It is pity on the interviewer and interviewee, as both have failed miserably to understand the in-depth concepts embedded in the old Sanskrit texts (‘The Sanskrit texts divided horses into castes, just as they divided people’: Wendy Doniger). It is very easy to belittle Indian mythology or sacred texts without really going “into that”. Religion is a diluted form of science and for common people’s understanding, it was communicated in the form of rituals. If people have misconstrued it, it does not prove that the texts are biased or irrelevant. Had Wendy Doniger read Swami Vivekananda’s thoughts, some sane comments with wisdom surely would have been there. – Chandrashekar Khire

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This article is wrong and has false information. Sanskrit is an inclusive language. Had this not been the case then how did Valmiki, who belonged to a socially backward caste, write Ramayana. Another great writer, Mahakavi Kalidas, belonged to the shepherd community. The entire English education system has destroyed the Indian culture and distorted history. – Yogesh Deshpande

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Dear Scroll.in, I highly recommend you to write about White people highlighting the problematic behaviour of Britishers and how they turned half of the world into their slaves. If casteism is bad then so is slavery. I would love to see you interview people who do not just talk about the problematic past of India but also the problematic past of the British Empire. I am sure you will not find a lot of White people who would actually talk about the British and their cruelty in India and the rest of the world in the colonial era. – Nidhi Mandal

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Containing the Taliban

The Taliban’s apparent aspiration of legitimacy may provide the global community with the opportunity to limit the extent to which the freedom of Afghanistan’s people is compromised (The Political Fix: What the Taliban’s sudden success means for India – and Indian politics). To ensure that governments use this opportunity, citizens must hold them accountable. Will the next big event erase from public consciousness the situation in Afghanistan? The media must continue to give due importance to Afghanistan. – Sandhya Christine Theodore

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Afghanistan might indeed become a dead-end for the Chabahar Port project in wake of recent events (What Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan means for India’s Chabahar Port project in Iran). But the connectivity passage can be redirected to Turkmenistan as the gateway to Central Asia. Turkmenistan is also known for its neutrality. But to safeguard its interests in the region, India will have to negotiate with terrorists, just like the rest of Afghanistan’s neighbours. When it comes to American disapproval, New Delhi should maintain independence in its foreign policy, whether this may be in the case of buying defence equipment from Russia or going ahead with a geopolitically important project in Iran. – Aswathy K

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Thank you for the wonderful list of books on Afghanistan (Reading Afghanistan as the Taliban take over: Seven books (none of them by Khaled Hosseini)). You can also add Nemat Sadat’s The Carpet Weaver to this list. It really shows the struggle of the LGBTQ community in Afghanistan in the 1970s, after the crown was overthrown. – Bishnupriya

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Afghanistan was never a safe place for queer individuals even before the Taliban came into power. They were oppressed then and even now. Gay men were punished by long-term imprisonment under the Afghan penal code. With the Taliban’s implementations of the Sharia law, queer Afghan individuals are forced to delete traces of their sexuality online. Queer women are in despair and fear for their lives. Non-governmental organisations abroad are trying to help the LGBTQIA+ community. The state of queer individuals is stagnant due to Afghanistan’s low passport ranking status, which makes it difficult to obtain visas from other countries. Efforts should be made by countries to help Afghans by providing them with humanitarian visas. – Leah Valentina D’souza