A Law Student's Contention

‘ You've got a nerve, coming into this muhalla! I know you: my father knows you: everyone knows you're a Hindu!! ' screams the Midget Queen.  Boys in their school whites and snake buckle are joining in, 'Hindu! Hindu! Hindu! From his window Midget Queen’s father joins in, hurling abuses at the new target… ‘Mother rapers! Violator of our daughters…!’ and the schoolboys have begun to chant 'Ra-pist! Ra-pist! Ray-ray-ray-pist!' without really knowing what they're saying. Their victim, Lifafa Das is trying to get away but by now he is surrounded by voices filled with blood- This episode from Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children , placed in the turmoil and unrest of partition, portrays the complex magic of words. Words have strange power; they can stir emotions and cause commotions in turbulent times. And these are turbulent times. It seems as if speech has been given a free hand to prey on the life of heads that donned skullcaps, shoulders that were draped i

Most probably, the revelation of the full title of the book will be sufficient for some to grab a copy of it straightaway. Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy is a Norwegian classic published in 1991. For those who do not find the idea of narrating the ‘history of philosophy’ in a ‘fiction novel’ compelling in itself and are still reading this blog; the book has a lot more to offer. Sophie’s World , as the name suggests, revolves around the events that take place in the life of 14 years old Sophie Amundsen as her 15 th birthday approaches. The book opens with the perplexed thoughts of Sophie when her friend suggests that the human mind is like an advanced computer; she wonders ‘surely a person is more than a piece of hardware?’ And then Gaarder knits a whole new world around her; I mean, he literally weaves a ‘new world’. In Sophie’s World, two threads run simultaneously. First, there is the story of Sophie & the mysterious Alberto Knox, fr

The book Crime and Punishment,  written by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky is based on a random murder of an old moneylender by a former student of law. But the book is not a crime thriller, for the murder takes place in the first part in a seven-part long storyline. Regarded as Dostoevsky’s magnum opus and one of the best literary works of Russian literature, Crime and Punishment  offers a view into Raskolnikov’s mind (the murderer and the protagonist). The novel can be best characterized as a psychological thriller. In his book, Dostoevsky grapples with questions like- what pushes a man into committing a hideous crime as murder in cold blood?   Unlike the ideal state of the human mind and soul, as is often depicted, Crime and Punishment shows the turbulent state of the mind of Raskolnikov and the contradictions within his soul- completely naked. In the plot, Raskolnikov, a bright young student, has to drop out of university because of the lack of money to support his studie

[Demagogue: a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument (Oxford Dictionary) ] It is a popular cer titude that the ancient Greek city of Athens is the cradle of democracy. What is lesser known is the fact that Athens is also the birthplace of its first cousin,  demagoguery.  Albeit, democracy has run the show for the most part since their inception, the wave seems to be turning now. Democracy is failing. Fault lines have started to appear in most of the safe heavens of democracy like the United States, Brazil, India, Italy, Britain, and Germany. More and more people have started to despise the inefficient and unproductive process that democracy is and have started turning to tricksters as their last expedient. There is an exponential rise in the number of the extreme right or left-wing populist governments all over Europe, Asia, and South America. These governments under demagogue lea

Picture Courtesy: Patrika The announcement made by the Home Minister on the floor of Rajya Sabha regarding Article 370 was immediately followed by a torrent of information (much of which was misinformation) which provided little clarity and gave rise to a number of misconceptions. For instance, in the heading of this write-up, there is one such fallacy which too had its inception in furore and frenzy I am talking about. That is the abrogation of Article 370 . Because Article 370 has neither been repealed nor abrogated and it is in its perfect shape. Rather, the government has instead superseded the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 1954 (Presidential Order of 1954) with the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 2019 (Presidential Order of 2019) to take away the special status of J&K. The relevance of the Presidential Order of 1954 To understand it better, think of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution as the skeleton of the

Image source: rajyasabha.nic.in On the pivotal day of April 3 rd in 1952, Rajya Sabha was constituted for the first time and ever since the day has been commemorated as Rajya Sabha Day. This year has bee n no different with politicians and constitutional functionaries reminding the nation of the importance of Council of States. What is different this year was that the Attorney General, a day before, was arguing before the Supreme Court that  Finance Act, 2017 has been rightly passed as a Money Bill.  The manner of passage of the Bill in 2017 led to sharp criticism against the government. Commentators went on to accuse the government of turning the constitution on its head to evade Rajya Sabha's scrutiny. To understand the scenario wholly, the position of Money Bill vis-à-vis Rajya Sabha has to be understood first. Under the conventional setup, for any Bill to become an Act, it has to pass through both the Houses of Parliament. In our parliamentary setup, Rajya Sa

Image Courtesy- TeePublic If a close analysis is undertaken of all superhero movies, then a common denominator underlying all plots will be discovered. Every superhero tale has a moral dimension, but it is quintessentially limited to the protagonist. That is to say, the superhero alone has the might of the right with him. Invariably accompanying him is the badness of the villain. Badness in the sense, the values that he stands for and things he fights for. This element is indispensable because goodness is relative. You need to give something worse to the viewer, to which he can compare the alleged good part and arrive at the conclusion which storyteller wants to sell; the superhero was indeed good! This is the cliché tale of every superhero movie and Marvel Entertainment has been no different about it. Start watching Marvel Universe movies starting from Iron Man (2008), Captain America, Thor, Avengers, and all their sequels and you will possibly get my point. But in Avenger