Vedic wisdom, the Gita, the eternal quest for truth and the permanence of doubt

The Vedic sages harbored no illusions about the finality of knowledge. For them, certainty was not a privilege granted to mortals, but a mirage—a temptation to be resisted. 

They understood that truth, far from being a fixed possession, is an ever-evolving revelation: not a monument to be guarded, but a path to be walked.

In this spirit, they rejected dogma and embraced inquiry. Truth, they believed, is not the domain of the rigid, the alienated, or the misanthropic. Rather, it belongs to the free-spirited, to those who engage life with joy, curiosity, and openness. The true seeker is not one who clings to answers, but one who dares to examine all sides of a question, who listens before asserting, and who holds belief lightly—like a song, not a sword.

The Vedic tradition, profoundly aware of the impermanence of language and the limits of writing, preserved its wisdom through an oral lineage. Knowledge was sung—not carved in stone, but carried in breath. Truth was performed aloud, in the presence of others, under the sky, where it could be tested, challenged, and understood collectively. Only that which could be spoken clearly and heard by all had the legitimacy to be considered truth.

This ethos reaches its dramatic apogee in the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna’s ultimate teaching to Arjuna unfolds not in a temple or monastery, but in the liminal space between two massive armies, poised for slaughter on the fields of Kurukshetra. The battlefield, with its clash of duties and its moral ambiguities, becomes the ideal setting for the revelation of truth—not despite its violence, but because it reflects the human condition in all its complexity.

Here, truth is not divorced from action. It is discovered in the midst of responsibility, in the act of engagement with the world. Krishna does not offer Arjuna a metaphysical escape from conflict; instead, he helps him see through his confusion, dissolve his paralysis, and reclaim his agency. It is in this moment—neither peaceful nor abstract, but charged with consequence—that Arjuna attains clarity.

His response, recorded in verse 73 of the Gita, is quiet yet momentous:

“By your grace, my delusion is gone; I have recognized my true self. O Acyuta, I am free from doubt. I shall act according to your word.”

This is the recognition that matters—not a sudden acquisition of omniscience, but the gentle lifting of fog. The truth, for Arjuna, is not a set of doctrines; it is the inner alignment that allows him to act with conviction, freed from fear and inner contradiction.

In a world too often marked by absolutism and ideological rigidity, the Vedic insight remains strikingly modern. Truth is not a prize for the loudest or the most certain. It is something more fragile, more sacred: a process of articulation, of listening, of emergence. It lives in dialogue, not monologue. It thrives in uncertainty, not closure.

The sages sang their truths under the open sky—and in the Gita, we are reminded why. Truth must be spoken, heard, and lived. It must be earned, again and again, in the thick of life—not away from it.

The Myth of the Civilizational Clash: Why Huntington’s Civilizational Thesis Falls Short

Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations offers a seductive but fundamentally flawed lens through which to view global conflict. 

While his thesis resonates emotionally—inviting people to externalize blame by identifying threats in cultural or religious “Others”—it does so at the expense of historical accuracy and analytical depth. In truth, the most violent and transformative conflicts in human history have occurred not between civilizations, but within them.

Take Europe, for instance—the cradle of modernity and a continent Huntington classifies as a single civilization. From the British massacres of the Irish, the Napoleonic Wars to the two World Wars, Europe tore itself apart through internecine conflict. World War I and World War II—commonly labeled as global conflicts—were in essence European civil wars that spilled across borders. A more accurate naming convention might be European War I and European War II. These wars were fought not against alien civilizations but among nations that shared language families, religions, and philosophical traditions.

The Holocaust further underscores this internal descent into brutality. Nazi Germany, a supposed pinnacle of Western advancement, built industrial mechanisms to annihilate millions of fellow Europeans. This genocidal project was born not from a clash with an external civilization, but from a political agenda within the West itself.

Terrorism, too, has often originated internally. The United Kingdom’s most persistent security threat until the late 20th century came not from foreign jihadists, but from the Irish Republican Army. In 1984, the IRA nearly assassinated Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Their campaign was rooted in historical, political, and religious disputes within the British Isles—not in a civilizational divide.

The Cold War, long seen as a binary confrontation between East and West, also fails Huntington’s test. Both the United States and the Soviet Union drew from the same intellectual lineage of Enlightenment rationalism and industrial modernity. Marx, the father of communism, was German and did most of his work in London. Lenin was steeped in European political theory. The Cold War was a geopolitical sibling rivalry—not a civilizational standoff.

Religious schisms within civilizations have also fueled centuries of violence. The Catholic–Protestant conflicts in Europe, including the Thirty Years’ War and the English Civil War, were devastating and long-lasting. These were not clashes of civilizations but internecine wars waged over authority, theology, and political control.

A similar pattern is visible in the Middle East. The Sunni–Shia divide has been the root of many of the region’s bloodiest conflicts, from the Iran-Iraq War to the contemporary civil wars in Syria and Yemen. These are fratricidal struggles within Islam, not confrontations with external civilizations.

Even the United States, often framed as a monolithic representative of Western civilization, was nearly torn apart by its own Civil War—a domestic conflict between Americans of European descent. More than 600,000 lives were lost, not to foreign armies, but to an internal reckoning over slavery, state sovereignty, and national identity.

The ongoing tensions between the United States, Israel, and Iran are also mischaracterized when framed as a civilizational clash. If this were truly a confrontation between Western and Islamic civilizations, the 57 Muslim-majority nations would rally behind Iran. Yet, many key Muslim nations—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and others—have chosen either neutrality or quiet alignment with the West. This fracture underscores the reality that geopolitical rivalries, regional interests, and ideological divisions within civilizations are far more significant than simplistic civilizational binaries.

The deeper historical lesson is clear: the gravest threats to any society often come from within. Conflict is most likely where identities intersect and power is contested among close cultural or political relatives. Civilizations are not monoliths, and their greatest ruptures tend to emerge internally—from ideological, theological, and political fault lines.

Huntington’s framework, though rhetorically powerful, is historically unconvincing. By casting global conflict as a clash of civilizations, it obscures the internal dynamics that truly drive human violence. Understanding the past requires more than fear of the “Other”; it requires confronting the mirror.

The New Triumvirate: America, Europe, China—and Israel’s Wars to Prevent Multipolarity

The United States, Western Europe, and China are not enemies. They are allies masquerading as rivals—co-owners of a global empire that fears no internal division as much as it fears the rise of an outside challenger. The real war is not between them. It is between their triumvirate and the rest of the world.

Bound by intricate economic ties, shared technological ecosystems, and overlapping interests in preserving the current international order, these three powers represent not a fractured geopolitical landscape, but a unified civilizational core determined to uphold its dominance across the globe. Their cohesion is not ideological but structural, based on a shared interest in controlling the narrative, institutions, and flows of global power.

This configuration finds a compelling historical parallel in the First Triumvirate of the late Roman Republic—Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. Although divided by personal ambition, these three men worked in coordination to suppress the republican institutions that had once defined Rome. The fatal blow to this fragile alliance came not from within but from without: the death of Crassus at the hands of the Parthians in 53 BCE, during the ill-fated campaign at Carrhae. 

Crassus's defeat shattered the balance, ushering in a civil war between Pompey and Caesar. Pompey was eliminated by Caesar’s forces, and Caesar himself was later assassinated by senators who feared his imperial ambitions.

Today’s triumvirate—America, Europe, and China—similarly dreads not one another, but the rise of a fourth force: an external actor that rejects their norms, resists absorption into their system, and potentially reorders global power. This "fourth force" could manifest as a resurgent Russia, an emerging Middle Eastern coalition, or even an unpredictable coalition of developing states—any configuration that escapes the gravitational pull of the current order. What unites the triumvirate is not mutual affection, but a collective imperative to prevent such a force from gaining traction.

In this context, Israel plays a pivotal, if often misunderstood, role. Far from being a solitary actor engaged in regional conflicts for its own survival, Israel has become an indispensable strategic tool in the hands of the triumvirate. It serves as a frontline buffer to contain any fourth force that may rise from the Middle East—a region historically resistant to imperial integration and deeply skeptical of Western frameworks. 

Israel's wars, therefore, are not merely its own; they are waged for the preservation of the triumvirate’s global hegemony. Whether confronting non-state actors or hostile regimes, Israel acts as a surrogate enforcer, a bulwark ensuring that the Middle East does not become a staging ground for a new, unaligned pole of power.

