For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Umar Nizar The most political of India’s literary awards, the Jnanpith has went to a chip off the old feudal coconut block, Akkitham Achuthan Nambudiri. This was long predicted, even before CAB was a twinkle in the right wing eye. Akkitham is one of those rarities in the right wing intelligentsia that he has …
Umar Nizar ”It is possible that new rites of purification and cleansing will follow. Even new laws and decrees will be passed. One might be subjected to sweet brutal sermons, immemorial obligations of duty, abhorrent images of profanation. One might even become the target of a convoluted double-game …. a Great Transgression to extract …
Umar Nizar John Stratton Hawley has emerged as one of the foremost scholars of Bhakti literature living today. His spatial location in the metropolitan USA and his avowedly apolitical stance make him a crucial pawn in the ongoing struggle for the legacy of Indian History. In his recent ‘Storm of Songs: India and the …
Umar Nizar There is a ‘scramble for Muslim intelligentsia’ going on along with a clamour for token inclusivity from the left-leaning, upper-caste politically correct elite, and yet even this tokenistic Islamic presence proves elusive. Islam has become that wide gaping wound on the side of a cancerous polity that festers. The agalma of Islam, as …
Umar Nizar In the wake of the election of Narendra Modi, the sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan made the startling claim that Modi’s OBC credentials were obliterated by the fact of his fair skin, which for working class Indians heralded upper class antecedents. (Shiv Vishwanathan himself was caught in a rather strange double bind, having supported …
Umar Nizar Muslims in India form a significant minority, numbering almost 140 million. These Muslim belong to various denomination including, Sufi, Salafi and Sunni and the Jama’at-e-Islami. The public sphere in India has been caste and class ridden in a way that MN Srinivas (1989) observes in his work on Sanskritization, where people belonging to …
Umar Nizar The Bhakti movement of Ramanuja, Nimbarka, Madhava, Ramananda, Vallabhacharya, Chaitanya, Nam Dev, Kabir, and Guru Nanak had very little impact on Kerala…. The problem of reconciliation between Hinduism and Islam also did not arise seriously in Kerala in that period. Contact with outside ceased to exist in the age of Chola imperialistic …
Umar Nizar The road to hell is paved with good intentions. With the rather misleading moniker `Sufi’, social media celebrity and Arundhati Roy groupie, Mayank Austen Soofi ambles around Delhi, chronicling the lives of the apparently destitute. This has earned him accolades in the form of invitations to the `Serendipity Arts Festival’ in Goa and …
Umar Nizar The Kerala People’s Arts Club (KPAC) has been at the forefront of the propagation of Marxist ideals in Kerala since its inception. This has taken the form of polemical plays such as Thoppil Bhasi’s `Ningal Enne Communistaakki’ (You Made me into a Communist) which later invited the reposte `Ningal Aare Communistaakki’ (Whom …