Counterview

By Irfan Engineer*  On 25th August, Dr. Ram Puniyani has completed 81 years. After its founding chairperson, Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, he has been the longest-serving Chairperson of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS), an organisation established to promote communal harmony.

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 Julian Bokser   Javier Milei’s government recently suffered a double defeat. The first occurred in the streets, with massive protests against his plan to liberalize land purchases by foreigners. The second took place in the halls of the Argentine Congress, where he failed to secure enough votes to pass the bill as presented. Both defeats point to the same thing: a power project that is beginning to show the limits of its strength. The bill that the ruling party sought to impose, under the name ‘Law on the Inviolability of Private Property,’ was neither an isolated initiative nor a simple regulatory adjustment. 

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 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 Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  Parallel narratives serve no one except those who weaponise them for self-promotion. If we are serious about bringing people together, we must stand for the rights of all and condemn wrongdoing even when it inconveniences our own social positions. Consider the case of a Rapido driver in Lucknow who was banned by the company after an altercation with four railway employees who had hired his taxi late at night. According to the driver, the passengers were making derogatory remarks about his community, prompting him to intervene and force them out of the vehicle.

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.”

By Vijay Prashad   In August, right-wing billionaire Abelardo de la Espriella took office as Colombia’s president and vowed to move an agenda of the far right even though he won by less than a percentage point over the left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda. It is characteristic of the far right of a special type to adopt any mandate and pretend that they have the authority to transform their society into their toxic swamp. Of the twenty states generally thought of as being part of Latin America, eleven now have governments of the far right: Argentina (Javier Milei since 2023), Bolivia (Rodrigo Paz since 2025), Chile (José Antonio Kast since 2026), Colombia (de la Espriella since 2026), Costa Rica (Laura Fernández since 2026), Ecuador (Daniel Noboa since 2023), El Salvador (Nayib Bukele since 2019), Honduras (Nasry Asfura since 2026), Panama (José Raúl Mulino since 2024), Paraguay (Santiago Peña since 2023), and Peru (Keiko Fujimori since 2026).

By Dayan Jayatilleka   The month he turned 50, my father, Mervyn de Silva, and my mother, Lakshmi, were in Havana watching Fidel Castro take over the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement at its 6th Summit. After my father died, I discovered in his briefcase the embossed invitation on stiff parchment. He had treasured it for two decades. I still do.

By Rajiv Shah   Following my blog , in which I cited renowned mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik , who mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Dimagi Naxal” remark by stating that the word “Naxal” refers to a “special river reed that grows in North Bengal (kash grass) with silvery flowers”, and that “Naxali” would be the name of Lord Shiva’s son Kartikeya, who was “born amongst these reeds”, I received an interesting rejoinder.

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan   Political vocabulary often reveals more than political speeches. In the Narendra Modi era, it has produced a growing dictionary of insults aimed at dissenters. Students became the “Tukde-Tukde Gang.” Intellectuals and activists were branded “Urban Naxals.” Writers returning awards were dismissed as the “Award Wapsi Gang.” Farmers protesting government policies were labelled “Khalistanis,” “Maoists,” or “anti-national.” Modi himself coined “Andolanjeevi” to describe what he called professional protesters.

By Harsh Thakor*  Sumit Sarkar, who passed away on August 13 at the age of 87, was one of the most influential historians of modern India. Born in 1939 into a Brahmo family in Bengal and the son of distinguished historian Susobhan Sarkar, he was educated at Presidency College and the University of Calcutta. After teaching at the University of Calcutta and the University of Burdwan, he joined the University of Delhi, where he served as Professor of History from 1974 until his retirement in 2004.

By Vijay Prashad   For more than six decades, the United States has attempted to make the Cuban people pay for their decision to pursue an independent, socialist path. The latest phase of this economic war has targeted the island’s most vulnerable artery: its energy supply. Six months after Washington intensified pressure on countries and companies supplying oil to Cuba, the policy has not produced democracy or improved the lives of ordinary Cubans. It has produced darker homes, immobilised buses, interrupted hospitals, and greater difficulty in moving food from farms to cities.

By Tulsi Patel*  The increasing trend of having a single child , or at most two children per couple, is on the rise in India today. Though Indian society is pronatalist and having children is widely viewed as an obligatory rite of passage for married couples, why do they want fewer children?

By N.S. Venkataraman*  In recent times, the term “Gen Z” and the broader idea of a Gen Z movement have attracted considerable attention in the print, visual and social media, as well as in public debates. Opinions about these developments differ sharply. Some view them as a legitimate expression of youth aspirations and a timely demand for change, while others regard them as movements that could contribute to social disorder and political instability.

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 Sunil Kumar*  ​The Prime Minister’s August 15, 2026 address from the ramparts of the Red Fort likely did not surprise anyone familiar with his style—supporters and detractors alike. Those who follow him know that nearly every address is engineered as an election pitch. The moment he sees a podium, the atmosphere shifts into a campaign rally.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  August 15 is an extremely important day in world history, not only because it marks India's independence, but also because it is associated with the end of the Second World War in Asia. On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied powers, bringing the war in the Pacific to an end, although the formal surrender was signed on September 2. By then, American forces had established a decisive military position in the Pacific and the Soviet Union had entered the war against Japan. A different outcome in 1945 could have profoundly altered the history of the Indian subcontinent.