This article delineates the vision and praxis of Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA), a self-funded, non-profit platform established in 2021 to critically intervene in the intertwined crises of India’s financial and ecological orders. Anchored in the dual focus on the devastating financial ecosystem—exemplified by the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) crisis—and the accelerating catastrophe of climate change and environmental degradation, OBMA advances a form of academic activism that traverses disciplinary, institutional, and epistemic boundaries. Drawing inspiration from Gandhian non-violent civil disobedience and movements such as Occupy Wall Street, it mobilizes legal challenges, digital campaigns, and critical scholarship to expose crony capitalism, regulatory complicity, and ecological neglect. At the same time, it expands into a broader intellectual–activist ecosystem that interrogates neoliberal political economy, authoritarian democratic forms, institutionalized education, proprietary regimes of knowledge, and epistemic monism, while experimenting with alternatives grounded in commons, decentralization, scepticism, and plural ways of knowing. Guided by the ethical horizon of bahujana sukhaya, bahujanahitaya ca (“for the welfare and happiness of the many”), OBMA seeks not merely reform but a reconstitution of socio-political and intellectual life through interdisciplinary praxis, prefigurative politics, and sustained critical engagement with structures of power, inequality, and ecological collapse.
THE ART OF RESISTANCE
Posted on: 18/09/2021 (IST 11: 15 hrs) Updated on: 22/09/2o23 (GMT 13.32 hrs) Posted On 19th September, 2021 DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY AKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY “Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger-signals; from the outer world, which can rageContinue reading “THE ART OF RESISTANCE”
CONVERGENCE TO PRAXIS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON SUFFERINGS: OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION
This journal tries to demolish the administrative boundaries of academic disciplinary technology by amalgamating all the so-called “subjects” by condemning the objectification, subjectification and subjection. It strives to reach the vanishing point of theory and praxis. Thus, instead of so-called “inter-disciplinary studies”, it emphasizes on the convergence of earthian knowledges and praxiologies. The journal attemptsContinue reading “CONVERGENCE TO PRAXIS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON SUFFERINGS: OBJECTIVES AND DESCRIPTION”
“False”(?!) allegations on the collusion among the BJP, Dawood-Mirchi and the DHFL: A Letter to the BJP President
The article refutes allegations of collusion between the BJP, Dawood Ibrahim, Iqbal Mirchi, and DHFL, claiming they are politically motivated and intended to tarnish the BJP’s image. It argues that these accusations are unfounded and part of a smear campaign. The author defends the BJP, suggesting that the party has no links to these figures or the alleged financial scandal.
Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA): MOA
1. Name of the CommunityThe name of the Society shall be “Once In A Blue Moon Academia”, hereinafter referred to as “OBMA.” 2. Objects of the Society 2.1.To promote and protect human and animal rights in all parts of the world; to study and disseminate knowledge on international human rights issues and the convergences ofContinue reading “Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA): MOA”
খাওয়া-দাওয়ার রাজনীতি আর ইয়াং বেঙ্গল
