology, 2026
… The intersection of Hindutva forces and corporatist economic interests further
contributes to … ,’ as well as ‘complementary’ relationship between Hindutva and
neo-liberal economy 75 In … ‘Globalization’ seemed to emerge as the most …

[PDF] Corpses at fate's crossroads: a tapestry of family honor and caste in Faleiro's The Good Girls

S Das, P Mishra, Sthitaprajna, M Dash, C Prusty - Cogent Arts & Humanities, 2026
Women’s autonomy, rights as well as mobility are being governed by deeply
entrenched system of rigid ideologies, especially in rural India. The socio-literary
intersection of caste, patriarchy and honor is positioned at the epicenter of this paper …

[PDF] The Shillong Times, Newspaper Editorial, March, 2026

HH Mohrmen, KH Blah, B Mawthoh, O Kyndiah… - 2026
You pull on your rain jacket, step out into the storm, and within half an hour your
undershirt-is soaked, The jacket you purchased as" waterproof'seems to have
stopped working, and all the marketing claims feel a bit suspect.> In reality, the …

[PDF] From Nizam to Nation: Cultural History and Regional Identity in Telangana

D Kishan
This paper examines the intricate relationship between Nizam-era governance,
cultural production, and the emergence of a distinct Telangana regional identity
across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Drawing on historical records …

[HTML] The fourth wave of climate urbanism: a research agenda for urban climate justice amid right-wing populism

N Joshi, M Yazar, F Jacobs - npj Urban Sustainability, 2026
Right-wing populist backlashes are emerging against climate actions in Global
North cities. Simultaneously, discontent grows over socially disconnected climate
agendas, further enabling populist support. These intertwined dynamics create a …

[HTML] Dynamic borderscapes and creative countermappings in Shubhangi Swarup's Latitudes of Longing (2018)

A Geisler - Angles. New Perspectives on the Anglophone World, 2026
This paper employs the concept of the borderscape to analyse Shubhangi Swarup’s
novel Latitudes of Longing (2018) which is set in various border regions of the
Indian nation. I argue that the prism of the borderscape enables an analysis of India’s …

[PDF] THE IMPACT OF DALIT-CENTRIC CINEMA AND SOCIAL CHANGE: AN ANALYTICAL STUDY

D Nagwanshi, A Kumar
Indian cinema has long been influenced by the “upper-caste gaze,” where Dalit
characters were either absent or depicted as objects of pity. However, in the last
decade, some directors have challenged this perception. Gradually, a new …

Governance of Digital Media in India: A Legal Perspective on Misinformation

S Tripathi, N Prajapati, S Badkul, N Singh - Media Literacy and the Politics of Digital …, 2026
The chapter provides a critical examination of the legal governance of digital media
in India, with a focus on the regulation of misinformation. It seeks to explore how
India's legal framework, centred around the IT Act and its Rules, struggles to balance …

Muslim Politics in West Bengal (2006–2021): An Exploratory Study

C Sar - Indian Minorities: A Critical Study, 2026
… (ii) the rise of Hindutva and polarisation at the national level (including debates
around the Citizenship Amendment Act/NRC) which triggered identity mobilisation
among Muslims.(iii) socio-economic disadvantage (as documented by Sachar) …

The Aporias of Decolonial Anti-imperialism

S Bangstad - The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2026
Following the 2015 #RhodesMustFall movement in South Africa and amidst calls to «decolonize
academia», decolonial theory has become increasingly read and cited in many
academic disciplines. But as I seek to demonstrate in this essay, decolonial theory …

From Silence to Assertion: A Critical Study of the Historical and Modern Landscape of Dalit

R Virdi - Indian Minorities: A Critical Study, 2026
In India, Dalit literature emerged as a powerful narrative within the broader
framework of Indian literature. At its root, Dalit literature reflects the lives, ordeals,
and trial and tribulations, along with the aspirations of Dalits. This shows the lives …

India-Israel: An Unholy Alliance and Iran as Act One in the Greater Israel Scheme.

