A feudal democracy?

November 20, 2020

Over the past few days, a well-known and fairly accomplished Senior IPS Officer, who is currently the Home Secretary to the State Government of Karnataka, has been in the news for her public spat on Twitter with a widely followed and encyclopaedic anonymous commentator on history who prefers to go...

Conversations, certitude and disagreements

November 13, 2020

I have written 26 pieces thus far under this column, which is slightly over the halfway mark for the number of pieces I have committed to. Now is a good time to pause for a bit, think and share a few general and generic thoughts. In the process of writing...

Religion, race and colonialism

November 6, 2020

I had ended the previous piece on the note that the relationship between the European colonizer’s religion and the evangelical nature of his colonization merited scrutiny. Fortunately, there is some scholarly literature on the subject. A reading of the literature on colonialism reveals that the story of European colonialism may...

The European origins of cultural coloniality

October 30, 2020

In his essay titled “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality”, Anibal Quijano, a renowned Peruvian sociologist, examined the continuing impact of Western/European conquest on the societies and cultures of what is known as Latin America today. In particular, the subject of his attention was the “relationship of direct, political, social and cultural domination”...

The coloniality of modernity

October 23, 2020

In 2002, an interesting paper titled “Early Modernity: The History of a Word” was published in The New Centennial Review of the Michigan State University Press. The paper was authored by Prof. Patricia Seed, then a historian at Rice University, who specializes in early modern and colonial European eras. In...

Public morality, public opinion and policymaking

October 16, 2020

I n a democracy where referendum is the exception, and periodic elections are the norm, how are elected representatives expected to gather public opinion on matters of policy, including morality, before passing legislations which are ostensibly based on “public morality”? Gathering public opinion through surveys and polls is a fairly...

Free speech and its impact on policymaking

October 9, 2020

The manner in which a society organizes itself, in particular its political economy, has a significant bearing on the manner in which the concept of public morality is evolved and enforced. For instance, a theocratic state traces its moral precepts to religion and scripture, with there being almost no room...

Free speech and its impact on policymaking

October 2, 2020

The manner in which a society organizes itself, in particular its political economy, has a significant bearing on the manner in which the concept of public morality is evolved and enforced. For instance, a theocratic state traces its moral precepts to religion and scripture, with there being almost no room...

Fifty one shades of speech

September 25, 2020

In the previous piece, this author had raised the following questions in the process of etching the contours of public morality: “The sum and substance of these discussions is that under the framework of the Indian Constitution, it is the State, meaning thereby the Executive and the Legislature but not...

Etching the contours of public morality

September 18, 2020

In the last few pieces, this author had undertaken a discussion on constitutional morality, its nexus with public morality, and the nature and scope of intervention permitted by the Indian Constitution to the State and the Judiciary respectively in relation to public morality. This also led to a discussion on...