Writer and editor Githa Hariharan, who successfully challenged the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act in 1995 to uphold the rights of the mother, has an idea of India that she explores in her new book, This Too Is India: Conversations on Diversity and Dissent. As for linguistic identity dilemmas: I think of the fact that my Tamil mixes Malayalam and …
A man was killed, and two others were injured following a dispute over seating arrangements on the Begumpura Express, travelling from Jammu Tawi to Varanasi. According to the police, the altercation began when Tauheed, a resident of Jagdishpur in Amethi, boarded the general coach of the train at Lucknow, where a group of men from Sultanpur were already seated. The …
The radical dalit poet, Sant Ravidas, may have been the first to herald a utopia in the subcontinent in the fifteenth century. Begumpura, the ‘city without sorrow’, is a casteless, classless society; a modern society, one without a mention of temples; an urban society as contrasted with Gandhi’s village utopia of Ram Rajya.“Begumpura” describes a land with no taxes, toil …
