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Showing posts from October, 2020

The Souvenirs You Left

I took a wistful reverie To heal from the cataclysm  Our confluence had brought.  Yet in my trance  The muses stabbed me  With shards of moments.  And I bled tears,  When my torment was complete,  The tears dried.  And the shards froze,  Into perfect crystal souvenirs  In my heart. Poem previously published at:  https://allpoetry.com/poem/15641776-The-Souvenirs-You-Left-by-AbhijitChatterjee

Freedom of Speech is double-edged sword, it cuts both ways - An Opinion Column

  On 22nd August 2020 at 4 pm a book was to be launched by Bloomsbury India called ‘Delhi Riots 2020 - The Untold Story’. It purported to present the ‘true’ events of the Delhi riots as it transpired in February 2020. Monika Arora, co-author of the book announced prior to the book launch “How Jehadi-Naxal lobby planned & executed ‘Delhi Riots-The Untold Story’. Book launch on 22 Aug at 4 pm...” on her twitter account sharing a poster of the book launch. BJP leader Kapil Mishra, who became infamous for his malicious hate-speech campaigns during the Delhi election 2020 and the Shaheen Bagh protest was apparently the guest of honour for the book launch. Understandably, the book launch became a politically loaded issue and Bloomsbury India, after facing massive online backlash cancelled the event and scrapped the publication of the book. This is not the first book on Delhi riots that portray the riots as being one-sided and anti-Hindu. In July 2020, Nupur Sharma (who was one of the inv

Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database - Post from The Conversation website

Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database What came first – all-seeing Gods or complex societies? God the Father and Angel, Guercino Giovan Francesco Barbieri via Wikimedia Commons Harvey Whitehouse , University of Oxford ; Patrick E. Savage , Keio University ; Peter Turchin , University of Connecticut , and Pieter Francois , University of Oxford When you think of religion, you probably think of a god who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. But the idea of morally concerned gods is by no means universal. Social scientists have long known that small-scale traditional societies – the kind missionaries used to dismiss as “pagan” – envisaged a spirit world that cared little about the morality of human behaviour. Their concern was less about whether humans behaved nicely towards one another and more about whether they carried out their obligations to the spirits and displayed su