For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Umar Nizar ‘Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible’. -Janet Malcolm In the surveillance police state of the globalized contemporary world, Manu Joseph has somewhat achieved the acme of the savarna journalist and has assumed …
Umar Nizar Quality vs energy is the major thesis of the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn who held daily workshops at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2018. The ‘meritocratic’ pretensions of third world elite are brutally dispelled by his radical stance. It is ironical that there are ‘radical’ collectives foisting rotten idealism, in the guise of …
Umar Nizar The Journal of Extreme Anthropology recently carried a study by an Indian academic on the forced movement of millions of migrant labourers and their families across the states, and mostly into the Gangetic Delta. The domain under consideration, for too long has been infected with the caste virus. The author of the …
Umar Nizar “No, not a single letter is seen On my race So many histories are seen On so many races” –Poykayil Appachan (Tr: Ajay Sekher) English is the unacknowledged Creole of the world. Chandramohan, the Indian English poet, uses the colonial patois to craft an intergenerational dialogue with the Malayali social reformer Poykayil Appachan. …
What do they know of Kathakali, Who they only Kathakali knows? Mistaken Modernities in Kerala Umar Nizar The cultural ecosystem in southern India, has been at the forefront of heralding an Indic future, from APJ Abdul Kalam on the Veena to TM Krishna performing live at the beaches of Kerala and TN, the southern …
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 …