COVER STORY
India's linguistic landscape cuts up the people into ever so smaller allegiances. But language, through its speakers, finds its own resolutions.
Outlook Magazine - 20 August 2001
All the intellectuals of India seem afraid that a proposal for discussing the question of caste at a UN forum might make it into a global talking point...
The Indian identity may be difficult to define, but its existence is a joyful reality verifiable on a daily basis
Vested political interests have made FIs like IDBI and IFCI anachronistic in the post-liberalisation scenario. And they run the risk of going the UTI way.
Indianness cannot be a fixity or a dogma. It remains with us as a magic puzzle
Indian civilisation derives from no utopian ideal; it was founded on, and as, a crossroads
All the intellectuals of India seem afraid that a proposal for discussing the question of caste at a UN forum might make it into a global talking point...
The Indian identity may be difficult to define, but its existence is a joyful reality verifiable on a daily basis
The PM is willing to do battle, and the odds are still with him
Vested political interests have made FIs like IDBI and IFCI anachronistic in the post-liberalisation scenario. And they run the risk of going the UTI way.
Damning revelations but the CBI's brief may limit the probe
Indianness cannot be a fixity or a dogma. It remains with us as a magic puzzle
Indian civilisation derives from no utopian ideal; it was founded on, and as, a crossroads
OTHER STORIES
Is it a time, a place, a culture or a look; or does being Indian have to do with intensity?
Participate and win exciting prizes - just an e-mail away.
An irreverent glossary
The man who once called India a functioning anarchy, John Kenneth Galbraith, in conversation with Arun Venugopal
Dr Abdullah stands forgiven, but not Advani for his decision to declare Jammu a disturbed area
'Native' literatures run close to the living nerve, but English too must find its way to Imagining India and, in the process, enrich itself by looking beyond its class horizons
Historian John Keay in conversation with Sanjay Suri
The man who first broke the news of Gandhi's assassination, in conversation, speaking on India, Indians and Indianness.
Sex, violence, wars, communalism, attitudes, grim gender and ground realities ... how do we measure up?
Gunter Grass, the 1999 Nobel laureate for literature, in conversation with Subhoranjan Dasgupta
At 1,240 metres, Dong is located at the confluence of the rivers Lohit (a tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra) and Sati, strategically placed at the tri-junction of India, China and Myanmar...
Where, one, people sneer at you if you ask them if they feel any pride for having made the first sacrifices for India's nuclear programme, and two, they are reeling from a two-year-long drought...
It is a bold experiment, and the effects have been dramatic. Every little problem is getting a compassionate response from men trained to kill.
How does it feel, how does it feel, how does it feel, I ask all of them, to stand at India's edge? But none of them feel anything much...
To seek truth at the extremities of the Indian experience, correspondent Sandipan Deb and photographer Prashant Panjiar travelled to the corners of the country. They found faith, bitterness, patriotism, and complex questions of identity.
The journey itself is not as important as the dilemma it creates and dynamics it unleashes in our cultural and political life
The Indian small town has been wiped off the map, the measured hopefulness of its middle class replaced by an acquisitiveness unchecked by social concerns, propelling itself on the twin cylinders of fundamentalist politics and global capitalism
When extraordinary levels of violence are systematically inflicted on the same people, it makes them more visible, where previously they were not noticed
Cricket is now a very Indian game. It is as Indian as the Taj Mahal, the Lok Sabha, or the English language
I was hurt that the contribution of gays was not acknowledged during the 50th anniversary of India
It is today politically fashionable to speak of a certain community and its culture as truly Indian, but the fact is that there are no pure native Indians, or any pure native Indian culture
I find it hard to take seriously the view that Indian civilisation is faced with the imminent risk of losing its identity
To be an Indian these days is to have precious little to cheer about. There is the occasional victory when the Indian cricket team has its collective ass saved by Sachin
Mainstream cinema sates our appetite for moral certitudes and linguistic surfeit
The tinseltown candy factory is brimming over with syrup-dipped perversities
Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, who studies the interplay of global and local, in conversation with S. Anand
The Jnanpith award-winning Kannada writer-critic in a free-wheeling interview
Land of spiritualism, Maharajas, Snake Charmers and the Great Indian Middle Class
Yo Sadhus, Hair Jordans, Wall Pissarios & Graffiti, Plantain Platters ...
The Siddhis, Gujjars, Khasis, Bondas ...
Top-Ten Indians who are, well, somehow Indian But For ...
Yoga, Fans, Paans, Bidis, Kohinoor, Tandoor, Kabaddi, Mehendi ... et al
Funny? You call this funny? Well, whatever. Don't say we didn't warn you.
Quotable Quotes? Apollonius Tyanaeus, Will Durant, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw
Perhaps the only ancient secular text from India that has been translated into 60 languages the world over...
Like all fountainheads of great Indian wisdom, the poet of Kama Sutra was never the involved party...
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata ... more than myths and mythologies.