Counterview

By Rajiv Shah   A few days back, I happened to attend an interesting conversation among a group of young Indian Americans in Los Angeles. The theme proposed a deceptively simple proposition: can caste travel with people who leave India? The answer, the discussion made clear, is that it can—and that for a younger generation of the Indian diaspora, caste is not a subject safely confined to family histories, Indian villages, or the pages of social reform literature.

By Vivek Sakpal*  On August 8, 2026, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, also the president of India's oldest political party (Indian National Congress), a Dalit (rarely mentioned) leader who has spent five decades in public life, addressed a rally at Ramlila Maidan in Haldwani, Uttarakhand. Two days later, members of the Shri Ram Sena reportedly performed a "shuddhikaran" havan at the very ground on which he had stood and spoken. 

By Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ*  I am Malala: I was born on 12 July 1997 as Malala Yousafzai in the Swat District of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. My family was lower-middle-class. It was certainly not easy to make both ends meet. My father was an educationist and ran a girls' school in my village; my mother was a housewife. We are three children: I have two younger brothers. The fact is that my parents did not have enough money for a hospital birth for me, so my mother had to give birth to me at home with the help of neighbours. My name 'Malala' means 'grief-stricken', after Malalai of Maiwand, a famous Pashtun poet and warrior woman from southern Afghanistan.

By Ravi Ranjan*  Raghuvir Sahay’s poem "Against Suicide" (Ātmahatyā ke viruddha) resists easy categorization. It is not merely a political protest, nor simply an existential cry. It is, more precisely, a work of poetic sociology—an attempt to read the hidden human textures of Indian democracy through the compressed, sensuous language of poetry. Where sociology dissects institutions, poetry restores the feeling of what it means to live inside them. Sahay does both. He examines the academy, the hospital, the newspaper, the university, and the political platform not as abstract structures, but as living mechanisms that slowly erase the very citizens they claim to serve.

By Pramod Ranjan*  On August 19, 2026, violence erupted in Shillong, Meghalaya, during a black-flag bike rally organised by the Khasi Students' Union (KSU). Statues of Swami Vivekananda and Subhas Chandra Bose were damaged in the course of the protests. Bose's statue was toppled, while the glass enclosure around Vivekananda's statue was smashed. Vehicles were vandalised, and there were allegations that people were attacked.

By Harsh Thakor*  Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918–1993) -- whose seminal work "What is Living and What Is Dead in Indian Philosophy" completes 50 years in 2026 -- occupies a distinctive position in the landscape of Indian philosophy, primarily for his sustained efforts to examine the tradition through a Marxist lens. Born into an illustrious family in undivided Bengal, he excelled academically, topping the University of Calcutta in both his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy Honours in 1939 and his Master of Arts in Philosophy in 1942. 

By Sakshi Gupta*   India’s rapid digital expansion once promised to democratize learning. When COVID‑19 shut down classrooms, online platforms like DIKSHA , SWAYAM , PM eVIDYA and One Class One Channel became lifelines for millions of students. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 embraced technology as a central pillar of educational reform, imagining a future where digital tools would bridge gaps and deliver quality learning to every child. 

By A. V. Yadappanavar*  India’s tribal communities have long lived at the margins of society, shaped by histories of displacement, fragile livelihoods and limited access to essential services. Among them, the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) represent the most delicate thread in the country’s social fabric. Many continue to depend on forests and natural ecosystems for survival, while others have been pushed toward urban centres in search of work. Their vulnerability is often intensified by isolation, demographic fragility and the pressures of modern development. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, home to several indigenous groups whose futures hinge on the protection of their territories, cultures and autonomy.

By Sandeep Pandey   Under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, a District Education Officer can impose a fine on a school operating without government approval. Yet a private university can apparently run professional courses without the requisite recognition, leaving hundreds of students to face an uncertain future.

By A Representative   A controversy over two celebrated books has plunged a private school in Ahmedabad into a political firestorm, drawing in right-wing groups and the state education department. The incident has now sparked a widespread solidarity campaign, with hundreds of citizens defending the school’s academic freedom .

