Information Factory

Swadeshi and Nationalism in India 2020

Recently read a piece in Print on how the Vocal for Local campaign promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his supporters is all hypocrisy because the ‘nationalists’ had abandoned the Indian mobile phone maker Micromax and preferred Chinese mobile brands. If interested, you will find the article here.

First, the prime objective of the article appears to be to deride nationalists as…

Ideology and politics in India

If you have been on social media, especially Twitter, you would have heard things like right-wing trolls or left-wing anti-nationals or right wing Sanghis or left wing Urban-naxals, or that right-wing ecosystem is threatening minorities or that left-wing ecosystem is trying to break India, etc. Have you ever wonder what this…

The cult of one

…….it cost the nation a lot to keep you in poverty – Sarojini Naidu to Mohandas Gandhi

Nothing has harmed the Hindu cause in modern era more than the personality cult, the deification if an individual. In 1947 we had the opportunity for a new beginning. Total population exchange and a constitution and governance system rooted in Indic wisdom accrued over centuries would have created a rooted,…

The year is 2557. It’s been almost 2 centuries since the ASHASKRA from the edges of the galaxy had first arrived on Earth on a diplomatic mission. They were the first ever non-terrestrial lifeforms that we had made contact with after centuries of search that had first started in the 21st century. Their arrival was greatly celebrated around the world; every country leapt forward to host them and…

The atrocities on Hindus in Malabar which started with the invasions of the region by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, reached their climax in August, 1921. Under the guise of the anti-British Khilafat agitation, Maplahs of Malabar unleashed a reign of terror on the minority Hindus of the region. Loot, arson, rape, murder and force…

Many years down the line when the history of our time is written, it will most probably be called the plastic age. Plastic has become an inseparable part of our lives. So much so that even the food we are eating, the air we are breathing and the water we are drinking has plastic in them. In 2019, researchers from Medical…

Traditionally, BJP’s strength has been nationalism and Hindutva. Recent events, however, show that opposition is now going out of its way to neutralize these. For example all the national flag waving, anthem singing, etc during the anti-CAA protests by Hinduphobes. These are the same people who used to burn the flag and were rabidly resisting standing up for the anthem in theatres.

They are also…

Conductors in the Gut that tune the Brain: The Microbiome story

In popular perception, micro organisms, especially bacteria and viruses, are often linked to disease. This kind of perception is definitely not without a reason. Pathogenic agents have been responsible for so many deaths over the years that diseases like the plague have shaped the course of human history.

But do you know…

The Citizenship Amendment Act

On 9th December 2019 Home Minister of India, Amit Shah, introduced the citizenship amendment bill in the Parliament. The bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on 10th December and in Rajya Sabha on the 11th. The law that came into effect from 10 January 2020 is the now controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Since then there…

Is this a period of ideological inversion in India?

“Any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time” – O’Sullivan’s law (for the Indian context, right- and left-wing in the O’Sullivan’s law need to be replaced with pro-Hindu and ‘secular’), respectively.

Before getting into the point I want to make about present day Indian politics, we need to take a small detour to look at the politics and…

You'll come across numerous BJP/Modi supporters on social media who mock and try to silence those advocating equal rights for Hindus in India. What explains their hate for the Core Right agenda? Is there a middle ground? Let's talk #Core

If you don’t know what #Core Right Agenda is, please read the following 2 blogs for a background: this and this. I’ll urge you to also read about the Hindu Charter and sign it.

Let’s start off with a couple of screenshots from Twitter to set the context for this post. 1st is from the account of a person closely associated with Mumbai BJP. I think he was a spokesperson at some point, but I am…

Some notes on Lok Sabha 2019 results in Kerala So what happened? How did BJP end up with 0 MPs in Kerala despite the political climate being ripe for the lotus to bloom? There are many narratives. But for me the reliable story is the one from numbers

Among the 58 ministers of the new Narendra Modi government, there is 1 representative from Kerala. I think that is one too many and Modi is being too generous to a state that has decisively voted against him by electing all 20 MPs from the opposition parties. That I am disappointed is an understatement. Like almost everyone, I too believed BJP would open its account this time in Kerala. In fact I…

If ideologically motivated censorship by the big tech bothers you, open source Twitter alternative, Mastodon, might interest you.

In recent years, especially since the launch of Reliance Jio, access to internet has become cheaper and more importantly, easier for us in India. It is not necessary anymore to own or have access to a computer to be able to be able to log into the intertubes. A much cheaper smart phone is now our window into almost any corner of the information highway. Consequently, social network sites and apps…

There is a Malayalam movie, called Comrade in America starring Dulqur Salman as the comrade who goes from Kerala to America via Mexico and fights their immigration policy. It is a typical red-film. For those who may not know, there is a special kind of cinema in Kerala whose only purpose is to peddle communist propaganda. I call these red-films. The frequency with which these red-films get made…