থালার ওপর রাষ্ট্র চেপে বসা-মাত্রই গেরুয়া ফ্যাসিবাদ সরাসরি রান্নাঘরে ঢুকে পড়েছে। এই লেখা সেই “ঢুকে পড়বার” খবরাখবর দেয়—গোরক্ষার নামে ব্যাপক খুনোখুনি, “সনাতন” খাদ্যবিধির জবরদস্তি, আমিষ (বিশেষত গোমাংস)-ত্যাগের জোরজুলুম, আর সেই ভয়ের রাজনীতির বিপ্রতীপে হাজির হওয়া দুশো বছর আগের ইয়াং বেঙ্গল। ডিরোজিওর ছাত্র-সহযোদ্ধারা বউবাজারের গলিতে গরুর হাড় ছুঁড়েছিলেন। প্রমাণ করে দিয়েছিলেন যে “শুদ্ধতা”-র চাপিয়ে দেওয়া নির্মাণ আদৌ কোনো যৌক্তিক নৈতিকতার মানদণ্ড নয়, স্রেফ গোঁড়াদের সীমানা আঁকার তকনিক; গরু “মা” হয়ে ওঠা আর দলিত-মুসলমানকে বাইরে ঠেলে পিষে দেওয়া সেই একই খ্যামতা-দেহের যন্তর-তন্তর-মন্তর। বাংলার রান্নাঘর (সমসত্ব বর্গ নয়) কিছুদিন আগেও ছিল বহুস্বরের পরিসর; এখন সেখানে সঙ্ঘী সেন্সরেরা উঁকি মারে ইতিউতি। লেখার পরিশিষ্টে ব্যঙ্গপত্র আর বিফ-বাফ রপ্তানির হিসেব মিলে যায়—রাতে গোমাতা, দিনে মহিষমাংসের ডলার। ডিরোজিয়ানদের সেই উঠোনে ছুঁড়ে দেওয়া গো-হাড়টা আজও তাই মাটিতে পড়েনি। ওটা প্রশ্ন। প্রশ্ন ফিরে ফিরে আসে।
Bageshwar Baba: the Hindutva-Certified “Magic Realist”
Dhirendra Krishna Shastri (Bageshwar Baba) is not a free-floating saint but a ruling-party political project: a twenty-nine-year-old hereditary Bundelkhand priest whose “Divya Darbar” cold-readings — sold as Balaji’s voice — underwrite medical harm (gaumutra for cancer, “Muslim-peer” possession), communal mobilisation (Hindu Rashtra, “ticket to Lahore,” economic boycott), and a cash-opaque temple trust now crowned by a Prime Ministerial cancer hospital and Y-category security. Activists who asked him to take a controlled test (Nagpur, 2023) were answered with flight, a police “clean chit,” death threats, and, in February 2025, Modi’s branding of critics as foreign-sponsored enemies of the nation; ministers then walked his November 2025 padyatra. The machine met its first state-side no in September 2026, when Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya rejected Shastri’s Durga Puja meat ban as outsider diktat against Shakta custom — electoral franchise management, not a conversion to secularism — exposing Hindutva’s homogenising fiction at the plate of Navami mutton.
The Vaiṣṇava Veneer: Unravelling ISKCON
This study reads the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) not as “mere spirituality” but as a relatively autonomous Ideological State Apparatus whose Indian career after liberalization is a textbook case of Gramscian trasformismo: a 1960s–70s counter-cultural mission, founded in New York in 1966 by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda on Gauḍīya personalism and initiation without birth-caste, absorbed into the bloc of concentrated capital, competitive religious patronage, and majoritarian cultural weather. Weber’s routinization of charisma explains the unfinished succession of 1977–78—the 9 July ṛtvik letter converted into eleven zonal ācāryas—and the harvest of that office: New Vrindaban’s RICO commune and two murders; a gurukula system that isolated minors under a theology of surrender, producing the 2000 Dallas suit, Chapter 11, and a $9.5 million settlement for 535 claimants, while Lokanātha and other cases show reputation still outranking the child. Three evidentiary drawers hold the CIA question: documented Agency use of clergy; documented Indian and Soviet naming (Parliament, Blitz 1976, Nedelya 1983 / Times 31 July, Andropov); no released operational file that the Agency ran the GBC—voluntas celandi, not a closed cryptonym. In India the same prestige consecrates Piramal Vaikunth and Ambani rooms; takes TMC ceiling-waiver and highway at Mayapur and BJP–RSS blessing (Modi at Kharghar 2025, Shah at Mayapur 2026, Suvendu’s gau-pūjā, Bhagwat at Second Avenue); stages Ayodhya 2024 as Communications policy while staying silent on gau-rakṣā lynching and communal violence; and locks Bhaktivinoda’s nineteenth-century Mayapur map against Navadvīpa’s older hagiographic name (Das 2023), a claim a 2025 film authenticates and a planetarium concretizes. Bangalore v. Mumbai (SC 16 May 2025) proves “ISKCON” is not one legal person. The founding vision did not entail the gate. The unfinished office, plus a republic that buys sacred cover, did. Devotees may keep the Name; the institution cannot keep the alibi.
