In a world where reductionist phrases simplify trends in unintelligent words, it is the season of supposedly “woke” men turning out to be predators. Case in point being Vikas Bahl, the man who directed Queen and also a few other successful men who were supposed to behave better than louts hanging around dark street corners, […]
You are browsing archives for
Tag: dissent
Ramachandra Guha Is Back With Essays On Dissent
Ramachandra Guha’s Democrats and Dissenters (Penguin) contains essays on subjects of great contemporary relevance like threats to freedom of expression in India . About the book: Democrats and Dissenters is a work of rigorous scholarship on topics of compelling contemporary interest, written with elegance and wit. The book covers a wide range of themes: from […]
Of Black Sheep Who Won’t Line Up For Slaughter
Sometime back, Aamir Khan was reviled because his wife was disturbed by what she read in the newspapers and for the sake of their son, wondered if they should settle in another country. Khan said loud and clear that it shocked and devastated him that his wife could feel that level of fear. In the […]
The Politicisation Of Dissent
In Pyaasa, Guru Dutt’s 1957 classic, the protagonist Vijay (He too is an anti-hero who takes on the establishment but his weapons unlike the edgy Vijay we saw in the 70s are poems, not punches) goes wandering in the lanes where young women are being bought and sold as objects of sexual gratification and sings, […]
Why India Needs Its Dissenting Heroes
A few weeks ago, I met author Shashi Deshpande to interview her in the wake of her resignation from the Sahitya Akademi Council. She spoke about her reasons to quit in a pragmatic, matter-of-fact way.She is not on Twitter or Facebook and unlike the best-selling authors of this generation, does not feel the need to […]
‘A Murder Was Ignored’
Writer’s note : This post was published first in The New Indian Express, Bengaluru on October 12 In a tranquil home that is over 35 years old but is as timelessly evocative as a piece of great literature, author and Padma Shri awardee Shashi Deshpande is nursing a cup of tea. She is grateful that the […]
Selfie Is Fine But Not Selfhood
I don’t have a daughter but if I did, would the Selfie with Daughter campaigners look at me benignly and welcome my inclusion in this online movement celebrating the father and daughter bond? Oh, they did not specify that, did they? So mothers can pose too? Yay for equal rights but the issue is […]
Aseem Trivedi And The Art Of Dissent
So here is the thing. We are living in an India where voices can be muffled, and young cartoonists can be jailed for creative dissent and protesters can be beaten up and shown that the State is intolerant of inconvenient points-of-view whether they are about dams or nuclear plants or corruption. And it is […]
Disagreement As Violence
The brutal beating of senior advocate Prashant Bhushan in a Supreme Court chamber for his comments on Kashmir has established one thing that the art of graceful disagreement is truly lost. Even something as apolitical as hindi film music on YouTube attracts hate mongers stewing in rabid nationalism,regionalism or religion and politics. A popular website […]