Sunday Posts

I have been reading Mark Lilla's The Reckless Mind (New York Review of Books, 2016), which is an insightful portrait of six intellectuals in Politics. Lilla's broad point is that seeking the purity of ideas in the messy practicum of the political world is a hazardous enterprise. This has led - whether inspired by enlightenment reason or by religious passions for a new beginning - to tyranny, or philosophies in the service of tyranny, which Lilla calls 'philotyranny'. In Lilla's vision, the love of ideas, the pure passion, more often than not, turn to ideologies, sacrificing freedom in the quest of a perfection that is both unknowable and unattainable. In this, his ideas are not too far from those of the American pragmatists, John Dewey in particular, for whom ideas turning into ideologies was the cardinal sin of our time. I came away, however, with another thought: That tyranny is somewhat our original condition, basis of our moral thought. Whether we think in...

Let's be irrational: Friday the 13th. Four Death Sentences. An Announcement that can define India's future. Despite this being plucked from Hollywood lore, such connections always appeal to Hindu mind. However, even if one does not believe in omen and try to be rational, Friday the 13th of September would still appear to be a great day for the Indian Middle Classes - as they got what they wanted: Death sentence for the four people who brutally raped and killed one of their own, and a 'strong' leader who would drive India to its destiny. If one wondered what that destiny may look like, the signs are already there. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition party in India, calls the inflation in India 'Jijiya Tax'. Inflation is corrosive, and it spiralled out of control under the callous economic management of the incumbent government, and has indeed hurt the salaried middle classes. Protesting against inflation, however, is not the point here: Likenin...