Counterview

By Tersina Maria Toppo*  A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.

By Harsh Thakor*  Eighteen-year-old Amber-Rose Berry of Pringle Bay, near Cape Town, has made history as the youngest South African woman ever to swim the iconic English Channel . Coincidentally and ironically, her swim was completed exactly 100 years after Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the Channel in 1926, and during South Africa's Women's Month , 70 years after the historic women's march against the Pass Laws , which gave August its name. She follows in the footsteps of another record-breaking South African, Otto Thaning , who became the oldest person, at 73, to complete the swim in 2014. His record still stands.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  India’s “vegetarian” supremacism is increasingly turning into an absurd competition among its “devotees,” each seeking “international” recognition for their “great” culture and “diversity.” Over the last decade, we have seen how these so-called “cultural warriors” are paraded in various Western capitals whenever Narendra Modi visits.

By Prabir Purkayastha  On 4th September, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an African proposal for a new world map, which shows countries’ true size relative to one another. It aims to correct the view of the world shaped by the widely used world map based on the Mercator Projection, created by Gerardus Mercator, a 16th-century Flemish cartographer.

Counterview News   The advocacy group Nutrition Advocacy for Public Interest (NAPi) has rejected as inadequate and evasive the response it received from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to its August demand for a ban on junk food advertising , saying the government's reply sidesteps every substantive demand raised by the country's leading doctors and public health experts.

By Martin Macwan*  The combined populations of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—account for 41–42% of the world’s total population. With South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE, and Indonesia joining, the group now represents 49.5% of the global population. Originally conceived by an economist at a New York investment bank rather than by political leaders, the member states remain economically aligned rather than fully “united.”

By Ram Puniyani*  In contemporary India, we are witnessing many mechanisms of political propaganda that seek to influence social thinking. Food habits have increasingly become one of the components of divisive politics. The idea that Muslims are more violent because they consume non-vegetarian food is one such narrative. The politics surrounding the “Holy Cow” and beef consumption has also entered this discourse. We have witnessed the phenomenon of lynching in India, in which Muslims and Dalits have been among the major victims.

By Rosamma Thomas*  Kerala's newly reconstituted State Planning Board has come under fire from social activists and academics, who allege its appointments are dominated by a single caste group and fail to reflect the state's social diversity. In an email to Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, prominent members of Kerala society said they had hoped the Congress government would champion inclusion — hopes they say have now been "belied" by the board's composition.

By Bharat Dogra  Recent warnings—some accompanied by high‑profile resignations—from AI industry insiders have sharply intensified global concern about existential risks posed by rapidly advancing artificial intelligence . Several insiders now estimate a non‑trivial probability—around 10 percent—of AI leading to the near‑end of humanity, a claim that has understandably set alarm bells ringing. Earlier scientific warnings lacked detail and urgency; this new wave comes from those working directly inside leading AI labs, lending it unusual credibility.

By Syed Ali Mujtaba  Filmmaker Tigmanshu Dhulia recently argued that the rising tide of Islamophobia in Indian society has made its way into Hindi cinema. Speaking at the Editors Guild of India’s Rajendra Mathur Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on September 4, 2026, Dhulia said filmmakers are part of the same society in which anti-Muslim propaganda has grown like a cancerous growth. The changing political and social environment, he suggested, has inevitably influenced the stories being told on screen.

By Ravi Ranjan*  Raghuvir Sahay's brief poem "Your Laughter" -- Āpkī Haṃsī -- transforms an apparently casual conversational gesture into a profound diagnosis of democratic decline. The poem's speaker listens as an interlocutor observes that the poor are exploited, democracy faces its final hour, corruption is universal, and helplessness pervades society—yet each grim pronouncement is followed by the same refrain: "you said and laughed."

By Harsh Thakor*  There are racehorses who win great races, and there are racehorses whose presence elevates the prestige of the great races. Galopin Des Champs emphatically belonged to the latter category—a horse whose very presence created a scintillating effect. I have unforgettable memories of this iconic figure, whom I personally witnessed running in the Centennial edition of the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2024. The news of his death on September 1st, only days after his retirement had been announced, brought an unexpectedly tragic final chapter to the story of one of the outstanding Irish sporting champions of recent years.

Counterview News   In a detailed interview published by The Examination on September 10, 2026, food policy expert Marion Nestle discusses her new book Sugar Coated (co-authored with Lisa Sutherland, a former Kellogg vice president of nutrition). The book traces how cereal makers transformed a niche product into a breakfast staple through marketing, industry-funded research, lobbying, and regulatory outmaneuvering.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  In a recent interview on Firing Line with Margaret Hoover , broadcast on 4 September 2026, Salman Rushdie drew a parallel between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It is a comparison so historically hollow and ideologically jarring that one wonders whether it was a careless slip or a calculated provocation. 

Dr. Ponnada Srinivas*  The recent Nepal flash floods that killed thousands of pilgrims near the China-India-Bhutan border is not an isolated tragedy. The involvement of Isha Foundation and Jaggi Vasudev drew attention this time, but the 2013 Chardham floods that washed away 6,000 pilgrims—mostly Telugu-speaking—caused equally devastating pain. That most northbound pilgrims originate from South India, particularly Andhra and Tamil Nadu, raises uncomfortable questions about the economic and cultural dynamics at play.

By A Representative   A call for unity among OBC, SC, ST and minority communities to defend constitutional rights took centre stage in Ahmedabad, as scholar and social activist Dr. Laxman Yadav’s two books, “Professor Ki Diary” and “Jati Vasti Ganana,” were launched at a public dialogue on democracy and social justice. Speaking at the event, Yadav urged marginalised communities to overcome divisions, build a collective voice and organise around issues of rights, representation and social justice.

By Vikas Meshram*  Very few writers in the history of American literature have shaped not just the world of literature but the very direction of a society's thinking through their pen. Toni Morrison is one of those rare names. Throughout her life, she gave voice through her writing to the injustice, oppression, and marginalisation faced by the Black community. She is regarded as one of the most respected names in American literature. Over the course of her long literary career, she wrote eleven novels along with children's literature, plays, and numerous essays, mastering nearly every form literature has to offer. Her writing was never confined merely to storytelling; it became a living document reflecting the pain, resistance, and struggle for existence of an entire community.

By A Representative   In a wide-ranging interview, veteran secular activist and writer Ram Puniyani has offered a stark assessment of India's political trajectory, warning that the country's pluralistic fabric is being systematically eroded by a well-orchestrated Hindutva project that seeks to reshape Indian society along Brahminical lines. Speaking to journalist A K Shiburaj , Puniyani, who has spent decades working for communal harmony, described the nature of communalism in India as having worsened dramatically over the past two decades, particularly since the BJP came to power about twelve years ago. 

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  The anti-intellectualism of authoritarian leaders is not new. From the McCarthy era to the Trump administration in the United States, from Indira Gandhi’s Emergency to Narendra Modi’s India, from military-mullah rule in Pakistan to Thatcherite Britain, and from the reactionary right’s advance across Europe to the dictatorships of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America—one pattern repeats: illiberal regimes consistently display a visceral disdain for intellectuals and for critical inquiry itself.

By Sanjay Swati Bhave*  September 3 was the very last day of The Times of India’s office on Ashram Road. The Times is now moving out of Fadia Chambers and into a part of some very large building in the area behind ISKCON Temple and Mall. The Ahmedabad office, housed in the four-storeyed Fadia Chambers on Ashram Road, was itself a landmark of the city.