The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism Pragati

The overemphasis on Nagpur as the headquarters of political Hindutva has taken away attention from another town that has served as the cultural hub of Hindu nationalism: Gorakhpur. 

I’m recommending a podcast episode where Amit Varma interviews journalist Akshay Mukul. The subject is Mukul’s book on Gorakhpur’s Gita Press, a Marwadi enterprise that germinated the idea of “Hindu India” in 20th century North India, especially in Uttar Pradesh.

It’s an excellent introduction to the moral universe of the Savarna orthodoxy. While reporting on police brutality in western Uttar Pradesh last week, I kept wondering how grateful Adityanath must be to institutions such as Gita Press. 

– Ayush Tiwari

India’s founding values are threatened by sinister new forms of oppression Guardian

Madhav Khosla explains how the current Indian regime is settling past scores by using modern tools.

– Anusuya Som

The New ‘Little Women’ May Finally Do Justice to Its Most Controversial Character Smithsonian Magazine

Some light reading for the weekend. If you, like me, have been looking forward to the new Little Women movie releasing in India, this is well worth looking at before you watch it. Of the four sisters, the titular little women, feminist Jo, has always been a fan favourite, while “selfish, bratty” Amy has been easy to hate. Yet Louisa May-Alcott’s sister, on whom Amy is based, had her own struggles and her own story. This is a pretty lovely redemptive piece on Amy March. 

– Jayashree Arunachalam

 Will this be the decade we finally come to terms with our reality? The Indian Express

Pratap Bhanu Mehta reflects on how the public discourse in India changed in the last decade. He notes that a decade ago, people had anger but that probably stemmed from hope and expectation for achieving something better. Hence, by the middle of the decade, the country leapt into what many thought would be a new reality. But by the time the decade came to an end, the hope that had driven many of us to this shift slowly turned into fear. In fear, he writes, there has been a “shrinking back from reality” in many ways. The new reality has turned out to be “darkness”. 

The promise of new beginnings in the new decade, Mehta argues, lies in the country’s refusal to give in to “unfounded hope” and “unbounded fear”, unlike in the decade gone by.

– Ayan Sharma

Maus Art Spiegelman

In this graphic novel, American cartoonist Art Spiegelman talks to his father about his experiences growing up as a Polish Jew and surving the Holocaust. The novel represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.

– Parikshit Sanyal