Madras Legislative Council is perhaps the first legislative body set up in India in the then Madras Presidency. So it has a enviable pedigree and commanded great prestige and attracted great talents. I was elected when I was barely in my early thirties and perhaps one of the youngest members of the council ever elected…
Saiva Siddhanta – Journal
I was always interested in Indian philosophical issues. There is a close affinity between Tamil language and Saiva Siddhanta philosophy. In the year 1966 I was asked to write an article comparing western and Indian philosophy by the editor of this journal Rao Sahib N. Murugesa Mudaliar, a competent writer in both Tamil and…
The future of politics and liberty
100 responses from the intellectuals and writers The British magazine for writers and intellectuals asked its contributors the question: Left versus right defined the 20th century. What’s next? 100 Prospect contributors responded (Prospect March 2007) and what are their responses like? There is evident pessimism! Almost nobody expects the world better in the coming decades,…
We need a full-time agriculture minister!
So too a full-time PDS minister! Also a full-time co-operatives minister! Agriculture is becoming more and more hopeless and unviable. It is a great national shame that farmers and their families undergo in Vidharba. Readers, please go through the editorial, for details. As we write, there is another heart-breaking n new from Karnataka. A fairly…
West Bengal Government’s troubles, just the beginning?
There must be an explanation for the CPM cadre’s brutality! Self-conceit and arrogance? Stalinism’s legacy? Mao’s madness? Call it by any name. The Communists in West Bengal have exposed their limitations when it comes to economic development through conventional means. Police firing and the killings of the poor is the last thing they imagined. What…
Decline of Bharata Natyam?
The traditional Bharata Natyam faces an identity crisis? There is a perceptible decline in the traditional art of Bharata Natyam, as we have known for long. On the one hand, there is the prim and proper stiff upper lip of the Kalakshetra style. They have thoroughly discouraged individual talents to blossom. In so many words,…
Madras music season 2006-2007
Appreciating music and dance A middle class paranoia contributes to decline of Carnatic music? Music and dance, a country’s cultural symbols, always were thriving in India, even under difficult situations. There is always an appreciating elite and the crowd in any society, devoted to the maintaining of standards. Now, suddenly, it seems the music and…
Reforming the Indian National Congress Party
Can Karunakaran do what others have failed to do? Mr.K.Karunakaran,88,is an old Congress man of the vintage years.His best days were when he made himself an unapologetic courtier of the late Indira Gandhi when she rode to power.Later when she tried to consolidate her power by splitting the Congress party in 1969 and later when…