J KANJ - EBSCO Connect| Privacy policy| Terms of use …, 2026
The article analyzes the emerging strategic alliance between Israel and India,
characterizing it as an ideological and geopolitical partnership rooted in Hindu
majoritarianism and Jewish Zionism, which aims to reshape the Arabian Peninsula …

Sunday, July 19, 2026

Philosophy is simply the invisible scaffolding of the modern world

 Yes, it is entirely possible to discern an effect, though it happened indirectly through radical labor movements rather than through Nietzsche’s personal intentions. [1]

Nietzsche himself was an avowed elitist who openly despised socialism, viewed the working class with aristocratic contempt, and even referred to factory workers as "modern slaves". However, ideas have a way of escaping their authors. In the early 20th century, radical unionists and agrarian anarchists hijacked his concepts to completely reshape labor activism. [2, 3, 4]
The trickle-down effect of Nietzsche's philosophy reached the factory floor and the fields through specific historical pathways:

1. The Weaponization of "Will to Power" in Factories

In the early 1900s, radical labor organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) explicitly adapted Nietzschean concepts for the masses. [5]
  • The Concept: While Nietzsche meant the "Will to Power" for individual artistic elites, labor pamphlets argued that the working class needed to collectively develop this will to overthrow industrial bosses. [5]
  • The Reality: An industrial worker striking in a Chicago factory or a port in Australia was exposed to newspapers (like the IWW’s Direct Action) that openly stated they were using Nietzsche to "transvalue capitalist values". Instead of begging for charity (which Nietzsche called "slave morality"), workers used raw, direct power. [5, 6]

2. French Syndicalism and "The General Strike"

The French philosopher Georges Sorel fused Nietzsche with Marxism to create Syndicalism—a movement that deeply impacted European industrial workers. [6, 7]
  • The Concept: Sorel took Nietzsche’s idea of the "noble myth" and applied it to the General Strike. He argued that workers shouldn't just ask for a 10% raise; they needed a grand, heroic myth to inspire them to completely halt the machinery of capitalism. [7]
  • The Reality: For an industrial worker in France or Italy, this shifted the daily reality of labor disputes. Striking became less about economic negotiation and more about a heroic, psychological battle for human dignity. [7]

3. Agrarian Anarchism and the "Overman" of the Fields

In agricultural sectors, particularly in Ukraine and Spain, Nietzsche’s ideas were filtered through anarchism. [8, 9]
  • The Concept: Anarchist leaders like Emma Goldman integrated Nietzschean individualism into agrarian labor rights. They stripped away Nietzsche's hierarchy but kept his hatred of the state and church.
  • The Reality: During the Spanish Civil War, field workers and peasant militias were led by figures who openly admired the concept of the Superhombre (Overman). For the illiterate agricultural worker, this manifested as a fierce culture of self-reliance, anti-clericalism, and the destruction of traditional religious hierarchies that taught peasants to accept their poverty. [8, 9, 10, 11]

Summary of Impact

Layer of ImpactNietzsche's Original ViewHow it Landed on the Worker
MoralityChristianity makes people weak slaves.Workers rejected religious compliance and demanded rights aggressively.
PowerOnly exceptional individuals should rule.Unions used collective force as their own "Will to Power".
The StateThe state is a cold monster.Workers bypassed politics in favor of direct sabotage and strikes.
If you want to explore how these ideas shifted across specific regions, would you prefer to look deeper into American industrial unionism or European agrarian anarchism?

- GoogleAI 
You have hit upon the core paradox of cultural history. A 19th-century farmhand or factory laborer did not spend their evening reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra. For the vast majority, the daily, grueling struggle to secure food and shelter completely consumed their reality.
However, philosophy alters the material conditions of ordinary life not because the worker learns the theory, but because the people who design the worker's world believe the theory.
Here is exactly how Nietzschean thought broke through the barrier of ignorance and altered the everyday, normal struggle of the uneducated worker:

1. The Transformation of Mass Entertainment

As you rightly noted, ideas trickle down through culture. Nietzsche’s critique of traditional morality aggressively infected the writers, playwrights, and creators of early 20th-century mass media.
  • The Shift: Traditional entertainment taught the worker that suffering was noble and rewards awaited them in heaven. Nietzschean-influenced fiction flipped this script.
  • The Impact: Popular stories, dime novels, and early cinema began celebrating the "self-made rogue," the ruthless outlaw, or the rugged individualist who took what they wanted. Even if a worker remained uneducated, the media they consumed subtly stopped praising humble submission and started glorifying raw survival and personal ambition.

