I AND MY WORDS

  It is kind of disconcerting that we have so much brouhaha to the kind of unfounded, selective discourse being written about people and the choice of characters we have taken up, just to put across a point. Be it the whole rigmarole about Savarkar’s petition, or the hilarious outrage about Jawaharlal Nehru verging on muted hagiography, there are several problem points that keep getting parroted without substance. Controlling discourse, the once strong citadel of the select few, and glorification of those who had little to say for themselves, is intellectual dishonesty that we wish were not prevalent in the vox populi media and academia of our times, especially when information lies everywhere. However, each point that causes outrage deserves its own dismissal, which shall be presented in a rather brief manner. The ‘Mercy Petition’ of Savarkar – Different Yardsticks for Different People So much has been written about the petition about Savarkar as if it was some kind of sin. Whil

India at the Time of Independence in 1947 A large number of left leaning academics have been perpetuating this nonsensical myth of the forceful takeover of Hyderabad for a while. I had responded earlier on a Twitter thread, and I am going to tell you that the claims of 200,000 Hyderabadi Muslims being slaughtered to death by the Indian forces are a ruse. This is essentially to cover up what the Razakars that resolved to uphold the Nizamiyat and make it a Khilafat did to the powerless majority of the princely state.  let us take a look at the 1951 census data and compare it with the data of the 1941 census. 1941 Census of Hyderabad tells us that there were 2.09 million Muslims. It can be seen here for those wishing to get references. In contrast, what do we see with the 1951 census? The Muslim population of the Hyderabad state was 2.2 million. That is right. 2.2 million. That is an increase of 0.11 million between ten years. i.e. a growth rate of 5.2% in the decade 1941-51 This clearl

  The Kashi Nandi, Staring Towards Gyanvapi  It is with irony that I note the manner in which the ongoings in Kashi are seen as some sort of weaponization . The thing that I find extremely depressing about Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s weaponization of academia to target a manifestation of the expression of faith repeatedly tells me more about the intellectual dishonesty that has been perpetuated by his comity for the last seven decades. If reclaiming temple sites is weaponization, how is it that temple demolition by the Islamic invaders in the name of jihad gets the term 'recontextualization' ? I don’t even need to take Mr. Mehta to Kashi – this is the case given for the formation of Quwat-ul-Islam mosque, which was built by ‘reusing’ rubble from destroyed Jain temples alongside Hindu ones in Delhi. The answer evades us to this day, except when one sees the blunt truth behind it. Over the past seven decades, there has been a rather blitheful effort bordering dishonesty to justify act