5 Minutes Read Kerala formally declared that it has eradicated extreme poverty, with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan making the announcement at the special State Assembly session on the occasion of ‘Kerala Piravi’ on Saturday (November 1, 2025). The state described the moment as a...
In Why the Subaltern?, A. K. Ravindran challenges the dominant notions of hierarchy, progress, and civilization that define both caste and class society. He argues that the subaltern, the labouring, life-sustaining communities, are not inferior but embody the creative and...
The history of the BJP’s growth is also the story of the self-destruction of backward-class political assertion. From the late 1970s to the 1990s, when anti-caste and reservation-friendly socialist politics gained momentum, this assertion was gradually depoliticized and absorbed into...
Sharmina examines how Narendra Modi’s eleven-year rule has transformed India’s political and social landscape. Using the debate over the RSS-imposed age limit as a starting point, the article explores Modi’s consolidation of power, the erosion of democratic institutions, and the...
In this concluding part, Sunandan K.N. traces how, by the early twentieth century, the Namboothiri reform movement redefined acharam through the lens of modern knowledge. He examines how colonial education reshaped caste hierarchies by transforming ritual authority into claims of...
The second part examines how colonial education and social reforms in late nineteenth-century Kerala challenged the Namboothiri order of acharam. As English-educated Nairs and others embraced new ideas of morality and family, traditional hierarchies were questioned. In response, Namboothiris formed...
Exploring the caste practices of Namboothiris (Kerala Brahmins) in the first half of the twentieth century, this paper by Sunandan K.N analyses the transformation of Brahminical claims of superiority over other castes, in interaction with colonial knowledge practices. The paper...
Climate change is no longer a distant threat but a lived reality in India, with disasters like the 2024 Wayanad landslide exposing both the human cost of environmental degradation and the failures of governance. Drawing on scientific evidence and lived...
In the concluding part of his series Critical Mind and Labouring Body: Caste and Education Reforms in Kerala, K. N. Sunandan argues that the reforms of the 1990s, while claiming to democratize learning, ultimately reinforced colonial-Brahmanical hierarchies of knowledge. Examining...
In the second part of his series Critical Mind and Labouring Body: Caste and Education Reforms in Kerala , K. N. Sunandan examines how the education reforms of the 1990s, especially under the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), shifted the...
