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Bulldozer (In)Justice in India: Encountering Demolition and Dispossession by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/30/bulldozer-injustice-in-... The article contends that “Bulldozer Justice”—the BJP government’s targeted demolitions of Muslim homes, businesses, and religious sites—represents not mere administrative excess or electoral tactics but the latest manifestation of a coherent seventy-five-year ethnocratic project rooted in the 1949 Babri Masjid occupation. It identifies a persistent structural impunity loop (extra-legal action, state complicity, retroactive judicial or legislative legitimation, and perpetrator reward) driving Hindu majoritarian statecraft, linking the 1949 conspiracy through the Supreme Court’s 2019 verdict to the 2025 Waqf Amendment Act. Drawing on Amnesty International’s documentation of 128 targeted demolitions, Housing and Land Rights Network data showing 738,438 displacements in 2022–23, V-Dem’s classification of India as an “electoral autocracy,” and other reports, the piece maps the phenomenon across its ideological, affective, legal, spatial, gendered, corporate, and legislative dimensions. It highlights the central bovine paradox of India as one of the world’s largest exporters of buffalo meat ($4 billion in 2025) alongside lethal cow-protection vigilantism, exemplified by major corporate donations to the BJP. Framing Bulldozer Justice within manufactured Islamophobia, Hindu victimhood narratives, creeping theocracy, and the mechanics of contemporary majoritarianism, the article characterizes the process as democratic demolition — one structure, one statute, and one impunity loop at a time.

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Bulldozer (In)Justice in India: Encountering Demolition and Dispossession

Bulldozer (In)Justice in India: Encountering Demolition and Dispossession

[debaprasad]

(via The Genealogy of Intoxication in the "Sanātana" Dharma)https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/27/the-genealogy-of-intoxication-in-the-sanatana-dharma/   From Rigveda’s divine Somarasa to Balarama’s Varuni līlā — Sanatana Dharma never banned sacred intoxication, it regulated it with wisdom. Yet BJP-ruled dry states push prohibition while claiming to protect ‘Hindu culture’. Hypocrisy or selective fundamentalism? Time to reclaim nuanced dharma over political control.   

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The Genealogy of Intoxication in the “Sanātana” Dharma by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/27/the-genealogy-of-intoxi... This article interweaves devotional revival, academic appeal, poetic prayer, and radical self-reflexive critique into a polyphonic offering. It advocates the responsible, scripturally grounded revival of two historically significant sacred preparations in Sanatana Dharma — Vaidic Somarasa, the divine elixir exalted in the Rigveda (particularly Mandala IX and 8.48.3), and Maireya Mada, the refined royal wine celebrated in the Valmiki Ramayana (Uttara Kāṇḍa Sarga 42 and Ayodhya Kāṇḍa Sarga 91) — while simultaneously inhabiting the fragile, absurd third space of refusal. Structured around a formal academic letter to Pujya Acharya Shri Ramdev Ji Maharaj and the Patanjali ecosystem calling for GMP-compliant research, standardization, and production of these formulations or their safe, therapeutically calibrated analogs within Ayurvedic Sandhana Kalpana; a deeply personal devotional reflection as a follower of Drunk Balarama (Madhupriya Haladhara), exploring hāsyarasa and the līlās drawn from the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, Harivaṃśa, and Mahābhārata; and a Vedic prayer-song to Varuṇa for the boundless flow of Vāruṇī, the work runs parallel with the voice of l’étrangère — the tremulous skin (dṛti) of Rigveda 7.89 — who refuses both the compulsory intoxication of speed capitalism and the homogenizing violence of theocratic-market fundamentalism. Drawing upon Vedic hymns, Tagore’s storm-cloud renditions, Marx’s nuanced theory of alienation and religion-as-pharmakon, Brecht’s subversive theatre, Subaltern Studies, and Kabir’s laughter, the article affirms Sanatana Dharma’s sophisticated, multi-layered grammar of madya — ritual, medicinal, ecstatic, and counter-hegemonic — while carving generous space for the sober, ridiculous, creative refusal of all compulsory cups. Ultimately, it calls for a courageous renaissance that is scholarly, devotional, and radically disobedient to the twin fundamentalisms of our time.

