Sandeep Balakrishna

ARTICLES

What is a Hindu Temple: A Brief Introduction

What is a Hindu Temple: A Brief Introduction

The conception, origin, evolution, and development of temples as physical, architectural, and later, artistic structures is perhaps as old as the dawn of human civilisation as we know it. Temples embody one of the finest, deepest, grandest, and most profound expressions of the Human Spirit of awe, wonderment, and a

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The Bangalore Ganapati Clashes of 1928

The Bangalore Ganapati Clashes of 1928

The full story of an infamous communal clash in Bangalore 1928 because Abbas Khan, a Councillor was offended by the Murti of a Ganapati

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Congratulations to Narendra Modi for the Action against these National Security Threats

Congratulations to Narendra Modi for the Action against these National Security Threats

Maoists and Naxals are national security threats. Discursive confusion arises at the precise moment one forgets this basic premise. Look at what’s happening in the immediate aftermath of the well-deserved and long-pending arrests of the five Maoists: Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun

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Kerala Floods: When the Comrades Shed their Clothes

Kerala Floods: When the Comrades Shed their Clothes

Nothing excites our Red-drenched comrades, now masquerading as liberals, as much as large-scale suffering. Larger the scale, greater are the swirls of the romantic and dreamy ideological mists that sway like diaphanous, tantalising curtains before their eyes. Their excitement is almost sexual, a heady tumescence anticipating a bloody

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Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A Hero of India's Second Freedom Movement

Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A Hero of India's Second Freedom Movement

In adversity, he was a unifier, in victory, magnanimous, in defeat, equanimous, and in exit, gracious. Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This is his finest hour. Mesmerising Orator A late rainy monsoon evening, 1991. The familiar venue of the National College grounds in Bangalore was overflowing, throbbing with energetic anticipation awaiting the

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Christianising Carnatic Classical Music: The Madras Enablers of Cultural Appropriation

Christianising Carnatic Classical Music: The Madras Enablers of Cultural Appropriation

And just as I had predicted, the Ideological Iyengar has exploded in his naked, phoney fury and revealed himself in full technicolour craziness. Don’t take my word for it. Check his own tweet. Thodur Madabusi Krishna’s metamorphosis from merely being an Ideological Iyengar to a cultural hoodlum is

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The Shakespearean Mists that Cloud the Colonised Indian Elite

The Shakespearean Mists that Cloud the Colonised Indian Elite

Apart from being a great leveller, social media like sunlight, is a great disinfectant. In the heydays of blogging, if you bluffed, you would be mercilessly called out but you had a safety valve of sorts: you could run, lick your wounds, hide, and hibernate for a while. Social media

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Is there a Faction in the Congress Party that Repeatedly Sets up Rahul Gandhi for Failure?

Is there a Faction in the Congress Party that Repeatedly Sets up Rahul Gandhi for Failure?

If fortune favours the brave and misery loves company, misery needs to heave a permanent sigh of relief. It has crown-prince-forever-in-waiting, Rahul Gandhi for constant company. In a recent podcast with a friend over the grave subject of the bizarre rigadoon that Rahul Gandhi performed live

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The Thriving Colonial Raj in India in Three Random Books

The Thriving Colonial Raj in India in Three Random Books

Here is a brief list before we begin. * Heartrending stories of utter destitution inside a slum and/or on the pavements? Check. * Soul crushing tales of a poor AIDS or terminally-ill patient rotting away in a Government hospital? Check. * Tales of police brutality and bureaucratic corruption endured by a

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The Cult of Mother Teresa had to Obviously Culminate in this Horror

The Cult of Mother Teresa had to Obviously Culminate in this Horror

A commentary on the child trafficking racket run by Mother Teresa's NGO, Missionaries of Charity

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