History

On History and Historians
'To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born,' Cicero declared, 'is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?' A good historian begins with the...

Al-Beruni's India
The first significant intrusion of Islam into India was led by Mahmud of Ghazni who, quite justifiably, lives in Indian history as a cruel and bloodthirsty fanatic ...

The Carvakas
It comes as a surprise to many that in ancient "spiritual" India, atheistic materialism was a major force to reckon with. Predating even the Buddhists, the Carvaka is one of the earliest materialistic schools of Indian philosophy....

America and the Cold War
The US pulled out of Vietnam in 1975 after more than a decade and a humiliating defeat. The war had been expensive, the draft unpopular, and too many white boys had ....

Democracy in Athens
The liberal-popular and the conservative-aristocratic emerged as the two dominant factions in Athenian democracy . The spirit of the agon (competition), fame, glory.....

The Pakistan Puzzle
On August 14th this year, Pakistan completed 60 years as an independent country. In these 60 years, the state of Pakistan has endured, but doubts about it still persist - it has been called a failed state and a rogue state....

A Journey to the West
Journey to the West, "China's most beloved novel of religious quest and picaresque adventure," was published in the 1590s in the waning years of the Ming dynasty. The novel's hero, "a mischievous monkey with human traits ...

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. The pop Arabic music in the bus...

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. Most belong to concerned citizens driven by their secular ideals...

Anandpur Sahib
Anandpur Sahib is a holy city in Punjab. Its historical significance to the Sikhs is second only to Amritsar. Hundreds of Sikhs once embraced martyrdom here. Sikh history is deeply marked by their struggle for survival in a volatile land....

Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka
In Aug 2005, I visited a remarkable site in Madhya Pradesh, India: the prehistoric rock shelters and paintings at Bhimbetka, discovered in 1957-58 by Dr. Vishnu S. Wakankar. Of the nearly 750 rock shelters.....

The Burning Ghats of Varanasi
Varanasi (Benares, Banaras, Kashi), on the left bank of the Ganga (Ganges), is one of the seven sacred cities of the Hindus. Among the oldest continuously inhabited cities...

The Dilwara Temples
Many Indians claim that the Dilwara Jain temples of Mt. Abu are a more magnificient achievement than the Taj Mahal - both were stunningly ambitious, state-sponsored, multi-year, monumental...

Al-Farabi, Medieval Islamic Philosopher
During the so-called golden age of Islam in tenth-century Baghdad, ... The man ... held second only to Aristotle was a tenth-century Muslim thinker called Abu Nasr al-Farabi (870-950 CE)....

Gandhi's "Inconsistent Pacifism"
Last week the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee made a rare and candid admission: "Our record is far from perfect . not giving Mahatma Gandhi the Nobel Peace Prize was the biggest omission" of its 106 year history....

Ghost Town in the Levant
Quneitra was once a bustling town in the Golan Heights and southwestern Syria's administrative capital with a population of 37,000. The word 'Quneitra' derives from Qantara, or 'bridge', between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan....

The Idea of India
An Indian-American friend of mine recently asked me: How did Indians themselves refer to India during the Raj? Did they call it "India"? I mean back then, it had independent state-like entities or "protectorates", with kings and other legislative bodies, as well as.....

A Mousetrap for Metaphysics
About six years ago, after an obsessive, multi-year engagement with history and philosophy, I struggled with the following question: Is it possible to reduce the vast range of humankind's metaphysical responses down to a....

Nalanda University
In July this year, I visited Nalanda in Bihar, India, one of the most spectacular archaeological finds on the subcontinent. Nalanda was once a famous Buddhist monastery and university. The region's ...

Omar Khayyam of Persia
In his lifetime, Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) achieved great fame as a master of philosophy, jurisprudence, history, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. The Great....

On Personal Responsibility
The modern age has overseen a great expansion of our rights. Global disparities remain but there is no dearth of people who believe that rights are a good thing (at least for the social group they identify with most, be it based on race, nation, class, culture.....

Respecting the Holocaust
The UN General Assembly recently adopted by consensus a resolution condemning the denial of the Holocaust. This US sponsored resolution "urges all member states 'unreservedly to reject any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event....

Wise Man Socrates
Socrates, like Jesus and the Buddha, never committed his ideas to writing.* Our main sources on him are Plato, his student, and Xenophon, the historian. The picture that emerges from their accounts make him perhaps the greatest....

The Wonder That Was India
Various societies at different times have dazzled with their bursts of creative and intellectual energy. Historians have a penchant for dubbing them Golden Ages. Examples include the Athens of Herodotus, the Baghdad of Haroun al-Rashid, and the India of the Buddha. But though India ...

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. My brother and sister both chose the ...

Forbidden City
Surrounded by moat and high walls, the fabled Forbidden City earned its name by being closed to everyone outside the Chinese royal family and their eunuchs and maidservants. The largest surviving palace ....

John Frum
Some time ago, Ruchira brought to my attention an article about 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 to many of us, it's actually not a joke. As the article explains...

Buddha's Finger
The monks and proprietors of Famen Temple in China's northwestern Shaanxi Province, about an hour's drive outside of Xi'an, believe the Buddha has given them the finger Or four.Legend has it that after the death of Prince Siddharta (aka the Buddha) around 500 BCE, such was the ...

On Early Islam
Muslims discovered Greek thought hundreds of years before the Western Christians, yet it was the latter who ultimately assimilated it. Why did the reverse not happen?

On Herodotus' Histories
What in his outlook and judgment is still noteworthy nearly 2,500 years later? What society was he a product of? What can we say about his methods, concerns, and objectivity? In other words, how should we evaluate Herodotus as a historian?

Little Boy of Hiroshima
"Little Boy was the codename of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945" by the US Air Force, the first atomic bomb ever used as a weapon...