Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra
I love how some otherwise intelligent people use objectivity and engagement as a trope to periodically endorse Mohan Bhagwat though, the RSS has repeatedly displayed double speak and the org and its innumerable affiliates spew casteism, islamophobia and abuse christians in word and action. This is either naivety or smart hedging. To engage seriously with Hinduism you do not need the RSS or any of its cohorts.
https://x.com/i/status/2085941953032798719
Every generation politically matures at a given moment, it has happened in the past as well
1975-77, 1989-92, 2011-13, 2026?
We must be cautious in over-interpreting this political moment, but it carries immense possibilities & future depends on how stakeholders interpret it
https://x.com/i/status/2085990062496641089
I continue to be an admirer of the overall American system, its decent people by and large, key historical figures such as Lincoln. But Indo-US tensions are inevitable for a decade or two. Will get worse. US is so used to being #1 and so in awe of current #2 that it will resort to bullying the clear but distant #3. Eventually a new equilibrium will be reached, and even a genuinely syncretic modern neopagan one, but not without Indian elites showing some backbone first. Indian unity is non-negotiable and India’s ascent to the top is equally inevitable. Any other aim or target is permanently consigning Indians to a subhuman category.
https://x.com/i/status/2085946521216815460
The overall American system is weak in its foundations, founded as it was on the near extermination of native Americans and the continuance of slavery. It required a civil war to end slavery, and it required political and ideological movements for emancipation of women. And now those same movements continue unrelentingly for racism, gender etc. compounding their societal problems, not reducing it. The American system is also archaic and creaky. Their leaders have become corrupt and plutocratic. If we thought there was a vast gulf between the Indian government and the Indian people, it is nothing compared to the near total disconnect between the American people and their government. A nation that only has the creation of wealth and capital as its core culture (without any other balancing factors) would only have weak systems that will eventually break.
https://x.com/i/status/2085976240377491469
At its unbridled peak, capitalism eats itself and belches socialism. The multibillionaire snake oil salesmen keep telling the public that there’s a pot of gold - abundance of everything humans desire - at the end of the AI rainbow. They tell tales of a New Rome, except one that is ethnically and religiously homogeneous, while they weave myths of America as the progenitor of “Western Civilization.”
It’s an elaborate psyop to placate a public that is falling behind in an acutely K-shaped economy. America is more divided and indebted than ever, and Americans face a precipitous loss of confidence in the American Dream. It opens the doors for a motley crew of radical leftists to gain sympathy. The political pendulum will swing further to the right and the left every few elections - if they are conducted fairly - a rather strong assumption given the US’ patchy record of voting integrity. Regardless, there will come a breaking point, even for this.
Meanwhile, the Indian-American middle management class and their counterparts in India will refuse to see the writing on the wall. They live in gilded cages, far away from the semi-literate, indebted, gun-toting masses who form 70% of the country. Indian think tanks and politicians believe in the American Dream more than Americans themselves. Tells a lot about how elite propaganda works. If anything should feed an 82 IQ stereotype, it is this. A few threads with stats for reference: x.com/suryakane/stat… x.com/suryakane/stat… Additional context: x.com/suryakane/stat…
https://x.com/i/status/2085860545266094190
We need a new intellectual biography of Bankim. There’s a ton of material—especially a bunch of his private letters (which I only recently learnt have survived the ravages of time)—that has regrettably escaped the attention of scholars, including Amitrasudan B. and others. And, of course, the many afterlives of Bankim and his oeuvre in postcolonial Bengal.
https://x.com/i/status/2085821756175184222
"Political Romanticism extends Schmitt’s attack on the individual and quarantines political subjectivity under the name Romanticism."
From our new issue, Alexander Freer's "Carl Schmitt, Romanticism, and Political Form": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…
https://x.com/i/status/2085849891155190172
John Gray, hailed as "Britain's best philosopher," is a leading critic of liberalism and the Enlightenment. iai.tv/video/the-idea…
He has long challenged the belief in inevitable progress, predicting both the 2008 financial crisis and the rise of populism. In this exclusive studio interview with Jonny Thomson, he explains why science and technology accumulate but gains in ethics and politics are fragile, unwinding every few generations.
https://x.com/i/status/2085803251606163474
We don't know the past or the future, but we think we know the present. Yet, philosophers and neuroscientists have argued the present is unattainable and unknowable. Poststructuralists like Derrida claim there is no 'now' that provides direct and immediate access to meaning.
