I started this note with the idea of reviewing To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf—but as my thoughts took shape, I realized I did not intend to write about the book; my reflections gravitated, irresistibly, toward Woolf herself. Having already spent time with her essay A Room of One’s Own and the iconic Mrs. Dalloway, this felt like a natural, if unexpected, progression.

Woolf’s protagonists are often women—but in my eyes, they just happen to be. They could just as easily have been men. That is my sentiment about Woolf, too: she was a woman, but she could have been born at any time and as any gender, and it wouldn’t have made a difference to the essence of her spirit. I believe this was her pathos—that gender didn’t matter to her as much as personalities and people did.

The Human Condition

This outlook didn’t bode well for early 20th-century Europe, where roles were strictly defined by gender. She was not a conventional woman by any standard, yet she didn’t want to be a man either. Perhaps this is why she was able to love both men and women with equal intimacy; gender was secondary to love. She was, simply, an intelligent, deeply sensitive human being with a mind full of beautiful images that she poured into her words—though perhaps never deeply enough for her own satisfaction.

As one reads her books, one is moved by her attempt to pour out the beauty she feels in her heart and soul onto paper. Her words carried a depth that her writing could only hint at.

Kindred Souls: Woolf and Proust

This refusal to be categorized by the “nerves of language” found a kindred spirit in the French writer Marcel Proust, whose influence on her work is telling. She was an ardent admirer of his writing, and one wonders if their shared complexities regarding sexual orientation deepened her engagement with his work. (Proust is presumed to have been homosexual, while Woolf was bisexual, famously maintaining an intimate relationship with fellow author Vita Sackville-West while married to her devoted husband, Leonard Woolf ).

When Woolf first read Proust, she told her friend Roger Fry, “My great adventure is really Proust... How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance?” Upon finishing À la recherche du temps perdu, she noted that Proust so “titillates my own desire for expression” that it became an obsession. It is as if she found a soul who shared her love for the beauty of art and language, weaving his influence into her own.

The Mirror and the Weight

Woolf famously wrote in Between the Acts that “books are the mirrors of the soul”. A meditation on her writing awakens the reader to an immense vastness, as though we are seeing only the visible edge of something much larger. Though today her work is classified as feminist and was once called radical, I believe she didn’t consciously intend to be either. Her thoughts simply were. She focused on the human condition, writing exactly what she felt without trying to fit a label.

Despite a long marriage to Leonard Woolf, who loved her with utmost devotion, Virginia remained haunted by the conviction that she was an unloved wife and an unsuccessful author—neither of which was true. Her history of mental illness and her eventual suicide are deeply moving. We are told she walked into the waters of the River Ouse with her pockets filled with stones. As she once wrote in a diary entry, “I am in a mood to dissolve in the sky,” she ultimately chose to dissolve in the water.

Sometimes I wonder: did she really need the stones to drown her? Would not the pathos of unresolved thoughts, the burden of words left unsaid, and the “shadows of the universe” she carried under her skin have been an unbearable weight enough to drown her on their own?

About the Contributor

Anupa is an educator and an avid reader who brings unique insight to her explorations of the written word. With an eclectic taste in books that ranges from the classic to the contemporary, she believes that literature serves as a vital mirror for our internal worlds. Through her contributions to ruminata, Anupa seeks to understand the architecture of hope and the complexities of the human condition.

That brief sentence, all of six words, made me pause and think for a moment. About sand, and about such a person. About their interest in collecting sand. Of all that is collectible, why would they choose to collect sand? It’s a curious enterprise. This person travels the world, but wherever they go, they go in search of a beach, a river, or a lake bed to find a wee bit of sand. What drives them to do that?

Calvino uses this sandy opening to launch into the first section of the book, which focuses on his visits to eccentric exhibitions in Paris. He wanders through collections of cowbells, gas masks, terracotta whistles, bottle tops, toilet paper packaging, and so forth. He then asks a question about the nature of collecting:

The fascination of a collection lies just as much in what it reveals as in what it conceals of the secret urge that led to its creation.

Ah! And is there an inherent politics to it?

In some sense, a collection is also like a diary, each item in the collection being a diary entry: “[…] a diary of travels, of course, but also of feelings, states of mind, moods […]”

He ends the essay with a touching note reflecting on his own work of decades—that of collecting and putting together words. What has been the purpose of it all?

