Counterview

By Kumar Krishnan*  There are moments when the best way to assess the present is to look back at the political lives of those who inhabited a very different public culture. Jageshwar Mandal, who died on September 9, 1988, belonged to that generation. His life raises a question that contemporary Indian politics rarely asks with sufficient seriousness: What is politics for?

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.

Counterview News   Persistent caste discrimination , the marginalisation of Dalits , concerns over the rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples , and the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities are among the issues flagged by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in its latest observations on India.

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 Sandeep Pandey  Devi Kashyap was a 33-year-old home cook. She used to cook food at people's homes in a middle-class locality, Indira Nagar, in Lucknow to earn her living. She was living separately from her husband with her 13-year-old son Abhishek, a Class VII student.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  The development of AI—from the Turing Test to systems such as OpenAI's GPT-5, Anthropic's Opus 4.6, Microsoft's MAI-1 (Thinking 1), Alibaba's Qwen, and Google's Gemma—has expanded the use of multi-agent teams and workflows for solving complex problems. These developments occur within a market structure in which AI companies seek rents and operate within a platform-capitalist system. 

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan   For years, the idea that artificial intelligence could one day threaten humanity sounded like science fiction. Today, it is being discussed by the very people building the technology. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Elon Musk have all warned about the dangers of increasingly powerful AI. The debate has become even more unsettling as AI systems move beyond answering questions and generating images towards acting autonomously, writing and executing code, browsing the internet, operating software and coordinating with other AI systems.

By Dr. P.K. Gupta*  Andhbhakti literally means blind devotion. In present-day Hindi it is often used, sometimes pejoratively, for uncritical loyalty to a religious teacher, political leader, party or ideology. The term should be used with care. Deep devotion is not necessarily blind, and unquestioning obedience is not unique to Hinduism or India. It becomes dangerous when loyalty silences evidence, conscience, reasoning and accountability. Modernity challenges this submission wherever it requires denial of factual claims that cannot withstand reasoned examination.

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.

By Raj Kumar Sinha*  September 13 holds an important place in the history of the struggle for the rights of Indigenous and tribal communities. On September 13, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) by an overwhelming majority. A total of 143 countries voted in favour of the declaration.

By Harsh Thakor*  Released last year,  Jarod Kimber ’s The Art of Batting is not merely a cricket book; it is a forensic yet poetic examination of what makes a batsman great. It dissects technique with the precision of a scientist while celebrating strokeplay with the sensibility of an artist, spanning generations and continents with equal authority.

​By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  ​Amid ongoing debates over the expanding influence of artificial intelligence, commercial developers are experiencing an unprecedented financial boom. Industry estimates suggest global AI revenues reached $229 billion by mid-2026, tripling year-over-year, with projections indicating a potential disruption of up to $4.7 trillion in enterprise profits by 2035.

By Vikas Gupta   India loves the photograph of a certificate ceremony. A minister on a stage. A banner bearing the word “skill.” Young people holding folders that promise a future. It is a reassuring image because it tells us the problem has a manageable answer: train the young, make them job-ready, and work will follow.

By Bharat Dogra    When the opening ceremony of the World Nomad Games lit up the sky over Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on August 31, it marked more than the start of a sporting spectacle. For ten days, through September 6, nearly 4,000 athletes, artists, and officials from 104 countries will compete in 43 events—from traditional wrestling and horseback riding to archery—while celebrating the rich folk music and cultural heritage of nomadic communities.

By Dr. P.K. Gupta*  Hinduism and Hindutva are not interchangeable. Hinduism is a plural religious civilisation, while Hindutva is a modern political ideology that seeks to consolidate this diversity into a uniform national identity. The ascent of this once-marginal current from the fringes of Indian politics to the commanding heights of state power represents one of the most consequential ideological transformations of the republic. In acquiring legitimacy, organisational reach and mass appeal, Hindutva has also attempted to claim the authority to define Sanatan Dharma itself.

By Harsh Thakor*  September 9, 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of Mao Zedong 's death On September 9, 1976, Mao Zedong, chairman of the Communist Party of China and the central figure of the Chinese Revolution , died in Beijing at age 82. His death closed a 27-year period in which he dominated China's politics, economy, and culture, and it left a legacy that historians, the Chinese state, and ordinary citizens continue to interpret in sharply different ways.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  An old mosque has been demolished by the Saharanpur administration under the pretext of a court order that was about to be challenged in a higher court. It is extremely shocking to see how the administration has turned highly biased and quick to invoke the "rule of law" when the alleged violation or crime is committed by Muslims. It keeps a blind eye when lumpen elements from the Hindu community take the law into their own hands, violate it, and rubbish it.

By Syed Ali Mujtaba*  The alleged assault of two female journalists by Delhi Police at the Saket police station on September 3, 2026, has become a talking point across the country. More importantly, it has revived a troubling question: Is there any dignity left for media professionals in India?