Category: People

When Indians think of nationalism, cultural identity, one Indian name seems the starting print. What is his relevance today? We go back to Raja Rammohun Roy, who died this month 164 years ago, as he is the originator of modern India. Along with him came modern education. An assessment of the great man and his…

Thoughts for ex PM! This is not a charge sheet. Nor a balance sheet. It is a tribute to a leader who raised the image of India in the world. The 2004 elections are variously called as a great historic turnaround for the country. The BJP which contested the elections on a very confident note…

Classical music must innovate and draw young listeners. Indian’s weakness for myth-making, forgetting history, making heroes of saint, politicians, plain villains! In the West, much new, innovative music created and much new style of music writing. I was reading through, for the second time, of a life of the Carnatic music legend, Tyagaraj, because a…

Nijalingappa, Ramakrishna Hegde, Deve Gowda Savitri Devi, P.Lankesh, Rajiv Tharanath Ravi Kirloskar, T.A.Pai, Sunder Ram Shetty, Shankar Hegde, Narayanamurty There is in Bangalore a core group of people who would do anything in their power to care for the old Bangalore and its ethos. Bangalore evokes such a deeply-felt nostalgia. There are so many reasons,…

I had seen and heard the late leader “Anna” (C.N. Annadurai) as a student when I was at Pachapayya’s College during the 1953-55 period. Anna himself was an old student and as such there was much affinity between his old college and the same college students. The first time I came to know the name…

Thakazhi Shivasankara Pillai — Three visionaries I don’t know how the rest of India think of Kerala, the narrow strip of land at the West coast of South India and where some of India’s greatest minds had come from. Adi Shankara and Narayana Guru are the two most revered names. As for the rest of…

What I learned from Harold Laski? He shaped my political beliefs in my younger days My another favourite writer and thinker was Harold J.Laski (1893-1949). I must have read and re-read almost all his volumes at one time. Now, as I read his biography (Harold Laski: Isaac Kramnick and Barry Sheerman, 1993), I felt inspired…

When Democractic Socialism was at its best phase Under Gandhi’s influence we can say now that the rest of the nationalist movement was under an unclear mindset about our Independence. We were still made to believe in the benign rule of the British government. It was the emergence of Hitler, we in India too began…