“So, deciphering the diary of the melancholic (or happy?) collector, I have finally come round to asking myself what is expressed in that sand of written words which I have strung together throughout my life, that sand that now seems to me to be so far away from the beaches and deserts of living. Perhaps by staring at the sand as sand, words as words, we can come close to understanding how and to what extent the world that has been ground down and eroded can still find in sand a foundation and model.”

The Observer

The first part of this collection (which shares the title “Collection of Sand”) focuses on reflections based on visits to different exhibitions in Paris. The second deals with a variety of visual aspects of observation; the third with the fantastical and the imaginary. The fourth part contains reflections from his travels in three countries: Japan, Mexico, and Iran.

This is what Calvino himself had to say about his work, in an “anonymous” note he penned for the back cover of the first edition:

“From Paris Italo Calvino periodically sends an article on an unusual exhibition to the newspaper he collaborates with... This allows him to tell a story through a series of objects: ancient maps or globes, wax manikins, clay tablets with cuneiform writing, the popular press, traces of tribal cultures and so on.

Some traits of the author’s physiognomy come through in these ‘occasional’ pieces: an omnivorous, encyclopedic curiosity, and a desire to distance himself discreetly from any form of specialism... These pieces start from ‘things observed’ and open out to offer glimpses of other dimensions of the mind.”

All in all, the writings here are about “things observed” by an inexhaustibly curious onlooker.

In 1983, Calvino wrote Mr. Palomar, consisting of 27 fictional sketches or vignettes in which Mr. Palomar meditates deeply on questions of the cosmos, existence, and culture. He makes observations in search of meaning in things. Mr. Palomar does nothing but observe and live an intellectual life essentially in his head. In this collection, we see that Calvino is Mr. Palomar.

Knotty Communications

The book moves from collections to the visual aspects of observation, and here Calvino’s obsession with signs—semiotics—takes center stage. He writes beautifully about the symbolism behind knots, for instance.

“In New Caledonia messages of war and peace were transmitted by means of a rudimentary rope made from banyan bark knotted in various ways. […] A knot around a small firebrand - extinguished, but with traces of burning on it - was a declaration of war... […] The art of making knots, which is the peak of both mental abstraction and manual work, could be seen as the human characteristic par excellence, just as much and perhaps even more than language...”

Knotty communications? Or perhaps the rich language of knots.

The Emergence of Writing

He also writes about the other—perhaps the most important—form of semiotics: writing. This arrested my attention given my own interest in the topic. In an essay called “Before the Alphabet,” Calvino traces the emergence of writing to Lower Mesopotamia (Uruk, c. 3300 BC), the land of clay. He notes how the the material dictated the form: because curves didn’t hold well in clay, pictograms became stylized, triangular, and cuneiform.

“Writing first emerges in Lower Mesopotamia... This was the country of clay: administrative documents, bills of sale, religious texts or those glorifying kings were engraved with the triangular point of a reed or quill on clay tablets which were then dried in the sun or baked. […]

In general these signs had a triangular apex that then prolonged itself into a line forming a kind of nail shape, or forking into two lines like a wedge: this was cuneiform writing... writing that transmitted an impression of rapidity, movement, elegance and compositional regularity.”

He reasons about why this might have happened in Mesopotamia. Writing, unlike speech, is not natural. Most of the languages humans have spoken do not have writing systems. Perhaps it is external social, political, or cultural pressures that are responsible for writing being invented. For instance, in Lower Mesopotamia, the development of irrigation and agriculture resulted in a demographic explosion leading to a complex social hierarchy. Writing here began as a receipt; it was a technology born of the boring necessity of accounting.

As I read these passages, I started thinking about the emergence of writing. How did it emerge in Mesopotamia and not somewhere else? There were many intellectually advanced civilizations in the ancient world: the Greeks, the Harappans, and so forth. Why was there no writing among the Aryans despite the huge intellectual achievement of the Vedas? Perhaps their focus was not on the permanent record of clay, but on the eternal sound of Śruti—that which is heard and preserved through precise oral recitation.

And in general, why did certain technologies in the ancient world develop at certain specific places and not others? Sometimes even the spreading of those took time. The Greeks perhaps took up writing very soon and evolved their own system. Probably not others. I wondered how technology can be a function of the terrain, vegetation, and other geographical or ecological factors.

Also, weren’t societies like the Harappans fairly complex and well-organized, with a lot of long-distance trade relations? While the Harappan “script” is yet to be deciphered, there are arguments (like the controversial “Farmer-Sproat-Witzel” hypothesis) that suggest it might not even be a script. If those pictograms are merely isolated concepts—devoid of the grammatical glue of verbs and connectors—then they may not be a language at all. Even statistical analysis fails us here; unlike the trilingual Rosetta Stone that unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphs, we have found no such parallel corpus to crack the code of the Indus.