The triumvirate’s true fear, then, is not disorder but independence—not violence, but non-compliance. It is the rise of a geopolitical actor that cannot be co-opted through trade, intimidated through sanctions, or deterred through military posturing. Like the Parthians of antiquity, this actor may emerge suddenly, from beyond the boundaries of acceptable discourse and diplomatic predictability. It may deal a blow to one member of the triumvirate—not necessarily by conquest, but through systemic disruption—and set in motion a collapse that no summit or sanctions regime can reverse.

What we are witnessing today is not the peaceful transition to multipolarity, but a frantic effort to defend an aging world order. The so-called rivalries between America, Europe, and China are less significant than the machinery of collaboration that undergirds them—through supply chains, financial markets, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic alignment. Like the Roman triumvirs, they may clash for precedence, but they remain united in one key objective: to prevent a rupture in the architecture of global control.

The lesson from Rome is clear. Power shared among elites is vulnerable to the shock of the outsider. And just as the Parthians exposed the limits of Roman imperialism, so too might today’s fourth force—wherever it emerges—reveal the fragility of the modern triumvirate.

Kishkindha to Kurukshetra: Vishnu’s Hand in the Cosmic Rivalry Between Surya and Indra

The cosmic confrontation between Karna and Arjuna in the Mahabharata is more than just a clash between two heroic warriors—it can be interpreted as the continuation of an ancient and symbolic rivalry between two celestial powers: Surya, the solar deity, and Indra, the king of the heavens. 

As the sons of these two deities, Karna and Arjuna embody this cosmic antagonism on the mortal plane. Karna, born of Surya, and Arjuna, son of Indra, are cast into opposing roles in the great war of Kurukshetra. Their destinies culminate in Karna’s death, brought about by Arjuna with the indispensable guidance of Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu.

This divine pattern of conflict, however, has an antecedent in the Ramayana, set in an earlier Yuga. There, the cosmic rivalry between Surya and Indra is mirrored in the fraternal conflict between Vali and Sugriva. Vali, the mighty vanara king and son of Indra, is opposed by his younger brother Sugriva, born of Surya. Once again, Vishnu—this time in his seventh avatar as Rama—intervenes decisively. Siding with Sugriva, Rama slays Vali and restores Sugriva to the throne of Kishkindha.

A striking symmetry emerges from these narratives. In the Ramayana, Surya’s son (Sugriva) triumphs over Indra’s son (Vali) with the help of Vishnu as Rama. In the Mahabharata, Indra’s son (Arjuna) vanquishes Surya’s son (Karna), aided by Vishnu as Krishna. In both epochs, the conflict between the celestial lineages is resolved not through the independent might of either side, but through divine intervention. It is the avatar of Vishnu who tilts the scales of fate, suggesting that dharma, not mere lineage, dictates the course of victory.

These epic patterns invite a deeper reflection: is there a cosmic balance being maintained between the houses of Surya and Indra, mediated by Vishnu across Yugas? Or does the repetition serve to highlight the futility of divine rivalry when set against the larger arc of Vishnu’s dharmic mission?

Ultimately, the question of superiority between Surya and Indra remains unresolved, perhaps deliberately so. For it is not the triumph of one deity over another that the epics foreground, but the recurring centrality of Vishnu—the preserver—whose avatars uphold the moral and cosmic order. The epics suggest that in the theatre of divine drama, power alone is insufficient without dharma, and destiny bows to the will of the divine incarnate.

Visha and Amrita: The Fragile Boundary Between Intellectualism and Barbarism

Churning of Cosmic Ocean

The boundary between medicine and poison, between what heals and what harms, has long been recognised in Indian thought as subtle and deeply contextual. In the Atharva Veda, one of the earliest Indian texts concerned with healing, disease and remedy are treated as forces that can both originate in and be dispelled by divine or natural means. 

The same herb, the same mantra, the same force—ojas or tejas—may bring either vitality or destruction, depending on its application, intention, and measure. This duality is also reflected in the Sanskrit term visha, meaning poison, which is etymologically and symbolically close to amrita, the nectar of immortality—both are born of the same cosmic churning (samudra manthan), the same act that yields the divine and the deadly.

This paradox of opposites—where poison and nectar, good and evil, often emerge from a common source—provides a potent metaphor for the relationship between the intellectual and the so-called barbarian. Much like the Vedic Rishi, who isolates himself to gain higher knowledge and then re-engages with society as a moral guide, the intellectual presumes a role of healing: to shield the body politic from ignorance, chaos, and violence. 

Yet the tradition also warns us against false ascetics and hollow scholars—those who pursue knowledge not for satya (truth) but for svārtha (self-interest). As the Bhagavad Gita cautions, those entrenched in avidya (ignorance) often masquerade under the guise of wisdom, and even tamas, the quality of inertia and decay, can wear the robe of sagacity.

The Mahabharata abounds with such inversions. The Kauravas, educated in the shastras, trained by royal gurus, are heirs to the throne. Yet it is Pandavas with their raw force and naturalistic values, and Krishna, with his cosmic vision, who preserve dharma. It is not the cultivated or the learned who uphold civilization, but often the forgotten, the exiled, the so-called barbarians whose strength lies in their unyielding will and raw power.

The history of empires in India, too, follows this rhythm. From Chandragupta Maurya—who rose from obscurity under the guidance of Chanakya—to the founders of the Gupta and Chola empires, it is often those from outside the sanctified elite who inject new energy into a stagnant polity. The decline of great kingdoms, conversely, is marked by excesses of ritualism, philosophical abstraction, and detachment from the realities of statecraft—a condition vividly described in Kautilya’s Arthashastra and critiqued implicitly by later Bhakti poets, who rejected hollow scholasticism in favour of lived, experiential truth.

The distinction between the intellectual and the barbarian is not absolute but cyclical, even illusory. When intellectualism ossifies into elitism and complacency, it ceases to be a healing force and becomes a poison. Conversely, what is dismissed as barbaric or uncivilized may contain within it the latent energy necessary for renewal. The same cosmic churning that produces poison also yields nectar. The task of any civilization is not to suppress the churning, but to recognize when its medicines have become its poisons—when its savages may be its saviours.

History’s Iron Law: The Fall of Empires to Their Former Colonies

The arc of imperial history is replete with ironies, none more persistent than the recurring phenomenon of great empires being undone by forces once subordinated to their power. This historical inversion—the return of the periphery to challenge and often supplant the core—has played out repeatedly across centuries and civilizations, suggesting a structural dynamic embedded within the very nature of empire.

Consider the fate of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Once the dominant power of the ancient Near East, it fell not to a rival civilization but to a coalition led by its former western vassals—the Macedonians under Alexander the Great. Similarly, the Roman Empire, which extended its control across vast swathes of Europe, North Africa, and the Levant, was ultimately overwhelmed not by a peer polity but by a convergence of Central Asian and Germanic tribes—Visigoths, Vandals, and Huns—many of whom had once served as auxiliary forces or client states within the imperial framework.

The Byzantine Empire offers another poignant example. It once exercised suzerainty over various Turkic and Balkan groups, including the ancestors of the Ottomans. Yet by 1453, it was these very Ottomans—former vassals—that delivered the final blow to Constantinople, signaling the definitive end of Roman imperial continuity. Likewise, the Islamic conquests of the Iberian Peninsula, which lasted nearly 800 years, were initially facilitated by political factions in Italy and Byzantium. These powers supported Arab-Berber incursions into Visigothic Spain in a bid to weaken their rivals—only to see a new Islamic civilization emerge on European soil.

This pattern is not confined to the ancient or medieval world. The Zengid dynasty, instrumental in the rise of the Kurdish commander Saladin, was eclipsed by him as he established the Ayyubid Sultanate. In turn, the Ayyubids were overthrown by the Mamluks—former slave-soldiers of Turkic and Circassian origin—who forged one of the most enduring military regimes in Islamic history. Similarly, the Mongol Empire, which spanned from the Pacific to the Danube, was ultimately supplanted by successor states in Russia and China—regions that had once existed under Mongol dominion.

In the modern period, the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries was not solely the result of European power but also of nationalist movements and regional actors who had once been subordinate to Ottoman rule. From the Balkans to the Levant, former provinces became crucibles of resistance and eventual independence.

