Jyoti Bania & Ashok Danavath Shashi Tharoor is the fox that Malcolm X warned of Shashi Tharoor, a Nair liberal, member of the Indian Parliament (MP) and author of many books made many inaccurate, controversial and contradictory comments in a recent talk on Ambedkar: The Quest for Equality held on June 13, 2023, at Selwyn …
Logarithmic castes in Kerala and exponential pride
Navin Sambrani While the caste elite, being twice born enjoy the exponentially `squared ‘ status, the Keralite caste elite, savouring their status owing to erstwhile informal marital alliances with the twice born, are its logarithmic inverse (square rooted, to the power of two) counterparts. Life thus shrinks into itself, in all its tropical pestilence. Shashi …
No Mr. Tharoor, I Don’t Want to Enter Your Kitchen
Tejaswini Tabhane Shashi Tharoor is an author, politician and former international civil servant who is also a Member of Parliament representing the constituency of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. This write-up is a rebuttal to his three-year-old article Why Caste Won’t Disappear From India, which I came across recently. While three years’ span is too big and my …
Onam: Real Brahmanism and Mythical Secularism
Field notes from my micro-context1 Nidhin Shobhana As a child, I would always wonder why my house did not look as ‘clean’ as my Nair neighbour’s. Similarly, I always wondered why none of us Christians would look as ‘authentic’ as our Nair friends when we attended Malayalee Samajam Onam programmes. Jokes/comments such as ‘Christians2 …