-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Pankaj Mishra |Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy
In his pages on the trial of Eichmann in Germany and Israel (2020), Daniel Marwecki describes how visions of Israel as a new embodiment of Jewish power also awakened not so long dormant German fantasies.
-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy |Trisha Gupta
The title did not specify which cities, but Mumbai has been Sudhir Patwardhan’s muse since he arrived there as a young medical graduate 50 years ago in 1974. His brilliant recent show, “Cities: Built, Broken”, which closed at Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi on March 4, was no exception. It could be argued, though, that the city for Patwardhan has often been a site in which to explore his favourite subject: people. It was an interest in human beings that led him to study medicine in Pune.
-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy |Gita Jayaraj
From the middle of October to the end of May or early June (the Malayalam months of Thulam to Edavam), parts of Kozhikode, Kannur, and Kasargod districts in the north Malabar region of Kerala come alive to Theyyam. In this extremely local form of worship, ancestors, spirit animals, human victims of unjustified caste and gender violence, and goddesses and gods are embodied and invoked in a ritual dance by men from communities listed as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy
A sensational YouTube video in Kannada has refocused attention on the unsolved rape and murder of 17-year-old Soujanya. The video, uploaded by content creator Sameer M.D. on his YouTube channel Dhootha (“Messenger”) on February 27, has gone viral in Karnataka, garnering over 1.8 crore views—an exceptionally high number in the Kannada YouTube sphere.
-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | R.K. Radhakrishnan |Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy
Former Supreme Court Judge V. Ramaswami, the first and only judge to date to face impeachment proceedings in Parliament followed by a vote, passed away on March 8 at his residence in Chennai. He was 96. Faced with impeachment, Ramaswami could have avoided the ignominy by resigning, but he chose not to. He wanted to be tried by the highest forum of the land: the Parliament. In the end, the impeachment motion failed, not because he was exonerated, but due to a lack of the required two-thirds majority.
-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy |Sambaiah Gundimeda
Following the Supreme Court’s validation last year of subclassifications within the SC and ST categories, the Telangana government, led by Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, appointed a single-member judicial commission in November 2024. Headed by the retired Justice Shameem Akhtar, it was tasked with assessing intragroup disparities among various castes within the SC category and proposing a rational redistribution of reservation benefits.
-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vivek Katju |Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy
That industry and business seek to influence government policies is an obvious truth. It is also true that governments strive to promote their countries’ commercial interests abroad and that these interests are those of private companies in countries that do not have a thriving public sector. There is, however, a recognised and basic distinction between government and business. This extends from the manner in which they are organised to their decision-making, operations and objectives.
-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Haruki Murakami |Philip Gabriel |Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy
For major-league novelists, late-career works can sometimes feel like a greatest hits compilation, a phenomenon that can work for and against them. Sometimes, they end up producing anaemic rehashes of their most successful works, regurgitating images and stories that have occupied them for decades. Don DeLillo’s books over the past five to six years are a good example.
-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Zahid Rafiq |Shakir Mir |Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy
One of the characters in Zahid Rafiq’s collection of 11 short stories set in Kashmir, The World with its Mouth Open, is a young boy who fails at the tasks set by his tutor: to draw parts of the human anatomy or solve complex mathematical puzzles. As he struggles with it, his mind wanders off, alighting on memories of playing football with his friends or of wrestling with his cousins.
-
1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy |Anil Menon
Having bowed to the deity, whose head is like an elephant; whose feet are adorned by gods; who, when called to mind, relieves his votaries from embarrassment; and bestows happiness on his worshipers; I propound this easy process of computation, delightful by its elegance, perspicuous with words concise, soft and correct, and pleasing to the learned. So begins Bhaskara’s Lilavati in Henry T. Colebrooke’s classic late 19th century translation.
