The Explanation of the Religions (Bayān al-Adyān, 1091-2) is the first surviving Persian encyclopedia of comparative religions completed before the better-known Arabic-language the Book of Sects and Creeds (Kitāb al-Milāl wa al-Niḥal) by Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm Aḥmad al-Shahrastānī from 1127-8. Beyond that, it is the earliest s…[Read more]

Korean War Battle of Chosin Reservoir: The British casualties in one day in the battle of the Somme during WWI were 50,000 dead and wounded. 50,000 casualties in one day – patriotism & esprit de corps – is a very solid proof that there is a “psychology of groups.”
Why is the Battle of Chosin Reservoir important?
Preface: Materialist dogma – “…[Read more]

Lukács is widely recognized as being the first critical theorist to have explicitly developed the idea of a “standpoint theory”. According to such a theory, members of oppressed groups enjoy an epistemic privilege regarding the nature of their oppression. However, there is no agreement regarding what precise argument Lukács offers for his claim…[Read more]

Citizenship and the posthuman have not been often theorized together. In this paper, I want to think about their coalition both as a new episode in the efforts of politics for citizenship, including knowledge politics, and as a source of rebalancing power against governmental and corporate interests in citizenship politics. Here, I seek to address…[Read more]

South African universities’ use of digital technologies in learning has increased in recent years. Given that
social exposure, the context and pedagogic uses of technology influence learning expectations and
learner involvement, it is important to understand students’ experiences of the use of different
technological tools. This article emp…[Read more]

Globally, student support mechanisms focus almost exclusively on academically ‘under-performing’
students, especially as insofar as academic development practices are concerned. This article makes a
case for a shift in approach. Using the context of one country, South Africa, we sought to better
understand the strengths that academically…[Read more]

Historical Synergy: Mannheim holds that historical and political thought is determined by the socio-historical location of the thinker and the political aspirations and material ambitions of the group or groups to which he belongs.
2. Prehistoric Artic Hunter-Gatherer Synergy of Beliefs in Animal Spirits w/ Economic-Political Realities Erica Hill…[Read more]

Line breaks are arguably the defining feature of poetry, in the absence of which a text becomes prose. Consequently, the translation of line breaks is a decisive issue for every poetry translator. Classical and modern literary theorists have argued that the potential for enjambment, which we understand as the effect that makes line breaks possible…[Read more]

The term ‘affective politics’ is sometimes used to dismiss political strategies as being directed merely at affects at the expense of rational analysis (Massumi 2015: 65f). While such uses are meant to criticize certain politics, appeals to the affects – and consequently, forms of propaganda or populism – do not have to be bad at all. The point h…[Read more]

Extreme Individualism & Dawkins Fallacy Dawkins argues that “gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour” – That is an excellent illustration in academia of what David Hay referred to as “Extreme Individualism” – a problem in Western Academia which Virgilio Enriquez also brought to light. Virgilio Enriquez…[Read more]

This working paper deals with the potentials of visual paronomasia and misreading in Persian poetics, and what they imply for textual criticism. In Arabic and Persian poetry, words gain an aesthetic value for their shape, the way they appear in writing. A visual parallelism between words defines a special kind of paronomasia known as script…[Read more]

“Ideal theorists” in contemporary liberal political theory argue that we can only arrive at a conception of what our most important political values require by reference to an imagined ideal state of affairs and that we must therefore, to some extent, engage in utopian thinking. Critical theorists, from Marx and the Frankfurt School, have tra…[Read more]

“Ideal theorists” in contemporary liberal political theory argue that we can only arrive at a conception of what our most important political values require by reference to an imagined ideal state of affairs and that we must therefore, to some extent, engage in utopian thinking. Critical theorists, from Marx and the Frankfurt School, have tra…[Read more]

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when a new style of Persian poetry was developing in the Persianate world, several erudite literary critics appeared in India, whose meticulous critiques of Persian poetry was unprecedented in the long history of Persian literature. A close study of the works produced by these critics reveals their vast…[Read more]

In this short article, I discuss a form of civil disobedience that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic: the refusal to comply with lockdown rules. Because such rule-breakers often claim that they are acting to preserve freedom, I ask whether their unwillingness to help prevent the spread of the virus is symptomatic of neoliberal individualism.…[Read more]

These are excerpts from the Forward Press team’s India tour travelogue. Forward Press Consulting Editor Pramod Ranjan, sociologist Anil Kumar and Forward Press Editor (English) Anil Varghese were part of the team that went on the tour from Delhi to Kanyakumari between 5 January and 15 February 2017. The team covered nine states and one union t…[Read more]

भारत में क्या हालत हो चुकी है, इसका अनुमान दिसंबर, 2020 में हुए एक सर्वेक्षण से लगता है। इस सर्वेक्षण के अनुसार भारत की आधी से अधिक आबादी को कोरोना-काल में पहले की तुलना में कम भोजन मिल रहा है। इनमें ज़्यादातर दलित और आदिवासी हैं। लेकिन इन सूचनाओं से भी अधिक भयावह यह है कि भारत का बौद्धिक वर्ग, ग़रीबों के सर पर मँडराते मौत के इस साये से प्राय:…[Read more]

फरवरी, 2010 में प्रकाशित इस लेख में बिहार की तत्कालीन राजनीतिक परिस्थितियों को रेखांकित किया गया है, जिसके कारण वंचित तबकों से आने लोगों का उत्पीड़न हो रहा था। लेख में इसके लिए तत्कालीन नीतीश कुमार की सरकार को दोषी बाताया गया है।

यह आलेख आम आदमी पार्टी की दिल्ली में पहली बार सरकार बनने के बाद लिखा गया था। आलेख में आम आदमी पार्टी की सामाजिक न्याय की अवधारणा पर विचार किया गया है। यह लेख बताता है कि पार्टी दलित, पिछड़ों के हितों की परवाह नहीं करती।

वर्ष 2009 में प्रकाशित यह लेख बिहार के मुख्यमंत्री रहे नीतीश कुमार के कुनबावाद की पड़ताल करता है।