Why does certain technologies take root in certain terrains and not others? Calvino doesn’t answer this for us, but he provides the framework to ask the question: How much of our “intellectual” history is actually a history of our geography?

The Cost of Beauty

In the final sections, Calvino travels to Japan, Mexico, and Iran. In Japan, he is entranced by the gardens of Kyoto. He observes that everything seems spontaneous only because everything has been calculated.

“[…] There is one thing I seem to be starting to understand here in Kyoto... The construction of a nature that can be mastered by the mind so that the mind can in turn receive a sense of rhythm and proportion from nature...”

But Calvino refuses to let us simply admire the view, because there is a dark side to it, as there is always to what we call “high culture”. It is often built on top of the sacrifices of the poor and the downtrodden for the sake of the rich. There is an unseen or forgotten violence behind it. One of his students asks him, “Do you like all this? I cannot help thinking that this perfection and harmony cost so much misery to millions of people over the centuries.”

“But isn’t the cost of culture always this?” Calvino objects.

“Creating a space and time for reflection and imagination and study presupposes an accumulation of wealth, and behind every accumulation of wealth there are obscure lives subject to labour and sacrifices and oppression without any hope...”

This struck a chord with me. Whenever I visit historical monuments—be it the intricate carvings of Belur and Halebidu, the soaring heights of the Qutb Minar, or the marble perfection of the Taj Mahal—my admiration is always shadowed by this very thought. I wonder about the sacrifice of the countless lives that propped up these stones, spanning multiple generations. How many were struck down by the harsh sun? How many fell to their deaths from makeshift scaffolding? How many were crushed beneath the accidental slip of a massive slab?

I remember the first time this thought stopped me in my tracks. It was at the Kailasa temple in Ellora, carved out of a single rock face. Standing before that monolithic achievement, the sheer scale of the human toll felt heavy in the air. Since then, it is a thought that recurs wherever I go.

The essay ends with this haunting image:

“The group has reached a bed of smoothed, round stones... ‘These stones,’ the guide was explaining, ‘were brought here three centuries ago from every part of Japan. The Emperor rewarded whoever brought him a bag of stones with a bag of rice.’

The student shakes his head and looks bitter. We seem to see the queue of peasants conjured up by those words bent double under their bags of stones... Meanwhile the attendants busy themselves round the scales: on one dish there are the stones, on the other rice…”

Imagine the human cost of a bag of rice!

The Sword and the Leaves

Despite the weight of history, Calvino remains a master of lightness. In the essay “The Sword and the Leaves,” he recounts a Zen story that perfectly encapsulates his worldview.

“[…] the perfect Samurai must never concentrate his attention on his enemy’s blade, nor on his own, nor on striking his opponent, nor on defending himself, but must only annihilate his own ego; that it is not with the sword but with the non-sword that victory is won...

[…] Looking at the yellow leaves falling into the water, I remember a Zen story which only now do I think I understand.

The pupil of a great sword-maker claimed to have outdone his master. To prove how sharp his sword-blades were he immersed a sword in a stream. The dead leaves carried down by the current were neatly sliced in two as they went across the blade’s edge. The master plunged into the stream a sword that he had fashioned. The leaves flowed on, slipping right past the blade.”

Collection of Sand is a delightful, dizzying anthology. The best thing about Calvino is that he never truly stays on topic; he meanders. And it is in those meanderings—between the sand, the knots, the swords, and the leaves—that we find the joy of reading.

Scientific theories are inherently falsifiable. That is to say, they are amenable to refutation. No amount of evidence confirming a scientific theory proves its validity; on the contrary, repeated and verified observations that don’t confirm the theory can take it back to the proverbial drawing board. Theories are not accepted because they are “True” in an absolute sense, but because the predictions they make haven’t been falsified thus far.

Scientists make specific predictions based on their theory, and in doing so, they provide the world with the exact tools needed to dismantle their work. They run the risk of losing face and intellectual credibility at any point. (On the other hand, the more specific and riskier the predictions, and the longer they remain unfalsified—the glory of unravelling something truly remarkable!)

