My little sister brought this home from a book fair at her school. It seems like a genuinely good book introducing tough topics to children, from the eyes of children. But it is not simplistic - it provides ample context and information in very real-world terms.
Good to see that these books still find ways into schools, at a time when school curriculum is dying a slow orange death.
The book is Abhijnanshakuntalam (had enjoyed every bit of it)
This is a slightly different kind of post, but since I’ve seen how popular Dostoevsky is in this sub, I wanted to share my visit to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s personal apartment in Saint Petersburg, which was later turned into a museum.
The photos are from a few months ago in June, which is the height of the White Nights in Saint Petersburg.
It was an absolutely surreal experience walking around the apartment, and taking in every wonderfully preserved detail.
Where are you all from? What do you think of this subreddit? Any insights? Reviews? General chatter?
What kind of genres do you prefer? What kind of discussions do you prefer on the subreddit? What are your backgrounds? Ages? Student, researcher, casual reader?
Does this subreddit manage to stoke your curiosities beyond reading? Are we having good conversations? Are we political? I hope we are not limited to reading and have stepped into thought in general.
Do you know of our resources (beginner handbooks, community reading, booklists and playlists here and there)?
Or literally anything else that's on your mind - let's talk.
(The Painting is Heer Ranjha by Abdur Rahman Chughtai)
I know posts and discussions get lost so they might not reach your feed, especially if you're not a regular on reddit. So please note that I update this little cake icon whenever we decide on our read, and I add the details of the selection (along with some resources) in highlighted posts on the subreddit page.
One of the most durable figures in modern history, the peasant has long been a site of intense intellectual and political debate. Yet underlying much of this literature is the assumption that peasants simply existed everywhere, a general if not generic group, traced backward from modernity to antiquity. Focused on the transformation of Panjab during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book accounts for the colonial origins of global capitalism through a radical history of the concept of "the peasant," demonstrating how seemingly fixed hierarchies were in fact produced, legitimized, and challenged within the preeminent agricultural region of South Asia. Navyug Gill uncovers how and why British officials and ascendant Panjabis disrupted existing forms of identity and occupation to generate a new agrarian order in the countryside. The notion of the hereditary caste peasant engaged in timeless cultivation thus emerged, paradoxically, as a result of a dramatic series of conceptual, juridical, and monetary divisions.
Far from archaic relics, this book ultimately reveals both the landowning peasant and landless laborer to be novel political subjects forged through the encounter between colonialism and struggles over culture and capital within Panjabi society. Questions of progress, exploitation and knowledge come to animate the vernacular operations of power. With this history, Gill brings difference and contingency to understandings of the global past in order to re-think the itinerary of comparative political economy as well as alternative possibilities for emancipatory futures.
YouTube Lectures on the book:
https://youtu.be/zZ3-z1ALHhY?si=gn6TdOlSJnfhBHBe
https://youtu.be/NIIs6uZcirM?si=penXZt-fDKsz3OVM
https://youtu.be/xk483JB_VtA?si=t9NMP74oqSA_9N_2
(Introduction to the book is taken from the author's website)
I feel like I want to read a small selection each from all Punjabi poets :)
Pic: First page of Sehje Rachio Khalsa
Just me and u/_greenteasamurai proving that Batalvi is a doabiya with our great deduction and reasoning skills.
I forgot all about them!!!!!!!!!!
Will read today.
P.S. Link to the og post in comments
Don't Say Palestine is a new release, about how media tries to sway public opinion (rooted in racism) against Palestinians. In using headlines like '10 Palestinians dead' (instead of killed), 'Palestinian prisoners releases' (prisoner meaning they did something criminal, which they didn't), or 'Israeli man kidnapped' (a soldier, taken from a tank when the army is aggressive), the media tries to normalise, downplay the genocide, treat Arab/Palestinian lives as inferior to lives of western Jews. - But. They are not as successful this time around. We have social media, and a heightened awareness in people. This book is the exploration of both these things.
The other is a book about Iran. Assal (historian, btw) uses new, more expansive techniques to map the Iranian identity and the Iranian people. She uses popular culture, for example, as a means to study the Iranian identity. Definitely a good read for these times, when again, media is trying to sway people against Iran (which they efficiently did for multiple years before the mask fell with direct American aggression).
I would love to hear what you all read/write on Substack. It would make a great complementary platform to this subreddit.
Share your handles if you'd like! :)
Hindustan Times has presented a list of objections which were apparently the reason for the fallout between Penguin and Sonia Gandhi - all of them seem to be related to BJP/RSS and Modi's image. Is BJP towing the line? An act of desperation perhaps?
If you have wanted to read Kant (or philosophy) but reading entire works seems herculean - you can start here. It is a short and accessible essay where Kant explains why you need to think for yourself!
I think this essay takes on new meanings in the age of AI when we are delegating our thinking to a machine, really what remains of us then which makes us human? Makes me wonder if we secretly believe that thinking is the most difficult task of all, despite never outright saying that it is harder than labour of other kinds.
https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/kant\_whatisenlightenment.pdf
(Should we start an Essay series?)
I was just thinking - my mother tongue is Punjabi, I speak it all the time, I am colloquially proficient. And yet, I don't have the required academic depth. I might not be able to speak formally, or might not be able to express my deepest self in my mother tongue. I read more English than Punjabi because I was educated in English, exposed to literature in English. I think that is the case with most people of my generation, or even before - really anyone who was educated in English (which is to say, received 'good international education').
At the same time, there is a distance to English. It's not my language. Its metaphors are not mine. I don't see the language play in the world around me. All my knowledge of it is learnt, colloquial proficiency is learnt too, I don't dream in English. If I read older texts, I sometimes have to learn the context of many things. Despite being educated in English all my life, it's never really going to be my language, and neither am I going to be its native speaker.
I remember Wittgenstein's 'The limits of my language are the limits of my world' thing - sure English education has placed me in a broader world which has more ideas and more to teach me, but, no language feels mine. It makes me think if, like my languages, is my cognition too stuck in the middle?
Do you think this affects the way we think? How does it affect our cognition, our confidence, our self-perception? How does it differently affect the diaspora, and the Indian English-educated? So many questions emerge from this train of thought. I would love to hear your views.
I consolidated a little bit of my thoughts. This writing thing feels nice.
Because this is bigger than CJP, Wangchuk, NEET now. This is general anger against an arrogant, shameless government.
This is for youngsters who are still on the streets, this is for youngsters who are there of their own volition, this is for people who are there in solidarity, for farmers who are marching today, for tribals who are shouting at a deaf government, for states which are demanding their federal rights.
This is for an autonomous resisting population.