Sunday, August 09, 2026

Quit India movement, American Revolution, and Vedic insights

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

Vedic Kaavya: Rig Veda 1.4.10

यो रा॒यो॒३॒॑ऽवनि॑र्म॒हान्त्सु॑पा॒रः सु॑न्व॒तः सखा॑ । तस्मा॒ इन्द्रा॑य गायत ॥

This is another gorgeous rik. And I am talking only about the poetry. Try to see if you can hear someone chant it

HH Wilson translates it thus: 

Sing unto that Indra who is the protector of wealth, the mighty, the accomplisher of good deeds, the friend of the offerer of the libation.”

I am sorry. His translation doesn’t do justice to the original at all. 

Indra is avnih mahaana अवनि: महान or a continent of bliss. Rayi is spiritual opulence not just wealth. He takes us across सुपार: as our friend सखा:

Indra comes across as an extremely powerful being who is our highest intelligence. All I can think of is how can I bring him down into my mind! Or reach up to him!

But the rhythm stretches you out into the infinite especially with the pause after रायो 

Yo rhymes internally with raayo. The anuprasa of sa- sounds in the second pada spreads out the settled wideness

The आ sound in the last four words further opens up the invocation that was started with the deergha maatraas in the first three alphabets of the rik 

Just as poetry this is fabulous. Why are we not teaching this in schools? I have seizures of joy just reading this. I hope you have them too 

https://x.com/i/status/2086285698697466175

Vedic Dhyana: अंगिकरण:

For more than three decades I struggled with dhyana. Breakthroughs happened but they were not steady

Until I immersed myself in the Veda expecting the same approach to dhyana as all modern interpretations. The Veda shattered the understanding that dhyana is passive. In fact, it is anything but passive when I am deeply immersed in taking care of patients and practices

So, where is the sweet spot? For me, it was the complete identification with the Divine I was worshipping, the Guru I was studying, the Agni I was pouring everything into. I realized that I am the Yajna I am performing or rather I am the Yajna being performed. The Agni I am offering everything into is within accepting everything already. The Divine I love is the Divine loving itself. The Guru is the Self within

How to make it happen? A deep intimacy with the Divine Beloved. And I am biased but I keep hearing in my brain when I try to explain RV 1.1.6 तदन्ग दाशुषे . The anga of Agni always receives bhadram from Agni and I am his anga. That is not how Sayana interpreted it but he would not mind my own assimilation of his reading

Suddenly Sri Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita 4.24 made sense ब्रह्मार्पणम् ब्रह्म हवि: This intensity within to do yoga was always the Agni leading the Yajna. And all equations crossed over. I think the Veda can give a new perspective and intensity to saadhaks and seekers, taking away the last vestiges and concepts of what is and what is not yoga. I may be utterly biased based on my experience but then again, maybe not. And everyone can advance their yoga by diving into the Veda headlong

https://x.com/i/status/2086169247991157050

What does dawn reveal beyond the rising sun? Explore Ushas, the Vedic Goddess of Dawn, and uncover the deeper wisdom of awakening, transformation, and illumination. youtu.be/LRKVDYNqE2w?si… @AmazingVedas @PariksithSingh @MakrandParanspe

https://x.com/i/status/2086197759577846157

A revolution that changed the world. Ancient wisdom that shaped civilizations. Discover the surprising connections between the American Revolution and Vedic insights with @PariksithSingh and @MakrandParanspe @AmazingVedas youtu.be/WbR1IVspoRc?si

https://x.com/i/status/2086147679516831813

Is the Quit India movement worthy of celebration or regret? Sri Aurobindo wrote that the Nazi Germans were 100 times worse than the British and if Hitler had won, "India would have had to spend a century or several centuries in a renewed servitude."

jothicharles.wordpress.com/2021/08/09/is-…

https://x.com/i/status/2086307823093424206

Today on Scroll: https://scrollnewsletter.substack.com/p/daily-brief-ramachandra-guha-sangh

- Ramachandra Guha: Sangh calls them ‘deshdrohis’ but ‘cockroach’ protestors are true nationalists

- ‘Anti-Hindu’ crimes remain low in US, but MAGA hostility against Indians is growing

https://bsky.app/profile/scroll.in/post/3msmsyvje5c2s

Between Feminism and Pan-Africanism

by Hilmelda Tenkeu countercurrents.org/2026/08/betwee

Hilmelda Tenkeu examines the tension between Pan-Africanism and feminism in the proposed "African Charter on Family, Sovereignty and Values". The charter advances positions on seed sovereignty, economic independence, natural resources, intra-African trade and resistance to external influence, while also seeking to restrict abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

Tenkeu argues that African sovereignty should not come at the expense of women’s reproductive autonomy or the rights of queer Africans. She traces the charter’s links to conservative international networks and earlier initiatives opposing abortion rights, while highlighting divisions among African governments over its provisions. The article calls for a broader understanding of sovereignty grounded in equal rights and bodily autonomy.

