My Perspective

We are in the middle of a new AI revolution that is going to change media forever. This could give a push to the saturating and plateaued social media. It could also make it even more difficult to reach a wider audience due to higher competition. To contemplate and guess what may happen, we must understand how changing media changed societies and civilizations. It does three things – unites a type of people, divides or polarizes a group, democratizes a previous media system, and makes content more local, but reduces wider reach. Creation of Insiders, but also Outsiders   Invention of Languages When early humans invented languages, they became more organized and developed tribes and societies. But this also clearly defined the concept of an ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’. When they came in contact with tribes which didn’t speak their languages, the idea of insider and outsider became clearer. This also led to clashes and cultural feuds.   Invention of Writing Systems When...

 Hello everyone! Exciting news! I'm thrilled to share that I've self-published my debut novel - ' Expedition to an Alternate Swarajya .' Dive into a world of Alternate History and Sci-Fi Adventure, exploring an alternate universe where India never fell under British colonial rule. Novel Trailer: Novel Blurb: Prism Science Inc. assembles a team of a physicist, a researcher, a strategist, a surgeon and a spy to travel in time and stop their arch-rival Castle Corp from altering the timeline. Assuming their travel is to the future the team enter the time warp. But they land in a present-day alternate universe where the Indian subcontinent never came under British rule and evolved into a group of modern nations. Deepika Rao, Jessica Bannerjee, Harish Naidu, Ganesh Patel and Rajveer Rathore must now understand what exactly Castle Corp CEO Eric Noble plans to do with this universe. The Suvarna Shakti is an ultranationalist organisation which wants to stage a coup and ...

 Hello! I have created a new YouTube channel where I express and explain ideas related to history, mythology and popular fiction. Its posts are somewhat similar to my blog here. I have also created a new blog for that channel where I post same content but in blog format. I am sharing links of that channel. So, follow and subscribe them as I am kind of migrating to that channel and blog. I would continue to post my other thoughts here in this blog. Thank you for your support. - Pranav Gogwekar PRAV YAV NAV YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsZVlrebUPU2COP0NhpzNvw Blogger:  https://pravyavnav.blogspot.com/ Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pravyavnav Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/prav.yav.nav

India has a wonderful variety of Hindu temple architectures. Each style evolved from previous one during a particular era and under a particular cultural influence. But after colonial period, the style stopped evolving further and all later modern temples we see today have borrowed heavily from the styles that existed before. Although there are a few hipster styles today, but still it’s little bland if you compare it with the kind of architectures that existed before. So, how would’ve been Hindu temple architecture of today’s India if we follow its pattern? But first let’s check out all types of Hindu temple architecture styles in India and abroad. You definitely must be aware of the most common styles – the north Indian ‘Nagara’, the south Indian ‘Dravida’, and its blend known as ‘Vessara’. But there are many regional styles which often get unnoticed by the common folk. Let’s check them out. Types of Hindu Temple Architecture Early Nagara Shikhara with Gavaksha Dravida Vimana Vessar...

I remember a lesson we had in Hindi subject when we were in school. Don't remember the exact year or the exact story, but only its crux. It was a story of Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire. As the story goes, Krishnadevaraya was a just king who was trying to do good for his subjects. But no matter what policies he made, it all failed miserably. One day, a sage came to visit his court. The king spoke about this issue to the sage and asked for a solution. But instead of answering him, the sage passed a weird comment. The sage said that the room of the court stinks. He said it has a damp smell and advised that the king should open up the windows and let the fresh air come in. He also told the king that good ventilation of air is beneficial for everyone's well-being. Then the sage left the court leaving the king puzzled. Puzzled because the windows were already open, fresh air was coming in and there was no damp smell. Tenali Rama was also in the court when the sage m...

Indian polity of the early ancient times was comprised of clans, settlements and tribes referred as Kula , Visha and Jana respectively. [1]  Several clans formed a settlement and its patriarchs elected a leader amongst themselves. Similarly these leaders of settlements elected amongst them a king called Rajana . [2]   The kingdom got its name after the ruling clan and hence we find words like Kuru , Puru , Ikshvaku and so on. A kingdom had many clans which united and fought wars under the banner of their ruler's clan. There were countless banners of countless tribes who waged war for suzerainty over other tribes and their lands. Change in situation, diplomacy and agreements led to breaking up of these alliances of houses. A region that came under the banner of a house or a tribe at a point in time went to some other house or tribe when loyalty and public mood shifted. If you could go to a certain region you could see who is controlling it just by looking at its flag. Do...