[debaprasad]

The Genealogy of Intoxication in the “Sanātana” Dharma

The Genealogy of Intoxication in the “Sanātana” Dharma

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NOTA: From Symbolic Dissent to the Horizons of Radical Democracy

NOTA: From Symbolic Dissent to the Horizons of Radical Democracy

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An Anti-Fascist Phenomenology of Haircuts and the Corporeal in Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”

An Anti-Fascist Phenomenology of Haircuts and the Corporeal in Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”

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“Man Na Raṅgāye”: Embodied Austerity and Leadership Praxis During the Climate Crises

“Man Na Raṅgāye”: Embodied Austerity and Leadership Praxis During the Climate Crises

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(via An Anti-Fascist Phenomenology of Haircuts and the Corporeal in Chaplin's "The Great Dictator")https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/15/an-anti-fascist-phenomenology-of-haircuts-and-the-corporeal-in-chaplins-the-great-dictator/

[debaprasad]

An Anti-Fascist Phenomenology of Haircuts and the Corporeal in Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/15/an-anti-fascist-phenome... Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) performs a radical phenomenological dissection of fascism as a regime that disciplines the body — beginning with the head as command centre and extending to hair, moustache, and razor as instruments of masculine authority and ideological inscription. Yet the film’s subversive genius lies in how these very tools are turned against their masters: the razor that polices masculinity becomes an agent of rhythmic care and tender absurdity; the frying pan a weapon of domestic insurgency; the hand grenade and rogue artillery shell instruments of intimate, comedic sabotage. Through shaving sequences, foam-moustache laughter, and phallic banana-crushing, Chaplin reveals that fascist power depends on rigid assignment of function — and collapses the instant the ordinary body slips out of place. This corporeal grammar finds its brutal contemporary counterpart in India under BJP-RSS rule. The same razor that restores dignity in the barber’s chair reappears as the financial “haircut” in the DHFL scandal — a legally orchestrated dispossession that stripped lakhs of ordinary depositors of seventy to eighty percent of their savings to enrich crony capital. What was intimate care becomes fincide; what was artisanal attention becomes procedural theft. From the disciplined fascist head to the managed economic body, the article maps a single arc: authoritarian power inscribes itself upon surfaces both facial and financial, yet the body — whether individual or collective — retains the capacity for interruption, refusal, and reclamation. The interruption is always possible. The razor can still be turned toward care.

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(via “Man Na Raṅgāye”: Embodied Austerity and Leadership Praxis During the Climate Crises)https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/15/man-na-ra%e1%b9%85gaye-embodied-austerity-and-leadership-praxis-during-the-climate-crises/

[debaprasad]

“Man Na Raṅgāye”: Embodied Austerity and Leadership Praxis During the Climate Crises by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/15/man-na-ra%e1%b9%85gaye-... On 10 May 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Indian citizens to adopt sweeping austerity measures—restraining petroleum use, reviving work-from-home, minimising non-essential foreign travel, postponing gold purchases, reducing imports of edible oils and chemical fertilisers, promoting natural farming and Swadeshi consumption, and preferring public transport, carpooling, and EVs—amid West Asia tensions, rising oil prices, and forex pressures. This paper delivers an uncompromising critique of these imperatives, examining their genuine ecological co-benefits in the climate crisis alongside the cross-traditional philosophical demand for ācaraṇa (embodied praxis) drawn from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Imam Abu Hanifa, Gandhi, Kant, Marx, Tagore, and Kabir; the glaring contradictions with the Prime Minister’s opulent lifestyle, extravagant foreign travels, luxury branding, and high-carbon Z+/SPG security protocols; and the deeper theoretical foundations in A.K. Dasgupta’s Economics of Austerity (1975), the Mahābhārata’s Vana Parva, the Bhagavad Gītā’s teachings on lokasaṅgraha and rejection of karmavirati, and Swami Vivekananda’s Practical Vedanta. It argues that in the Anthropocene, genuine austerity requires visible leadership embodiment for moral legitimacy, ecological efficacy, and spiritual coherence; absent such praxis, Modi’s call stands exposed as the very hypocrisy Kabir satirised in his pad “Man nā raṅgāye raṅgāye jogī kaprā” — performative asceticism and ruling-class doublespeak that fatally undermines its own imperatives. The paper proposes a framework of ecological austerity as lokasaṅgraha, integrating economic theory, environmental analysis, South-East Asian philosophy, and uncompromising political ethics.