These historical precedents point to a cyclical law of reversal: the imperial center, in time, becomes vulnerable to the energies it once harnessed and subordinated. Empires are seldom felled by foreign equals; they are more often eroded from within or overtaken by those they once ruled.

This historical logic may once again assert itself in the decades ahead. The post-World War II Western order—led by the United States and upheld by former colonial powers such as Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain—now faces demographic, economic, and ideological challenges emerging from the very regions they once colonized. Migration flows, capital investments, and technological diffusion from Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America are beginning to reshape the political and cultural landscapes of Europe and North America.

The prospect, then, is not merely one of geopolitical rebalancing but of civilizational inversion. The imperial core—once the agent of global domination—may, within the next fifty years, find itself increasingly subject to the influence, and perhaps even the ascendancy, of forces and populations it once ruled. If history remains a reliable guide, the next wave of transformation may well be led not by the heirs of empire, but by the children of its margins.

Prosperity Without Liberty: Rethinking the Capitalist Free Market Orthodoxy

The belief that privatization inherently advances freedom is not only overly simplistic—it is historically indefensible. Far from being bastions of liberty, private corporations have at times been among the worst violators of human rights. Some of history’s most exploitative systems of slavery were not the result of feudal tyrannies or authoritarian regimes but were driven by private enterprises operating under the banner of commerce and profit.

Institutions like the British East India Company, the Royal African Company, and the Dutch West India Company—respected and even celebrated in their time—trafficked in human lives while amassing vast political and economic power. These were not outliers; they were emblematic of an era where profit was pursued without ethical constraint. Their legacies serve as a sobering reminder: privatization is no guarantee of liberty. When left unregulated and unaccountable, private enterprises can be just as oppressive as despotic governments or feudal warlords. 

This historical insight invites us to question the assumptions underlying modern economic orthodoxy. Is economic success truly the product of private ownership and unregulated markets? Or is it better explained by the presence of strong institutions, effective governance, and coherent national strategies?

China presents a striking counterpoint to the conventional wisdom of free-market supremacy. Despite being a one-party authoritarian state, China has witnessed the fastest economic transformation in modern history. Its rise to the status of the world’s second-largest economy has been driven not by liberal democracy or laissez-faire capitalism, but by long-term planning, centralized control, and strategic reforms. Crucially, state-owned enterprises have played a central role in this transformation—demonstrating that public ownership, under the right conditions, can be both efficient and globally competitive. China's experience challenges the idea that prosperity depends on privatization; instead, it underscores the importance of institutional stability and visionary governance.

Even in the supposed heartland of free-market capitalism—the United States—the notion of an open and competitive market economy is more illusion than reality. American capitalism is deeply skewed in favor of large multinational corporations that often operate in lockstep with political and bureaucratic power. The lines between government and corporate America have blurred to the point of indistinction, creating a system where policy is routinely shaped by lobbyists and campaign donors rather than public interest.

While these multinational giants enjoy deregulation, tax privileges, and global reach, small and medium-sized businesses are burdened with red tape, compliance costs, and structural disadvantages. In this landscape, the promise of equal opportunity through market competition is hollow. What emerges instead is an entrenched oligarchy—where wealth translates into power, and power perpetuates privilege.

U.S.-style capitalism does not represent the triumph of freedom. It is increasingly the fountainhead of global oligarchy—producing economic dynasties that seek not only to dominate markets, but to influence politics, control narratives, and shape the rules of the game to their advantage. The idea that market forces will spontaneously align with public good is not only naive—it has been consistently disproven by history.

Khrushchev's Fire: From Stalin’s Purges to Kennedy’s Philandering, and the Fall of the Soviet Empire

Stalin once lost his pipe. A few days later, Lavrentiy Beria, the ever-diligent head of the NKVD, arrived with an update. “Did you find your pipe?” he asked. Stalin, deadpan, replied: “Yes. It was under the sofa.” Beria blinked. “Oops,” he said. “Three people have already confessed. They’ve been executed.”

Such was the bureaucracy of terror—pre-emptive, paranoid, and wholly indifferent to truth.

After Stalin’s death, and Beria’s prompt liquidation, Nikita Khrushchev emerged from the shadows—bald, voluble, and eager to cast himself as the conscience of the new Soviet era. This was the same Khrushchev whom Stalin had once publicly mocked by tapping his pipe on his head and declaring, “It is hollow.” When the Wehrmacht stood poised to overrun Stalingrad, Stalin ceremonially poured ash on Khrushchev’s head, invoking a Roman ritual used to shame defeated generals.

Yet Khrushchev would have the last word—or so he imagined. Once in power, he launched the grand campaign of de-Stalinization. Out went the cult, the statues, the steely iconography of the vozhd. In came the anecdotes, the horror stories, the grainy memoirs. On a 1958 visit to Hollywood, Khrushchev even told John Wayne that Stalin had once ordered the actor’s assassination over his anti-communism—and that Khrushchev had heroically rescinded the hit. The tale appears nowhere in his memoirs and served mainly to flatter American egos while recasting Khrushchev as the enlightened reformer.

But Khrushchev’s true alliance was not with the West’s movie stars—it was with its propaganda mills. He handed them, gift-wrapped, the caricature they had long desired: Stalin as a paranoid butcher, a geopolitical maniac juggling nuclear grenades. And while Stalin’s cruelty was both real and immense, the irony lies in the balance of terror. For all his crimes—and they were numerous and grave—Stalin presided over a world that, however brutal, never flirted so openly with nuclear annihilation.

That particular honor fell to Khrushchev himself, who in 1962 blundered into the Cuban Missile Crisis with the finesse of a sleepwalker juggling live ordnance. Opposite him stood John F. Kennedy—charming, reckless, and depending on which document you read, either a Cold War tactician or a pill-popping philanderer with mafia entanglements. Together, they brought the planet within a hair’s breadth of incineration.

The Cold War had many architects, but few episodes captured its lunacy like those thirteen days in October, when ideology, ego, and testosterone collided in the tropical humidity of Havana’s shadow. And Khrushchev’s moral indignation rang hollow when set against history’s broader ledger. Yes, Stalin built an empire through repression—but he was not unique in brutality.

The founding fathers of the United States, after all, were slaveholders—men who spoke of liberty while owning other human beings. They waged wars of extermination against indigenous peoples, laying the foundation of the so-called “land of the free” atop a continent-wide genocide. Empire is never a clean business. And those who sit tall on their moral high horses often forget the dried blood crusted on their own saddles.

What made Stalin intolerable to the West was not his cruelty—it was his defiance. Khrushchev, by contrast, sought applause. In condemning Stalin, he hoped to win legitimacy abroad. Instead, he shattered the internal scaffolding that had held the Soviet system together through war, famine, and fear. What followed wasn’t reform, but entropy.

A parade of uninspired leaders—Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko—offered stagnation as statecraft. And then came Gorbachev, with glasnost and perestroika in hand, determined to hammer the final nail into the Soviet coffin. Enamoured with the West and eager to remake the USSR in America’s image, he proved a willing listener to the whispers of Washington’s deep-state strategists. The reforms he enacted were incoherent, ideologically muddled, and economically disastrous. The result was not renewal, but ruin: a plummeting economy, a crumbling state, and the quiet, almost ceremonial dissolution of an empire.

And the West? It was not content with victory. The goal was never simply to dismantle the Soviet Union—it was to fragment Russia itself. A patchwork of compliant mini-states, stripped of sovereignty and saturated with Western capital, was the ultimate ambition. First came NATO’s eastward creep. Then the velvet revolutions, IMF shock therapy, and NGOs with strategic subtexts. The Cold War ended. The playbook didn’t.

Khrushchev was no Stalin—but he may have been something worse: a man who mistook applause for strategy, and sabotage for reform. The Soviet Union didn’t collapse in a day. It began to decay the moment the round-headed fool tried to look clever by setting fire to the house he once helped build.

China Chose Order Over Freedom—And Prospered. Should India Rethink Its Path?

Can freedom survive without order? Increasingly, the answer appears to be no.

Liberty without structure is fragile. It fractures under pressure, degenerates into chaos, and ultimately becomes susceptible to co-option—whether by demagogues, mobs, or malign external forces. Freedom, when unmoored from order, becomes not a birthright but a mirage—an illusion that dissolves the moment institutions falter, insurgencies erupt, or ideological fragmentation goes unchecked.