The Karnataka Government  recently setup a panel to look into legality of having an official flag for the state of Karnataka. This led to an outrage among many people calling a state flag a step towards separatist movement. Mostly because Indian states other than Jammu & Kashmir have no official state flags and as J&K is an autonomous state with some issues people feel having a state flag is a step towards breaking away. Proposed Official flag for Karnataka But according to me it should not be a big deal as every state in India have its separate identity and a state flag is just a symbolic representation of it.  India is among very few countries in the world where states does not have its official flags. Be it the US, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Australia and even Pakistan has official flags for their states and it is not a big deal in those countries. I believe the concept of a state flag should have been created when we formed out constitution so that by no...

Yes, the most controversial topic of Indian politics since its independence and the basis of Indo-Pak conflict - The Kashmir Issue. I have found that many Indians don't know much about the state and its culture and fight or debate on it only on the basis of emotions. Religious emotions mostly. So here's an overview of the state and my take on it. Many of you must be thinking that Jammu & Kashmir is a state with just one culture i.e. Kashmiri, like a 'Nation-State'. To have a clarity on what is a Nation-State, you may visit my other article on ' Ethnic Nationalism '. But that is not true, the state of J&K is a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-cultural society bound by a former ruler and history. Here' s the map of the former Princely State of Jammu & Kashmir.  Not everyone speaks Kashmiri The state is culturally divided into these regions. Jammu region- Dogra speaking (similar to Punjabi) Kashmir valley - Kashmi...

A lot is heard about ethnic based separatist movements, like people of a particular region in a country having issues with people of other regions within the country. Most of the reasons are ethnic or cultural and the demands range from territorial autonomy to complete independence. Why does it happen? Well for that we have to go back in history. During the age of empires, the political boundaries were not limited to the cultural boundaries but depended on the ruler's imperial capacities. For examples: Maratha Empire had conquered and ruled states like Gujarat and Central India which were culturally distinct. The French Empire ruled Italy and Spain. The Japanese Empire briefly ruled nations in South East Asia and Korea. The British, well their rule was in every continent of the world. When concept of Nation-State emerged, it started changing political boundaries. Most common factor was language; kingdoms like Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria etc. joined to form Germany, as they a...

People all over the world have misconceptions about India including Indians. Unlike countries like Germany, Japan, Thailand, Bangladesh, India is not a nation-state. But we present her as a nation-state just because we compare India with other countries. But that's not true. Nation State Nation-State is a concept in which " nation " means people (ethnic group) and " state " means government or rule. In the old ages there use to be city-states, kingdoms and empires, which had nothing to do with culture or geography. All the lands possible to conquer were conquered, irrespective of culture. Nation-state emerged as a concept in which a country is a homeland of an ethnic people. Hence,  Germany (German people, German language, German cuisine, German culture), Italy (Italian people, Italian language, Italian cuisine, Italian culture), Japan (Japanese people, Japanese language, Japanese cuisine, Japanese culture.) But there are some countries  which do not fit ...

The Europeans came with the “Aryan Invasion Theory” when they found out that North Indian languages and its ancestor language ‘Sanskrit’ shares very common vocabulary and grammar with the European languages and its ancestor languages i.e. Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Greek and Latin. They concluded that the North Indian languages, their ancestor Sanskrit, Iranian languages and European languages belong to the same origin, which they named “Indo-European.” As many researchers has said, i n those days the European society was very much Euro-Centric. They didn’t want to accept that their language has been influenced by an Indian language i.e. Sanskrit which is considered mother of Indo-European languages. India was under British rule and they didn’t want to accept that their dark skinned slaves were the one who influence them in the ancient times. Therefore they came with the Aryan Invasion Theory. In that theory the Indo-Aryans, subgroup of Aryan race (Europeans) invaded India which drag...