Namit Arora grew up in the Indian cow-belt city of Gwalior, famous for its fort and the first epigraphic evidence of zero. After IIT Kharagpur he obtained a Masters in Computer Engineering from Louisiana, followed by a great escape in 1991 to Silicon Valley, where he played a cog in the wheel of Internet technology at three failed startups and at Nokia, Cisco, and McAfee. This didn't make him wise but enabled him to attend lectures of dubious practical value at Stanford and to live, work, or travel in scores of countries, including yearlong stints in London and Amsterdam. He quit this profession in 2013 and moved from California to Delhi NCR. Namit’s essays have appeared in venues like the Humanist, Philosophy Now, the Times Literary Supplement, the Caravan, the Kyoto Journal, the Philosopher, Himal Southasian, and four college anthologies in the U.S. His review of Joothan won the 3 Quarks Daily 2011 Arts & Literature Prize. During a two-year break (2004-06), Namit traveled across India and created a photojournal. Over 15 museums, 30 academies, and 50 publishers have licensed his photos. His videography includes River of Faith, a documentary film about the Kumbh Mela. Contact him via email, blog or website.
Imagine the Middle East in the early centuries of the Common Era. There is no Islam. The two dominant powers in the region are the Romans and the Persians, with a long history of fighting over territory and trade routes. The border between their two empires keeps shifting across Syria and Mesopotamia.
By Namit Arora The Greeks understood philosophy as the love of wisdom. They valued theoretical knowledge to the extent it contributed to practical wisdom. Inside Plato’s Academy was a grove of olive trees dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom. But philosophy today, at least as pursued by much of the Anglo-American academy, is markedly…
By Namit Arora I don’t know many books in which ‘Go west, young man!’ would be a call to go to India. One such book is Journey to the West, ‘China's most beloved novel of religious quest and picaresque adventure,’ published in the 1590s in the waning years of the Ming dynasty. The novel’s hero,…
By Namit Arora (A slightly modified version of this article appeared in Philosophy Now, Nov 2011. Here is the PDF.) As a graduate student of computer engineering in the early 90s, I recall impassioned late night debates on whether machines can ever be intelligent—intelligent, as in mimicking the cognition, common sense, and problem-solving skills of…
By Namit Arora Various societies at different times have dazzled with their bursts of creative and intellectual energy. Historians have a penchant for dubbing them Golden Ages. Examples include the Athens of Herodotus, the Baghdad of Haroun al-Rashid, and the India of the Buddha. But though India has long been famous for its “ancient wisdom”,…
By Namit Arora The US pulled out of Vietnam (video) in 1975 after more than a decade and a humiliating defeat. The war had been expensive, the draft unpopular, and too many white boys had come home in body bags. A strong antiwar mood had set in amidst the public and the Congress. Most Americans…
By Namit Arora Growing up in India, I ate meat only a handful of times until I left home for college. My mother, a moderately pious Hindu, had a deep aversion to eating animals and wouldn’t allow meat in her kitchen (I also remember her kindness and sympathy towards the ragged animals that shared our…
By Namit Arora (A slightly edited version of this article appeared in The Philosopher, the journal of the Philosophical Society of England, Volume LXXXXVII No. 1 Spring 2009.) 1. Is ‘human rights’ a Western idea? Yes and no. Yes because the modern concept of human rights arose in the West during the Enlightenment. No because…
By Namit Arora Returning home from China in 1292 CE, Marco Polo arrives on the Coromandel Coast of India in a typical merchant ship with over sixty cabins and up to 300 crewmen. He enters the kingdom of the Tamil Pandyas near modern day Tanjore, where, according to custom, ‘the king and his barons and…