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Annihilating Time, Truth and Life

by Dilip Simeon, 7 August 2014

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"This essay derives its inspiration from the need to engage with and understand the phenomenon of totalitarianism, which appears to me to be a central feature of terror and terrorism. My argument is not restricted to India, nor to a specific religious provenance of Indian communal politics. (Communalism refers to the assumption that shared membership of a community automatically results in a shared political interest). Rather, the relevance of totalitarianism is itself evidence of India’s assimilation into a globalised reality. The sub-division of communally inspired violence along religious categories is self-defeating, for it follows the habitual practice of analyzing communal phenomena through a communal lens – in other words, taking as given precisely those terms and usages that require analysis." [. . .]
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A Matter of Time
by Dilip Simeon
July 2014