Weekend Reads

  • Rather than being a threat, linguistic identities strengthen India, argues Mathew Idiculla in the Hindu.
  • On Gauri Lankesh and the vernacular Indian left: Raghu Karnad writes in n+1 magazine on why the Indian liberal must die.
  • The genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar shows that religion has always been a key part of politics in region. In Politico, Joe Freeman recounts how the United States government tried to fight Communism with Buddhism.
  • The Dravidian movement’s contribution to keeping India united is not appreciated enough, writes Pulapre Balakrishnan in the Hindu.
  • Modi’s Mandal: Tapping the wrath of “lower” Other Backward Castes is a strategy that the Bharatiya Janata Party expects will pay off as it goes ahead with a major overhaul of the backward quota system, argues Ullekh NP in Open.
  • Mona Ahmed, often labelled Delhi’s most famous hijra, was never sure if she wanted the queer identity for herself, writes Urvanshi Butalia in the Business Line.
  • Return of the city-state: Nation-states came late to history, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest they won’t make it to the end of the century, writes James Bartlett in Aeon.
  • The question of cultural appropriation: It’s more helpful to think about exploitation and disrespect than to define cultural “ownership”, argues Briahna Joy Gray.
  • In Religion Dispatches, Jason Jospeh writes about how Western intellectuals invented the myth of a mythless society.
  • In Mint, Sidin Vadukut reviews the “new” Nokia 3310 and comes away impressed by not having a smart phone.