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Stolen votes, unmoved voters

India's opposition has found a cause that outrages the capital but leaves the countryside shrugging. Its problem is less the Election Commission than itself On October 10th police waded into journalists, students and activists who had gathered at Jantar Mantar, a protest ground in Delhi, to demand the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, the chief election commissioner. They also wanted an end to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, which the opposition says is a means of striking inconvenient voters off the list. The government responded by denotifying Jantar Mantar as a place to protest. Congress responded by vowing to take it back. A day of brutality has given the opposition its best publicity in a while. Will it matter at the ballot box? Ajay Gudavarthy, a political scientist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, is doubtful. In a long interview with G. Sampath on In Focus , he argues that "vote chori" (vote theft) is still an issue for the educated and the...
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Principles for Building Prosperity Across Generations

  The Architecture of Lasting Wealth: 10 Timeless Principles for Building Prosperity Across Generations True wealth is not simply the accumulation of money. It is the creation of knowledge, relationships, opportunities, values, and systems that continue to generate prosperity long after their founders are gone. Introduction: Wealth Is a System, Not an Accident Why do some individuals and families build prosperity that lasts for generations, while others struggle to preserve wealth beyond a single lifetime? The answer often lies not in how much money they earn, but in how they think, learn, build relationships, manage opportunities, and transfer wisdom to the next generation. Sustainable wealth is rarely the result of a single extraordinary decision. Instead, it emerges from a collection of interconnected principles practiced consistently over time. These principles form what can be described as a Wealth Operating System —a framework that integrates intellectual growth, financial di...

French Beach

 

Hindutva from Speeches to Spectacles: The Evolution of Performative Politics

1. Introduction: The Concept of the "Spectacle State" In the study of modern power, we often prioritize the "mind"—analyzing party manifestos, policy white papers, and logical debates. However, as scholar Brahma Prakash argues in his theory of the  "Spectacle State,"  contemporary politics has migrated from the cerebral to the visceral. We are witnessing a transition where power is no longer just articulated through ideology; it is felt through the body and experienced through the senses. This shift creates a "massive constellation" of sights and sounds that transform political adherence into a constant, everyday performance. Sensory Hindutva:  A political framework that bypasses intellectual persuasion to occupy the level of the body and emotions. By utilizing music, aesthetics, and everyday objects, it creates an "orchestrated emotional order" that invites participation from the public, often regardless of their deep ideological...

"Bhakti jamming" and "bhakti clubbing"

  "Bhakti jamming" and "bhakti clubbing" refer to the integration of devotional music and Hindutva pop into everyday urban leisure, social gatherings, and festive nightlife in major Indian cities like Delhi and Mumbai

Culture wars, by other means

How music, machines and myth turned Hindu nationalism into a mass aesthetic A new book argues that India's ruling ideology has embedded itself less through doctrine than through spectacle For most of the four decades that Indian journalists have covered the rise of Hindutva, the Hindu-nationalist project has been analysed the way political scientists analyse most things: through manifestos, election results and organisational charts. Brahma Prakash, a professor of cultural studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, thinks that lens misses the point. In his book, Spectacle State: How Hindutva Shapes Feeling and Culture , and in a recent interview on the online outlet The Federal , he argues that Hindu nationalism's most effective vehicle in the past decade has not been ideology at all, but sensation: sound, colour, motion and touch, deployed at a scale and with a coordination that has no real precedent in Indian public life. This is a claim worth taking seriously, and one worth int...

UAPA - Process as punishment: A six-year wait for a trial that has not begun

Process as punishment A six-year wait for a trial that has not begun raises hard questions about India's anti-terror law — and about the state's confidence in its own evidence IN THIHAR JAIL, on the outskirts of Delhi, a prisoner has spent six years waiting for something that has not yet happened: the start of his own trial. Umar Khalid, a historian arrested in September 2020 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in connection with riots in north-east Delhi that year, has aged from 33 to 39 behind bars without charges being formally framed, let alone a verdict reached. His case has become the most closely watched example of a broader pattern that critics call "process as punishment": a system in which the ordeal of prolonged incarceration, rather than any eventual conviction, becomes the real sentence. This is not a uniquely Indian phenomenon — pre-trial detention is used and abused in democracies from Brazil to the Philippines. But the scale and d...