Freedom does not exist in a vacuum. It requires scaffolding: a dependable legal system, robust institutions, and a shared cultural framework that engineers stability. Only in societies where peace and predictability prevail do people begin to assert liberty as a right. Where violence dominates and governance collapses, survival supersedes sovereignty. Under such conditions, freedom is not merely endangered—it becomes irrelevant.

China’s modern trajectory exemplifies this logic. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, the Chinese Communist Party imposed an unforgiving form of political control. Yet it was precisely this imposition of order—ruthless though it was—that laid the groundwork for China’s meteoric rise. By extinguishing internal dissent, the CCP created the conditions necessary for long-term economic planning, infrastructure development, and integration into global markets. In three decades, China transitioned from inward-looking authoritarianism to a formidable global power—not because it embraced freedom, but because it prioritized stability.

The key insight is simple: chaos is the enemy of progress. Disorder—whether driven by ethnic strife, sectarian politics, or decaying institutions—has been one of India’s most enduring challenges. Since 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has brought a degree of cohesion and clarity to the governance model, restoring direction to a state long beset by drift. Yet, fault lines remain. From separatist movements to criminalized politics, several regions in India continue to struggle with chronic instability.

If India is serious about achieving the vision of Viksit Bharat by 2047, political order cannot remain a rhetorical ambition—it must be institutionalized. And this requires a blunt reckoning with the inherited architecture of governance. Many of India's institutions are colonial holdovers—designed to rule a subjugated population, not empower a sovereign citizenry. Their functioning is slow, opaque, and frequently obstructive. Unless these institutions are thoroughly reformed, they will continue to frustrate developmental ambitions rather than facilitate them.

The Modi government has shown resolve in pockets, but systemic reform remains an unfinished—and perhaps deliberately avoided—agenda. Transforming governance demands more than technocratic tweaks; it requires political courage, intellectual clarity, and the ability to question sacrosanct liberal orthodoxies. 

For instance, diversity is often celebrated as a national strength. But history offers a more sobering picture: societies with less internal fragmentation—more cohesive in religious cultural aspects—tend to move faster in achieving economic and cultural ascendancy. Homogeneity, for all its discomforts in polite discourse, has often gone hand in hand with order and effectiveness.

If India is to become a truly developed nation by 2047, it must make difficult choices. It must find ways to reduce friction—political, ethnic, administrative—and foster a more unified sense of purpose. That does not mean eliminating difference, but it does mean subordinating factionalism to national coherence. Political freedom, far from being the starting point, is the end product of a stable order and a flourishing society.

A republic is only as strong as the foundation it rests upon. India must decide whether it wants to be a nation permanently negotiating its internal contradictions—or one that builds durable order and, through it, secures lasting freedom.

Kissinger’s warning and the India-Pakistan ceasefire: When friendship with America turns costly

“It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.” ~ Attributed to Henry Kissinger by William F. Buckley Jr.

This darkly prophetic remark, reportedly made by Henry Kissinger during a phone conversation in 1968 amid the bloody churn of the Vietnam War, encapsulates the paradox at the heart of American foreign policy. 

The conversation, as recounted by Buckley, revolved around the tragic fate of two South Vietnamese presidents—Ngo Dinh Diem, overthrown and executed in a CIA-backed coup, and Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, who was later abandoned by his American patrons and left to flee his crumbling nation. Kissinger, the master tactician of realpolitik and the quintessential deep state functionary, understood the ruthless logic of empires better than most.

Contrary to the high-minded rhetoric peddled by Hollywood stars, media pundits, and Ivy League theorists, the post-World War II American foreign policy has rarely been about promoting democracy, human rights, free trade or global peace. 

These are the ornamental veneers, the palatable narratives sold to the world. Beneath them lies a colder, more enduring objective: the consolidation and perpetuation of American hegemony. Whether in Latin America, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia, Washington’s actions have consistently favoured strategic dominance over ethical consistency.

It is in this broader context that America's recent role as a peacemaker between India and Pakistan must be viewed. While Washington claims to play the benevolent intermediary, its deeper motivations are strategic. Peace talks, ceasefires, and crisis diplomacy offer the United States not just influence but leverage—particularly over two nuclear-armed neighbours with divergent trajectories.

Pakistan, economically fragile and politically unstable, remains deeply enmeshed in what is often described as the triad of the “three A’s”: America, Army, and Allah. The first provides aid and international cover; the second runs the state; the third, increasingly, offers the ideological glue in a fracturing polity. In such a context, America's leverage is overt, structural, and near-total.

India, on the other hand, presents a more complex challenge. A rising economic power and a vibrant, if often chaotic, democracy, India is not easily amenable to external pressure. But therein lies the risk. 

If New Delhi begins to rely on Washington to maintain strategic equilibrium in the subcontinent—especially in moments of acute crisis—it could slowly cede space in its foreign policy to American calculation. And when American interests inevitably diverge from Indian ones, history offers a clear warning: the United States has rarely hesitated to jettison even its closest partners in pursuit of its own geopolitical calculus.

Moreover, while the U.S. may occasionally make sacrifices to protect the interests of Western allies, its track record with non-Western nations is far more chequered—and often catastrophic. From orchestrating coups in Iran and Chile to plunging Iraq and Libya into prolonged chaos, American involvement has frequently ushered in not democracy, but disorder; not freedom, but tyranny; not development, but economic devastation. For many countries outside the Western fold, the American footprint has meant political instability wrapped in the language of liberation.

The lessons of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan—and indeed Pakistan itself—are not ancient history. They are cautionary tales still unfolding. India must remember: alliances with superpowers can offer short-term gains, but dependency, however gradual, may prove fatal in the long run.

Alien oceans, familiar chemistry: The mysterious case of Planet K2-18b

Scientists have detected molecules in the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet that, on Earth, are strongly linked to biological activity. The planet—K2-18b, located 124 light-years away in the constellation Leo—is classified as a "Hycean" world, potentially covered by a global ocean and enveloped in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

It is here that traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) have been tentatively identified. On Earth, these compounds are produced almost exclusively by living organisms, particularly marine microbes like phytoplankton.

These findings come from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which has already detected methane and carbon dioxide in K2-18b’s atmosphere. Now, the possible presence of DMS and DMDS has intensified speculation about the planet’s potential to host life.

Could we be approaching the first credible detection of alien life—or are these molecules the byproducts of unknown non-biological processes? Could what we classify as biosignatures on Earth arise differently in alien environments? And if life can emerge in the deep oceans of a planet orbiting a distant red dwarf star, how common might it be across the universe?

If confirmed, this would mark the strongest evidence yet of life beyond Earth. Given the vastness of the cosmos, it seems unlikely that Earth is unique. The Milky Way alone hosts hundreds of billions of stars, most with planetary systems. Beyond it lie countless galaxies, each with their own stars, moons, and planets—potentially trillions of worlds.

In a universe so expansive, dynamic, and ancient, the idea that life exists only here feels increasingly improbable. Perhaps life is not the exception, but the rule.

The Pfizer Papers: Unmasking the medical-industrial complex

Over the past century, human health and life expectancy have improved dramatically. The prevailing narrative—vigorously propagandized by the pharmaceutical industry—credits this progress primarily to the widespread use of medicines and vaccines. But is this claim justified? I believe it tells only a narrow, self-serving part of the story.

The real engine behind longer, healthier lives is not the pharmaceutical industry but the big transformation in living conditions. Today, people benefit from cleaner water, more nutritious food, better housing, enhanced hygiene, and more accessible education. Conflict-related deaths have declined. Public health infrastructure, law enforcement, and economic stability have improved in most parts of the world. These factors, not pills and injections, have laid the groundwork for better health outcomes on a global scale.

In fact, the over-reliance on pharmaceutical products may be doing more harm than good. Many of today’s chronic illnesses—such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and hypertension—can often be prevented or significantly managed through lifestyle changes rather than long-term medication. Those who maintain balanced diets, sleep well, exercise regularly, and avoid excessive medication often fare better than those who rely heavily on pharmaceutical interventions.

This argument is advanced forcefully in The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer's Crimes Against Humanity, edited by Naomi Wolf and Amy Kelly, with a foreword by Stephen K. Bannon. The book makes the convincing case that the global pharmaceutical industry, far from being a benevolent force, may be complicit in undermining public health, individual freedoms, and democratic governance.

Focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors allege a disturbing confluence of interests among Big Pharma, government regulatory bodies, mainstream media, and major social media platforms. According to the book, these actors worked in coordinated tandem—not merely to manage a public health emergency, but to shape a one-dimensional narrative, suppress dissent, and manipulate public perception. 

This alliance, the book argues, brainwashed large segments of the population into accepting extended lockdowns, masking mandates, and mass vaccination campaigns—despite growing evidence that these vaccines failed to prevent transmission and, in many cases, led to serious side effects.

This critique is particularly damning in the case of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. The authors contend that both Pfizer and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) failed to conduct or disclose adequate safety testing. Despite possessing knowledge of serious adverse events, they proceeded with the vaccine rollout under the protective umbrella of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act—legislation that grants pharmaceutical companies immunity from liability during public health emergencies.

This immunity, originally designed to enable swift crisis response, has effectively shielded corporations from legal consequences even when their products cause harm. The result, the authors argue, is a regulatory environment where corporate profit is prioritized over public safety, and where public trust is eroded by the very institutions meant to protect it.

Moreover, the book suggests that social media companies played a pivotal role in enforcing this narrative. Posts questioning vaccine efficacy or highlighting side effects were systematically suppressed, deplatformed, or labeled as misinformation—even when they were backed by data or legitimate scientific concern. The suppression of alternative views and scientific debate, the book warns, marks a dangerous slide toward digital authoritarianism masquerading as public health advocacy.

To be clear, this is not an argument against all medicine or legitimate pharmaceutical intervention. But it is crucial to draw a line between genuine medical progress and a corporatized and bureaucratized health regime that equates public well-being with forcing people to consume certain medical products and locking down the global economy. 

At its core, The Pfizer Papers calls for a reckoning—a reexamination of the powerful nexus between corporate interests, government agencies, and information platforms. It raises questions about regulatory capture, media integrity, and the right of individuals to make informed medical decisions without coercion or censorship.

As citizens in a data-driven world, we have to fight for transparency, accountability, and independent oversight of those who shape public health policy. Real health is not manufactured in Big Pharma’s laboratories—it is achieved through clean air, honest governance, nutritious food, community resilience, and personal autonomy.

People, Power & the Politics of the Past: Between Zinn’s progressive vision and Harman’s Marxist doctrine

History, as the adage goes, is written by the victors. From imperial chronicles etched into stone to modern state-sponsored textbooks, the telling of the past has long been a prerogative of those who prevailed in the political and military arenas. The vanquished, when given voice at all, are often consigned to the footnotes of history — if not erased altogether.

Yet there exists a third, more elusive narrator in the grand chronicle of civilization: the ordinary person. The farmer whose grain fed empires, the weaver whose textiles clothed kings, the soldier who marched for causes he did not choose. Their lives shaped the world as profoundly as any monarch's edict, yet their stories remain the most underrepresented — rarely told in their own voice, often mediated through the lens of ideology.

In the last century, Marxist and leftist historians have positioned themselves as champions of the voiceless. They promised a historiography rooted in the lived experiences of the working class, the oppressed, and the colonized — a “history from below.” Yet the irony is striking: while seeking to subvert elite narratives, many of these works fall into their own hierarchy of abstraction. Revolutions are told through the speeches of Lenin, Mao, or Castro. Labor struggles are described in terms of party resolutions and strike statistics. The workers, ironically, remain nameless — symbolic placeholders in a broader ideological argument.

It is in this context that Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (1980) arrived like a thunderclap. With an opening salvo that declared, “I will try to tell the history of the United States as seen by the victims of the system,” Zinn set out not merely to revise American history, but to fundamentally reorient its vantage point. Gone were the paeans to founding fathers and frontier heroes. In their place stood the Cherokee driven from their land, the African slave resisting dehumanization, the Lowell mill girl writing poetry in defiance, the Vietnam War protester, the labor organizer, the civil rights marcher.

Zinn's narrative is not concerned with neutrality. He makes no pretensions of being above the fray. “There is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation,” he reminds the reader. His allegiance is unapologetically with the oppressed. And yet, even as he shatters the myth of benevolent empire, Zinn occasionally erects new myths of his own — idealizing Indigenous societies or downplaying the internal contradictions of resistance movements. The risk, as some critics have noted, is that he sometimes replaces the great man theory of history with the “noble victim” theory — flattening complexity in service of moral clarity.

Nonetheless, Zinn’s achievement is profound. He reframes American history not as a march of progress, but as a contested terrain of power, violence, and defiance. His chapter titles alone — “Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress,” “The Intimately Oppressed,” “Robber Barons and Rebels” — signal a deliberate inversion of traditional narrative frames. This was not merely a history book; it was a cultural intervention.

Following in Zinn’s footsteps, though on a far more ambitious scale, is Chris Harman’s A People’s History of the World (1999). Harman attempts the near-impossible: to tell the story of all human civilization — from hunter-gatherer tribes to the dawn of the 21st century — through the lens of class struggle. His is a world history stripped of kings and chronicles, peopled instead by those who toiled, rebelled, and resisted.

Yet here, the promise of a “history from below” encounters a paradox of its own. Harman, a prominent member of the British Socialist Workers Party and editor of Socialist Review, wears his Marxist commitments on his sleeve. His prose, while passionate and erudite, lacks the narrative vigor that made Zinn's work so widely read beyond academic and activist circles. Where Zinn painted in vivid, human strokes, Harman often delivers polemic. The result is a book that, while ideologically rigorous, sometimes reads more like a manifesto than a story.

His chapter on the fall of the Roman Empire, for example, is not a meditation on cultural decline or moral decay but a critique of overreliance on slavery and the parasitic nature of aristocratic power. When writing about feudalism, he focuses not on chivalric myth or castle intrigue, but on the surplus labor extracted from serfs. These are valid and important perspectives — yet they are delivered with such theoretical density that the reader may struggle to connect emotionally with the people whose lives the book seeks to illuminate.

Moreover, in applying the Marxist framework universally — even to prehistoric and tribal societies — Harman occasionally stretches the materialist analysis to the point of distortion. Not all historical events can be adequately explained through the binary of exploitation and revolt. Human motivations are messier: shaped by religion, kinship, love, fear, accident. Harman’s strict ideological lens sometimes leaves no room for these subtler forces.

However, Harman is aware of history's recurring cycles of rebellion and repression. He writes, “Again and again, the mass of people have shown their capacity to fight for a new and better world. But again and again they have been diverted, betrayed or crushed.” This refrain is a recognition that the historical agency of the masses, while often stifled, is never fully extinguished.

The comparison between Zinn and Harman reveals more than just differences in style or scope. It illustrates the tension inherent in writing history from below. Can such a history ever be free of ideology? Should it be? Must a people’s historian choose between emotional resonance and analytical rigor, between storytelling and structure?

Perhaps the answer lies in synthesis. Zinn's emotive storytelling can inspire, but needs anchoring in nuanced analysis. Harman’s intellectual scaffolding is fine, but cries out for the warmth of lived detail. The future of “people’s history” may well depend on the union of both: a commitment to truth without romanticism, to justice without dogma, to narrative without myth.

In an age of resurgent nationalism, culture wars, and contested memory, the question “Who gets to tell history?” has never been more urgent. The people’s history project — flawed, unfinished, and vital — remains one of the most important intellectual tasks of our time. As Zinn once wrote: “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness.”

The historian of the people must remember all of it.

Beyond Gandhi: Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s contrarian view of Indian nationalism

Is Nirad C. Chaudhuri's Autobiography of an Unknown Indian a paean to the West or a sharp critique of the East? The initial pages might lead one to the former conclusion, yet a deeper immersion exposes a far more enigmatic and compelling narrative. This is not simply the story of an individual, but a multifaceted exploration of an "unknown India"—a land struggling to articulate its identity within the complex and often corrosive embrace of colonialism.

The first impression one might glean from Chaudhuri's Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is of an Anglophile sensibility bordering on contempt for his native land. While this initial assessment is not entirely unfounded, it proves to be a superficial understanding upon more profound engagement. Chaudhuri's India, initially perceived as a stagnant morass of tradition and intellectual deficiency, emerges as the very subject of his intricate inquiry: an "unknown India" grappling to define itself in the crucible of colonial encounter.

