Articles by: Akshat Jain

Crucible of revolution: Book review of The Journey of the Farmer’s Rebellion

Crucible of revolution: Book review of The Journey of the Farmer’s Rebellion

This book documents the rebirth of an anarchist consciousness in India’s masses. “The workers have begun to think that if people are given the opportunity and power to manage things on their own, they can do so better than the government. A lot of the workers have begun to ask, do we actually need a government at all?” – Nodeep[Read More…]

by 09/10/2022 Comments are Disabled Book Review
A play in the life of upper caste liberals: A review of Ek Mamooli Aadmi (An ordinary man)

A play in the life of upper caste liberals: A review of Ek Mamooli Aadmi (An ordinary man)

Dir. Arvind Gaur Written by: Ashok Lal Presented by Asmita Theatre Group in Sri Ram Centre for Art and Culture on 29th July 2022 The black t-shirt wearing and exceedingly soft-spoken young volunteers we encountered outside the venue exuded such an intense awareness of the injustices of the world that I wanted to pat them on the shoulder and tell[Read More…]

by 31/07/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Ghosts That Haunt Hindutva: The Violent Muslim and the Complicit Liberal

Ghosts That Haunt Hindutva: The Violent Muslim and the Complicit Liberal

by Akshat Jain and Shahrukh Khatib Utpal Kumar, writer extraordinaire for Firstpost, and executive editor for iTV Network according to his LinkedIn profile, has written an article to explain ‘How communal flare-up in Delhi’s Jahangirpuri exposes liberal, intellectual and even political ineptitude’. He uses the bogey of Jahangirpuri riots to attack liberals for allowing Muslims to be intolerant. This article[Read More…]

by 24/04/2022 2 comments India
Jhund: An upper-caste movie review

Jhund: An upper-caste movie review

ONE I was shown Nagraj Popatrao Manjule’s Fandry for my course in media and cultural studies at TISS and then I went and watched Sairat with my friends in a theatre. It was impossible for me to get my family to watch either of these movies. One of the reasons was that these movies were in Marathi while my family[Read More…]

by 09/03/2022 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Bengal elections: Have communal forces been defeated?

Bengal elections: Have communal forces been defeated?

After Mamata Banerjee’s win in the elections in Bengal, a spate of celebratory articles has appeared all over the liberal media saying such things like Bengal rejects communal politics, rejects politics of hate, rejects Hindutva, etc. On the basis of the election, Shoaib Danyal shows his on-ground journalistic skills by discovering that ‘Bengal is, as famously described by political scientist[Read More…]

by 28/05/2021 Comments are Disabled India
Leaders-followers-cynics-reactionaries

Leaders-followers-cynics-reactionaries

On my first day as a professor of critical writing in a ‘premier’ university, I decided to conduct an experiment in the classroom. I walked in and told the students that ‘today’s class will focus on critical thinking because one logically and chronologically has to think critically first and only then proceed to write critically.’ Saying that, I wrote ‘cultural[Read More…]

by 22/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Lost in nuance: A reply to R Jagannathan’s editorial in The Times of India

Lost in nuance: A reply to R Jagannathan’s editorial in The Times of India

For a very long time now, we have been hearing people declare that we should do things ‘according to our national characteristics’. From Bankim Chatterjee to Partha Chatterjee, the chatter has not changed much. There are two kinds of people who make this argument at present: the patriots and the great intellectuals who make tours of other countries. While using[Read More…]

by 14/05/2021 Comments are Disabled India
Fear of the nation

Fear of the nation

The NIA probe in the Bhima Koregaon case has revealed that mass mobilization of militant Dalit and Muslim forces is happening against the government. ‘According to NIA, the documents seized from (Rona) Wilson mentioned that Dalits and Muslims must come together to build a major anti-fascist front in the Indian subcontinent as soon as possible.’ These documents are evidence against[Read More…]

by 17/10/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Institutional nephews

Institutional nephews

I have been following Kangana Ranaut with a mixture of fascination and admiration ever since she showed the extraordinary courage of taking on the bigwigs in Bollywood by attacking the source of their power—nepotism. Beginning from Koffee With Karan where she famously called Karan Johar the ‘flag bearer of nepotism’, she has been relentless in her attack. She must have[Read More…]

by 11/09/2020 Comments are Disabled India
I was born a bad person and my fellow savarnas, so were you all

I was born a bad person and my fellow savarnas, so were you all

I was born a bania, a savarna or upper-caste, and that is why I was born a bad person. Let me explain. I am part of that minority for whom the benefits of the caste system far outweigh the costs (if there are any costs at all except for making me lazy, stupid, selfish, and arrogant by making everything in[Read More…]

by 14/08/2020 3 comments Annihilate Caste
Incensed by George Floyd? (Re)Start protests in India

Incensed by George Floyd? (Re)Start protests in India

America has two lessons for India right now, one for the government and one for the people – 1) The government should not ally with a falling power (America) against a rising power (China), notwithstanding India’s racist outlook towards the Chinese and its disgustingly servile love for the white of colour. 2) Protests can and must happen despite coronavirus. In[Read More…]

by 13/06/2020 Comments are Disabled India
 Intellectual emancipation in the times of Corona

 Intellectual emancipation in the times of Corona

It has so come to pass that we only impart religion to our little bundles of joy while abandoning them almost exclusively to the not-so-innocent hands of schools for their ‘secular’ education. While there has always been a debate about how much state propaganda is really thrust down the throat of malleable minds at an early age to destroy their[Read More…]

by 23/04/2020 1 comment Life/Philosophy
Men wearing protective masks walk as they carry bags, amid concerns about the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Nizamuddin, area of New Delhi, India, March 31,  2020. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

(IL)Logic in the service of prejudice: Why the blame on Tablighi Jamaat with the use of wrong math? 

CO-Written by Akshat Jain & Divij Oberoi In the great ancient tradition of our country (bharat ki mahan aur pracheen sanskriti), we have yet again decided to start a witch-hunt against the members of a minority community. While this kind of witch hunting had become confined to villages due to the evil machinations of secular-rationalists, it is now being restarted[Read More…]

by 18/04/2020 2 comments India
Islamophobia is a harmful misnomer for anti-Islamism

Islamophobia is a harmful misnomer for anti-Islamism

There is no such thing as Islamophobia. There is only anti-Islamism. A Hindu, Christian, or secular liberal does not have a mental illness that makes them afraid of Muslims, they are against Islam as a political ideology and value system. The same is true of homophobia which is really just a cover for anti-homosexualism, which is the political assertion of[Read More…]

by 11/04/2020 Comments are Disabled World
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