Columnists

Saikat Majumdar

Majumdar, author of ‘The Firebird’, teaches world literature at Stanford University, US.

Ironies and barricades: How between JNU and BHU, we see the brutal distance that separates us as a nation

Fri, Nov 22, 2019

At this moment, the two faces of student protest couldn’t be farther apart from each other. No denying that they are vastly different in scale and intensity, to say nothing of the fact that any activity in JNU is always on-camera nationwide in a way no other university in the country is.

There may not be a word for lynching in most Indian languages. We need one.

Sat, Oct 12, 2019

It is strange because it is new. Always. Even after 4,743 bodies — the number of people lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, as estimated by the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The liberal professional?

Fri, Jun 07, 2019

The idea of energising professional education with elements of liberal education in draft education policy hints at some possibilities of resolution of conflict between the two streams