What if the world’s most celebrated idea of “helping the needy” is not universal, but theological?

What if social security systems today are based on a religious fiction about human beings?

SN Balagangadhara asks this unsettling question. Let’s walk through it. 🧵 Modern psychology, economics, even development policies assume that humans are needy beings.

From Maslow’s pyramid to poverty metrics, this anthropology of deficiency drives how we structure society.

But where does this idea come from?

What if the humanities in India are not about remembering but forgetting?

What if the classroom itself is a site of loss, not inquiry?

D. Venkat Rao invites us to rethink the very foundation of knowledge.

This is a thread for those who teach, think, or remember. 🧵 We inherit the humanities as a grand civilizational archive. It speaks of reason, beauty, freedom, ethics.

But as Rao reminds us, it also speaks in the voice of empire. Its "human" was never meant to include all lives, all memories.

What if Indian academia is not producing knowledge but staging its simulation?

Vivek Dhareshwar calls it intellectual parasitism. A condition where concepts are consumed without being metabolized.

A thread on his radical vision for a new humanities. 🧵 Intellectual parasitism is not mimicry. It is dispossession.

It is when Foucault, Derrida, Butler are recited like mantras, their concepts floating free of the historical and social wounds that made them necessary.

Theory becomes a fetish. Thinking stops.

How did the British and missionaries react to bare-chested women in South India? A story of colonial morality, caste, and cultural erasure that still shapes our thinking on dress and modesty today.

A thread 👇

A company painting of a basket maker and his wife, late 18th century. In pre-colonial South India, women—across many castes—often went bare-chested. This was not seen as shameful. It was part of local aesthetics, climate, and caste codes. Modesty had a different meaning.

And VS Naipaul wrote so prophetically

"The construction of a mosque on a spot regarded as sacred by the conquered population was meant as an insult… an insult to an ancient idea, the idea of Ram.”

"A convert’s deepest impulse is the rejection of his origins.” In an interview published in Outlook magazine, Naipaul had said;

"You say that Hindu militancy is dangerous. Dangerous or not, it is a necessary corrective to the history I have been talking about. It is a creative force and it will prove to be so."

Ancient Indian texts (Upavana Vinoda, Kathasaritasagara etc.) talk about two types of gardens.

One attached to a royal place and one that was a public garden.

These gardens were spaciously laid out to include water tanks, flowers, orchard, etc.

Then our historians made Mughals synonymous with gardens in India. Kautilya's Arthasastra confirms that an expertise in planting trees, shrubs and curating gardens was recognised.

Such plantings are also extolled in the Matsya Purana, in the form of dramas, epics, and poems that contain references to well laid out gardens.

Reflections on schooling and learning by Mundiya Kepanga, the chief of the Huli tribe in Papua New Guinea. It is westerners who have invented schools with tables, chairs and boards and diplomas. But in my tribe, we had a traditional type of school called Iba Gidja.

Lutyens' Delhi vs. Lutyens' India

Edwin Lutyens, who was largely responsible for architectural design and construction during the British Raj, when India was a part of the British Empire, had fairly negative opinions about Indian architecture. "Personally, I do not believe there is any real Indian architecture or any great tradition," he wrote. "They are just spurts by various mushroom dynasties with as much intellect in them as any other art nouveau … And then it is ultimately the building style of children."

The history of "Made in Sweden" safety matches in India dates back to the late 19th century.

In the 1880s, a Swedish inventor named Gustaf Erik Pasch developed a safer alternative to the traditional friction matches, which were prone to accidental ignition and caused numerous… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… In 1891, the Swedish safety match company, Jönköpings Tändsticksfabrik, started exporting these safety matches to India under the brand name "Swedish Safety Matches."

The matches quickly gained popularity due to their improved safety features and reliable ignition.

Indonesia reached its peak of glory during the era of Hayam Wuruk (also known as Rajasanagara or Bhatara Prabhu), a Javanese Hindu emperor of the Majapahit Empire.

According to the Nagarakretagama, written in 1365, Majapahit was an empire stretching from Sumatra to New Guinea. Its borders included modern-day Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, southern Thailand, Timor Leste, and the southwestern Philippines, and it is regarded as one of the greatest and most powerful empires in Indonesian and Southeast Asian history.

