The concept of the Raja-Putra, or “son of a king,” is mentioned in Vedic literature. British Orientalists however portrayed Rajputs as descendants of foreign invaders and believed that the Agnikula myth was invented to conceal their foreign origin. The idea however was propagated in order to legitimise the imperial rule.  The fluid social structure in early Vedic India allowed a tribe to gain or lose Rajput status based on its political importance, occupation, and survival or extinction. Ibbetson writes in his book: “In the early Hinduism, caste distinctions were primarily based upon ..read more

“Oils and oaths. Orbs and sceptres, Symbol upon symbol. An unfathomable web of arcane mystery and liturgy. Blurring so many lines, no clergyman or historian or lawyer could ever untangle any of it.” “-It’s crazy.” “On the contrary. It’s perfectly sane.” “Who wants transparency when you can have magic? “Who wants prose when you can have poetry?” “Pull away the veil and what are you left with? “An ordinary young woman of modest ability and little imagination.” “But wrap her up like this, anoint her with oil”  what do you have? “A Goddess” — The Crown, Netflix With democracy replacing the wo ..read more

At its simplest, the term modern is an adjective that specifies a point in time. It represents whatever is current and present – the time “now”, as opposed to the time that is past and the time that is yet to come. But modern is not just a point in time, it is also what may be called a temporal experience. This concept, represented by the term modern, comes out beautifully in the seminal work of the American Marxist literary scholar Marshall Berman titled All That is Solid Melts into Air (1982). He writes:  To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, po ..read more

New Criticism is a way of approaching and understanding literature that held sway in the field of English studies both in the universities of Britain and of America roughly during the second and third quarters of the twentieth century. New Criticism will see how a political epicentre of its inception might be located in the outbreak of the First World War, which continued from 1914 to 1918 and resulted in manslaughter that was unprecedented in human history. Even though the immediate incident that triggered the war was a rather localized issue of European politics – which was the killing of th ..read more

Aristotle was born in Macedonia in 384 BCE. At the age of seventeen, he came to Athens and joined the circle of researchers and scholars who had gathered around Plato in his Academy. This association between Plato and Aristotle has had a tremendous influence on the history of human thoughts, with reference to mimesis, we see the two intellectuals working on a number of similar concepts which have gone on to form the basis of much of Western philosophy. Between 347 BCE, the year when Plato died, and 335 BCE Aristotle stayed away from Athens most probably because of certain political reasons, an ..read more

“Your book reads like a novel,” is a comment that popular historians often hear. When said by a general reader, it is a compliment: an acknowledgement of the fluency of the writing and a compelling story. If a historian uses those same words, however, it is an insult. It means ‘you cannot be trusted on your facts’. Hence the title of this piece is bound to infuriate every reader of this journal, for it implies that historians should tell lies. After all, that is what novelists do, isn’t it? Make it all up if they don’t know the facts? I ought to explain at the outset that I am a ..read more

   [1] As it seems to be the opinion of some of the gentlemen who compose the Committee of Public Instruction that the course which they have hitherto pursued was strictly prescribed by the British Parliament in 1813 and as, if that opinion be correct, a legislative act will be necessary to warrant a change, I have thought it right to refrain from taking any part in the preparation of the adverse statements which are. now before us, and to reserve what I had to say on the subject till it should come before me as a Member of the Council of India.       &n ..read more

Feminism is a much-maligned term and Margaret Walters in her book Feminism: A Very Short Introduction devotes the whole of her first chapter to trace the long history of opposition to the term “feminism”. Interestingly, as Walters shows, this opposition does not merely come from people who are opposed to the idea of equality of women but also from people like Virginia Woolf, whose works are regarded as central to contemporary feminist theory. The problem with dealing with a theoretical term that is so regularly vilified is that we end up with a purely negative category – a blank, or perversion ..read more

    Literature and Psychoanalysis: Freud, Juan, Lacan Freud was born in the region Moravia in 1856. However, his family shifted to Vienna when he was three and it is in this city that Freud continued to live and work till he was eighty-two. In 1873 Freud enrolled as a medical student in the University of Vienna and by the late 1880s he had already established himself as a consulting doctor for psychological disorders. However, we will have to remember here that when Freud started his career as a doctor, what we today consider psychological disorders were primarily understood and ..read more

Aristotle was born in Macedonia in 384 BCE. At the age of seventeen, he came to Athens and joined the circle of researchers and scholars who had gathered around Plato in his Academy. This association between Plato and Aristotle has had a tremendous influence on the history of human thoughts, with reference to mimesis, we see the two intellectuals working on a number of similar concepts which have gone on to form the basis of much of Western philosophy. Between 347 BCE, the year when Plato died, and 335 BCE Aristotle stayed away from Athens most probably because of certain political reasons, an ..read more