I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article (“The Mughal emperor who tried to merge Vedanta with Islam”). In the fourth paragraph, the author writes “Jahangir was attempting something intellectually audacious: to prove that Vedanta and Sufism were essentially the same, expressed in different languages”, but this would be politically audacious in today’s era of political and communal intolerance and fanaticism.

Jahangir, a man although not without faults, was a great admirer and promoter of art and wildlife. I had the good fortune of reading the Sahitya Akademi Award winner Bengali novel Shahzada Dara Shukoh by Shyamal Gangopadhyay, in which I had traced Jahangir's pursuits in art, wildlife, ornithology etc. His ideas on Vedanta are equally commendable and represent the true essence of our pluralist nation.

It is interesting to note how the idea of worldly affairs to be “Maya” can terrify and fill a ruler with joy of turning his guilt into a dream at the same time. The author’s restraint in romanticising the episode is extremely appreciable. – Prayash Majumdar

The article seemed to draw a number of false equivalences by bundling Sabarimala, the hijab and the ghoonghat under a single umbrella of “controlling women”, based on a superficial understanding of autonomy (“Why the Sabarimala verdict allowing...

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