https://x.com/i/status/2086305089300709442

New article: Dalit women’s autobiographies enrich resistance literature, yet are often read through a caste lens that erases gender—or a feminist lens that erases caste. An intersectional view of caste, gender, class & religion as interconstitutive is essential. scholar.google.com/scholar_url?ur

https://x.com/i/status/2086303788780945652

We think we communicate and understand most deeply using language. But how can we say what words cannot express? Silence. Drawing on Wittgenstein and Heidegger, philosopher Steven Bindeman argues that language often keeps us separated from the world and is fundamentally incapable of describing it. "As Kierkegaard once wrote, 'Bring silence to people who listen and watch them take themselves to heart'," writes Bindeman. Only silence can bridge the gap between the self and world. Tap the link now to read more about what happens when silence speaks. iai.tv/articles/wittg

https://x.com/i/status/2086142929425293569

I often say that I first learned philosophy by reading the works of R.M. Hare on my own. Although Hare was the most important moral philosopher of the mid-twentieth century, he’s barely read anymore. I thought I’d take the time to explain the broad outlines of his thought.

https://x.com/i/status/2086128011565215753

The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga by Patrick Beldio

G Adams - Nova Religio, 2026
… In light of Beldio’s acknowledged commitment to the Integral Yoga tradition, some
readers … and Mirra as they developed the Integral Yoga tradition and Aurobindo
Ashram. This is not a … constant references to how Integral Yoga fits into the larger …

[PDF] Consciousness: According To Indian Philosophy-1

RK Paramguru
… In fact, his term ‘integral yoga’ has been visualized as ‘integral cosmology,’ as
used in the above heading, and also as ‘integral Vedanta’ by the Italian born … He
has developed his integral yoga system around this five-kosha-structure of classical …

3 Mindfulness Practices Worth Starting Today

I May, I May, I May, I May
… In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Satchidananda, 2012), one of the first Sanskrit
definitions of yoga is Yoga chitta vritti nirodhah, which translates as yoga is the
stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. Not the elimination of thought, but the practice …

[PDF] Indian Journal of Modern Research and Reviews

P Mann, RK Phor
… Unlike many conventional physical education activities that emphasize external
performance metrics, yoga adopts an internally oriented approach, … The inclusion
of yoga within physical education is not merely a matter of curricular diversification; it …

Aligning with the Cosmos: Vedic Astrology and the Science of Connection in a Global Yoga Community

D Thomases - Nova Religio, 2026
This paper explores how non-Indian spiritual seekers engage with the practice of
Vedic astrology, or jyotish. In particular, I focus on a 75-hour online course in 2021–2022
that sought to train members of a global yoga community in the basics of Indian …

Applied Mysticism: Studies of Meditation and Psychedelics in Secular Contexts by Richard H. Jones

KE Hayes - Nova Religio, 2026
Applied Mysticism is the latest of Richard H. Jones’ numerous studies of mysticism.
Jones, an independent scholar who has published [End Page 113] extensively on
mysticism and philosophy since the early 1990s, turns his attention here to a …

Yoga as a Multi-target Systems-level Intervention in Biological Aging: Molecular Mechanisms and Comparative Evidence

D Sharma - Journal of the Indian Academy of Geriatrics, 2026
… practice exerts antiaging effects, situates Yoga within a comparative framework
alongside aerobic … Yoga modulates multiple hallmarks of aging through its
primary axis of action on the … are mechanistically integral, not incidental, to the …

[PDF] Yoga Nidra

C Wybar, K Bartsch
… teachers to use yoga therapeutically based on a deeper understanding of
anatomy, physiology and the integration of modern science and research with
traditional practices and experience. Mission: Create an international community of …

[PDF] Integration Of NEP 2020 With India's Knowledge Heritage

DSG Kale - The Research Dialogue, Open Access, 2026
… global peace movements Yoga and Ayurveda are now integral to global wellness
industries. In technology and management, principles of IKS are being applied to
artificial intelligence, systems thinking, and ethical leadership. The UN’s recognition …

[PDF] ResearchPro International Multidisciplinary Journal

AK Srivastava
yoga pioneers introduced yoga to the West and began transmitting the
knowledge of yoga to their students in the Western hemisphere. Yoga … As an
integral aspect of yoga education evaluation, funding significantly influences …

