India
History’s Long Afterlife — with Priyamvada Gopal
“I tend to use the word ‘afterlife’ rather than ‘the past’, because I think that things that have happened in history have a life in the present. It’s ongoing.”
A Tattooed Community in India Is Dying Out
The Ramnamis are considered Dalits — untouchables, lower-caste people whose place in life deserves the least respect. In fact, Dalits are traditionally not allowed to worship the god Ram, who is considered a “high-class” deity, which makes this tradition even more unusual.
The Long Shadow of Deobandism in South Asia
The new Taliban government in Afghanistan represents the realization of the 155-year-old Deobandi movement’s objective of establishing a regime led by religious scholars. Over this time, and possibly much like the Taliban today, these religious clerics oscillated between jihadism and pragmatic politics.
In Second Regime, Both the Taliban and the World Face a New Reality
Afghanistan itself was a sideshow in which money and careers could be made and repatriated. In the meantime, an artificial economy was created there to service birds of passage, from diplomats and aid workers to military officials and outside contractors.
The New Kashmir Insurgency
Throughout the last decade, as internet penetration deepened and the number of social media users grew in Kashmir, a young generation of militants emerged from the ashes of a dying movement. This generation weaponized social media, setting the stage for a unidirectional conversation in which the insurgents showcased their lives and ideology.
The Ill Fruits of Demographic Engineering in Kashmir
A hilly, snowcapped terrain leads to the village, which has witnessed one of the harshest winters in the Kashmir Valley in decades. The Forest Department managed to cut the trees before anyone could protest, as people had been braving subzero temperatures inside their homes.
How the Idea of ‘India’ Came About
For the Mughal rulers, whose control covered much of the subcontinent, India could be imagined as something close to a unified state. However, for the millions of people beneath their rule, no sense of a “nation” or being part of “India” is evident.