Ram Madhav

Is the die cast for Taliban? | OPINION

Ram Madhav, July 9, 2022

(The article was originally published by India Today on July 9, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Loya Jirga or Grand Assembly of religious leaders and elders, elected at the local levels, is the Afghan traditional democratic assembly system, in vogue for several centuries. In the Afghan political system, ratification by the Loya Jirga was considered […]

The Battle for Religious Reform

Ram Madhav, June 30, 2022

(The article was originally published in OPEN Magazine on June 30, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Someone needs to challenge the radical and revisionist interpretations of Islam The horror of Udaipur is a chilling reminder of the deep penetration of Islamist radicalism among the Indian Muslim youth. Hindu–Muslim tensions have a history of more than […]

Liberalism and Its Discontents

Ram Madhav, June 21, 2022

(The review was originally published by Chintan – India Foundation Blogs on June 21, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Francis Fukuyama is one of the West’s most renowned public intellectuals with profound liberal credentials. Once acquired name and notoriety for his theory of the “End of History”, Fukuyama traveled a distance in the last three […]

Eccentric Culture – A Theory of Western Civilization

Ram Madhav, June 9, 2022

(The review was originally published by Chintan – India Foundation Blogs on June 9, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Do identities matter? A debate has been raging in the Western world for several decades now. While classical liberalism rejected group identities in the name of individual liberty and freedom, neo-liberals tend to emphasize identities of […]

The Print | RSS’ Ram Madhav says Muslims ‘need to give up 3 concepts’: ‘Kafir, ummah, jihad to kill’

Ram Madhav, June 8, 2022

(The text of the interview was originally published by The Print on June 8, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) The three concepts of kafir (‘unbeliever’), ummah (a supra-national community tied by religion) and jihad (‘struggle’, often used in the sense of ‘holy war’) are hindering the assimilation of Muslims into Indian society at large, senior […]

Modi juggernaut might continue to roll on for many years to come

Ram Madhav, June 7, 2022

(The article was originally published in Times of India on June 7, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Politics is about leadership and narrative. Jawahar Lal Nehru, the longest serving Prime Minister of India, who held that portfolio for seventeen years – “six thousand days” as Amiya Rao and B G Rao called in their book […]

Doom – The Politics of Catastrophe

Ram Madhav, May 7, 2022

(The review was originally published by Chintan – India Foundation Blogs on May 7, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) The Covid pandemic has highlighted one important probability – mankind’s ability to self-destruct. The virus, that had caused SARS two decades ago or Covid two years ago, was suspected to be a byproduct of human experimentation […]

A Nation-First Narrative

Ram Madhav, April 23, 2022

(The article was originally published by India Today on April 23, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Access PDF here  In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping, the then supreme leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), dec­ided to focus exclusively on economic development. He realised that for the China dream to come true, the economy, shattered by […]

Democracy in South Asia

Ram Madhav, April 9, 2022

(The article was originally published by Chintan – India Foundation Blogs on April 9, 2022.Views expressed are personal.) Interestingly, two leaders have a serious problem with the RSS at the same time. One is Imran Khan, the outgoing Prime Minister of Pakistan. Isolated in the Pakistan National Assembly and faced with a definite ouster through […]