Our descriptions are part of a shifting web of meaning that we can never get to the bottom of and which is limited by culture and history. Moreover, leading neuroscientists claim the reality we perceive in the present is a form of hallucination, or interface, evolved for survival. Rupert Sheldrake, Joanna Kavenna, and Timothy Morton debate whether we can ever truly grasp the present. Tap here to watch now. iai.tv/video/the-phan…
https://x.com/i/status/2085780562384490919
How Hindu Gods are Secularised to Destroy Hindu Dharma: Is Murugan (Skanda) a Hindu God or just some ancient tribal king from Tamil Nadu? Enemies of Dharma are demoting him to an "ancestor" to strip his divinity. This is a 2,000-year-old tactic to ease conversion by digesting Tamil Hindu culture. Don’t let them secularise your Gods!
Watch and share widely: youtu.be/8QlmfWxcpsA
https://x.com/i/status/2085671307551883418
One striking feature of The Life Divine is its continual appeal to scientific developments. Aurobindo points to evolution, quantum physics (in embryo during his lifetime), psychology, and biology as moving toward his vision. Modern Integral thinkers have continued this strategy, updating his examples with complexity theory, emergence, neuroscience, and systems thinking. Yet this often amounts to retrospective confirmation rather than prediction. Scientific concepts are interpreted metaphorically until they appear compatible with the spiritual framework. Rarely does the metaphysical system generate novel scientific predictions that could distinguish it from competing theories. In philosophy of science, explanatory power depends not merely upon accommodating known facts but upon risking falsification. Here Aurobindo's system proves remarkably resistant.
The Problem of Unfalsifiability
Every conceivable outcome appears compatible with divine evolution.
If humanity progresses, Spirit is ascending.
If civilization collapses, evolution merely proceeds through crisis.
If suffering increases, it serves divine transformation.
If enlightenment remains rare, humanity simply is not ready.
No imaginable observation could demonstrate that the theory is mistaken.
This places the system closer to theological interpretation than empirical explanation.
Karl Popper famously regarded such unfalsifiable frameworks as metaphysical rather than scientific. That does not make them meaningless—but it does limit their explanatory status.
The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga by Patrick Beldio
spirituality in the twentieth century, developing a system [End Page 116] of thought
and practice (Integral Yoga), establishing a popular ashram in Pondicherry, and … For much of his career—which began as a political revolutionary and later morphed into a decades-long period of seclusion and spiritual development—Aurobindo worked side by side with a French woman, Mirra Alfassa (1878–1973), whom …
Hindutva as an ideology of Hindu nationalism in contemporary Indian cinema
memory of the … Hindutva as a form of nationalization of mass culture in modern
India. In MV Kirchanov (Ed.), … Hindutva, human rights and Bollywood cinema in …
Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva: by Janaki Bakhle, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2024, 520 pp., $22.50 (hardback), ISBN 9780691250366
one of the most controversial anti-colonial thinkers of the Indian freedom struggle
movement in this book, referring to his original Marathi and English writings. Bakhle …
[PDF] The Hindu and the Brahmin
the lin eages of Brah min power that “the Kolhapur focus on Vedic rit ual laid the
foun da tion for non-Brah man articu la tions of a uni ed Hin du ism which came …
[PDF] The Rise of Religious Populism and the Erosion of Civil Liberties: A Comparative Study of the Consequences of Illiberal Democracy in Indonesia and India
large postcolonial nations experience profound erosion of civil liberties despite high
voter turnout. The objective is to analyze the shift toward illiberalism, propelled by …
Fear of a Flat Planet
spaces which promoted conspiratorial New Right movements in the 2010s. In the
United States, QAnon led to a convergence of Flat Earth advocacy with the Donald …
Religion and Violence in Hindu
thought, through the work of major figures such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Sri
Aurobindo, and Gandhi. The worldview in which both value systems operate affirms …
Religion, Violence, and the Body Politic
support of Hindutva’s ideology and mandate. Hindutva workers are affiliated with
one or more Hindu nationalist organizations and are indoctrinated in Hindutva’s …
[PDF] THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF CIVILITY: A CULTURE-CENTRED CRITIQUE OF
the contemporary far right has cynically appropriated, were constituted from their
origin as instruments of marginalisation, and that liberalism, theorised here as an …
The Myth of Religious Violence, or Why This Volume Is (Probably) a Bad Idea
many in the powerful Bharatiya Janata Party–reject the classification of Hinduism as
a religion. As Richard Cohen writes,“The proponents of Hindutva refuse to call …
[PDF] A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF POLITICAL MOBILIZATION IN INDIA
MGS RajThe Relationship between democracy and desirable societal development is one of
the most intensely discussed issues in the social sciences. When India crops up in
this discussion, it is often because examples are found here that turn common …
the most intensely discussed issues in the social sciences. When India crops up in
this discussion, it is often because examples are found here that turn common …
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