Dhīti is a blog for long form essays, expressions of civilizational voice, cinema and literature review, and more.
Member-only
The Curator and the Clerk - Why Indian Public Policy Needs to Rethink Culture
The piece reflects on the gap between how culture is lived and how it is administered, drawing on insights from anthropology, public policy, and personal fieldwork. It builds on thinkers like Akhil Gupta, James Ferguson, Ashis Nandy, Sudipta Kaviraj, and Partha Chatterjee to argue for a more dynamic, responsive, and culturally intelligent approach to policy making.
Anurag Shukla
7 min read
Culture And Policy
Scenes from a Village That Never Was
From the binaries of post-Independence cinema to the nihilism of contemporary crime dramas, and from the everyday realism of Phulera to its recent slippage into self-conscious performance, the article considers how and why the village continues to be reimagined in TV shows/movies.
Anurag Shukla
11 min read
Culture And Policy
The NCERT Textbook Renewal - Distortion or Decolonization of Bharatiya History
Sir Jadunath Sarkar & R.C. Majumdar didn't spend lifetimes crafting rigorous Indian historiography just to see it buried under colonial guilt. NCERT's 'Exploring Society - India and Beyond' isn't 'saffronization'—it's honest history that finally serves Bharatiyata over colonial narratives. Real scholarship was never the problem. Shame was.
Sushant Gangoli
18 min read
Culture And Policy
The Dhārmika State - From Philosophy to Governance Practice of Integral Humanism in Modern Indian Policy
This essay revisits Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya’s vision of integral humanism, and explores the contours of a Dhārmika State grounded in civilizational values.
Cherish Rajpurohit, Sushant Gangoli
25 min read
Culture And Policy
Before the River, After the Flood - Rethinking India’s Water Imaginaries
A reflective piece that traces how our developmental gaze in India has long imagined the river as a fixed line to be mapped, managed, and monumentalized while ignoring the more intimate, seasonal logic of wetness that has traditionally shaped our relationship with water.
Anurag Shukla
16 min read
Culture And Policy
Reclaiming the Forest - Against the Modernist Myth of Environmentalism in India
The piece offers a civilizational critique of Ramachandra Guha’s recent work Speaking with Nature. It attempts to foreground indigenous, Vaidika, and dhārmika perspectives on environmental ethics as lived ontology deeply embedded in our texts, practices, and lifeworlds rather than modern ideology.
Anurag Shukla
12 min read
Culture And Policy
Showing
1
to
9
of
43
Articles