By Moin Qazi* As you read these lines, 1.6 billion Muslims across the world, from Morocco to Jakarta, will be paying homage to Prophet Muhammad ahead of the Prophet’s birthday, which falls on 9-10 November 2019. This day, 1,430 years ago, Prophet Muhammad delivered the historic Last Sermon (khutabat al-wida) on the parched terrain of Mount of Mercy (Jabal ar-Rahmah) in the Uranah valley of Mount Arafat, 20 kilometres east of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. It was precisely on the ninth day of Dhu al-Hijjah (12th and last month of the Islamic year -6 March 632) in the tenth year of hijrah (migration from Mecca to Medina) that the Prophet addressed 1,44,000 pilgrims. The sermon, though seemingly addressed to a Muslim gathering, had a universal message. It consists of summarized exhortations based on some core teachings of the Qur’an and sunnah (Prophetic practices). It captures the ethos of Islam and provides a great lens to view the religion through. Some of his advices have become the f

By Venkatesh Nayak* The process of manufacturing post facto approval for the momentous changes that the Central Government made to the status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in August 2019, with Parliament’s nod, is in full swing. Apart from the chest-thumping at the recent election rallies in Maharashtra and Haryana and the latest round of military operations launched across the northwestern border , educational institutions are being pressed to organise debates on this issue. A common theme that pervades all these attempts to legitimise recent actions over J&K is the blame game targetting other political parties that governed the Centre and J&K for all that went wrong until August 2019. Arguably, the favourite whipping boy of critics of the Kashmir policy is Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who was the Prime Minister at the time of J&K’s accession to the Indian Union in October, 1947. An oft-repeated charge against Pt. Nehru was that he did not show enough courage to beat back th

By Prateek Aggarwal* The current age of technological revolution is being led by digital technology (mostly computers) that change the way we work, communicate, navigate social relationships, spend our leisure time, and much more. An inherent part of this revolution is automation—the execution by a machine agent which was previously carried out by a human. (Parasuraman & Riley, 1997) Automation has considerably affected various aspects of our lives, directly and indirectly, driving the work of modern devices we are so accustomed to, such as washing machines, ovens, cars, mobiles. Automation has penetrated sectors such as banking, agriculture, education, medical sciences, manufacturing, etc., and is seen in most economic, social, and personal aspects of our lives. Automated devices have become a necessity that enables us to have a better standard of living by providing access to a multitude of services and information. However, what is considered automation changes with time. When a

By Venkatesh Nayak* It has been more than three months since several parts of the State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) are without access to mobile telephony and Internet. The shutdown was imposed around the time the Central Government with Parliament’s approval made fundamental changes to J&K’s status under the Constitution of India. A few weeks ago, the media reported the Government’s claim that all landline services across the State and post-paid mobile telephone services in some parts of the Valley had been restored. Speaking at an event organised in New Delhi by the Former Civil Servants Forum, the Union Home Minister (HM) is reported to have said that the restrictions are only in some minds and not in J&K (perhaps he referred to the minds of those opposed to the changes being imposed on J&K including Opposition Parties). The Union Home Ministry has now confirmed the HM’s statement. A few days ago the Home Ministry has given a reply under the Right to Information Ac

Recalling India’s iconic martyr Bhagat Singh’s contribution on his 112th birth anniversary, falling on September 28, Prof Romila Thapar, professor emeritus, sent a message for the book launch ceremony of “The Bhagat Singh Reader”, edited by Prof Chaman Lal, held at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on September 25. Text: Bhagat Singh has a very special place in our lives, reflecting as he does, a significant aspect of our anti-colonial movement for independence, a movement that ensured our ceasing to be a colony and becoming an independent nation. It was a movement that saw an intense concern with debating and discussing the meaning of nationalism, as well as the methods of attaining freedom from an oppressive government. To this debate Bhagat Singh made his own contribution. He was part of a large number of others, equally effective nationalists, committed to creating a recognizably secular democratic state under the leadership of Gandhi and Nehru. We applaud Bhagat Singh to

Well-known academic, social and political activist Sandeep Pandey was recently in Ahmedabad as a visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM-A), taking a course in Transformational Social Movements, which he has been doing every year. In a recent commentary, Pandey, along with Anurag Bhaskar, another academic, presently teaching a seminar course on Law, Politics and Social Transformation” at the National Law University, Delhi, has taken strong objection to the manner in which the IIM-A has been “ignoring the caste reality of India.” The commentary , published in the e-journal “Indian Cultural Forum”, argues that the caste reality is being ignored despite the fact that that the students are taught to make a “critical enquiry of the dominant model of economic development pursed by governments”, and are told about about “various inequities in society, and more importantly, the reasons thereof.” Pandey and Bhaskar say, students are, in fact, made “face-to-face with the rea