By Ram Puniyani*  While delivering the Ramnath Goenka Lecture, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that India should take a ten-year pledge to root out the colonial mindset. In ten years, he noted, it will be 200 years since Lord Macaulay introduced the English-based education system. According to Modi, Macaulay’s project aimed to reshape Indian thought by dismantling indigenous knowledge systems and enforcing colonial education. He went on to argue that Macaulay’s “crime” was creating Indians who were “Indian in appearance but British in thought.” This, Modi claimed, destroyed India’s self-confidence and introduced a sense of inferiority.

By A Representative   Social Development for Communities (SDC) Foundation , a Dehradun -based public-interest organization working on climate change , sustainable development and environmental issues in Uttarakhand , has released its preliminary Factsheet on Char Dham Yatra 2025 . The document compiles data on pilgrimage days, footfall distribution, peak footfall dates and zero-pilgrim days across the five major pilgrimage sites— Kedarnath , Badrinath , Gangotri , Yamunotri and Hemkund Sahib —for the recently concluded Char Dham Yatra 2025. The Foundation announced preliminary results in a fact sheet ahead of a comprehensive Char Dham Yatra 2025 report saying, long-term planning, collaborative governance and sustained stakeholder engagement are essential to ensure that the Char Dham Yatra remains spiritually meaningful and environmentally secure. Presenting the factsheet, Anoop Nautiyal , Founder of SDC Foundation, noted that the 2025 Yatra recorded 51,06,346 pilgrims, compared ...

By S.V. Rajadurai*  The year 2025 marks the centenary of the Self-Respect Movement founded by Periyar E.V. Ramasami . The term self-respect encapsulates the core ideals of the movement: abolition of distinctions between Paraya and Brahmin , rich and poor, and men and women—distinctions upheld by the hierarchical caste order with Brahminism as its ideological foundation. Though the movement was centred in the Tamil-speaking areas of the Madras Presidency and Pondicherry, it reached the oppressed masses in Dharavi and Pune, the Travancore princely state, and the migrant Tamil communities in Malaya, Singapore, Ceylon and Burma.

By Dr. Manoj Kumar Mishra*  The Trump administration has set a new precedent by conducting twenty lethal pre-emptive strikes against alleged drug cartels from Venezuela, resulting in the deaths of around 80 individuals. According to the administration, the vessels operating in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific were carrying narcotics from Venezuela, and the victims of the attacks were labelled “narco-terrorists,” with the drug cartels equated to terrorist organisations.

By Shiran Illanperuma   Sundays at Paramasivam Pushpalatha’s home used to be a much livelier affair. It was her only day off from the factory and so she would pack seven days of domesticity into one. Her husband, Govindasamy Sivakumar, would sometimes take walks to avoid the hustle and bustle of the house being turned upside down in a frenzy of cooking and cleaning.

By Biljana Vankovska   A familiar drama has resurfaced in Skopje. While I was still in Beijing attending the CASS academic conference on the Belt and Road Initiative, news broke that the Vice Speaker of the Macedonian Parliament, accompanied by two MPs, formally received a Taiwanese parliamentary delegation. The visit came less than two weeks after the new Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China presented her credentials, filling a diplomatic post that had been vacant for a year and a half.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  Congress party’s internal developments have now become national news, with Karnataka emerging as a major challenge for the party high command. While Siddaramaiah has been regarded as an effective chief minister, it is also widely acknowledged that he returned to the position on the organisational groundwork laid by D. K. Shivakumar, who was assured the chief ministership after two and a half years. 

By Aditya Krishna Deora*  A new film titled “The Taj Story”—produced by CA Suresh Jha, written by Saurabh Pandey and Tushar Goel, and starring Paresh Rawal—has recently ignited controversy across India. Marketed as a “truth-telling” exploration of the Taj Mahal’s “hidden past,” the film claims that India’s most iconic monument is not a Mughal creation but an ancient Hindu temple—Tejo Mahalay. The film’s premise, directly derived from P. N. Oak’s long-debunked theory, attempts to reframe history through a lens of civilizational conflict, presenting Mughal India as a period of Hindu dispossession.

By A Representative  The National Alliance for Justice, Accountability & Rights (NAJAR), an initiative of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), concluded a three-day national conclave in Dharwad, Karnataka, held from November 22 to 24, 2025. The gathering brought together legal professionals, senior advocates, activists, researchers, social movement representatives and law students from across the country to discuss the current democratic landscape and collective legal strategies.