Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra
In response to - “Why I Have Changed My Views About Political Anarchy” @manujosephsan
The young are often impatient with history. But these grey hairs have witnessed enough of life to know that it is equally my right not to stand by and let them sign my death warrant in the name of youthful idealism. They have every right to question, to challenge and even to err. But to take us all down with them is the recklessness of inexperience for the wisdom of hindsight. Here, I will stand my ground, with every ounce of strength I can muster, to remind them that history is not a burden to be discarded, but a warning to be heeded. History reminds us that anarchy rarely stop where their architects imagine they will.
Marie Antoinette learnt the first lesson of anarchy the hard way - with her head. The French Revolution began with cries of liberty, equality and fraternity. The old order had lost its legitimacy. As you say, the prestige of class had faded. Those in power were despised, privilege was resented, and the demand for justice had become a demand for retribution. First they guillotined those everyone hated. Then it came for those associated with the hated. Soon, the definition of an enemy expanded to accommodate every new suspicion, every ideological disagreement then personal vendetta including theft of drying clothes on a line. A terrifying free-for-all.
Even Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the Reign of Terror, the great list-maker who had helped decide who deserved to die, eventually found himself on the wrong side of the blade. That is the danger of unleashing anarchy in the belief that it will selectively punish only those you despise. Once the rules are discarded and the mob becomes the arbiter of justice, there is no guarantee that you will remain on the right side of its fury. So be careful what you wish for. Your head could be next- on the pettiest of pretexts.
Why does he write in English? Why does he belong to that class? Why does he hold that opinion? Why does he refuse to conform? The charge need not be serious. It only needs to be convenient. Having seen other systems at close quarters, I have learnt to value what we too often take for granted. Democracy can be messy, frustrating and painfully slow. It can be paralysed by competing interests, compromised by political expediency and weakened by those who exploit its freedoms while undermining its institutions. But I would rather work to improve a flawed democracy than cheer for its destruction. Because the alternative is not some romantic, classless utopia in which justice magically prevails. It is too often bloodshed, fear and arbitrary power. A society run according to the whims of little men who acquire enormous power and mistake their prejudices for principles.
Democracy gives us the means to correct our mistakes without having to shed blood to do so. It allows us to challenge the powerful without making their physical destruction the price of dissent. Reform what is broken. Hold the guilty accountable. Dismantle unjust privilege. Strengthen institutions. Enforce the law. But do not confuse the destruction of a system with the creation of a better one. History has already shown us how that story can end. And the guillotine, once set in motion, does not ask whether the next neck belongs to an aristocrat, a revolutionary or the man who sharpened its blade.
https://x.com/NBDwrites/status/2110005107576422524
By reducing history to unceasing clash of religious forces, such textbooks commit a grave erase the profound cultural osmosis that occurred simultaneously at grassroots level.
History is rarely just a process of state-on-state violence or imperial conquest. By Faisal CK
https://bsky.app/profile/scroll.in/post/3mxthjd5buk22
Archive | The polyphony of the Ramayana should not be seen as its limitation, but rather as the realm of infinite possibilities. India's countless castes and religions, which originated or spread in India, have all been influenced by the Ramayana to varying degrees. The story of Ram has been adopted in various forms in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, Dalit, and Adivasi versions.
Not only in India but also in other countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Muslims have their own versions of this story. While at some places this Ramayana narrative fits well within Islamic theology, at others it is part of a cultural and literary tradition. Although serious research on these many versions has not yet been conducted.
In the Islamic tradition, a section of Muslims has accepted Ram as a prophet of the Muslims. According to Islamic belief, there have been more than one lakh twenty-four thousand prophets before Muhammad. In India, there are some Muslims who consider Krishna and Ram as prophets. #ramayana
Read the full article: hindi.caravanmagazine.in/religion/many-…
https://x.com/thecaravanhindi/status/2110334553688564017
The romanticized notion that "natural herbs" are inherently safer than "chemical tablets" is an idiocy that never dies in the minds of alternative medicine sympathizers like yourself. Nature is not your friend; it is actively trying to kill you just like "all natural" Ayurveda is too. When an ancient remedy passes rigorous scientific tests, it stops being "alternative medicine" and simply becomes medicine.
But when a traditional treatment fails these tests, a rational, scientific system discards it. A dogmatic business promoting system keeps selling it anyway, pointing to 2,000-year-old texts as "proof." Also there is no modern Ayurveda. Ayurveda is, was, and always will be primitive medeival dmbfckery. Hope this was sensible enough. Please don't waste my time anymore.
https://x.com/theliverdoc/status/2110352098898673859
Barring deductive truths like the Pythagoras theorem, all else is guesswork. That the sun will rise tomorrow is a guess. Skepticism makes us aware that what we treat as firm scientific truths may be dismissed in the future the way we now dismiss early beliefs as superstition.
https://x.com/kaushikcbasu/status/2109653105277063392
Excited to see this lost document of Vaclav Havel @nybooks Havel was a big influence on me since I read his Kafkaesque essay, The Power of the Powerless, which had been smuggled out of Czechoslovakia. It hugely influenced my research on politics & power.
https://x.com/kaushikcbasu/status/2106213860772389202
“Action depends upon perception, and perception on action.” The assumption that perception is a window onto reality has the brain backwards, argues Oxford neuroscientist Thomas Parr. Under the Free Energy Principle, perception and action are the same process: both work to close the gap between what we predict and what we encounter, either by updating our beliefs or by changing the world to fit them. Curiosity, Parr argues, is as fundamental to behaviour as reward: we act not just to get what we want, but to know our world better. Tap here to read Parr’s full article. iai.tv/articles/your-…
https://x.com/IAI_TV/status/2109720809421906340
There won’t be any new answers to old questions!