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(via Revoke the IBC: India’s Biggest Crony Heist – A Call for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience) https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/08/revoke-the-ibc-indias-biggest-crony-heist-a-call-for-non-violent-civil-disobedience/

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Revoke the IBC: India’s Biggest Crony Heist – A Call for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: shorturl.at/H6uoS The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) 2016, touted as a landmark reform, has entrenched crony capitalism in India under the BJP-NDA regime by socializing enormous losses onto public banks, depositors, MSMEs, workers, and taxpayers while privatizing gains for politically connected acquirers. The DHFL episode epitomizes this plunder: a solvent housing finance company was deliberately forced into IBC, leaving over 2.5 lakh middle-class depositors with negligible recovery on ₹5,375 crore claims, as ₹31,000–45,000 crore in alleged fraud was wiped clean under retrospective Section 32A and transferred for a notional Re 1 to Mr. Ajay Piramal, while being riddled with conflicts with SARFAESI, RBI Act, NHB Act and Companies Act, endless amendments as well as tweaks exposing congenital defects, moratorium abuse, CoC supremacy shielded by judicial deference, and engineered opacity, the IBC stands as a global outlier that destroys value of natural justice, violates constitutional rights under Articles 14 and 21, and devastates MSMEs. Beyond reform, it must be fully revoked and re-made from scratch in a pro-people, pro-depositor manner. This manifesto calls for a nationwide Gandhian Satyagraha through mass dharnas, RTIs, human rights complaints, and economic resistance to scrap the Code, eliminate Section 32A, enforce Section 66 fully, and secure full restitution with compound interest to all victims. The heist must end– NOW.

[debaprasad]

Revoke the IBC: India’s Biggest Crony Heist – A Call for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience

Revoke the IBC: India’s Biggest Crony Heist – A Call for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience

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(via Mayday… Mayday… Mayday: Dispatches from the Crashing Cockpit of Speed Capitalism) https://onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/02/mayday-mayday-mayday-dispatches-from-the-crashing-cockpit-of-speed-capitalism/

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Mayday… Mayday… Mayday: Dispatches from the Crashing Cockpit of Speed Capitalism by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/05/02/mayday-mayday-mayday-di... This wanna-be-palimpsest charts the anatomy and ideology of speed capitalism through India’s toxic hassle-hustle culture — from Murthy’s 70-hour sermons, Deshpande’s 18-hour decrees, and the Modi-era cult of exhaustion to the SIR regime’s accelerated erasures, the parliamentary assembly line of rushed legislation, and the gig economy’s algorithmic violence. Diagnosing a civilisation in free-fall, it unmasks the energy fetish and nuclear-speed différance, achievement society’s neuronal violence, McDonaldization fused with Coca-Cola capitalism’s engineered thirst, and the cruel automation paradox of burned-out survivors beside surplus ghosts. Against this hyperindustrial descent, it offers tortoise-time (Kurmāvasthā): deliberate deceleration, creative idleness, and joyful voluntary labour (sahasa aicchik śrama) in moneyless convivial communes — drawing on Tagore’s drowned flute and city-wall critique, Gandhi’s snail-paced wayfaring pedagogy and Bread Labour, Vietnam’s war bicycles, Illich’s convivial tools, and Marx’s emancipatory vision beyond the division of labour. The dispatches culminate in a final reflexive Mayday cry from the crashing cockpit, calling for the reclamation of time, dignity, and the living Earth before hyperindustrial Armageddon swallows all.