Wednesday, August 05, 2026

Sri Aurobindo does not accept Woodroffe's contention

 Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra

The University of Jammu's Shri Aurobindo Gyan Kendra is a dedicated space for learning, reflection, and research. Featuring rich academic resources, a ...
As part of the 154th Birth Anniversary Celebrations of Sri Aurobindo, author, entrepreneur, and podcaster Karan Verma shares an inspiring message ...
It was as Sree Narayana Guru that he founded the Sivagiri Mutt and led the historic and transformative educational, social and religious reform movement that ...
A born revolutionary, Sri Aurobindo revolted against the British and the Congress leadership. While writing his articles he was secretly in touch with the ...
5 days ago — Sri Aurobindo was a great spiritual figure, probably the greatest in human history, who discovered the truth of the Supramental consciousness,
5 days ago — Sri Aurobindo served the Baroda State from 1893 to 1906, teaching, writing, doing Yoga and engaging in secret revolutionary activity.
5 days ago — Sri Aurobindo on the Modern Evolutionary Crisis. (By Dr. Dilip Kumar Roy) ... Sri Aurobindo does not accept Woodroffe's contention in an unqualified sense.
6 days ago — 'Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to history. Sri Aurobindo is the Future advancing towards its realisation. Thus we must shelter the eternal ...

Maa, it is Thy Presence that gives value to everything, else our very life seems such a meaningless waste, a goalless voyage. It is Thy Presence that fills all things with joy and gives us hope and direction. It is Thy Presence that makes living worthwhile and our efforts meaningful.

6 days ago — Indian philosopher, yogi and former independence leader (1872–1950), founder of Integral Yoga, which he developed with Mirra Alfassa ("The Mother") at the Sri ...
3 days ago — A distinguished revolutionary, educationist and nationalist leader, he actively opposed the infamous Risley Circular, worked closely with Sri Aurobindo ...
SRI AUROBINDO'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS AT SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM Every year on August 15th, we celebrate the birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo, the great yogi ...
Lecture series on Sri Aurobindo's Synthesis of Yoga (by Ranganath), pp 468-470 ... Sri Aurobindo Society, Hyderabad•51 views · 45:21. Go to channel The Mother ...
4 days ago — ... SRI AUROBINDO: THE SPIRITUAL REVOLUTIONARY. Author : Anupa Lal. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Rs95. Availability: Out ...
This issue of Best of Sri Aurobindo Circle explores a fundamental question in this regard – will the new creation be preceded by a destruction of the old?

The Kelkar Museum’s risqué sarotas are not merely titillating curiosities but represent a pedigreed lineage of erotic imagery intertwined with the consumption of areca nuts as part of the sophisticated cultural practice of betel chewing. Kamayani Sharma 

https://scroll.in/magazine/1094567/what-erotic-nutcuters-reveal-about-the-sensual-history-of-paan-in-india

https://bsky.app/profile/scroll.in/post/3msdod63wf22s

New paper by my doctoral student Elena Holmgren: Action in Unison: A Phenomenological Account of Collective Agency in Group Flow States - Holmgren - European Journal of Philosophy - Wiley Online Library https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejop.70115 

https://bsky.app/profile/evanthompson.bsky.social/post/3msdoe7jyl22k

"The fact is that audiences will go see a star in something terrible or mediocre, and ignore the prestige play that doesn’t have a known actor in it." https://fivebooks.com/best-books/charles-isherwood-on-broadway/

https://bsky.app/profile/fivebooks.com/post/3msdvps7wp52b

India’s youth movement did not stop at the border. The Wire traces how students’ courage, diaspora solidarity and international attention turned a fight for educational justice and democracy into a global story, including HfHR’s own work. https://m.thewire.in/media/india-globally-how-indias-youth-movement-rippled-across-the-world

https://bsky.app/profile/hfhr.bsky.social/post/3msdvv6gakb2o

My book, "The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate" is out! Promo Code WIN26 will get you 30% off at @yalepress.bsky.social. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300272734/the-white-pedestal/