Pseudoscience, on the other hand, seeks only confirming evidence. Think of stuff like astrology, certain conspiracy theories, or diatribes against modern medicine. They almost always sound plausible because they are designed to be “watertight.” However, proponents of these don’t provide anything falsifiable. There’s loads of contrary evidence, of course! But in the absence of well-defined falsifiability criteria, such evidence is simply “absorbed” or argued away:

“The data doesn’t show it because the liberal elites are suppressing the ‘real’ results,”

“the entire study regarding the efficacy of vaccines is a plant by Big Pharma to protect their profits,”

“Homeopathy works, but you don’t trust the results only because it’s not approved by the West,” and so forth.

Because these claims never specify what would count as a “failure,” they run no risk. They conveniently seize every feeble corroboration only to gloat. And, to be clear, the question here is not one of truth, but that of logic—indeed, liberal elites might have their political biases just as Big Pharma is primarily motivated by commercial gains. But those do not automatically validate these claims. They have to stand the test of falsifiability independently.

This is where the logic meets temperament. Falsifiability is, at its heart, an act of humility. To be scientific is to admit, “I could be wrong, and here is exactly how you can prove it.” It is full of doubt, caveats, and accountability. Does science—and more than science, the industry that is built on the foundation of science and technology—always show intellectual humility and accountability? Of course not. But that is at least part of its philosophy. While individual actors or corporations may fail, the scientific process—rooted in peer review and the constant threat of refutation—provides a level of scrutiny that pseudoscience avoids by design. Pseudoscience is defined by arrogance; it starts with the conclusion and works backward, ensuring it is never vulnerable to reality.

Beyond the realm of formal science, this “scientific temper” is a powerful tool for our civic and cultural discourse—whether on social media or in the real world. Logic ought to trump emotion, or at the very least, provide a necessary check on it. In policy-related discussions, we often see positions taken based on one’s political alignments rather than the substance of a proposal. A policy is labeled “pro-people” or “anti-people” based on who proposed it, rather than a rigorous analysis of its mechanics.

Similarly, in the debates around history and linguistics, we encounter claims of “primacy,” “antiquity,” or “superiority” of certain cultures or languages. Such claims frequently function as social paradigms—mental models so central to our identity that we would rather explain away a mountain of evidence than admit the model has entered a state of crisis. These claims are frequently patently unfalsifiable, if not already proven false by existing evidence.

Why do we gravitate toward these “watertight” claims in history or politics? Why do we often take a black-and-white position or remain obsessed with our antiquity and a purported “glory of the past”? It is often because they provide an identity-based safety net. Logic and scientific temper, on the other hand, are discomfiting; they induce doubt and offer no consolation or comfort.

In an echo chamber, you are embraced for toeing the group’s line and pounced upon if you find errors or even ask questions. On the other hand, in a critical peer review, you are rewarded for finding weak points, but also subject to criticism for illogical claims—however emotionally appealing they might sound.

There is a profound ethical dimension to this. Illogic not only leads to bad science; it can breed a society that is intellectually dishonest. That, in turn, hurts democracy and any hope for social justice. Language has a critical role to play here: if our language of discourse is designed to be unfalsifiable—playing on emotions and using loaded, ambiguous terms that lack clear definitions—the quality of our discourse suffers. When our engagement shrinks to fragments and social media polls, we lose the vocabulary of doubt that is essential for progress.

What’s the antidote? There are no silver bullets. But scientific temper is not a silo reserved for those who work in the field of science or technology; it must be a part of every discipline and every conversation. Understanding concepts like: thinking from first principles, falsifiability, statistical evidence, repeatability, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies aids all of us in this endeavour.

In an age where social media algorithms act as a “protective shield”, filtering out the "black swans" that might challenge our worldview, maintaining a scientific temper is a revolutionary act and an important contribution to society. It requires us to consciously break out of our inertia and seek evidence we have been conditioned to ignore. It moves us away from pre-packaged certainties and toward a more honest, accountable engagement with the world.

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Picture a conversation about politics at home or among friends. What begins casually heats up fast. The situation pressures you to take a clear for-or-against position on some issue or policy; and on that basis, you’re instantly classified—as a supporter or opponent of Modi or Siddaramaiah (or Rahul Gandhi). The debate curdles into a quarrel.

That moment captures a snapshot of a larger malaise pervading our society. Our compulsion to oversimplify—to see only two opposing choices in everything—reveals a flaw in our reasoning. By ignoring complexity and papering over nuance, this habit blocks a fuller understanding and dictates how we respond to, and engage with, out immediate political, cultural, social, and even global conflicts.