By Harsh Thakor  Divya Mahajan, a 15-year-old girl from Nashik, created history by becoming the youngest ever to swim across the North Channel in 15 hours and 50 minutes on August 23. It was one of the proudest moments in Indian open water swimming, writing a new chapter in Indian sporting history.

By Shamsul Islam*  On August 29, 2026, Mohan Bhagwat , the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is scheduled to address an estimated 5,000 Indian-Americans at Madison Square Garden in New York. The event, billed as part of the RSS centenary "Universal Oneness Celebrations," arrives with disturbing historical echoes. As researcher Pieter Friedrich has noted, it was in 1939 that Nazis filled the same arena (photo) under the banner of "Americanism." Now, the RSS—India's largest Hindu nationalist organization—will occupy the same space preaching unity, even as its own ideological archives tell a starkly different story.

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan   There is an old saying: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Samuel Johnson was not criticising love for one’s country; he was warning against those who weaponise patriotic symbolism to escape accountability. In India today, that warning feels uncomfortably relevant.

By Jorge Coulon   In 1799, Francisco de Goya published Los Caprichos . Among his engravings was one destined to stand the test of time: a man sleeps, leaning over a table, whilst owls, bats and creatures of the night emerge from behind him. At the bottom, a phrase: ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’.

By Raqif Makhdoomi*  There is a growing perception in parts of Kashmir that a return of the Congress to power at the Centre would necessarily mean a return to political normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir. That expectation deserves to be examined against the historical record. This is not an argument that the Congress and the BJP are identical. They are different political formations, with different ideologies, political traditions and approaches. But Kashmir's experience with successive governments in New Delhi also shows that the region's political grievances cannot be understood simply through the lens of today's party politics.

By Vikas Meshram*  Of all poetic forms, the ghazal is special. It holds love, separation, pain, and joy with a gentle power that few others match. In just two short lines, a sher can conjure an entire world of feeling. That is why this form has moved readers and listeners across continents for centuries. Born in the deserts of Arabia, enriched in Persian, refined in the Urdu of the Mughal courts, and later embraced by Hindi and Marathi, the ghazal absorbed something from every language and culture it touched. Yet at its core it remained unchanged: a simple, honest way of speaking about the heart.

By Ravi Ranjan*  Uday Prakash stands as one of contemporary Hindi literature's most significant figures, renowned for his distinctive style, social concerns and sharp satire. His short story "Kapatakala ka kavi" (Poet of the Age of Deceit) appears deceptively simple—the tale of an elderly poet's everyday confusions. Yet beneath this surface lies a profound philosophical narrative exploring the shifting relationships between human beings, time, memory and experience.

By Harsh Thakor*  Denis Compton, who died on April 23, 1997 at the age of 78, was far more than a great cricketer. He was a national figure who infused cricket with a vitality and charm that helped restore the game’s place in the public imagination after the Second World War. In those difficult post‑war years, he almost single‑handedly rekindled affection for cricket, becoming a symbol of joy, flair and possibility. His batting elevated the art to a realm of poetry, blending audacity with imagination in a way few have ever matched. Rarely has the sport witnessed a batsman so unorthodox yet so consistently productive; his inventiveness expanded the very vocabulary of batting.

By Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ   It is heartening that the Catholic Church in India will observe 23 August as "Justice Sunday" — a day dedicated to the biblical call to "learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow" (Isaiah 1:17). In a communique dated 22 July 2026, Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore, Chairman of the CBCI Office for Justice, Peace & Development, reminds us that true worship of God is inseparable from the practice of justice. The theme this year — "Justice Begins with Us" — is a challenge to every disciple of Christ to move beyond token piety and become an instrument of God's justice.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  William Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy As You Like It —specifically Jaques’ melancholic monologue in Act II, Scene VII, which conceptualises the seven stages of human life —defines the realities of the world with these famous lines: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts.”