The Man and the Monolith: A Dossier on Mohan Bhagwat
This dossier is a committed forensic case against Mohan Madhukar Bhagwat, sixth Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh since 2009 and its executive from 2000 to 2009: a lifer raised in a three-generation Sangh household, produced by the organisation’s sealed ladder, and now the living editor of an ideology whose founding texts — Savarkar’s membership test, Golwalkar’s denial of minority citizenship and praise of a Nazi purge as a “lesson,” Moonje’s 1931 pilgrimage to Mussolini — he does not disown so much as copy-edit for export as “oneness.” It holds the line the Sangh most wants critics to overstep: no invented personal conviction from Gujarat 2002, no fake-doctorate smear, no claim that a USCIRF recommendation or a Canadian petition is already law; the charge that survives is custody of a majoritarian machine — unregistered at the centre, banned three times by the republic, radiating through the BJP and the Parivar — restated in Bhagwat’s own dated speech as eliminative absorption (“everyone is Hindu”), relocation of blame (2013, 2015, 2019, 2025), and centenary reputation-work. That work arrived in New York in August 2026 as “Universal Oneness” at Madison Square Garden and walked into a revolt that includes Hindus who refuse to let Hindutva speak in their name. The monolith calls itself oneness. The dossier refuses the name.
Ahimsa Before Arms: an Open Letter and Dossier to the Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of India
Addressed to the men and women in the uniform of the Indian Republic — not to generals, procurement officers, or politicians, but to the person with the rifle, the aircraft, the border watch, and the internal-security beat — this open letter and dossier is written from ahimsa: hard, active non-violence that refuses the destruction of truth. From parliamentary records, CAG reports, RTIs, courts, former Governors and Army Chiefs, the National War Memorial, investigative and strategic sources, SIPRI and budget data, and OBMA’s research, it maps institutional betrayal under the BJP–NDA regime(s): a suppressed Army Chief’s memoir; electoral use of Pulwama and Pahalgam martyrs; Model Code violations; Agnipath’s contract labour; disability-pension cuts after the 2016 strikes and the 2026 tax on valour; AFGIS/AGIF losses in DHFL; defective INSAS and ammunition; Chinese occupation and cartographic lies; Operation Sindoor’s fog and later war-memorial names; Siachen’s nationalism industry; Taliban engagement and the asymmetric terror label; CAPF subordination and the 2026 Act overriding the Supreme Court; veterans at Jantar Mantar; Rafale opacity; a ₹6,81,210-crore budget that still cannot issue reliable boots; and war-profiteering that turns the soldier into a line item. Linked to Prahar, Rang De Basanti, War Chhod Na Yaar, and Jai Ho, and closed by the Russell–Einstein question, it asks the citizen in uniform for viveka — not rebellion, but truth known, paid forward, and refused as the next campaign poster’s raw material.
Reading ‘Vande Mātaram’ Across Registers: Text, Myth, Ritual
This “reading” traces Vande Mātaram’s discursive transformation(s) from a specifically Bengali hymn into an unstable national emblem and, finally, a ritualised test of belonging. It begins with the demographic hinge of saptakoṭi/dvisaptakoṭi—seven crore throats and fourteen crore arms—corresponding to the Bengal Presidency, not India, and follows its mutation from Bankim’s fixed text to the 1905 inflation of thirty crore, the Republic’s excision of the number-bearing and goddess-identifying stanzas in 1937–50, and the later dissolution into unbounded koṭi-koṭi. Across page, stage, state and popular transmission, the essay asks what happens when a countable provincial people becomes an infinite, unauditable mass. It reads the hymn through the genesis of Ānandamaṭha, Tagore’s counter-discourse of neśā, the colonial genealogy of mātṛbhūmi/mātṛbhāṣā, and the “(M)Other-Tongue” mechanism that manufactures Others. The stanza-by-stanza appendix tests the hymn’s claims of water, fertility, beauty, knowledge, feminine strength and sustaining earth against ecological depletion, educational precarity, demographic violence and extractive concentration, exposing a structure in which the signifier survives while the referent is hollowed out. The blurred number, singular vande, and 2026 penalisation of disruption converge as political ritual: citizen becomes chorus, dissent filial betrayal. The argument is not that singing is illegitimate, but that compelled, unexamined singing surrenders the critical freedom citizenship requires; to decline the chant is not to refuse the country, but to refuse a mistranslation, a miscount, a manufactured Mother, and the disappearance of the historically located citizen into an infinite chorus.