Consider the farmers’ protests of 2020–21. What unfolded was not merely a policy dispute but a profound illustration of a societal schism. The establishment, with help from supporters and media, framed the movement as an illegitimate insurgency, branding farmers “Khalistanis” or “andolan-jivis” (professional agitators). The narrative hardened into patriots versus traitors. In response, protesters cast it as a grassroots struggle against corporate overreach. It became a collision of two irreconcilable worlds, with no space for accommodation. The eventual repeal was not a dialogue-driven consensus but a strategic political retreat, highlighting a failure of the argumentative process.

This is a local face of a global phenomenon. We are trapped in an argumentation crisis. This is not a mere decline in civility but a systemic consequence of a deeply rooted human cognitive preference for binaries. This innate tendency is now dangerously supercharged by political ideologies and social technologies.

There is no logical or ideological inconsistency in condemning the barbaric killings in Pahalgam as acts of Islamic terrorism while simultaneously condemning the regime’s warmongering that exploits such atrocities. One can recognize that war can sometimes become unavoidable and still worry about it and oppose it. It is possible to raise one’s voice against both Israel’s Zionist government and Hamas, while maintaining real empathy for ordinary people on both sides. Our “progressive” credentials are not diminished if we share Palestinian poems alongside the stories of Israelis dragged into a war they did not want, or if we condemn the oppression faced by countless women like Ahu Daryaei in Iran.

And yet, we pick a side and cling to it. We posture to impress our peers, to avoid their ire.

This tendency to force everything into our preferred ideological frames and binary-based thinking is growing in our discussions on society, economics, culture, and literature. For example: individual vs community, Dalit vs Savarna, oppressed vs oppressor, capitalism vs socialism. These lenses aren’t wrong; in many contexts, they are right and necessary. They’re just not sufficient. They can’t explain or resolve everything.

Look at food debates—the vegetarian vs. meat eater (popularly known as, “non-vegetarian”) squabbles. Or education—where a shallow understanding of “medium of instruction” keeps the Kannada vs English false dichotomy alive even today. It is not unnatural to support a right to food and simultaneously worry about the ecological impact of rising meat consumption; or to fight for equality and social justice while remaining open to the benefits of globalization and free markets. It is the mark of an educated mind, as the saying goes, to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. We can hold apparently conflicting ideas in view and reconcile them. Seduced by simplistic narratives, we seem to be losing that ability.

This problem isn’t new. Gustave Le Bon, a French physician and polymath, understood this long before many others. His book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, was a foundational work in social psychology, first published in 1895. Perhaps what he observed during the French Revolution—and the ‘Reign of Terror’ that led to the republic’s collapse and the rise of Napoleon—helped him crystallize his theory.

The essence of his work is captured in the line: “Alone, we think. In a crowd, we react.”

In a mob, he argued, individuality dissolves and reason yields to emotion. People are swept up by a collective mind—easily led, impulsive, and prone to extremes. Our primal nature takes over. We lose restraint, because responsibility now belongs not to any individual, but to the mob. A hypnotic frenzy spreads like a contagion. A “crowd” need not even share a physical space; we see lynch mobs and troll armies on social media all the time. (To be clear, the consequences are not always destructive; crowds can be mobilized for positive, heroic outcomes, though that is harder).

In any era, those who grasp a subject comprehensively and think deeply are few. But unlike in the past, information has become radically accessible in the last two decades. It is true that the internet and social networks are part of a global democratization process. It is just as true that they are part of a systematic weaponization process. (Whether platforms controlled by a few giant corporations are truly “democratic” is another question entirely).

In an age where algorithms select fragments of information—many of them half-baked and bias-confirming—to build us comfortable echo chambers; when a complex problem becomes fodder for a social media poll; when “activism” shrinks to endorsing and sharing online petitions; when an entire field of study can be distilled into a few ‘Shorts’—what we face is not just a political or cultural crisis. This is a generational epistemic crisis. We must ask the fundamental questions: Do we truly know what we claim to know? What is the source of that knowledge? By what methods did we acquire it?

To identify and correct the flaws in our thinking, we need to use the first principles, concepts, and tools from various fields like psychology, logic, economics, and game theory. They provide many useful mental models.

As mentioned, the symptom of binary classification that has now worsened is also a primitive survival strategy evolved for survival. When faced with a complex problem or danger, the brain evolved shortcuts and simple heuristics to process available information and make quick decisions. While these work effectively in many situations, in others they lead to our logical fallacies and prejudices, unconsciously shaping a black-and-white worldview.

Various cognitive biases work together to strengthen this kind of thinking.