The fragrance of sandalwood: A history of the Mysore Sandal Soap

How Sri Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV and his Dewan, Sir M. Visvesvaraya, established the century-old legacy of this soap brand, which was later elevated to new heights by Sosale Garalapuri Shastry. It all began somewhere in May 1916, during the First World War. At the time, Mysore was the world's largest producer of sandalwood.

Mysore would export the majority of sandalwood to Europe. But, due to the chaos of the world war, the city could not export the sandalwood.

By severely punishing the rebels following the 1857 rebellion, the British gained a sense of heroism and self-confidence.

As Trevelyan wrote, the struggle "irresistibly reminded us that we were an imperial race, surviving on conquered soil by dint of valour and foresight." In similar fashion, the value of education remained unquestioned despite the trauma of the Mutiny.

In part, of course, this was because the Western educated had remained loyal during the revolt/uprising.

~ Sindhi diaspora, the Nation, and the Media

Sindhis today account for more than fifty percent of Indonesia's domestic film production and the vast majority of television soap operas.

How did the Sindhis come to dominate the film and television industries in Indonesia? In Indonesia today, Sindhis number no more than 10,000 among a total population of 260 million, and although they constitute a small diaspora community, their economic footprint is significant.

Most of them live in Jakarta and are known as ‘orang India’ (‘Indian people').

In his novel, Burmese Days, George Orwell captures the “chief beatitudes of the pukka sahib” down to “Keeping up our prestige / The Firm hand (without the velvet glove)/ We white men must hang together /Give them an inch and they’ll take an ell, and/ Esprit de corps.” According to Orwell, a young Englishman could come to India and immediately “kick grey-haired servants.”

In the colonial period, most British officials demonstrated their "moral authority" in an arrogant manner.

In Richard Burton’s words, “it was the tight pantaloons,..., the authoritative voice, the procurante manner, and broken Hindostani which impressed the Indian." [1/6] Those who relied on such a manner to demonstrate British superiority matched this with the firm belief that the bodily demeanour of the Indian should demonstrate his inferiority. The Indian body was thus transformed into a battleground, with chairs & shoes as the weapons. [2/6]

A 🧵 on Sir Madhava Rao (1828–1891) and his schemes on Education (as it is mentioned in his Hints on the Art and Science of Government). The princely states of Travancore and Baroda made admirable contributions to public education at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1920–21, only 1 in 6 children in British-administered territories attended school, whereas in these states, two out of every three children did.

~ Indians & their attitude towards History

There are recurring patterns when it comes to the perspective of Indians on history and biography. And what may initially appear to be false facts, mystification, and convenient amnesia may acquire an entirely new meaning and validity. There are three dominant attitudes towards history-writing in India. Each of these attitudes is an ideal-type by itself. Together, however, they provide an analytical framework for locating the peculiar Indian attitudes toward the past and its people.

The controversy over the Naval Ensign reminds me of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's arguments in his book, Decolonizing the Mind.

He argues that the imperialist tradition in colonized countries is maintained by the international bourgeoisie through the flag-waving native ruling class. The economic and political dependence of this neo-colonial class is reflected in its culture of apemanship and parrotry, enforced on a restive population through a corpus of state intellectuals, the academic and journalistic laureates of the neo-colonial establishment.

See who is going to be in our campus tomorrow?

So much looking forward to this session.

@DrSJaishankar The talk was centred around the transformation that India has experienced in the last decade in terms of it fast transforming into a digital society, developing independent foreign policy outlook, economic recovery, and running the world's largest food security scheme.

New start-ups recognized:

Some remarkable data on the number of start-ups in India. In 2021, the Government recognized over 14,000 new startups as compared to only 733 new startups during 2016-17. (Economic Survey)

2016-17 2021-22 The number of patents filed in India has gone up from 39,400 in 2010-11 to 45,444 in 2016-17 to 58,502 in 2020-21 and the patents granted in India have gone up from 7,509 to 9,847 to 28,391 during the same time period. These numbers have come from the residents than MNCs.

Next time when you feel a craving for chips, try Balaji Wafers, instead of any other brands. This is both for their quality of chips, and relatively lower prices.

An incredible story of the Virani brothers from Rajkot, who build a Rs 2,500 crore-plus brand with stubbornness. Chandubhai and his brothers Bhikhubhai and Kanubhai migrated from a small Village Dhun Dhoraji, Kalavad Taluka, Jamnagar district of Gujarat. Their father Popatbhai Virani was a farmer, who sold ancestral agriculture land and gave ₹20,000 to them to venture into business.