Radar

Emotions contain judgements, Peace hides violence - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra P 180 2 Synthesis of Yoga I All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted I Mamu Gadadhar Mishra 31:56 ... Sri Aurobindo Savitr...
Even Dawkins is guilty of tribal cognition - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra Bk03C03 The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, Sri Aurobindo's 'Savitri' read by Ameeta Mehra 1:15:47 SAVITRI Boo...
Religious philosophy of Sri Aurobindo - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra The Life Divine - Book II : Chapter 17 Para 5 | Study Circle with S.Sivakumar, Sri Aurobindo Society 1:03:34 Sivakumar: ...
The universal solvent that is modernity - Pretty much. But it's worth pointing out that this is not a new discussion. Bankim Chatterjee in his "Letters on Hinduism" argues that the prevailing ...
Anirban answers Gitanjali - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra 20 August 1914 || Prayers of the Mother 3:09 The 123 prayers in this collection are translations of prayers that were wr...
Cockroach Carnival - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra https://marketime.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-system-as-spectacle.html Yes, Mikhail Bakhtin’s theoretical unpacking of *Fra...
The system as spectacle - This is called aestheticization of politics. The aestheticization of politics is a concept introduced by Walter Benjamin in his 1935 essay, The Work of...
To render the individual experience universal - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra Rainbow & the Other An Arya is the one who has refined himself - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra Feel Philosophy Recove...
A miracle of the speaking silence - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra Two Birds from Savitri The moment we utter the very first phrase “*dvā suparņā*, two birds beautiful of wings”, we are ...
Indra is not an armchair theorist - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra What drives human invention? According to psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, it often comes down to pattern recognition, a...
Average is Kosher - I was in NCC in the college, but haven't followed any regular physical exercise except walking, at times. Intellectual engagement also gives a good pret...
Pearls in sleeping breast - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra An oceanic flood of dreams poured An oceanic flood of dreams poured An oceanic flood of dreams poured Pearls in sleepin...
A gentle, therapeutic management - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra All are equal but each individual is different. How to reconcile? - TNM This fundamental paradox is reconciled by recog...
What does it mean to care for others - “You should put your hands in the soil every day,” Anu said one of the evenings Shoaib had joined her and her family for dinner at their home in Himacha...
Varied experiences and myriad lessons - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra I used to use a text-only format which seems to be no longer possible. Being bombarded by a continuous stream of visual...
Recovery of metaphysical seriousness - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra Vedic Meditation The Power of Indra Indra, the God-mind as Sri Aurobindo calls him, is indeed the most powerful deva a...
Journey of Odia music - Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra Recorded songs from the first decade of the 20th century (1900–1910) are extremely rare, but archival efforts have iden...

[HTML] Transcending from Tribe to Humanity

VAM Ashrof
… Yet it was precisely he who authored Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? —first circulated
in 1923 while he was imprisoned under British authority. … His definition of
Hindutva turned not on belief but on belonging. A Hindu was anyone for whom India …

[PDF] The 'Threat'of 'Conversions': Cultural Violence

MS Selvaraj - 2025
… It argues that Hindutva’s broad conception and portrayal of India’s Christians as a
demographic, cultural and political ‘threat’ allows … By examining newspaper
archives, civil society and government reports, and documents and speeches of …

2 Hindu Religious Heritage and Tourism

KA Shinde - Religious Heritage and Tourism in South Asia, 2026
This chapter aims to provide an understanding of how Hindu religious heritage is
being used for tourism purposes. At the outset, I want to emphasize that my focus is
the structural aspects of Hindu heritage as it anchors tourism in India, both for …

[PDF] Institutional Practices and Anti-Muslim Violence in India after the 2014 Elections

E Wasiak - 2026
… While studying these laws, it becomes clear that the BJP’s Hindutva views
manifest themselves within their actions in the government. These examples show
that Muslim societies in India are seen as marginal, with no concern … It’sa direct …

[PDF] India's Foreign Policy in the age of Populism

S Destradi - 2026
… On the one hand, recent research has traced the emergence of “neo-Hindutva
actors in the diaspora. These “new players in the Hindutva ecosphere” are more
reluctant to openly associate with traditional Hindutva networks and Hindu …

[PDF] Urban Dalit Mobilities

D Swain - Economic & Political Weekly, 2026
… Apart from factionalism, these chapters discuss how factors like communal
polarisation and Hindutva iconography have drawn the youth after … While these
chapters discuss the co-optation of the Dalits by Hindutva politics, it would have …

Crossing the line: Felani Khatun's killing and the gendered, racialized politics of the Bangladesh-India border

M Hassan - Sociological Spectrum, 2026
This paper examines the killing of fifteen-year-old Felani Khatun at the Bangladesh–India
border to interrogate how postcolonial border regimes produce racialized and
gendered forms of violence. Drawing on feminist, postcolonial, and migration studies …

Digital Hate Speech, Religious Disinformation, and Peacebuilding in India: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

N Akhter, SKK Pandey - Digital Hate Speech, Disinformation, and Peace in …, 2026
Hindutva is a political ideology that holds that Hindu cultural nationalism and
locates India as a Hindu nation at its core. It has become so entangled in digital hate
campaigns against religious minorities, specifically Muslims that any hate speech …

The Impact of Disinformation on Human Rights: A Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

CC Arslan - Navigating Public Security in the Age of Post-Truth …, 2026
Disinformation is a strategic technique of power designed to erode social trust and
public reasoning. This study defines it as a socio-technical process involving
fabricated production, coordinated diffusion, and algorithmic micro-targeting. Within …

Police Violence and Insurrection: The 2020 Uprising as an Anti-Colonial and Anti-Racist Abolitionist Moment

C Cunneen - The Palgrave Handbook of Racial Injustice and …, 2026
This chapter analyses the way resistance movements centred on policing in 2020
often drew attention to both the structural racism underpinning policing and its
violent operationalization. In many instances, that racism was seen in the context of …