-The Business Standard The right to speak freely implies no corresponding obligation for someone else to give you a platform to exercise that freedom The circumstances of Mr Modi's invitation by a students' association at the University of Pennsylvania's business school, and subsequent un-ceremonious un-invitation following protests, are well known. What is less clear is the correct interpretation of what happened. Mr Modi's supporters, and even some who don't support him, have cried...

-PTI People from all walks of life will come together in the capital on Thursday to participate in cultural events as part of the 'One Billion Rising' global campaign, making the demand to end violence against women and children. Women organisations, elected representatives, legal luminaries, actors, artists, NGOs and academic institutions apart from individuals are expected to participate in the day-long programme, its organisers said. The campaign will simultaneously be held in...

-The Hindu Thanks to manufactured debates on TV, there is no time for irony and nuance nor are we able to distinguish between a charlatan and an academician Now that the Supreme Court has provided some sort of relief against harassment to Professor Ashis Nandy, it has become incumbent upon all liberal voices to ponder over the processes and arguments that combined to ensure that an eminent scholar had to slink out...

-Counterpunch.org     “The rearing and guiding of a civilization must depend upon its intellectual class.”     BR Ambedkar, Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah, 1943, Delhi. I. Arrest. States are clumsy with their enormous power. When it suits the modern state, it uses it immense apparatus to constraint those who make claims upon it or who say things that denigrate this or that section of society. A college professor in West Bengal draws a cartoon of...

-Outlook The sorts of corruption that matter are a purview of privileged     “An intellectual man can be a good man but he may easily be a rogue. Similarly an intellectual class may be a band of high-souled persons, ready to help, ready to emancipate erring humanity, or it may easily be a gang of crooks or a body of advocates of narrow clique from which it draws its support.”     —B.R....