• One is confirmation bias: the tendency to search for, select, and remember only that information, argument, or data that strengthens our existing beliefs, while ignoring what contradicts them.

• Another is negativity bias: giving far more weight to bad or unpleasant experiences than to good ones.

• A third is the availability heuristic: making universal judgments based on events that easily come to mind (often linked to recency bias). For example, one recent incident of an assault on a migrant (or an act of oppression by a migrant) can instantly overshadow countless instances of long-term, peaceful coexistence.

• Another such bias is the anchoring effect: an excessive reliance on the first piece of information offered (for example, the first set of leaked reports about the caste census) when making decisions.

There are dozens more such biases. Understanding them helps us identify the problems in our own thinking.

f cognitive biases and prejudices shape the structure of our limited thinking, Game Theory provides the terminology for it. Concepts like “zero-sum thinking,” “groupthink,” and “preference falsification” show how individual prejudices can aggregate to create collective paralysis.

A zero-sum game is a mathematical model of a situation (which could be a social relationship or an economic transaction) where the total sum of gains and losses of the participants remains zero. In such a case, one person’s gain comes at an equal loss for another. While this fits some situations, the real danger arises when this principle is unconsciously applied to most real-world problems. In most contexts, zero-sum thinking is a myth: a false perception that conflict is inherent in social relations and that one party’s victory is only possible through another’s defeat. This is deeply rooted in us.

This mindset denies the possibility of positive-sum outcomes—where greater value can be created for everyone when more people get opportunities. Instead of a mindset of cooperation and collaboration, it spreads bitterness, leading to unnecessary conflicts. This is glaringly visible in the debate on reservations. Even when there is strong evidence for the argument that true progress is possible only by including all sections of society and that this benefits everyone, the benefits received by lower classes are portrayed as opportunities directly snatched from the upper classes. We must instead realize that when more and more historically disadvantaged people get opportunities, it is possible, over time, to create more value for everyone. We must believe this can create a virtuous cycle. Along with this, we must also continue to think about how to increase the total quantum of opportunities, not just argue over dividing the current ones. Otherwise, we will only end up drowning in the for-and-against debate.

There is a direct and strong link between the socio-psychological concept of groupthink and zero-sum thinking. When a group’s desire for internal harmony and conformity becomes extreme, it begins to reject obvious truths and wisdom, becoming irrational and inert. When the world is perceived as a “us” vs “them” zero-sum war, group unity becomes the highest priority. There is no room for logic or factual assessment. The group turns inward, obsessed with its own purity and incapable of tolerating any dissent. This is accompanied by the demonization of opponents. Individuals belonging to the group will not express their doubts publicly, to avoid being “canceled” or ostracized.

The Turkish-American economist Timur Kuran, in a 1987 paper, put forward the concept of preference falsification. This refers to an individual hiding their true likes, dislikes, and opinions due to group or social pressure; or, performing a manufactured preference that is favorable to the group. For example, individuals who might privately hold a nuanced opinion—such as believing that the majority of Muslims in India are, like themselves, ordinary people with common aspirations who just want to live in peace—may suddenly sound like extremists on platforms like Twitter. Similarly, those who oppose a government policy stay silent, fearing the “anti-national” label. This silence of the majority, in turn, deepens political polarization.

Amartya Sen’s important work, The Argumentative Indian, begins with a reference to Krishna engaging in a detailed and lengthy philosophical discussion in the Bhagavad Gita. He then examines the questions raised by Gargi and Maitreyi and discusses the heterodoxy that has been embedded as a value in Indian civilizations since ancient times.

Even if dissent, pluralism, and heresy existed in our heritage, the reality is that they have been under assault for the last few decades. Not just dialogue, but the very possibility of it is diminishing, and we have become a “tongue-tied nation” (“ಮಾತು ಸೋತ ಭಾರತ”). Simplified perceptions and the zero-sum contest of easy binaries have taken hold.

To this, we must add a crucial counter-point. As Dr. B.R. Ambedkar argued, this celebrated “argumentative” tradition often co-existed with the oppressive hierarchy of caste—a rigid binary of “graded inequality”. The high-minded debate was largely the domain of a privileged elite, while the vast majority were systematically denied the right to even be heard.

This reframes our modern crisis completely. The challenge is not simply to revive Sen’s argumentative ideal, but to truly realize it for the first time by infusing it with Ambedkar’s non-negotiable demand for structural equality. The goal, then, is to build a genuinely pluralistic and inclusive public square, one that honors the supposed civilizational values that both Sen and Ambedkar, in their different ways, championed.

