Essay:
The Infamous Macaulay Speech That Never Was
By Anirban Mitra
The Wire - 19/02/2017
A quotation supposedly culled from a speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay is a staple of social media forwards and has even been quoted by senior Indian politicians. But is it authentic?
Essay:
And Macaulay's Idea Of India Endures
By Ramnath Narayanswamy
Swarajya - Aug 10, 2015
The Indian Education system is still dominated by a colonial mindset. Despite the passing of more than six decades since independence, we have failed to establish a vibrant, high-quality system of primar...
Read More
Essay:
How The Classic Indian Epic Texts Continue To Shape Our Consciousness
By Subhash Kak
Swarajya - Aug 28, 2016
Classic epic texts like the Mahabharata, and those pertaining to the epic song and dance traditions, like the Natya Shastra, are explored at length in this essay.
Essay:
Yogic Identities: Tradition and Transformation
By James Mallinson
The earliest textual descriptions of yogic techniques date to the last few centuries BCE and show their practitioners to have been ascetics who had turned their backs on ordinary society. These renouncers have been consider...
Read More
Essay:
Exploring the history of Hindu festivals: the ancient strands of HolÄkÄ
By By Manasatarangini T
Published in Indiafacts.org
In Hindu tradition there is a clear demarcation of at least three distinct classes of ritual observances: 1) The most conservative of these are the śrauta rituals...
Read More
Article:
Persian poet's 700-year-old manuscript, signed by Shah Jahan, at Asiatic Society
By Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey
Times News - Mar 6, 2017
KOLKATA: He expressed the spiritual experiences of a mystic, in love with his beloved. In his own enchanting way , he wove themes of ambiguity into his po...
Read More
What is a Rare Book?
The Six Criteria of Rarity in Antiquarian Books
by Jeremy M. Norman
As an antiquarian bookseller, I am frequently asked to define “antiquarian†or “rare†books. To some extent these two relatively vague but omnipresent terms are used interchangeably in the tr...
Read More
Essay:
Comparing India and the West
By S.N. Balagangadhara
Universiteit Gent
During the last two decades, I have been pursuing an unorthodox way of studying cultural differences, focusing mainly on the Indian and the western cultures. Because I believe that one can answer questions about the ci...
Read More
Calligraphy in Ancient India
By Vedveer Arya
ITIHASA
Ancient Indians had developed the art of Calligraphy around post-Mauryan era. Ikshvaku kings of Andhra were probably the first who used calligraphy in their inscriptions. In fact, the so-called Siddhamatrika script is a calligraphy of Brahmi s...
Read More
Essay:
From World’s Education Capital to Depths of Illiteracy – Part III
By Sahana Singh
Indiafacts.org
This final article in our series describes the destruction of key universities and the era of darkness, which descended after aeons of learning. Even as the broken pieces were being put to...
Read More
..."One such famous story is that of the Rani Padmini, who burned herself alive along with the other ladies of the court in order to protect their honour from the invading Sultan Alauddin Khilji. In 1303, Sultan Alauddin Khilji of Delhi decided to attack Chittor...
Read More
Essay:
Republics Of The Past – Part 1
By Sumedha Verma Ojha
Swarajya - Jan 20, 2017
India became a modern republic, a sovereign, democratic republic, in 1950 amidst widespread skepticism about the durability of both democracy and the republican form of government in the country. It is now 201...
Read More
Essay:
How India Went From World’s Education Capital to Depths of Illiteracy – Part II
By Sahana Singh
Indiafacts.org
We continue our series on the universities of ancient India, which imparted a multi-disciplinary education to students of advanced learning. In this second part, we look at I...
Read More
Essay:
The long journey of the Brahmin Bull
By Akanksha Damini Joshi
#BosIndicusInAmerica #JallikattuLearning
The story starts in 1854. Southern America, Louisiana.
Once upon a time, 2,500,000 acres of tall wild grass, wild flowers.
Within this expanse, a small plantation town called St. Franci...
Read More
Essay:
When Did We First Celebrate Makar Sankranti?
By Raj Vedam
Swarajya - Jan 13, 2017
The widespread celebration of the Makar Sankranti festival and its many regional variations hint great antiquity. In this article, we will take a journey through time, weaving together history, astronomy, c...
Read More