In any battle for the soul of a nation, culture is the battleground. In India, too, as Hindutva sought to obliterate secular Nehruvi ideals, seismic waves were triggered that shook the world of theater, music, food, literature, film, and the theater of thought.
magazine section of scroll has sought to reflect this struggle, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. For example, we wrote about the emotional scars of children living in violent rehabilitation camps in Gujarat and the trauma of being non-vegetarian in Ahmedabad. We wrote about the fierce resistance in Dalit Shahir’s poetry and the death of dowry that gave birth to feminist street theater in India. We’ve written about reformed poachers in Odisha reserves who are threatening to go back to killing animals, and generations of immigrants from Rajasthan who have been selling tea in Mumbai.
In our archives you can find stories of struggles, not only political, but also social and personal. Women’s resentment in a society where they are expected to bear children. In a country obsessed with white skin, the anger of women suffering from vitiligo. A mother’s frustration that her school’s WhatsApp group crushes her child’s autonomy.
Explore our vast archive and read the stories that resonate most with you. In the meantime, here are 10 of his articles that we think you might enjoy.
Kamayani Sharma entered a forgotten room at Delhi’s Ghalib Academy and discovered one of the most important documents of mid-century modern South Asian art gathering dust. What was this collection doing in an institution dedicated to 19th century poets, and what did it have to do with the Indian state? Sharma answered these questions and more in this interesting article.
Director Sudhanva Deshpande remembered martyred cultural icon Safdar Hashmi and the most important street theater performance in India’s history.
With the tenacity of a historian, Sujan Mukherjee searches for the man who took the inhuman photographs of the 19th century Madras Famine and discovers a story of callous indifference.
Almost all married women in their 30s are expected by society to passionately desire babies, aspire to motherhood, and conform to the ideals of a “normal” woman. Almost all of them receive rude questions and offensive comments, even from complete strangers. What these inquisitors fail to realize is that it’s all a matter of choice, argued Chinmay Manjunath in this essay.
G Venkatasubbia was a towering figure in the world of Kannada letters.A renowned teacher, editor and translator, his greatest achievement was that he was the custodian of a 54-year project that brought us the 8-volume, 9,000-page monolingual dictionary – kannada sahitya he parishat Niganuthu. Srinath Perul met a man whose name is synonymous with the Kannada dictionary.
Unlike the Ramayana, the classical theatrical art of Kerala and the ancient text Surpanaha is no cardboard vamp. She is a full-blooded being who dares to question the status quo, wrote Marini Naar – her grief, bereavement, envy, desire, and her anger are loud.
After the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister questioned the director of the blockbuster, architect Smita Dalvi shared her opinion in a sharp article. Baahubali Seek advice on possible architecture of administrative complex for new state capital Amaravati.
After about 100 women agitated outside the Urban Company’s Gurgaon office in what was perhaps India’s first female-led gig workers’ strike, Karishma Mehrotra met with the agitators to discuss how their dreams of stability and prosperity were being undermined. I asked him if it had turned into a nightmare.
Sanjukta Sharma revisits Peter Brook’s home mahabharata, praised the text not simply as a monolithic morality tale of good versus evil, but as a story about ambivalence and mortality. Brooke “stripped away the pious parts and laid bare the skeletal humanity of the text,” Sharma wrote.
For half a century, KC Paul has worked tirelessly to convince the world that it is the sun that orbits the Earth, not the Earth that orbits the sun. A self-proclaimed scientist, he is famous for his distinctive graffiti across Kolkata, containing his astronomical proclamations and the disturbing question, “Are journalists and scientists blind?” Devarshi Ghosh met the man to find out what makes him unique.