To overcome our “tongue-tied” state and achieve this requires a two-fold path:

1. Individual Cognitive Labor: We must actively resist our mental shortcuts, slow down, and seek out the dissenting perspectives we have been conditioned to ignore.

2. Collective and Institutional Change: We must demand and build a public square—from our social media algorithms to our public institutions—that rewards nuance and protects inclusivity, rather than profiting from outrage.

The goal is not to end disagreement, but to elevate its quality by ensuring its inclusivity—to dismantle the false binaries and finally build a public square where the complex, truthful spectrum of all voices can be heard.

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If a book on the history of the islands were to be written, to paraphrase Pankaj Sekhsaria from memory, the entire history of British colonization would merit a page, while India’s administration would get a single paragraph. India, itself a victim of colonization, suffers from a cognitive dissonance—a denial of sorts—in not acknowledging its own role as a colonizer.

The post-independence era saw a period of fast-track colonization orchestrated by the Indian state. It all began with the plan of peopling the islands in the 1960s. Official government documents from the 1960s, as Sekhsaria points out, explicitly called them ‘Colonisation Schemes’. Indian colonization of the islands was a continuation of the cold chain as it were. It is hard to imagine the islands being part of Indian dominion had British not colonized it first. It was a gift from them in that sense. To encourage settlement, families from the mainland were offered a package that typically included 5 acres of paddy land, 5 acres of hilly land for cultivation, and a loan to procure cattle, in addition to the rights to timber for constructing a house.

This process continues today through the act of renaming. Today Port Blair is Sri Vijaya Puram. Havelock Island is now officially Swaraj Dweep, Neil Island is Shaheed Dweep, and so on. We must, of course, erase relics of our colonial past. Mustn’t we? But what about our colonial present? Do we, for instance, stop to think what the original inhabitants think of these strange names? Did they, by chance, have their own names for these islands?

Of course, they did. Havelock Island, for instance, was Thi-tar-siro, ‘the land near the open sea’. Port Blair is Lao-tara Nyo to the Great Andamanese, which translates to the ‘house of evils or foreigners’. Just as well.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been home to some of the first migrants out of Africa. These communities have a long history of living in isolation. In the 19th century, there were about 5,000 indigenous people—the Onge, Great Andamanese, Sentinelese, Jarawa, Nicobarese, and Shompen. Today, their numbers have dwindled to under 500, with some groups, like several of the Great Andamanese tribes, having vanished completely, and their languages, like Pujjukar, becoming extinct. Once spread throughout the archipelago, they are now restricted to a few reservations while mainland settlers occupy the rest of their homelands.

The story of tribal communities is the same the world over, whether in South America, Central India, or the Andamans. Contact with the ‘civilized’ world brings an onslaught of infectious diseases; poachers and illegal mafias introduce alcohol and tobacco, leading to addiction and sexual exploitation. Then the state enters the picture—seemingly to help—and introduces another form of dependency by providing rations and supplies. Yes, there is access to healthcare, but one wonders if that need was created in the first place by the forced contact imposed on them.

The Great Andaman Trunk Road, cutting through the Jarawa Tribal Reserve, is a testament to this imposition. It connects Port Blair with northern towns like Baratang, Mayabunder, and Diglipur. This road was constructed despite numerous protests from activist organizations and resistance from the Jarawa themselves. Despite multiple orders from the Supreme Court to limit or close the road, it continues to be operational. The construction of roads and bridges continues unabated.

The name ‘Jarawa’ is an interesting one. It’s not a word in the language spoken by the people we call Jarawa. In fact, it’s a word in the language of the Great Andamanese, a neighbouring group, that meant ‘stranger’ or ‘the other’. What do the ‘Jarawa’ call themselves? Or do they? There’s a word in their language—Aong—which connotes ‘we’ or ‘us’ or ‘our people’. Now, is that a word used as an identity for the tribe, or is it just that, a word? I ask because, do you really need to identify and differentiate yourself when you are living by yourself? Isn’t identity more often than not a manifestation of external forces? Doesn’t it get asserted under conflict?

But I digress.

We were told that the travel through the Jarawa reserve (yes, I am a hypocrite, no question) is a great experience—you will travel through dense and beautiful rainforests. We were also told that the vehicles move in a convoy and are not allowed to stop; if we happen to come across the Jarawa people, we just move on, or else they might shoot us with arrows—absolutely no contact.