This critique, though at times seemingly harsh, is not driven by mere negativity. Instead, it functions as a rigorous diagnostic tool, meticulously identifying the perceived ailments plaguing the Indian psyche and polity. Chaudhuri's purpose, it becomes evident, is to trace the arduous and often contradictory process through which Indians of his era wrestled with their "Indianness," a self-awareness born from the very recognition of these internal fractures. This perspective lends a compelling logic to his seemingly severe observations.

Chaudhuri's stance on India's future is neither overly optimistic nor despairingly pessimistic. He leaves the nation's destiny suspended, an "unknown" quantity whose trajectory remains uncertain. This ambiguity is not a failure of resolution but rather a logical consequence of his analysis. He posits that India's path forward is contingent on the agency of its people, unburdened by illusions of past glories or guarantees of future triumphs. His assertion that even national decline necessitates leadership is a particularly resonant and unsettling observation, highlighting his deep skepticism towards the prevailing political class, whom he perceives as mirroring the "petty mindedness" of the populace.

The structure of the autobiography, divided into four parts, builds Chaudhuri's argument. The initial exploration of his ancestral and maternal villages, culminating in the pivotal chapter "England," reveals the formative influence of a refracted, almost mythical understanding of the West. This "chiaroscuro of knowledge," with its intense highlights and profound shadows, created a lasting internal division, preventing a complete anchoring in the Indian soil. His poignant description of this bifurcated consciousness – the "plebeian world of his Indian life" versus "the world of his aristocratic English aspirations" – resonates with a profound sense of alienation.

His citation of Bankim Chandra Chatterji's satirical allegory, depicting Englishmen as tigers and Indians as discreetly hiding monkeys, and his observation of Gandhi's reliance on Western academic accolades when praising Nehru, serve as potent illustrations of the ingrained hierarchical perceptions of the time. These literary and anecdotal inclusions enrich the narrative, making his analysis more engaging and intellectually stimulating.

The second section delves into his formative years in the context of the Indian Renaissance, which Chaudhuri views as a promising but ultimately truncated movement. He lauds figures like Raja Rammohan Roy, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, and Swami Vivekananda, but crucially emphasizes their engagement with Western intellectualism as a catalyst for their effectiveness. His identification of the period between 1916 and 1918 as the onset of this cultural decay offers a specific, albeit debatable, point of historical analysis. His exploration of the complex and often contradictory Hindu attitudes towards Muslims during the rise of nationalism provides a sobering and historically significant insight, moving beyond simplistic narratives of unified resistance. The analogy of viewing Muslim peasants as akin to low-caste Hindu tenants or livestock is particularly stark and unsettling, revealing the deep-seated social hierarchies of the time.

The narrative shifts to Calcutta in the third part, offering a vivid and often visceral portrayal of the burgeoning metropolis. His description of the monsoon-ravaged city as "Venice with a vengeance" is a striking example of his literary flair, transforming a mundane observation into a memorable image. Even his account of the 1910 Hindu-Muslim riot, initially dismissed as "great fun" due to its relative lack of brutality compared to later events, subtly foreshadows the escalating communal tensions that would plague the nation. His recounting of his extensive reading, particularly in Western history (Stubbs, Green, Mommsen), underscores the intellectual framework that informs his observations. His candid admission of academic failure due to "diffuse and haphazard" reading and a lack of "will-power" adds a layer of personal vulnerability to his intellectual pursuits.

The final section reveals a man grappling with the harsh realities of life in Calcutta, a city he perceives as succumbing to "pathological megalopolitanism." His assertion that "Hindu society does not teach its youth to face life bravely" is a provocative and central tenet of his critique. While acknowledging his evident courage, it is tempting to attribute this resilience, in Chaudhuri's own estimation, to Western ideals rather than his native tradition, highlighting his enduring intellectual and emotional tether to England. His disdain for the "local English" juxtaposed with his yearning for "intimate personal contact with Englishmen" in England reveals a nuanced and somewhat paradoxical relationship with the colonizers. He critiques their mercantile spirit while simultaneously idealizing a more refined, intellectual English archetype.

Chaudhuri's perspective on the rise of Gandhian politics is particularly noteworthy for its deviation from conventional hagiography. His initial embrace of pre-Gandhi nationalism, driven by its potential to foster historical and political consciousness, gives way to disillusionment as Gandhi's influence grows. He argues that Gandhi "simplified Indian nationalism," stripping it of its intellectual and political depth and transforming it into a movement rooted in a "servus" morality – pure and lofty, yet ultimately born of subjugation and passivity. His description of the non-cooperation movement as a "monstrous abortion" is a powerful and controversial indictment of a pivotal moment in Indian history.

The concluding melancholic note, "My low spirts were apostle. There seemed to be no cure for them," underscores the profound sense of alienation that permeates the autobiography. By acknowledging in interviews that his work transcends mere personal narrative to encompass the history of a nation, Chaudhuri reaffirms the broader scope of his project, a point explicitly stated in his preface regarding the "struggle of a civilisation with hostile environment.”

Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is far more than a personal memoir. It is a rigorous, often contrarian, and deeply intellectual engagement with the complexities of pre-independence India, viewed through the intensely personal yet acutely analytical lens of Nirad C. Chaudhuri. His unflinching critique, while potentially unsettling, serves as a valuable, if contentious, contribution to the understanding of Indian identity, consciousness, and the enduring legacy of colonialism. The book remains a dynamic and thought-provoking work, demanding careful consideration of its multifaceted arguments and the enduring enigma of the "unknown India" it seeks to illuminate.

Communist heart of capitalism: How corporate power mirrors communist structures

Common discourse often presents capitalism and communism as fundamentally opposed ideologies. Capitalism is celebrated for its free markets, individual liberties, and democratic values, while communism is criticized for state control, repression, and inefficiency. However, a closer look at the workings of modern capitalism—specifically through the lens of multinational corporations—reveals striking similarities to the very communist systems it stands against.

At the core of today's capitalist economy are the multinational corporations, which wield economic clout rivaling that of many nations. These corporate giants operate under hierarchical structures that closely resemble the centralized control found in communist regimes. At the pinnacle of this hierarchy is the board of directors and top executives, a governing body that functions similarly to the politburo in a communist state.

In both systems, ultimate authority resides in an elite group. Just as the politburo maintains significant power with little accountability to the populace, corporate boards and executives exert near-absolute control over their organizations. Critical decisions regarding strategy, resource allocation, and corporate direction flow from this inner circle, leaving the majority of employees—much like average citizens in a communist society—without any meaningful input. 

Workers are primarily tasked with executing directives from above, underscoring a lack of agency that echoes the limited autonomy experienced in authoritarian regimes.

Moreover, the relentless pursuit of expansion, a hallmark of communist nations seeking global influence, is equally evident in the mission of multinational corporations. These entities strive tirelessly for growth, seeking new markets and resources across the globe, often bolstered by alliances with powerful states, particularly the United States. This urge for expansion reflects a deeper drive for control and influence, reminiscent of the ideological ambitions found in communist systems.

The notion that capitalism thrives on free markets and democratic principles is further complicated by the reality of corporate power. Instead of fostering genuine market competition, advanced stages of capitalism seem to prioritize corporate supremacy, often at the expense of local communities and environmental integrity. 

The geopolitical and military might of nations—such as the United States—frequently supports corporate interests by creating favorable conditions for expansion, ensuring that companies have access to vital resources and markets. This symbiotic relationship blurs the line between corporate capitalism and state power, suggesting that corporate interests may dominate the global landscape more than ever.

The consequences of this corporate-driven globalization are multifaceted and often contradict the ideal of shared capitalist prosperity. While corporations and their home governments may thrive, countless communities worldwide grapple with exploitation, environmental degradation, and a diminishing sense of autonomy. The freedom that corporations possess to operate globally does not necessarily equate to freedom or well-being for the local populations impacted by their actions. 

While traditional narratives frame capitalism and communism as diametrically opposed, the internal organization and global ambitions of large corporations reveal a distinct "communist" character. 

The centralized authority of corporate "politburos," the limited agency of the workforce, and the relentless drive for expansion all mirror the power structures and behaviors typically associated with communist regimes. This perspective challenges the conventional understanding of capitalism and raises critical questions about the true beneficiaries of a system increasingly dominated by powerful, internally authoritarian entities. It compels us to reevaluate the intersections of power, autonomy, and the ethical implications of corporate globalization.