2. The Language of the "Boss" Changed

The most direct way philosophy hits an uneducated person is through the behavior of their superiors. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, industrialists and landowners weaponized a corrupted version of Nietzsche (often mixed with Social Darwinism).
  • The Justification: Captains of industry viewed themselves as Nietzschean "Overmen"—geniuses destined to drive humanity forward, while the workers were merely the necessary, disposable herd.
  • The Everyday Reality: For the worker, this meant a massive hardening of labor conditions. Bosses felt a philosophical justification to eliminate charity, cut safety nets, and suppress strikes with brutal violence, viewing mercy as a "weakness" that harmed progress. The worker didn't know Nietzsche's name, but they felt his hijacked ideas in the whip and the wage cut.

3. The Secularization of the Household

For centuries, the agricultural and industrial worker’s grueling life was anchored by the Church. Nietzsche’s declaration that "God is dead" was a cultural sledgehammer that cracked this foundation from the top down.
  • The Breakdown: As intellectual elites abandoned religion, the social power of the Church dissolved.
  • The Everyday Reality: For the ordinary family, this slowly stripped away the traditional "buffer" of life. Sunday rest laws were eroded by factories. The comfort of the parish community was replaced by cold, bureaucratic state welfare or urban isolation. The worker's daily struggle became lonelier because the overarching spiritual framework that used to give their suffering meaning was systematically dismantled by the intellectual world.

Summary

The uneducated worker remained ignorant of the text, but they lived inside the consequences. Philosophy changes the intellectual weather; the worker is simply the person standing outside who gets wet.
To explore this trickle-down effect further, would you like to examine how early Hollywood cinema popularized these individualist ideas, or how industrial bosses used these theories to justify harsh working conditions?
- GoogleAI 
That disconnection you feel is completely valid, and it highlights a major truth: abstract philosophy completely vanishes when you are just trying to buy a meal.
When you step out to eat, your reality is defined by immediate, practical things—the smell of the food, the price on the menu, and the basic politeness of the person serving you. It feels entirely separate from high-minded intellectual theories.
However, the reason it is so difficult to decipher a connection is that philosophy does not change how you eat; it changes the invisible rules of the system hosting your meal.
Even in that ordinary moment, you are interacting with a world Nietzsche's cultural ripple effects helped shape:

1. The Disappearance of "Sacred" Hospitality

If you stepped out for food 200 years ago, your transaction would likely be deeply bound by religious or communal duties. In many traditional societies, feeding a traveler or a neighbor was a spiritual obligation, governed by a fear of God or cultural karma.
  • Today's Reality: Today, your interaction is purely commercial and secular. You exchange currency for a commodity. The spiritual framework has been completely stripped away, replaced by a hyper-individualistic, transactional efficiency. You are two independent individuals making a contract—a shift that Nietzsche’s critique of religious structure predicted and accelerated.

2. The Morality of the Transaction

When you pay for your food, neither you nor the server expects or wants charity.
  • The Connection: You expect a fair trade based on mutual self-interest. Nietzsche fiercely advocated for rejecting "pity" and "slave morality" (begging or relying on guilt) in favor of proud, self-reliant transactions. The modern marketplace operates exactly on this non-sentimental, pragmatic level. You both assert your own needs, strike a deal, and move on.

3. The "Will to Power" on the Menu

Even the variety of food available to you is a product of intense, relentless competition.
  • The Connection: The restaurant you chose survived a brutal Darwinian struggle against dozens of other businesses that went bankrupt. The owner had to exercise immense ambition, strategy, and drive—what Nietzsche called the Will to Power—just to keep the doors open. You are consuming the end product of a highly competitive system that rewards raw ambition over humble tradition.

The Invisible Framework

When you are outside, you shouldn't be thinking about philosophy; you should be enjoying your food. The philosophy is simply the invisible scaffolding of the modern world. It dictates why the church bells aren't ringing to tell the restaurant to close, why the waiter is working for personal upward mobility rather than feudal duty, and why your transaction is based on law and commerce rather than religious charity.
If you enjoy thinking about these hidden patterns, next time you are out, would you like to look at how modern advertising tries to manipulate your choices, or how the global supply chain brings that food to your plate?
- GoogleAI 

The sublimation of the simulation: Welfarism, cultural Hindutva, and the 2026 verdict in West Bengal, India