I asked our driver as we were entering the reserve if we might see the Jarawa. (Yes, I did want to see what our earliest ancestors, the first humans of India still extant, might have looked like. I’m sorry.) “If you are lucky,” he remarked coolly. Well, yes. Recent estimates say they are all of 400-odd individuals. Could we really ‘spot’ them in these thick rainforests? As it turned out, by the end of our round trip, we had seen the whole range—so much so that I remarked, ‘Looks like we have met most of the clan.’ I was trying to make a joke of it, but I felt a strange sensation of guilt and shame. A sadness. What have we done here? Until a few decades ago, the Jarawa did fiercely resist intrusion. But since the late ‘90s, they have—especially the younger generation—been coming out. Today, they come to the road, wait there, and can be seen asking for food. Biscuit packets get thrown at kids who scramble for them and jump with joy.

This stands in stark contrast to their profound indigenous knowledge. As described in Sekhsaria’s book, the Onge have a method of extracting honey from the hives of the giant rock bee. To ward off the bees, they don’t use fire or smoke but simply chew the leaves of a specific plant, tonjoghe, and smear the greenish pulp over their bodies. This repels the bees without harming them, allowing for a sustainable harvest. And famously, no one from these tribes died when the 2004 Tsunami hit; their acute environmental awareness and traditional warnings passed down through generations helped them move inland and to higher ground. What have we done to people who possess this kind of ecological wisdom?

Travelling, apart from being an enjoyable and relaxing experience, widens your horizons and gives you a better understanding of the world; but it also often leaves you with an acute sense of guilt. I suddenly remembered a brief note I had written a few years ago during a trip to Meghalaya. I remembered it as we were travelling on the bumpy and often non-existent road towards Diglipur. The feeling was familiar.

“Selfie Danger Zone and Landslide Ahead”

As we move gently along the curving roads carved on the East Khasi hills en route to Mawlynnong, there’s fog everywhere, slowing us down further. The fog set in quite early yesterday, much before sunset, as we headed out of Sohra (Cherrapunji). It’s a heavenly sight all around, with boundless valleys and streams flowing every which way one looks. From time to time, at a location where you get a panoramic, unobstructed view of the valley, one finds signage that says, “Selfie Danger Zone”. Pretty soon you start seeing the ugly profile of mined hills and mining trucks everywhere. Signage warning of potential “Landslide Ahead” follows soon after. Gorgeous valleys on one side with their selfie danger zones; butchered hills on the other with their landslide alerts.

I’m looking out the window of my cab trying to process all this. At first, man discovers these bounties of nature and settles down. Eventually, he invents something called tourism that helps people from distant lands partake in this joyous experience. People start flocking, needing more and bigger roads, homestays, resorts, restaurants, plastic, more everything—including more landslides. In a parallel thread, man invents photography, invents social media, puts tiny yet highly powerful cameras inside smartphones. Someone discovers the idea of a “selfie”. It spreads like a virus, eventually leading to selfie danger zones.

I know I’m rambling as I’m still trying to process all this. Selfies, social networks, tourism, landslides, plastic, and a myriad of other things are inexorably intertwined in my mind. I’m struggling to disentangle them so I can get some clarity. To see through the fog, as it were.

And the irony of I, a tourist, making these observations is not lost on me.

That same paradox was playing out on this Andaman road. The same dumper trucks, concrete mixers; dug up hills, reinforcement bars sticking out like sore thumbs. A thumbs up to development.

The government of India wants to increase tourism here tenfold. One can only imagine the consequences. What might that mean for the ecology of the place? What would that mean for the tribal communities?

Pankaj Sekhsaria has been fighting for the cause of the islands. He has been documenting this for decades, his writing often carrying the exhaustion of fighting a losing battle. You can sense a feeling of one step forward, two steps back in many of his essays.

As I read his book intermittently during my travel, I couldn’t help but think: had I read this before I embarked on that long journey on the Great Andaman Trunk Road, would I still have done it? I’m not completely sure. But that’s no longer the most important question.

Islands in Flux is a niche book. It’s extremely unlikely that I would have come across it or read it had I not travelled to the Andamans. But I’m glad I did. It’s an eye-opener. Not only in regard to these islands but in general to the destruction we are causing in the name of development and tourism.

The irony, I realize now, is not just that I was a tourist observing a tragedy; it’s that by participating, I was a part of it. Reading the book didn’t provide a solution, but it clarified the problem. It turns the question from a simple ‘Would I still have gone?’ to the far more unsettling ‘Now that I know, how do I carry this knowledge?’