Valson Thampu Professors are unsure if they constitute the intelligentsia. They are not even sure if they should. Should academia be responsive to the world beyond its small confines? Since the writings of Marx and Engels, it is a point well settled that the two factors most decisive in theContinue Reading
Beyond a point propaganda is a balloon that cannot withstand the pinprick of realityContinue Reading
Young people should know that it is incompatible with human dignity to be used as tools by othersContinue Reading
Turbulence in academia means only one thing. Young minds are starving. Continue Reading
Valson Thampu It is now a year since Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air was published (February 2016). Not surprisingly, it has made its way into the Booker list for 2016. It is remarkable how this book has gripped – in part, certainly, by our fearful fascination with its subjectContinue Reading
By Valson Thampu An actress is waylaid and molested. Sex, we are told, came in by the backdoor in this carefully scripted episode. The plot hinged on extortion. (As though rape is not extortion: murderous extortion). Maneka Gandhi makes a feeble effort to link this to the Kerala political dispensation.Continue Reading
It is time to express uncompromising disapproval of this national slurContinue Reading
The people of Tamil Nadu deserve a better fare. If their leaders do not give it to them, they could begin to help themselves.Continue Reading
By Valson Thampu On January 17, 2016, Rohit Vemula certified his caste identity with a touch of finality only he could have afforded. He tightened a noose around his neck. Left a note pretty much to the effect that he was only making visible the noose that had caught hisContinue Reading