Counterview

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 Raj Kumar Sinha*  The incident involving Abhijit Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, being surrounded and confronted by social media influencers in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh, has become the subject of a major debate on the internet. There are two sharply contrasting views among social media users and the general public over whether the influencers’ conduct was justified.

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 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 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 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. 

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 Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan  A video has been doing the rounds, and it stopped me mid-scroll. A thirsty crow lands beside an outdoor tap that is already running. It simply puts its beak under the stream and drinks. No searching. No experimenting. No problem to solve. Just an open tap. It is hard not to think of the other crow—the one from our childhood story.

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 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?

By Vijay Prashad   On 2 September, fragments from a US missile tore through the roof of a wedding celebration in Kuhestak, in Iran’s southern county of Sirik. Four people were killed, including a child, and sixty-eight were wounded. The United States has made a custom of bombing weddings – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and now Iran. When US Vice-President J. D. Vance was asked about the dead, he shrugged: ‘Things happen’. The sentence should be entered into the record of this war. Imperialism turns other people’s catastrophes into the passive voice.

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.

By M.G. Devasahayam*  Meta—the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp—recently agreed to a US$16.68 billion settlement in US courts over allegations that its platforms contributed to mental‑health harms among children. The settlement emerged during a federal trial involving claims brought by 29 states, local governments, school districts and individuals. Meta, along with Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok, continues to face thousands of lawsuits alleging that these companies knowingly designed features that are addictive to children and adolescents, thereby exacerbating a nationwide youth mental‑health crisis.

By Harsh Thakor*  'A Life Well Swum' by Graeme Lowe is a compelling memoir that explores the fascinating world of long-distance swimming and serves as a beautiful reminder that swimming is a wonderful way of experiencing the world. Lowe, who lives in Jersey with his wife Liz where the sea is never far away, initially aspired only to get fit, but swimming a few lengths in the local pool rekindled memories of an unfulfilled childhood ambition: to swim the English Channel. What follows is a lifetime of aquatic adventures chronicled with honesty and warmth, navigating his journey into the world of long-distance swimming from dolphins off Catalina to jellyfish in the North Channel. It is a narration of cold, fatigue and friendships forged through shared challenges, conveying that the most challenging part of the mission is not always the swimming itself, but the decisions and doubts that precede it.

By Md. Abu Saim*  The signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan on 7 August 2026 in Mecca marks a significant moment in contemporary geopolitics. Long anticipated across much of the Muslim world, the pact establishes that an armed attack on any one of the three signatories will be treated as an attack on all, while emphasizing that the arrangement is strictly defensive and directed only at external aggression. 

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 Syed Ali Mujtaba   An extraordinary event at the Press Club of India in New Delhi, where a cutout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was depicted as Lord Ram and worshipped, has raised serious questions about the sanctity and credibility of an institution that is expected to uphold the independence of the press.

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan   After eleven years at the helm of the BJP's digital machine, Amit Malviya is gone. The party has said little about why. But his removal comes at a politically revealing moment, when India's digital battlefield has changed, young voters are challenging established political narratives, and misinformation has become one of the biggest threats to democratic discourse.

By Kumar Krishnan*  Naxalism is not a new word in India's political vocabulary. Nearly six decades ago, the term emerged from Naxalbari, in West Bengal's Darjeeling district, becoming associated with an armed political movement rooted in questions of land, class conflict, peasant discontent and Maoist ideology. The Naxalbari uprising shook Indian politics. 

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan*   There are moments in a journalist's life when a news story refuses to remain just another headline. It becomes intertwined with memory, conviction, and identity. The conviction of Tarun Tejpal by the Bombay High Court in the 2013 sexual assault case is one such moment.