A Bowl of Elusive

You see this? This is a picture of the Preamble to the Constitution of India shared by a Govt handle recently. Notice something? Here - check this. This was the Preamble we were all familiar with.  The difference? Well, the words “Secular” and “Socialist” aren’t there in the first picture. Why? The govt handle said that they were sharing the original version of the Preamble. These words were added in the 42nd amendment to the Constitution in 1976. But the fact is, that as far as any amendments made to the Constitution are concerned, the latest version is the original version.  Now we all know why the current ruling party is against the word Secular - but what do they have against the word Socialist. Let's find out. I can bet that around 80% of the people on social media today won’t know what socialist actually means. Among those who know, many don’t really understand the implication as far as the Indian Constitution is concerned. So here goes nothing. Socialist refers to a state th

A while ago, I made a video questioning whether the Indian epics Ramayan and Mahabharat were historical events or mythology. It drew a lot of anger from a lot of people. The thing is – I was not always aware that I was an atheist. There was a time when I prayed to God as well – Lord Shiva actually. But I never believed the stories to be true or historical. I viewed them as mythology – which even if it ever happened, happened in some other realm or alternate reality. Because with what we know about science and our own development, we can safely assume that the magical elements in the holy books of all religions are just not possible. I thought everyone knew this – I thought everyone knew that these were stories – metaphorical mostly and meant to impart a moral lesson to the people. So, it was astonishing when a very close friend of mine became seriously offended because I questioned the authenticity of Mahabharat and hence, Shri Krishna in association.  I tried to reason with him, sayin

I had a debate with a netizen over Instagram chats. It took a lot of mental strength to get through, so I thought I should share it with the world. I was fed up of people arguing over a simple comment on this post about the status of minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh, where I had commented, “ This is why India has to be better and make a safe space for it’s minorities. We have to be better than those we criticize. We can’t use such people’s bad work to justify doing the same thing.”  Needless to say, my comment irked a lot of people. So, I shared it in a story for my followers to see…   This is when a netizen called Nikhil Agarwal replied to my story. He had been commenting on some other post where I had expressed some opinion. I vaguely remembered what he had said at this point. But his message against my story made his stance clear. Him: Look at the peaceful community Census. And if you are really researcher. Then read history India has been heavenly place for minorities for at

I had a long conversation today with a close friend of mine, who pointed out to me that my political opinions felt somewhat biased against Hinduism. He was referring to one of my posts where I speculated if the Nuh violence could have been instigated by Bajrang Dal for political reasons. He pointed out to me that even if the origin of the violence was political, it doesn't change the fact that the Muslim population in Nuh threw stones and are not free of blame. My friend pointed out to me that I had nowhere condemned that. I revisited my post and found out he was somewhat right.  Recently I have been writing against fanatic Hindu ideology. My reason for this  is simple: It is not the Hinduism (Santan Dharm or whatever you want to call it) that was taught to me growing up.  I was taught that we were the most inclusive of religions. I was taught to respect others' faith. I was taught that regardless of whatever name you call your God by (Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwar - or Allah, Budd

Back in 2013, my uncle used to rant about how, if BJP comes to power, democracy would be in danger. He would cite the Gujrat riots of 2002 as an example - he would say that Narendra Modi got away with mass murder by being in power and he would do the same once he was in power at the center. I was twenty-three years old then and didn't understand my uncle's panic. BJP had been in power earlier as well, during Sri Atal Vihari Bajpayee ji's term as Prime Minister - things weren't that bad. People were not happy with them and voted them out in 2004 - so democracy was still there. So I laughed it off thinking my uncle was being paranoid. I believed that my country was made of sterner stuff - a party with a communal agenda could not possibly change the fact that this country was a land where various religions lived in harmony. Boy, was I wrong! BJP came to power in 2014. Soon, the media started pushing their agenda like anything. People started openly expressing anti-NonHindu