The Dollar's game: Power, perception, mythology and control of global economy

The very notion of money is a constructed reality, a shared illusion we mistake for tangible truth. Its value isn't inherent; it's a meticulously crafted myth, propagated by the confluence of cultural, social, political, and industrial forces. This orchestrated belief, this collective hallucination, is the bedrock of our economic system.

This belief, this faith in the power of money, is not fundamentally different from our belief in God or a political ideology. It's a leap of faith, a collective acceptance of an intangible concept that shapes our reality. Just as religious or political doctrines require widespread acceptance to hold sway, so too does money.

The global dominance of the American dollar exemplifies this principle. It's not a testament to inherent superiority, but a demonstration of the United States' capacity to impose its narrative, to convince—or coerce—the world into accepting its currency as the universal measure of value. This power is wielded through the manipulation of shared belief, a testament to the sway of collective perception.

From this understanding, the fetishization of currency backed by gold, or any other commodity, as the sole arbiter of monetary integrity becomes a flawed premise. Money, at its core, is a tool for quantifying exchange, its effectiveness tied to stability and transparency. The gold standard, far from being a safeguard, merely relocates the locus of manipulation, shifting it from printing presses to gold reserves.

This shift reveals the true source of the dollar’s instability, which is not the removal of the gold standard, but the unchecked expansion of its supply. Each new injection of dollars into the global market acts as a silent tax, a form of economic imperialism that devalues the holdings of even the poorest nations, a direct consequence of faith in the dollar.

Therefore, the search for an incorruptible monetary system, whether anchored in gold or digital code, is a pursuit of a chimera. 

Money, ultimately, is a reflection of power, a tool shaped by belief and political reality. Given that its value derives from shared belief, and beliefs are always malleable, the question remains: can a truly neutral system ever exist, or are we forever trapped within the subjective, politically charged narratives of our economic myths?

Was Indus Valley Civilization the fountainhead of democracy? The myth of Ancient Athens

Great Bath of Mohenjo-Daro 

Democracy is often credited to Ancient Athens, where formal institutions of popular governance emerged in the 5th century BCE. However, some scholars argue that democratic principles may have deeper historical roots, possibly extending to civilizations like the Indus Valley Civilization, which thrived from 3300 to 1300 BCE in present-day India and Pakistan.

Due to the undeciphered Indus script, the political structure of the  Indus Valley Civilization remains uncertain. Yet, archaeological evidence suggests a highly organized society with meticulously planned cities such as Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. These urban centers featured sophisticated drainage systems, standardized weights and measures, and well-structured streets, but notably lacked monumental palaces or elaborate royal tombs—hallmarks of centralized monarchy.

Unlike contemporary Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, dominated by powerful rulers, the  Indus Valley Civilization presents little evidence of autocratic rule. Instead, its uniform infrastructure suggests governance through councils or assemblies, where power may have been distributed among merchants, elders, and religious leaders. While definitive proof of early democracy is elusive, this decentralized structure challenges the notion that democratic ideals originated solely in Athens.

Western historiography often overlooks the limitations of Athenian democracy. Political participation was restricted to free and property-owning male citizens, excluding close to 90% of the population, including women, enslaved individuals and non-citizens. In contrast, the  Indus Valley Civilization presents no evidence of rigid patriarchal control akin to that of Ancient Athens. 

A common misconception is that veiling originated in Asia, yet historical records show that aristocratic Athenian women were expected to remain indoors and be fully covered in public. Meanwhile, ancient Persian women—contemporaries of the Greeks—could own property, engage in commerce, and participate in social life, suggesting greater gender equity in non-Greek civilizations. No depictions of veiled women have been found in  Indus Valley Civilization artifacts.

Greek philosopher Aristotle reinforced rigid gender roles, asserting women’s inferiority and justifying their exclusion from public and political life. Other ancient societies, however, exhibited more fluid gender norms and greater economic and social participation for women. Persia’s progressive stance on women’s rights diminished following its conquest by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE. With the spread of Hellenistic influence, gender roles became more rigid, and the restrictions characteristic of Greek society began to take hold in Persian territories.

These considerations invite a reevaluation of democracy’s origins. Concepts like collective decision-making, the absence of absolute rulers, and participatory governance may have emerged independently in multiple civilizations, including the  Indus Valley Civilization. Democracy, rather than being the singular invention of one culture, likely evolved across different societies, shaped by their unique historical contexts.

The trifecta of power: Greed, guilt and fear as the foundations of civilization

Civilizations are not built on morality, reason, or cultural pride but on three primal forces: greed, guilt, and fear. While we celebrate justice, patriotism, and faith as noble ideals, they often mask deeper motivations that shape human behavior and sustain power structures.

The Illusion of Morality

Morality is rarely a pure guiding force. Instead, it emerges from guilt and fear—fear of consequences and guilt for failing societal norms. People act ethically not because of an inherent sense of right and wrong, but to avoid punishment or inner turmoil. If morality is just an emotional tool for social control, can it truly claim to be an independent force?

Reason: A Tool of Justification

Reason is often praised as humanity’s defining trait, yet it frequently serves to rationalize instincts rather than challenge them. Political ideologies, economic systems, and religious doctrines claim rational foundations but are deeply rooted in greed, guilt, and fear. More often than not, reason constructs justifications for what we already desire to believe.

Culture and Patriotism: Reinforced Through Fear and Guilt

Culture and patriotism are often linked to guilt—guilt for failing ancestors and fear of repeating historical tragedies. National pride is built on narratives of past suffering, ensuring conformity through coercion rather than appreciation. Societal cohesion thrives on these anxieties, maintaining power by appealing to inherited duty and existential threats.

Faith: A Response to Fear and Desire

Belief in God stems from fear of meaninglessness and a desire for security—be it wealth, power, or an afterlife. Even atheists place faith in ideologies, science, or progress, crafting secular belief systems that serve the same existential function. Faith, in any form, offers reassurance in a chaotic world, reinforcing societal order.

Power and the Manipulation of Emotion

Greed, guilt, and fear are the ultimate instruments of control. Effective rulers understand that people respond more to these primal forces than to reason or morality. Political and religious leaders cultivate them to shape public behavior, ensuring stability while maintaining their influence.

To grasp how societies function, we must strip away comforting illusions and recognize the raw mechanics of power. Only by confronting these forces can we hope to navigate them—either as those who wield power or those who resist it.

The enigma of brain in a vat: Is the world real or a simulation?

What is the mind? Is it a function of the brain, or does it possess a deeper, intrinsic quality that transcends mere neural activity? Does the mind endure beyond the final cessation of brain function? With over 100 billion neurons collaborating in the intricate tapestry of the mature human brain, what roles do these cells play in shaping our mental experiences? 

And when we make choices, are we guided solely by intricate chemical and electrical reactions in the brain, or do we exert genuine free will?

If our decisions are nothing more than the result of biochemical reactions, then the concept of free will becomes questionable. It raises alarming possibilities: can we manipulate individuals into making specific choices simply by altering the brain’s chemical and electrical processes? Conversely, if the mind is independent of these material mechanisms, we might argue for the existence of free will—a belief that our choices stem from a source beyond mere biological determinism.

The connection between the mind and matter—between our mental experiences and the physical brain—has confounded humanity for millennia. Across civilizations, sages and philosophers have articulated theological doctrines and philosophical theses attempting to elucidate this relationship. Yet today, many of these ancient perspectives are often relegated to the realms of mythology and fiction.

Despite our advances, the fundamental questions persist: What is the true relationship between mind and matter? How do we make choices? When we utter the word "I," what do we truly mean?

In contemporary discourse, philosophers and scientists alike wrestle with conceptual puzzles such as the "brain in a vat" thought experiment. This scenario compels us to envision ourselves as disembodied brains immersed in a simulation, questioning the authenticity of our experiences. Is the universe we perceive genuine, or is it merely an elaborate construct of neural processes, akin to a digital matrix?

This conundrum is hardly a novel invention. Ancient philosophers and sages anticipated aspects of these debates, presenting the human body as a vessel—a clay container—designed to house the soul or mind. In this view, every living being embodies the duality of existence: the physical form as a "vat" and the mind as the "soul."