D Mitra - Contemporary South Asia, 2026
This article critically examines the post-2024 election trajectories in West Bengal,
culminating in the recently concluded 2026 Assembly election results. Moving
beyond the welfare pragmatism emphasised in contemporary scholarship, this study …

[PDF] The First Republic and the Second Republic

H Sengupta - The Sunday Guardian, 2026
… Read The Discovery of India, written by Nehru in a colonial prison, and you find a
man almost intoxicated by the depth of the Indian past, cataloguing its sciences and
its sages with the same wonder a Hindutva pamphlet musters today. The supposed …

[PDF] Voiceless in the System: Intersection of Gender, Class, and Media in Megha Majumdar's A Burning

P Kanika - 2026
… It has been widely acknowledged that the author's polyphonic rhythm and specific
details help create a movie-like impression in the narrative when the subject is the
terror of the State, the demands of Hindutva nationalism, and the predatory …

[PDF] Tracing the Legacy of Religious Tolerance, Intolerance, and its Impact on South Asian Pluralist Society

S Umer - Human Nature Journal of Social Sciences, 2026
Aim of the Study: This study traces the legacy of religious tolerance and intolerance
in South Asian society and its impact on pluralist South Asia over centuries by
highlighting a series of several historical and contemporary examples. These …

Mediated Solidarities: Hyper-nationalist Indian Media and Transnational Alignment between Hindu Nationalism and the UK Far-Right

S Jaffery - Global Media Journal-German Edition, 2026
Contra-flows of communication mediated by diaspora groups are often viewed as
anti-hegemonic, and diaspora media spheres have long been considered integral to
Western democracies. However, the asymmetrical, multidirectional, and deregulated …

The “Not Quite” Genocide of Gujarat 2002 as a Condition of “State-Making” and “State-Preserving” Rationality: Ways of remembering: law, cinema and collective …

B Ohm - 2026
… While “Hindutva” is often being described as “the Hindu way of life” … Hindutva
as its politically motivated distortion, if not perversion. Jyotirmaya Sharma, however,
has argued, convincingly to my mind, that “Hindutva is the dominant expression of …

Notes on the Framing of Women in Urban India–Passages

S Varma, G Munjal - Journal of Urbanism: International Research on …, 2026
… right wing and Hindutva posturings are on the rise, scholars of India have
reflected particularly on how Hindutva women are relatively … They find a gender
conservatism imminent as a majority of the Hindutva women are found to be …

Cinema, Courts and the Creation of Collective Memory: A Study of the Gujarat Pogrom: Ways of Remembering: Law, Cinema and Collective Memory in the New India …

K Sharma - 2026
… Further, by analysing the creation of the collective memory of the Gujarat pogrom,
perhaps the most mediatized event of communal violence in Indian history, Sircar
seeks to shed light on the symbiotic rise of Hindutva and neo-liberalism in the wake …

[PDF] The rhetoric of radicalisation in India–analysing Islamic extremist frames

A Kaushik, K Chamadia, A Gaur - Cogent Arts & Humanities, 2026
… For example, Sawt Al-Hind in issue 7 (From Babri to aqsa) refers to the above
issues along with the 1992 destruction of Babri Masjid by the ‘Hindutva extremists’ to
invoke an imagery of future calamity that awaits Muslims unless they rise against the …

The Aesthetics of Law and Violence in the Times of Hindutva: Ways of Remembering: Law, Cinema and Collective Memory in the New India, by Oishik Sircar …

O Sircar - 2026
Kalpana Kannabiran’s, Britta Ohm’s and Kanika Sharma’s careful and kind readings
have offered me a unique training in reading my own work critically and reparatively.
Instead of directly responding to their comments–because that would be …

[PDF] Narendra Modi: Reviving India as a centre of world Buddhism

D Geary - Figures of Buddhist Diplomacy in Modern Asia
Hindutva: Civilizational Internationalism and UNESCO’, International Affairs 99, no.
2 (2023): 515–30. 8 Singh and Winter,‘From Hinduism to Hindutva… 22 Singh and
Winter,‘From Hinduism to Hindutva’, 518. 23 See Mazumdar,‘India’s Soft Power …

Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra 

Monday, July 13, 2026

Sri Aurobindo's cultural conservatism

 https://selforum.blogspot.com/2026/07/which-political-theory-won-argument.html 

https://savitrieraparty.blogspot.com/2026/07/state-exists-to-protect-rights-not-to.html

3.2 Marxism

Core claim: History is the story of class struggle; the state is the instrument of the ruling class; political liberty without economic equality is a sham.