by Ranganayakamma countercurrents.org/2026/10/there-…
Ranganayakamma responds to Bhikshapati’s argument that changing the economic system does not necessarily transform human beings. She argues that social relationships, the division of labour and control over production determine whether exploitation and domination persist in new forms. Drawing on the experiences of China, Russia and Yugoslavia, she contends that changes in ownership alone did not establish socialism, as workers remained excluded from decision-making while party leaders and officials retained authority. The persistence of unequal divisions between intellectual and physical labour, she argues, explains the emergence of new forms of domination. Fundamental structural change remains essential.
https://x.com/Countercurrents/status/2110242088159998227
Indian obsession with money, status and sex is because there is nothing else in the mind. It has no higher vision, no uplifting ideas. And obsession with sex does lead to Sodom & Gomorrah.
https://x.com/JayantBhandari5/status/2110226891009602004
Indians revert to blaming the British colonizers for everything, as if Indians themselves are responsible for nothing, even after 80 years of so-called independence. In reality, what happens in India is still a sanitized, Europeanized version of the underlying savagery.
https://x.com/JayantBhandari5/status/2110209197195538661
#OPINION | A language begins to perish when its people lose faith in its worth. During British colonial rule, when Assamese struggled to reclaim its rightful place in education and public life, Lakshminath Bezbaroa emerged as a literary crusader who refused to let his mother tongue languish in obscurity. #Assam #TheAssamTribune assamtribune.com/opinion/lakshm…
https://x.com/assamtribuneoff/status/2110269603113021735
Something similar happening today to Odia in Odisha today that survived Bengali overlordship,fought for 50 years for own linguistic state,got one in 1936(first in India)but we are such poor inheritors of that legacy that our dehatis and politicians like to speak in shitty Hinthi
https://x.com/guptanumis/status/2110327668369691107
The Literary Genius of the Upanishads: Isha shloka 3 pada 3
तांस्ते प्रेत्याभिगच्छन्ति
Those who love chanting will notice that the taanste becomes taa-gama-ste because the anusvara becomes a gama- sound. And brilliantly this is used to suggest movement because gama- is also the dhatu that means to go.
The next word plays further on the gama dhatu and turns it into the third person plural or gacchanti
Notice how preta too comes from the root इ which means to go. This is a remarkable and scintillating play with roots and dhatus, very Vedic in its alankaras
Notice also the sense of preta as not only someone who is dead but is also an unsatisfied wandering spirit reminding us of ghosts and ghouls. And this plays well against the Sunless or Asuric world of the first pada in this shloka and the blinding dark of the second pada
https://x.com/AmazingVedas/status/2109499935313858635
The Mother - the tiny booklet is a capsule of powerhouse. It's the essence of Sri Aurobindo's yoga. An ocean of teachings condenced in a droplet. A practical guide and the gateway to spiritual life. Thanks for sharing the excerpts.
Noble sir. In childhood, my father used to read one paragraph of 'the mother' along with prayers everyday in the evening. We all prayed together. The words are like a light, always helped when there were patches of darkness.
https://x.com/Nimai_Swain/status/2110242377550168448
I used to visit Ashram branch in Amritsar.. Mr M S Sood ji were managing the branch. He could recite it without taking small booklet in his hands.. He was a great inspiration...
https://x.com/kuldipsurisView/status/2110243051038019810
want to like Naipaul. My mother is a great fan. I like some of his fiction and his Islamic travelogues. But his India trilogy (Area of Darkness, Wounded Civilisation and Million Mutinies) feel strained. He wants to get in but it smells poopy so he can’t. He ends up performing it for a western audience. He’s clever enough to know he’s performing so it costs him.
https://x.com/Manchu__/status/2110232020999942194
Trump is a bottom-tier, awful president who, in between lining his family's pockets, has filled the White House with a rogues' gallery of blowhard idiots, and I mourn the damage he's doing to my country and the world. This is really the man we have in charge facing the problems of AI risk, Russian aggression, Middle East chaos, and Chinese expansionism? Instead of leading America, he's posting tiger snuff videos and obsessing over his ballroom. It's horribly depressing.
https://x.com/HistoryBoomer/status/2110195307120046424
Weird that Sanghis never protest to stop and development & infrastructure projects. Its always commies, Congressis and Leftits who do it in the name of environment, settlement and Lavda-lehsum. Who is protesting against Andaman port, Dharavi redevelopment, Ken-Betwa Linkin project?
https://x.com/HPhobiaWatch/status/2110231423060001159
"We are living in a time of three big fights. The fight between democracy and dictatorship, the fight between people and plutocrats, and the fight between global alliances and predatory isolationism." @cafreeland
https://x.com/SushantSin/status/2110148490227781897
Extremely wise words by Shivshankar Menon, India's former Foreign Secretary and National Security Advisor. Asked by the host what worries him about India - what is a burden of history for India - he replied that "there is such a thing as excessive pride in your past."
He explains that talking of "your glorious golden ages in the past" to "feel good about yourself" is ok - a normal aspect of building an identity for yourself - but "when you then carry it on into victimhood and into revenge for history" and when that becomes a driving force for today's actions, then it becomes "dangerous." He takes the example of people in India speaking about "a thousand years of slavery" (meaning Muslim and then British rule)...
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2110190810910400744
Delighted to announce that registration is open for the iLOGY Storytelling & Performance lab at CRIPA, Auroville, Pondicherry. For more information and to register use this link: culturemonks.in/2026/07/06/ilo… #storytelling #theater
https://x.com/culturemonks/status/2109900292175311322
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