Fossil Fuels, Space & Science: Why Petroleum Is Just as Natural as Solar and Wind

The notion that solar and wind power are "natural," while petroleum, diesel, and gas are "unnatural," is a narrative developed and propagated by Western intellectuals, politicians, geopolitical strategists, universities and media houses. 

This distinction is not rooted in science but in ideology—often serving as a tool to hinder the energy independence and economic growth of developing nations by limiting their access to affordable and reliable fuel sources.

Everything in the universe is natural. Humans are a product of nature, and so is everything we create—cars, buildings, AI, and even petrol and diesel. The distinction between "natural" and "unnatural" is an ideological construct, not a scientific reality.

Petroleum is composed of hydrocarbons formed through planetary processes we do not fully understand. The claim that it originates solely from ancient organic matter is flawed—if true, how do we explain the presence of hydrocarbons in space? 

Scientists have detected them on distant planets and moons, where no dinosaurs or prehistoric forests ever existed. This suggests that hydrocarbons are not remnants of past life but a fundamental part of planetary chemistry.

The real question, then, is not whether hydrocarbons are "natural" but why we insist on labeling some energy sources as "pure" while vilifying others. Understanding hydrocarbons beyond ideological biases could lead to more balanced energy policies and innovation.

The geopolitical consequences of declining birth rates: A warning for the future

Instead of looking to nations with shrinking populations as models of success, India’s policymakers should study those that maintain high birth rates while balancing economic growth and social stability. A thriving nation fosters family-friendly policies, invests in its youth, and recognizes that demographic health is as crucial as economic strength.

History shows that the future belongs to societies that prioritize strong families and high birth rates. In any civilizational conflict, military and economic superiority may offer short-term gains, but in the long run, the society with the higher birth rate prevails. Without a new generation to carry the torch, even the greatest civilizations fade into history.

A birth rate below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman signals slow but inevitable decline. A shrinking workforce leads to labor shortages, stagnating innovation, and slowing economic growth. While automation and productivity gains may temporarily mask the impact, the long-term effects are unavoidable: fewer taxpayers, strained pension systems, and overburdened healthcare services.

Imagine a nation where the elderly outnumber the young, with too few workers to sustain the economy. Who will power industries, drive innovation, govern the country, or defend its borders. As populations decline, geopolitical influence wanes. A country unable to sustain its population risks losing global standing, military strength, and economic clout.

Many nations turn to immigration to replenish their workforce, but this comes with challenges—cultural integration, social cohesion, and political friction. Strong national identities and welfare states often struggle to balance the need for workers with the complexities of assimilation. More importantly, relying on immigration is a temporary fix that ignores the root problem: the decline of native-born populations.

A falling birth rate reshapes a nation’s political landscape. With fewer young voters, policies increasingly cater to an aging population, leading to economic stagnation and resistance to change. Without a course correction, the consequences of demographic decline will reshape the future in ways many fail to foresee.

Elon Musk’s dream of Mars landing by 2029: Bold vision or political theater?

Elon Musk has a habit of making audacious predictions. On Saturday, the SpaceX founder declared that Starship—the world’s most powerful rocket—would set course for Mars by the end of 2026, carrying Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus. Even more astonishingly, he suggested that human landings could begin “as soon as 2029.”

If this timeline holds, it would mark one of the most transformative moments in human history. The dream of becoming a multi-planetary species would no longer belong to the realm of science fiction but to the tangible future. But the real question is: does Musk truly believe in these projections, or is this just another instance of him thinking out loud—leveraging grand promises to energize investors, engineers, and policymakers?

Musk is more than just a visionary; he is a shrewd businessman and an increasingly influential political player. His bold proclamations serve multiple purposes. On one hand, they spark excitement, mobilizing resources and talent to push SpaceX’s ambitions forward. On the other, they strategically reinforce his economic and political influence—keeping SpaceX at the center of government contracts, shaping space policy, and cementing his status as a figurehead of technological progress.

History offers ample reason for skepticism. Musk has made bold promises before—about self-driving cars, hyperloops, and Mars colonization—many of which have yet to materialize on schedule, if at all. Space exploration remains one of the most complex and unforgiving endeavors imaginable. While SpaceX has undeniably revolutionized the industry, the reality of human landings on Mars by 2029 remains deeply uncertain.

I don’t believe Musk’s 2029 Mars landing is a genuine target. Rather, it is a calculated narrative—one designed to appeal to an audience that craves American exceptionalism and the projection of global technological and military dominance. Whether Musk’s prediction is an earnest aspiration or a strategic exaggeration, one thing is certain: We will know the truth in 2029, which is just four years away.

Reforms by Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Gorbachev, Deng, Trump and the Risks of Transforming a Nation

In his 2021 book Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, historian Vladislav M. Zubok argues that Mikhail Gorbachev’s well-intentioned but misguided reforms were the primary cause of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. 



Rather than stabilizing the economy, strengthening political structures, and improving living conditions, Gorbachev’s twin policies of Perestroika (economic restructuring) and Glasnost (political openness) acted like the fabled Sorcerer’s Apprentice—unleashing forces he could not control.

Instead of fostering a more resilient Soviet state, these reforms ignited long-suppressed nationalist and ethnic grievances, while also raising expectations for democracy. The unintended consequences of Gorbachev’s reforms accelerated the unraveling of the Soviet system, culminating in its collapse in 1991.

Contrast this with China, where Deng Xiaoping faced a similar challenge in 1989. The Tiananmen Square protests, driven by demands for political freedoms and ethnic autonomy, presented a direct threat to the Communist Party’s control. But unlike Gorbachev, Deng took decisive and brutal action—deploying tanks and troops to crush the uprising. This show of force ensured the survival of China’s one-party system and its continued economic rise. 

China’s rise as a global superpower was not merely the result of economic reforms but also of ruthless political control. Had Deng Xiaoping not ordered the military to suppress the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, China could have faced prolonged political unrest, potential regime instability, or even fragmentation—similar to what befell the Soviet Union.

By crushing the pro-democracy movement, Deng ensured the Communist Party’s unchallenged authority, creating the political stability necessary for China’s rapid economic growth. This brutal decision was arguably the linchpin that preserved the centralized power structure essential for China’s transformation into the world’s second-largest economy.

The lesson is clear: Reforming a nation is a perilous undertaking. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, leaders who attempt transformation without fully grasping the consequences risk unleashing forces that may ultimately destroy the very state they seek to strengthen.

Now, as Donald Trump once again attempts to reshape the United States with sweeping proposals on immigration, government institutions, and the economy, one must ask: what happens if his reforms destabilize American society? If social and political forces spiral out of control, will Trump—if given the opportunity—have the will to act decisively, as Deng Xiaoping did? Or will he, like Gorbachev, preside over a nation fracturing beyond repair?

I believe Trump is more likely to follow Gorbachev’s path, overseeing a rapid decline in America's military and economic dominance rather than strengthening it.

Holi: A festival of water, colors and nature

Happy Holi!

Holi, the festival of water, colors and joy, is deeply intertwined with the natural spirit of Hinduism. Unlike many faiths rooted in deserts or dry landscapes, Hinduism emerged in the lush, fertile lands of the Indian subcontinent, where monsoons breathe life into the earth and sacred rivers flow. The celebration of Holi, marked by water and vibrant hues, is a reflection of this ecological connection.

Water holds a sacred place in Hindu tradition, and no story captures this reverence better than the legendary descent of the River Ganga. According to ancient texts, Sage Bhagiratha’s penance moved the heavens, and with the aid of Lord Shiva, the mighty Ganga flowed from celestial realms to earth. This tale is not just mythology—it symbolizes the life-giving power of rivers, the sanctity of nature, and the harmonious relationship between Hinduism and the environment.

The roots of this reverence stretch back to the Rig Veda, the oldest Hindu scripture, where the Ganga is first mentioned. The very genesis of Vedic Hinduism coincides with the river’s earthly flow, signifying the spiritual and ecological bond between the religion and its surroundings. Holi, celebrated with splashes of water and an explosion of colors, is a tribute to this natural heritage—a reminder of the blessings of monsoons, rivers, the fertile land and the vibrant colors of the natural world.

In a world where environmental concerns are growing, Holi stands as a testament to Hinduism’s deep respect for a natural and spiritual way of life. It is not just a festival of joy, but a vibrant acknowledgment of the elements that sustain life—water, earth, air and the eternal rhythm of seasons.