The Piramal Pratijñābhaṅga: The Itching Palm of “Conscious Capitalism”?!
This open letter to Ajay Piramal is a satirical indictment of Piramal as an agential structure of corporate power, wielding pratijñābhaṅga, dharma, and satyāgraha to expose the contradictions of “conscious capitalism,” the DHFL “resolution” (?), depositor dispossession, and the collusive architecture linking capital, State apparatus, and institutional power. Piramal is neither an isolated individual nor an aberration, but a particularly revealing node in India’s dynastic neo-capitalist order—the same oligarchic formation embodied, in their own equally consequential ways, by Adani and Ambani, the notorious twins of India’s corporate duopoly.
মঁসিয়ে ফুকোর খ্যামতার কলাপ আর আজকের প্রলাপ
What happens when Foucault is read not as a doctrine but as a device that reads back? Beginning with the sword suspended supposedly above Damocles, this essay follows its displacement—from sovereign threat to dispositif, from visible punishment to (in)visible surveillance, from the juridico-discursive to the rhizomatic capillary, from the sovereign who commands to the subject who learns to govern itself. Rather than applying Foucault to contemporary India, the essay de-seminates him in the context of present-day India: concepts scatter across Damocles, Orestes, parrhesia, the rhizome, the Frankfurt School, algorithmic surveillance, autocratic legalism, electoral politics, guilt and self-discipline, repeatedly returning in altered forms. The rhizome becomes both possibility and trap; the network that once promised escape from sovereign centrality can become an architecture of distributed control, while the sword need no longer fall because its possibility has been internalised. Against any simple opposition between power and resistance, the essay asks how resistance itself is captured, reproduced and redirected through the very dispositifs it contests. It is thus an exercise in meta-writing: Foucault is read through Foucault, against Foucault, and beyond the stabilising authority of “Foucauldian-ism”, as the essay moves between theory, myth, political diagnosis and its own acts of reading. What emerges is not a final thesis but a deliberately unstable map of power—one in which the question is no longer merely where power resides, but how subjects, networks, institutions and affects continually participate in making, unmaking and remaking its forms.
Encountering Pratijñābhaṅga: BJP’s Jumla Politics and the Hollow Piramal Promise
This article argues that the political formation presenting itself as temporal guardian of Sanātana Dharma stands convicted, by that tradition’s own oath-jurisprudence, of serial pratijñā-bhaṅga (breach of the solemn word). Classical Indian thought treats the given word as a binding bond, its rupture punished both in the seen (dṛṣṭa: curse, fine, exile, infamy) and unseen (adṛṣṭa: loss of merit, hell). Reconstructing this jurisprudence from Vedic, epic, Nyāya and Dharmaśāstra sources, the paper applies it to two cases. Focus One: the Hollow Piramal Promise in the DHFL insolvency, where Piramal Capital publicly pledged fixed-deposit holders an extra 10% over the CoC plan yet delivered only 23.08% recovery (~77% haircut on ~₹5,375 crore), while assigning ~₹45,050 crore in alleged-fraud recoveries to the acquirer for one rupee. Focus Two: BJP’s jumla politics—the serial non-coherence of promises from ₹15 lakh and two crore jobs to Acche Din, Smart Cities, Housing for All and Viksit Bharat 2047. Method is compelled juxtaposition of promise against record; pseudology is treated as a discursive property, contested claims are marked, and the Piramal material is offered as opinion and fair comment on a matter of public interest. The finding is arthānupapatti—its Vedic name anṛta, the untruth opposite to the ṛta these guardians claim to protect.
Azadi, or Democratic Unfreedom? A Video Message from OBMA
This video asks what “Azadi” (freedom) means in India today, and whether the formal existence of democracy can coexist with a lived condition of democratic unfreedom. Tracing the period from 2014 to 2026, it examines the erosion of civil liberties, institutional accountability, democratic participation, ecological security, and economic justice, before asking what genuine freedom might require: the Right to Reject, the Right to Recall, a partyless democracy, and an ecological politics rooted in Oikos — our shared home.
Once in a Blue Moon Academia 