“The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history, writes Henry Siegman, the former head of the American Jewish Congress. "Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel's interest in a peace process--other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo--has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land.”
― Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation
― Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation
“It is harder to dehumanize a single individual that you have gotten the chance to know. Which is why people and groups who seek power and division do not bother with dehumanizing and individual. Better to attach a stigma a taint of pollution to an entire group.”
― Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
― Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
“Our self is not constructed by claiming one side of a duality. Rather we are fashioned as drops of water, of the same abundant substance as the ocean. We have within our small selves all the properties, all the constitutive molecules that make up the limitless whole. We are the many, held in the one. We are fractal images of the ultimate reality.
If we embraced this wholeness within ourselves, perhaps we would be less anxious as men about the feminine within, less anxious as heterosexuals about our (perhaps unexplored) capacity to love someone of the same sex, less anxious as Hindus about the evidence of Muslim culture in our lives, less anxious as ‘upper castes’ about the breaching of our spaces by the “lower”, and generally speaking less anxious as “us” about the lurking presence of “them” in us. We could relax into our porosity. We would no longer need to feel small, threatened and in constant need of securing our borders, rallying our defences against being overwhelmed by the “Other”.”
― Burn Down Your House: Provocations From Kabir
If we embraced this wholeness within ourselves, perhaps we would be less anxious as men about the feminine within, less anxious as heterosexuals about our (perhaps unexplored) capacity to love someone of the same sex, less anxious as Hindus about the evidence of Muslim culture in our lives, less anxious as ‘upper castes’ about the breaching of our spaces by the “lower”, and generally speaking less anxious as “us” about the lurking presence of “them” in us. We could relax into our porosity. We would no longer need to feel small, threatened and in constant need of securing our borders, rallying our defences against being overwhelmed by the “Other”.”
― Burn Down Your House: Provocations From Kabir
“I have discovered that some groups and castes are offered little to no opportunity to work in the public sector in Nepal.”
― Why Nepal Fails
― Why Nepal Fails
“A female’s right to choose must be sacrosanct!”
― Sacrifices Beyond Kingdoms: A Provocative Romance Torn Between Continents and Cultures
― Sacrifices Beyond Kingdoms: A Provocative Romance Torn Between Continents and Cultures
The Chennai Book Club
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— last activity Dec 26, 2025 07:42PM
This is a place where readers from Chennai can discuss, share and exchange books. We also have monthly meet-ups, usually held on the penultimate Sund ...more
Vinoth Kumar ’s 2025 Year in Books
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