Documenting 21st Century - India and the World

Indian conventional thinking is about veneration of founding fathers, Democracy, constitution, universal suffrage, liberal economic reforms, socialistic ideas and Caste census. Indian activists and intellectuals live in their microcosm bubble of these & related ideas. Much of social and intellectual thinking in India is shaped by false achievements and fabrication of history and lack of epistemological knowledge of the world - the macrocosm.  The Democracy in India is largely a failed project of which i have discussed in detail and will only give a brief summary here. The founding fathers lacked foresight, philosophy and courage to shape a suitable and stable political system for India. The current constitution itself is dysfunctional and a failed project as its founded on political system which is unsustainable. Mind you that i do not criticize the progressive ideas of the constitution like fundamental rights, secularism and principle of natural justice. But these ideas are pa...

On History  is book by great Historian Eric Hobsbawm which is compilation of several essays from his past lectures and papers. The essays cover diverse themes like on economic and social history, nationalism, Karl Marx, contemporary society, Soviet union, barbarism etc. But at its core, the book is about, as its title suggests, the dynamics of history as a science. The authors explains what is History, how its study evolved in previous two centuries, what were & are its shortcomings, what are consequences of these shortcomings. In fact, author stresses much about 'bad history', that is politically motivated history, anachronistic follies and history based on personal biases of historians. All these topics are discussed in great depth although book may appear too short for these topics.  Author signifies the role of Karl Marx's importance to historians about how historical materialism is critical force of social change and he also underscores pitfalls of 'vulgar Marx...