Outlook Lens
On Sonia Gandhi’s 79th birthday, her legacy sharpens into focus as a woman who weathered personal loss, political fire, and gendered hostility, yet quietly reshaped India’s welfare state and coalition politics. From a hesitant outsider to a formidable force at the nation’s centre, her journey remains one of the most remarkable arcs in modern India.
As India’s political landscape shifts, the Left faces unprecedented challenges brought in by the might and reach of capitalism and the rigidity and reductiveness of religion-based politics. From the rise of the Right to debates over caste, gender, and democracy, progressive movements are seeking new ways to stay relevant. Outlook’s December 21 issue explores the past, present, and future of the Left in India in its centenary year.
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Millions of Indians are losing access to subsidised food grains as large-scale ration card deletions surge during the ongoing digitisation of the Public Distribution System. Behind the official claim of “rightful targeting” lies a growing trail of eKYC failures, technical glitches and outdated income norms pushing vulnerable households into deeper food insecurity.
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How have the Dravidian movement, the Dalit movement led by Ambedkar and his successors, the Communist movement, and the Hindutva movement articulated by the RSS and the BJP each engaged with caste?
The Dravidian Movement used novels, plays, films and even politics to spread its ideology
Although the state of Tamil Nadu has been long rooted in the politics of self-respect, caste boundaries still shape social relations
Dravidianism developed as a challenge against the Aryan-supremacist and Hindu nationalist trends of India’s early nationalist movement. It continues to challenge Hindutva’s Vedic supremacist concepts
How Periyar and the Self-Respect Movement took shape in Tamil Nadu and why the state has done better than the rest of the country on many social, civil and public parameters
As Hindutva ideology reshapes political narratives across much of India, Tamil Nadu is emerging as a key battleground
When Nehru wanted Periyar to be kept in a mental health facility for his vitriolic views on Brahmins
After a hundred years, what has happened to the idea of self-respect in contemporary Tamil society?
Self-respect marriage remains a force of socio-political change even a century later
The Dravidian movement waged an ideological war against the devadasi system. As former devadasis lead a new wave of resistance, the practice is quietly sustained by caste, poverty, superstition and inherited ritual
Hope Bihar can once again be that impossibly noisy village in Phanishwar Nath Renu’s Parti Parikatha—divided, yes, but still capable of insisting that rights are not favours and development is more than a slogan shouted from a stage
A senior law officer argued in the Supreme Court that “intellectuals” could be more dangerous than “ground-level terrorists”
The war on drugs continues to be a war on the poor.
Dharmendra’s tenderness revealed itself without any threats to his masculinity. He adapted himself throughout his 65-year-long career as both a product and creature of the times he lived through.
From a small village in Tiruvannamalai district to the bustling city of Chennai, her journey is the story of a young woman shaped by Periyar’s radical ideals of equality, rationalism, and social justice.
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In an environment hostile to critical accounts of the Indian state, some filmmakers in Bombay cinema are turning to the legacy of popular film conventions and infusing them with sharp political commentary.
Tagore’s career spanning Ray’s artistry, commercial stardom, political responsibility, and late-life reinvention demonstrates that longevity in cinema is never a matter of survival alone. It is shaped by curiosity, self-respect, and an ability to adapt without contorting oneself.
Haynes’ first collaboration with Julianne Moore birthed uncanny dimensions of illness without cause or cure.
If masculinity and femininity are two sides of a coin, then Mammootty’s Stanley exists on the edges of that coin. His heavy, dominant body towers on the margins of the screen as he tenderly twins with a devouring femininity that facilitates the rhythmic and cool procession of killing.
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