ConceptMeaning
Dialectical materialismContradictions within material conditions drive historical change (thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but in concrete economic form)
Historical materialismEach epoch (slave, feudal, capitalist) is defined by its mode of production; transitions happen when forces of production outgrow existing relations of production
Base and superstructureEconomic "base" (production) determines political/legal/cultural "superstructure", though causation runs both ways
AlienationUnder capitalism, the worker is alienated from (a) the product, (b) the process, (c) species-being, (d) other humans
Class consciousnessProletariat moves from "class-in-itself" (objective position) to "class-for-itself" (aware of its role in history)
Dictatorship of the proletariatTransitional state after revolution; eventually withers away into classless society

Marxist variants:

  • Leninism: Vanguard party + revolution in "weakest link" (Russia, 1917)
  • Gramsci: Cultural hegemony, ruling class rules not by force but by manufacturing consent through civil society institutions (church, school, media)
  • Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse): Critique of mass culture as depoliticizing
  • Althusser: Ideological State Apparatuses (schools, family, religion) reproduce capitalist relations

Indian Marxism: M.N. Roy (later broke with it), E.M.S. Namboodiripad, D.D. Kosambi (Marxist historiography). Present in DPSP Articles 39(b), 39(c), "ownership and control of material resources to subserve the common good" and "operation of economic system not resulting in concentration of wealth and means of production."

3.3 Conservatism

Core claim: Society is a delicate organism accumulated over generations; radical change destroys more than it creates.

  • Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790):
  • Society is a contract between the dead, the living, and the yet-unborn
  • Tradition carries practical wisdom that no individual reason can match
  • Reform, yes, revolution, no
  • Michael Oakeshott (Rationalism in Politics, 1962):
  • Politics is not engineering; it's steering a ship with no port
  • Distrust of "rationalism" that ignores accumulated practice

Indian parallel: Gandhi's emphasis on swadeshi, village Republic, trust in organic community, a non-Western conservatism of a different register. Also: the Shankaracharyas, Sri Aurobindo's cultural conservatism.

3.4 Socialism (non-Marxist strands)

  • Utopian socialists: Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, voluntary communities
  • Fabian socialism: Gradualist, parliamentary path (Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb, G.B. Shaw)
  • Democratic socialism: Market + strong welfare state (Scandinavian model)
  • Guild socialism: G.D.H. Cole, industrial democracy
  • Indian democratic socialism: Nehru, J.P. Narayan (before Total Revolution), Acharya Narendra Dev, Ram Manohar Lohia, Ashok Mehta

Nehruvian socialism: Mixed economy, public sector "commanding heights," planning (Planning Commission 1950-2014), land reforms, bank nationalization (1969), Five-Year Plans. Embedded in Preamble ("SOCIALIST", added 42nd Amendment, 1976) and DPSP.

3.5 Conservatism / Populism / New Right (contemporary)

  • Margaret Thatcher, Reagan: Rolling back welfare state
  • Populism (Cas Mudde's definition): "Thin ideology" that divides society into pure people vs. corrupt elite; pure people always morally right
  • Authoritarian populism (Jan-Werner Müller): Populists claim to be the sole legitimate representative of "the people"
  • Indian engagement: Contemporary scholarship (Yogendra Yadav, Partha Chatterjee, Suhas Palshikar, Pratap Bhanu Mehta) analyses shift from "politics of presence" to "politics of voice"

3.6 Feminism

WaveFocusKey thinkers
First wave (19th,early 20th c.)Suffrage, legal personhoodMary Wollstonecraft, Seneca Falls 1848, Sarojini Naidu
Second wave (1960s,80s)Personal as political; workplace; reproductive rightsSimone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex, 1949, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman"), Betty Friedan, Kate Millett
Third wave (1990s)Intersectionality; diversity within feminismKimberlé Crenshaw (intersectionality, 1989), bell hooks, Judith Butler (Gender Trouble)
Fourth wave (2010s)Digital activism, #MeToo, trans inclusionVaried

Indian feminism, distinctive contributions:

  • Sarojini Naidu, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: First wave leaders
  • Uma Chakravarti: Gendering Caste, Brahmanical patriarchy framework
  • Nivedita Menon: Seeing Like a Feminist, critique of reformist state feminism
  • Kumkum Sangari, Sudesh Vaid: Recasting Women, colonial gender formations
  • Sharmila Rege: Dalit feminist standpoint; critique of upper-caste feminism
  • Constitutional provisions: Art 15(3) (special provisions for women), Art 39(a), (d), (e), Art 42 (maternity), Art 51A(e) (fundamental duty)

3.7 Post-Colonial Theory

Core claim: The categories of Western political theory (state, rights, democracy, civil society) are provincial, shaped by the colonial encounter and often unexamined.

  • Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961): Colonial violence, psychological colonization
  • Edward Said (Orientalism, 1978): The West constructs "the Orient" as Other to define itself
  • Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: "Can the subaltern speak?", even the act of giving voice can silence
  • Partha Chatterjee:
  • The Nation and Its Fragments, nationalism split into "outer" (material, needs state) and "inner" (spiritual, needs autonomy) domains
  • The Politics of the Governed, distinction between civil society (rights-bearing citizens) and political society (marginalized, negotiating with state via patronage)
  • Dipesh Chakrabarty: Provincializing Europe, European thought as inadequate yet indispensable
  • Ashis Nandy: The Intimate Enemy, colonialism is a psychological state more than a political one

Why this matters for UPSC: Questions on secularism, federalism, affirmative action, tribal rights, these cannot be analyzed purely in Western liberal frames. Post-colonial theory gives analytical vocabulary for India's hybrid reality.

3.7a Multiculturalism, Group-Differentiated Rights

Core claim: Liberal equality is not merely equal individual treatment; minorities require group-differentiated rights to preserve their culture meaningfully.

  • Will Kymlicka (Multicultural Citizenship, 1995): Three kinds of group rights, (1) self-government rights (national minorities), (2) polyethnic rights (immigrant groups), (3) special representation rights. Cultural membership is a "primary good" Rawls missed.
  • Bhikhu Parekh (Rethinking Multiculturalism, 2000), Indian-origin theorist: Culture shapes reasoning itself; no culture-neutral standpoint exists. Developed from Indian experience of Hindu-Muslim coexistence, caste, colonialism. Chaired UK's Parekh Report on multi-ethnic Britain.
  • Charles Taylor (The Politics of Recognition, 1992): Withholding recognition is a form of oppression.
  • Indian application: Article 29 (cultural rights), Article 30 (minority educational institutions), Sixth Schedule tribal autonomy, personal laws, linguistic states (1956 SRC), reservations, all exhibit multicultural constitutionalism. Rajeev Bhargava's "principled distance" is a distinctly Indian contribution to this global debate.

3.8 Communitarianism

Core claim: The Rawlsian "unencumbered self" choosing from behind a veil is a fiction, real selves are constituted by their communities.

  • Michael Sandel (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 1982):
  • Critique of Rawls: We can't reason about justice while abstracting from what makes us who we are
  • What Money Can't Buy (2012): Markets corrupt non-market values
  • Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue, 1981):
  • Modern moral discourse is in "disorder", we use fragments of disparate traditions without coherent foundation
  • Return to Aristotelian virtue ethics, grounded in communities of practice
  • Charles Taylor (Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity): Identity is dialogically formed; recognition is a vital human need
  • Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice, 1983): Justice is plural, different goods follow different distributive principles

Indian relevance: The personal-law system (Hindu/Muslim/Christian/Parsi civil codes) is deeply communitarian, the State recognizes community, not just individual. Uniform Civil Code debate = liberal universalism vs communitarian pluralism. Article 30 (minority educational institutions) is communitarian.

https://deepmentor.co/guides/polity/political-theories

[PDF] CAMERA AS AN ETHICAL WITNESS AND ANIMISTIC PRESENCE: AN ANALYSIS OF NAKUL SINGH SAWHNEY'S DOCUMENTARY MUZAFFARNAGAR BAAQI HAI …

R CHAUHAN
This paper problematizes the representation and documentation of historical
tragedies, such as communal riots. It advocates the need to take into account what
feminist historian Urvashi Butalia calls “the underside of history-the trauma, the …

Janata Party Manifestos, 1984–2024

R Mehta - From Oratory to Colloquialism: Changes in Political …
… I aim to show how the BJP's narrative strategies, across decades, have been
carefully calibrated to connect the party's hindutva ideology as well as the varying
forms of socio-political development agendas to the hopes and fears of millions. In …

