History and Culture

Part 1: The Rise of Islam NEW!
A brief survey of the conditions and events that led to the rise of Islam and its rapid spread in the early decades after Muhammad.

Part 2: The Golden Age of Islam NEW!
In late first millennium CE, a new spirit of reason and inquiry arose among the educated elite of Baghdad and the Abbasid caliphate. What conditions led to it and what were its major features?

In Light of Nalanda NEW!
What was ancient Nalanda University like? Here is a portrait based on the accounts of Chinese scholars of 7th century CE and a recent personal visit.

Asian Food for Thought NEW!
India and China offer a striking illustration of the vast range and malleability of the human palate, and the power of ideas in shaping it.

Marco Polo's India NEW!
Returning home from China in 1292 CE, Marco Polo spent a few months in India ... his book, The Travels, contains a rich social portrait of India that still resonates with us today.

The Eichmann Within
Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem documents the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi nabbed by the Israeli secret police in Argentina and brought to Jerusalem.

What Confucius Said
No person has left a deeper mark on Chinese culture than Confucius, who lived 2500 years ago in an age of social turmoil.

Homosexuality in India
"We don't have any," is the classic Indian response to homosexuality in India. Curiously, Indians say this even when they know of and tolerate homosexual acts.

On Telling Stories
We often ask what it is that makes us human. I’d have to say it’s our penchant and need for story-telling: human beings are the story-telling species.

John Frum
There is a village on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, where the people believe Prince Philip of England is a god. Though it might sound preposterous, it's actually not a joke.

Swastika
When I visited India the summer I turned 9 years old, my grandmother took my siblings and me to a jeweler so we could each select a pendant to bring back with us to the US.

 

Books and Authors

Shantaram: A Review
Shantaram is the story of a violent man's search for the man of peace within himself.

Rereading Naipaul
Perhaps he found too little to praise in India, but much of what he wrote has a ring of truth. If there is loathing, there is also a kind of love.

The Reach of Reason
Perceptions of culture, history, and identity are necessarily subjective and selective. There's no impartial and omniscient chronicler of events, no 'scientific' history.

The Tragedy of the Congo
The history of European colonialism is replete with examples of extreme cruelty. The decimation of the American Indians in South America ...

The Wonder That Was India
Various societies at different times have dazzled with their bursts of creative and intellectual energy. Historians call them Golden Ages.

 

Art, Music, Cinema

Slumdog Millionaire: A Review NEW!
The film has obvious and broad appeal as the quintessential underdog story [but] the movie on the whole was just downright silly.

Advice to a Young Artist
The idea for writing this came to me from an interview in which an author was reverentially asked, ‘Sir, what would be your advice to a young artist?’

On Photography
If a picture says a thousand words, which thousand words does it say to whom? If we all wrote down what we hear, no two accounts would be the same.

Peter Brook's Mahabharata
Earlier this year I saw Peter Brook's Mahabharata for the third time in fifteen years. Each time my admiration for it has grown.

 

Fiction & Poetry

A Sales Conference
On Sunday evening, Ved flies to Palm Springs, California, to represent his product at Omnicon’s annual sales conference. More than a thousand of his coworkers from scores of countries will attend the three-day event.

Science, Religion, Philosophy

On Knowledge Without Wisdom NEW!
Philosophy today, as pursued by much of the Anglo-American academy, is not how the Greeks understood it, as the love of wisdom, which has been exiled to the stormy shores of self-help aisles.

The Dearth of Artificial Intelligence NEW!
Despite big advances in computing, AI has fallen woefully short of its ambition and hype. Why is AI in such a braindead state?

Atheistic Materialism in Ancient India NEW!
It comes as a surprise to many that in ancient "spiritual" India, atheistic materialism was a major force to reckon with.

Being Liberal in a Plural World NEW!
In the absence of a consensus on the ‘truly universal’ values of liberalism, and hence rights—whether on empirical or practical grounds—how is a liberal to act in the world?

Candles in the Dark?
Beyond Belief, an annual symposium that seeks to promote the constituency of reason in society, was held this year from 3-6 October in La Jolla, CA.

How Terrorism Works
Experts on Islamic terrorism are now everywhere, spouting wisdom on countless media outlets and blogs on what turns Muslims into terrorists.

From the Outside, Looking In
Speaking of Muslims as fanatics and terrorists is not even considered bad manners; it’s seen as a comic expression of the truth.

Pinker, the Storyteller
Many evolutionary psychologists, including Steven Pinker, professor at Harvard, claim that ... evolution has endowed humans with a "moral instinct".

The Politics of God
In response to 9/11 and the alarming role of evangelical Christianity in US politics, a host of loud atheistic voices have emerged.

The Basis of Belief
Do we arrive at our beliefs in a systematic manner or through an intuitive process? Are we predisposed towards some beliefs while being skeptical about others?

Rediscovering Golem
What is life anyway, and how did it really happen upon this world? As a physical phenomenon, is life an accidental and rare occurrence?

On Being Spiritual
Spirituality is cool these days. Its warm and fuzzy aura now appeals to more and more people in the West. Here are my provisional thoughts on what being spiritual means to me.

Eugenics Record Office
James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, is in trouble again, this time for a racist remark that has led to wide criticism and his firing.

Travel

An Indian-American in China
Arriving at the mausoleum of Mao Zedong on Tian'anmen Square, I looked expectantly to join a long line of Chinese tourists awaiting their moment to view Mao's body.

Divinity is Here
I am in the village of Rum in south Jordan, all signed-up for two days in the desert. The clincher was the Bedouin honcho's sell job:  "I have open jeep, ...

The Lost City of Ugarit
The road to Lattakia goes over the Anti-Lebanon Range. I had left Aleppo under a blue sky at noon; now a thick fog rolls in, tall conifers appear in the valleys, visibility drops.

Nobody's Land
"Cuiabá is the city of mangoes. We don't buy them, just pluck and eat," says Rizardo, our wildlife guide. Riding in the bed of a pickup truck, we are going down the Transpantaneira.

At the Foot of Mount Yasur
I am six hundred miles east of the Great Barrier Reef in the archipelago of Vanuatu-or, as they say in Vanuatu, the "ni-Vanuatu" archipelago, home to nine active volcanoes.

 

Biography

Percy Julian, Chemist Extraordinaire
Percy Lavon Julian, born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1899, the grandson of slaves, was one of the most accomplished chemists of the 20th century.

 

Economics and Geopolitics

America, the Cold War, and the Taliban NEW!
The roots of transnational Islamic terrorism lie not so much in culture and the Qur’an as in politics and the conduct of the Cold War in Afghanistan.

On Credit Default Swaps
Warren Buffet has called credit default swaps the "financial weapons of mass destruction", others call them "the dark matter" of the financial universe...

Namit Arora's photojournal spans hundreds of Indian sites, and focuses on portraits, wildlife, archaeology, culture, and nature.