My Perspective

Art flourishes when there is stability. During ancient times, humans created art only when they found a safe place to reside and ample food to eat. When civilisation came into existence, farming and pastoral professions created surplus resources and granted a good amount of free time for people to pursue their hobbies. In feudal times, when kings and prosperous merchants had a lot of money at their disposal, they spent it on patronising art. This is how art flourished and artists found their livelihood. After industrialisation and modernisation, art itself became a commodity. Only those arts with higher demand began to get preference. Although industry flourished, contacts became the tool that allowed or barred artists from achieving their goals. Even today, an artist requires stability to deliver art. Therefore, either the artist must get paid for the art, or find an alternative profession to attain stability. This is why many artists today are struggling, not just for their su...

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...

I have seen people many times discussing and ridiculing the term 'Hindu atheism' in social media comments. They find it hard to comprehend how can an Atheist be a Hindu or how can a Hindu be an atheist. Hinduism is a religion and so a Hindu must be a believer of God. If he believes in God then how can someone be an atheist? Well it's not as simple as that. Hinduism is not a monolithic religion with one book, one ideology. Hinduism is actually an amalgamation of many schools of thoughts and philosophies that existed in ancient India. These philosophies sometimes disagreed with each other. These schools of thoughts were broadly divided into two types: Astika or Orthodox and Nastika or Heterodox. Today Astika is translated as Believer and Nastika as Atheist, but that was not strictly the case then. It was with reference to simply accepting or rejecting the authority of the Vedas. Nastika schools of thoughts included Jainism, Buddhism, Charavaka, Ajivika etc. which later...

An artist is defined as a person who creates his work using his creativity and skills while an artisan is defined as one who creates his work with his skill alone. An artist is credited for his or her work and even praised for it. On the other hand an artisan is simply termed as a skilled labourer, and his or her identity is always subordinate to the one who commissions the work. Till the Middle Ages only performers were termed as artists and given their due credit. This is because their art was inseparable from them. One cannot separate dance from a dancer, song from a singer, or music from a musician. But the art created by writers, painters and sculptures are separable and hence these people then did not come under the term "artists". Then came the Renaissance and it changed the society. People who mastered their craft and those whose work stood out among others were given credit and even praised for it. So a painter, writer, sculptor, and architect got a chance to ...

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...

We know from the Hindu epics and mythologies that after ruling the kingdom of Hastinapura post Mahabharata war the Pandavas retired to Himalayas. Yudhisthira handed over the throne of Hastinapura to Parikshit, who was son of Abhimanyu and grandson of Arjuna. Parikshit was a pious king. His reign saw the beginning of Kala Yuga or the Dark Age which began soon after Lord Krishna left his mortal body and went to Vaikuntha. In the Puranas the dark age is personified the demon "Kali". He symbolises corruption, evil, suffering and everything bad. When the Kali Yuga began, the demon Kali entered Parikshit's realm. When Parikshit stopped him the demon asked Parikshit to name few places where he can dwell. Parikshit granted him five places to reside amongst which was gold. Kali immediately entered Parikshit's golden crown and began to corrupt his mind. This made him arrogant and made him do wrong things. When he went to a sage who was meditating, he threw a dead snake on th...

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...