In our time, the rich variety of human experience faces a quiet but powerful threat. What we call the dignity of difference, the inherent worth of distinct cultures, beliefs, personalities, and ways of life stands challenged by a spreading pressure toward sameness. This is not the harsh totalitarianism of old dictatorships with their secret police and propaganda, but a...
From Cyrus the Liberator to Modern Conflict: The Paradox of Persia/ Iran and Israel
The history of Iran, ancient Persia pand the Bible are bound together by one of the most remarkable acts of mercy recorded in antiquity. That act stands in heartbreaking contrast to the violence now consuming West Asia, where the descendants of those same peoples find themselves locked in a deadly struggle. The paradox is stark: a land once celebrated...
Lessons from (De)Jemimah
Jemimah Rodrigues played a fighting role in India’s victory in the semi-final of the ICC Women World Cup 2025 held in India on 30th October 2025. In a run chase that seemed seemingly impossible the Indian women along with Jemimah crossed the frontier which very often they had failed in the past. While celebrating the victory and receiving the...
Decolonizing Data
Data when thought as a resource is immediately reduced to be an economic resource. We need to shift from this resource metaphor . This reductive thinking of data as a revenue generating asset actually forgets other ways data lends its value to us. Data as resource leads to data colonization with Big Tech benefiting Big Business by monopolising their...
Big Tech , Big Data , Big Business Convergence
Society’s of Control are technocolonial societies. Big Tech engages profit extracting practices. These practices seek to enter the mind space of people and colonize it. It is space from where the individual relates to oneself and builds coherence as one relates to oneself and the world. We seem to have moved from the land grab of the colonial times...
Resisting Big Tech , Big Data ,and Big Business Combine
We are living a datafied world . How are we to deal with the data harvesters that rob our privacy ? Story of data extraction is told in terms of four big US corporations: GAFA—Google, Amazon, Facebook ( Meta) and Apple . Some others use the acronym GAFAM where M stands for Microsoft. China has a parallel empire of...
Everyday life and the Word of Big Tech
Everyday life is an empty signifier of Ernesto Laclau . It is a nodal point that somehow brings together Everything and makes life meaningful to us as individuals as well as communities. It is Jacques Lacan’s point de capiton. We can transcend everyday life and critically look at it. Yet we stay immersed in this stream of life that...
The Emptiness of Hope: Linking Ernesto Laclau’s Empty Signifier and Buddhist Shunyata to Affirm That Hope Does Not Disappoint
In an era marked by uncertainty—political upheavals, existential crises, and the relentless churn of global events—hope often emerges as a fragile beacon. Yet, as the Apostle Paul asserts in Romans 5:5, “hope does not disappoint us.” This profound declaration invites deeper philosophical inquiry: How can hope, seemingly vulnerable to the whims of reality, evade disappointment? To explore this, we...
A Guiding Light: Remembering Fr. Cyril Desbruslais SJ.
The news of Fr. Cyril Desbruslais SJ’s passing on September 8, 2025, in Pune, Maharashtra, at the age of 84, struck a deeply personal chord. For me, and countless others, Fr. Cyril was not just a towering figure in Indian Jesuit circles, a brilliant philosopher, or a transformative playwright—he was my teacher, a mentor whose compassion and wisdom shaped...
The Food Miracle: Can India’s Culinary History Be an Antidote to Hindutva Violence?
India’s food is a vibrant tapestry, woven from threads of history, migration, and cultural exchange. It is a cuisine that defies rigid boundaries, embracing influences from across the globe while remaining distinctly local. Yet, food in India is also a site of contestation, entangled with politics, caste, and, increasingly, the divisive ideology of Hindutva. From debates over beef to...
