Upword

 Hindus in Bangladesh have borne the brunt of ethnic cleansing in silence because no one from the international community has come forward in solidarity with them. The people of India must ask the new government to intervene and protect the Bangladeshi Hindus from religious extremism that has nearly wiped out the minorities from Bangladesh. 

 We discuss the state of electoral politics in India and why we must bring civilizational issues to the forefront of national politics. 

 There is a low-intensity cultural war raging against Hindus in popular culture in India and outside. Vamsee Juluri, Professor of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco, explains the mechanics of this phenomenon. 

 If you wonder why politicians keep breaking their election promises and are still let off the hook, the answer is in the very structure of democracy. In this episode of pinpoint, we discuss the universal rules of politics and explore how they apply to India. 

 The myth of EVM hacking is as old as the use of Electronic Voting Machines for conducting elections in India. But is there any truth to the allegations raised by the losing side after the declaration of results every time?  

 The Central Government recently brought in the "The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers' Cadre) Ordinance, 2019" to treat University/ College as the unit of reservation roster for teaching posts instead of 'Department/ Subject'. While it was hailed as a great decision, no one seemed to have paid attention to its dangerous implications. Ajaey Sharma explains the consequences in the first episode of Neer-Ksheer. 

 For a thousand years, our land was grabbed, our people enslaved, our temples destroyed. Political independence came in 1947 and we entered a new epoch of history. We thought we had regained the control of our destiny. But the euphoria was short-lived. For what we thought was the death of imperialism was just a change of apparel. Indeed, imperialism is alive and kicking. It has only become subtler, multi-polar and more dangerous. In this information era, our land may be free, but our minds are colonised. We live in the age of intellectual imperialism but we are in no mood to take it lying down.  Join the War at www.upword.co/upword-league  Donate at www.upword.co/donate  UPI: upword@upi 

 In the second episode of Pinpoint, Ashish Dhar deconstructs the pompous hypocrisy of intellectuals in matters of war (and peace). 

 This is not a done-to-death primer on the political history of Kashmir. It is an investigation into why a citizen of India would wage war against the Indian state? 

 A popular meme of 20th-century caste politics in India is the image of Gautama Buddha as some kind of a social reformer. However, a serious study of Buddhist texts reveals that the political rhetoric around the Buddha is very misleading. Dr. Koenraad Elst shows that far from being a rebel, the Buddha was conformist par excellence. 

 The state interference in the management of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple has caused tremendous damage to its precious heritage and also makes the temple wealth susceptible to organised loot aided by corrupt state officials. 

 Among the most consequential events leading to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan was the call for Direct Action, code for a violent assault on the unsuspecting majority community. It serves as a reminder that tolerance of intolerance leads to horrific consequences.
 

 How India - the richest civilisation throughout the documented history of the world, became poor in the last few centuries? In this eye-opening video, Dr. Raj Vedam, Director of Indian History Awareness and Research, walks us through a disheartening phase of Indian history. Do watch and share with your family and friends. 

 Is the Shri Ram Mandir at Ayodhya a case of ‘Land Dispute’ or does it relate to wider civilizational aspirations and national ideals? What were the real motives of Babur when he destroyed the temple in 1528 CE? How have the communist intellectuals played the devil with the peaceful resolution of the issue? Why should we ask political parties to resolve the issue through a legislation?     Shri Bharat Gupt, former professor at Delhi University, explains the case for Shri Ram Mandir in this short yet succinct video. 

 Secularism demands that the Government of India and its various arms maintain an equal distance from all religions. However, in practice, the state actively favours a set of religions at the expense of one. This practice has its roots in the Constitution of India, specifically in the articles 26 to 30, the source of anti-Hindu bias of the Indian state. Kanu Agrawal, a young advocate at the Supreme Court of India, provides a forceful critique of these articles in this video. 

 Communism in India has had a strange history. The ideology never captured the imagination of Indians unlike it did in some other countries. Yet communists have wielded a great influence on the public discourse in India by infiltrating educational institutions. Here Dr. Shankar Sharan provides a brief history of communism in India titled 'Marxist treason in India'.