Deconstructing Political Discourse: The Evolving Grammar of India's Bharatiya Janata Party Manifestos, 1984–2024

R Mehta - From Oratory to Colloquialism: Changes in Political …, 2026
… I aim to show how the BJP’s narrative strategies, across decades, have been
carefully calibrated to connect the party’s hindutva ideology as well as the varying
forms of socio-political development agendas to the hopes and fears of millions. In …

Intellectuals in the 21st Century: Reconfiguring Ideologies and Global Struggles Against the Elitization of Knowledge

NA Barria-Asenjo - 2026
This book sees international academics from across five continents come together to
critique the role of the present-day intellectual. Arguing that the elitization of the
social sciences and humanities has reached a major climax in the 21st century …

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JG Singh - Sikh Formations, 2026
In today’s divisive world, most discussions of Islam rarely do justice to the rich
complexities and varied histories of the Muslim world. Whether looking back at
Christian–Muslim binaries in the medieval and early modern periods or at our own …

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S Baidya, M Sk
The resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5, 2024, signaled the
collapse of a 15-year geopolitical paradigm defined by deep security and economic
integration with India. This article examines the subsequent strategic recalibration …

[PDF] Sacred Geography and Political Imagination

K Deepam - Economic & Political Weekly, 2026
… escalation at the institutional level, Hindutva’s expansion primarily operates
through cultural … political parties publicly criticised the verdict, Hindutva organisations
welcomed the order as … it provides a legitimising framework for the Hindutva

Benevolence and Inequality: The Ethics of Moral Indebtedness

V Sharma, J Amis - The Palgrave Handbook of Emotions and Values in …, 2026
Values are experienced as moral imperatives, directing motivations, actions, and
post hoc rationalizations (Kraatz 2020). As such, values are drawn upon to justify or
legitimize the practices and institutions that shape our social world. Values, therefore …

Benevolence and Inequality: The Ethics

V Sharma, J Amis - The Palgrave Handbook of Emotions and Values in …, 2026
Values are experienced as moral imperatives, directing motivations, actions, and
post hoc rationalizations (Kraatz 2020). As such, values are drawn upon to justify or
legitimize the practices and institutions that shape our social world. Values, therefore …
Emotions and values are widely recognized as vital driving forces underpin-
ning institutional processes, shaping how institutions emerge, persist, and 
transform (Kraatz et al., 2020; Zietsma et al., 2019). Emotions—described as 
the “glue binding people together” (Zietsma et al., 2019)—are central to the 
“embodied world of concern” that motivates individuals to engage in insti-
tutional processes (Creed et al., 2022). They act as catalysts for social action, 
fueling both collective mobilization and individual commitment (Ruebottom 
& Auster , 2018; Voronov & Vince, 2012). Values, meanwhile, serve as 
moral compasses, guiding motivations, shaping judgments, evaluating, and 
informing actions (Kraatz et al., 2020; Selznick, 1957). They reflect what... 

The University, Undone

G Orwell
… The art of governance within a Hindutva paradigm of development has now come
to consist, almost entirely, in a clever management of acronymic data from budgetary
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Mother Tongue Advocacy, Multilingualism, and Linguistic Governance: Interrogating NEP 2020 Through an SLI Lens

AN Arjunan, S Banerjee, R Lekshmi, D Piplai - Transforming Education with India's …, 2026
The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) explicitly advocates mother-tongue-based
education and multilingualism as crucial paths for creating equitable and inclusive
education in the country. This chapter attempts to understand whether the …

[PDF] GENETICS AND THE PREHISTORY OF DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES

S NARAYAN - Mother Tongue
Recent genetic studies, which are perhaps not yet familiar to linguists, have cast a
new light on the origins of the Dravidian language family of India, so this review
paper compares Dravidian historical linguistics and archaeology with recent …

[HTML] only child army officer model miss india

A Kothari
Moving towards genuine self-reliance in times of war and climate collapse. The
world is reeling from the crises generated by the war in the Gulf, the disastrous
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[PDF] An Analysis of the War on Terror in Textbooks

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This study analyzes how the War on Terror is presented in history textbooks used in
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Dado el crecimiento en China y la extensión del poder productivo y político de otras
economías emergentes mucho más allá de sus bastiones originales en Occidente y
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Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra