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Acharya Prashant

September 29, 2026
Home
September 29, 2026

Acharya Prashant

OP-EDS & COLUMNSMEDIA COVERAGEINTERVIEWS & TALKS

Op-Eds & Columns

Acharya Prashant is a philosopher and author, an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad. He is among the most widely read philosophical columnists writing in India today, with more than 190 published columns ranging across climate and consumption, elections and ideology, caste and religion, gender, education, geopolitics, technology, and the inner life.

What unifies this range is a single method: tracing every public crisis back to the unexamined self that produces it.

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Amar Ujala
Amar Ujala
The Sunday Guardian
The Sunday Guardian
The New Indian Express
The New Indian Express
Deccan Herald
Deccan Herald
The Pioneer
The Pioneer
NDTV
NDTV
Dainik Jagran
Dainik Jagran
NBT Navbharat Times
NBT Navbharat Times
Lokdesh
Lokdesh
THE WHOLE SPECTRUM
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The Pioneer19 Sep '26

Will AI Kill Us? First, Ask Who Is Afraid

NBT Navbharat Times13 Sep '26

एक अरबपति का मास्टरप्लान: सूरज को रोको, कार्बन उगलते रहो?

Times Now14 Sep '26

A Billionaire's Masterplan: Block the Sun, Keep the Carbon?

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Featured Columns

Times Now14 Sep '26

A Billionaire's Masterplan: Block the Sun, Keep the Carbon?

"How much does it take to reduce emissions? In principle, nothing much. No invention is pending, no launch window has to be waited for, no breakthrough in materials science is required, no treaty has to be signed by anyone who does not want to sign it. What is required is that a very large number of people desire less than they currently desire, and that is the one thing no engineer can deliver and no summit can negotiate. So the simple route goes untried, and in its place arrive proposals of escalating magnificence."

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Full Index

CompactDetailed

Full Index

Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues
  • All (219)
  • Environment, Technology & the Future of Civilization (53)
  • Nation, Governance & Cultural Introspection (26)
  • Global Affairs, Geopolitics & Human Nature (14)
  • Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues (37)
  • Mental Health, Psychology & Self-Knowledge (23)
  • Philosophy, Ethics & Self-Enquiry (39)
  • Festivals, Symbolism & Inner Renewal (15)
Newspaper
  • All (37)
  • The Pioneer (8)
  • Deccan Herald
  • The Sunday Guardian (21)
  • The New Indian Express (3)
  • Dainik Jagran
  • Amar Ujala
  • Patrika
  • Rashtriya Hindi Mail
  • Swatantra Chetna (1)
  • Rashtriya Sahara
  • Lokdesh
  • Others (1)
  • Dainik Bhaskar
  • Free Press Journal (1)
  • Lokmat
  • NBT Navbharat Times (1)
  • NDTV
  • News 24 (1)
  • Times Now
  • Zee News
Lang
  • All
  • English
  • हिन्दी
Year
  • All (37)
  • 2026 (15)
  • 2025 (16)
  • 2024 (2)
  • 2023
  • 2022 (2)
  • 2021
  • 2020 (2)
Patrika
02 Sep '26

Truth, Self & Realization — The Real Meaning of Krishna

In this special Janmashtami feature published in Rajasthan Patrika, philosopher and author Acharya Prashant explains why the true Krishna is not an idol to be worshipped from a distance, but Truth, the Self, and Realization (Satya, Atma, Bodh) itself.

Times Now31 Aug '26

Nepal Tragedy: The One Word No One Wants to Say

"This was a climate catastrophe, and not the first; the very same valley was struck in almost this way a year ago, and the whole Himalayan arc now does this two and three times a season. The word, then, is available, and it is accurate, and still it is the one word we will not say plainly. That refusal deserves more attention than the flood itself, because the refusal is the disease, and the flood only its symptom."

The Pioneer29 Aug '26

Nepal tragedy: Why hide the real cause?

"That flood did not come from the cloud, and it did not finally come from the glacier. It came from the way we have been taught to see life. The ice of the Himalayas is not melting in any factory's furnace. It is melting in our tendencies, in the ego itself."

The Pioneer22 Aug '26

Gen Z: A vibe is not a revolution

"What is being called a generational shift is a momentary situational phenomenon, and everybody has mistaken it, the celebrating and the nervous alike, including the political parties. This badge of honour is being awarded far too quickly. They are rebels, we say. But are they really?"

The Sunday Guardian14 Jun '26

At Britain’s Parliament, an ancient Indian question challenged the limits of law and power

"The theme I was asked to speak on at the House of Lords in the British Parliament this week was lovely: Indian roots, global wings. Lovely things charm us, and a charmed audience nods before it has time to look. So I begin by declining the nod, because both halves of that phrase mean something quite different from what they are taken to mean, and that difference is the whole of what India can offer."

WeeklyFortnightlyMonthlyFeatureLong-form Essay
Areas
Environment, Technology & the Future of CivilizationNation, Governance & Cultural IntrospectionGlobal Affairs, Geopolitics & Human NatureSociety, Culture & Contemporary Social IssuesMental Health, Psychology & Self-KnowledgePhilosophy, Ethics & Self-EnquiryFestivals, Symbolism & Inner Renewal
CompactDetailed
Gen Z: A vibe is not a revolution
NBT Navbharat Times
23 Aug '26

Gen Z: A vibe is not a revolution

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

“What is being called a generational shift is actually a fleeting, circumstantial phenomenon, and everyone has misunderstood it—whether they are celebrating it or panicking over it, including political parties. This badge of honour is being bestowed far too quickly. We say they are rebels. But are they really?”

Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Gen Z: A vibe is not a revolution
The Pioneer
22 Aug '26

Gen Z: A vibe is not a revolution

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"What is being called a generational shift is a momentary situational phenomenon, and everybody has mistaken it, the celebrating and the nervous alike, including the political parties. This badge of honour is being awarded far too quickly. They are rebels, we say. But are they really?"

Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Gita as Casteist and Misogynist? Strawmanning at Its Worst
The Pioneer
27 Jun '26

Gita as Casteist and Misogynist? Strawmanning at Its Worst

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"The accusation that the Gita is casteist and the accusation that it is misogynist both rest on roughly the same move: take a verse out of the sentence it lives in, and the sentence out of the chapter it lives in, and the chapter out of the text's own stated definitions, and almost anything can be made to say almost anything. The discipline this calls for is not loyalty to a text. It is the same discipline owed to any sentence before judgment is passed on it: read it whole, in its own sequence, before deciding what it was made to confess."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
The Terms She Never Chose to Live by
The Sunday Guardian
24 May '26

The Terms She Never Chose to Live by

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"The dowry demand is typically presented in public discourse as an anachronism, a stubborn remnant of a less enlightened India that education, urbanisation, and explicit legal prohibition have somehow failed to dislodge, a framing that mistakes the institution’s most explicit expression for a departure from it. But is dowry an aberration within the institution of marriage, or the institution’s own operating logic, followed to its economic conclusion?"

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
NEET crisis: The wound beneath the wound
The Sunday Guardian
17 May '26

NEET crisis: The wound beneath the wound

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"The investigation into 2026 NEET-UG cancellation will produce arrests, possibly convictions, and a reformed NTA with a strengthened testing protocol; the twenty-two lakh students who sat on May 3 deserve nothing less. But the reformed examination will still fill its halls with candidates who do not know why they are there, whose years were arranged around a credential that was always standing in as a substitute for the self-knowledge that no curriculum, reformed or otherwise, has ever offered them."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Mother's Day Special: ‘The Marriage we Settled for’
The Sunday Guardian
10 May '26

Mother's Day Special: ‘The Marriage we Settled for’

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

“The mother being honoured today is the first person her children watched accept the settlement. The daughter who watched her mother’s labour go unnamed, unthanked, and unquestioned did not even consider that cooking may be a form of oppression. She learned something subtler and more durable: that this is what care looks like, that devotion does exactly this, and that a settlement accepted without complaint and carried with grace passes, in most households, for love itself.”

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Reserved seats, unchanged cages
The Sunday Guardian
19 Apr '26

Reserved seats, unchanged cages

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"Women’s reservation means little unless society first transforms the lives women actually inhabit."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
The Wound That Equality Cannot Heal
The Pioneer
18 Apr '26

The Wound That Equality Cannot Heal

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"The Women's Reservation Act will soon reach implementation. More women will enter legislatures, which is preferable to the alternative. But the question being avoided in all this discussion is more uncomfortable: has anything changed in the relationship between a woman and her own sense of self? The hardest evidence against the adequacy of external liberation is not political. It lives in her inner life. That doesn't yield to legislation or to awareness of patriarchy as a social structure."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
The Child as the Ego’s Credential
The Sunday Guardian
12 Apr '26

The Child as the Ego’s Credential

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"A parent who has not questioned her own conditioning, who has not sat with her own fear and traced it to its source, who has not asked what she is outside her own social performance: such a parent has no light to offer. The state of the child is a faithful record of the state of the parent, and the relationship with the child cannot change until the parent begins to change what she is."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
What the IPL Spectacle Really Feeds
The Pioneer
11 Apr '26

What the IPL Spectacle Really Feeds

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

There is a reason the entertainment apparatus grows more elaborate, more expensive, and more omnipresent when the ground-level facts of existence are becoming harder to look at. Political theatre, religious spectacle, franchise cricket: the products differ but the mechanism is identical in every case, each offering the ego a ready-made emotional world to inhabit so that it need not examine the actual world it lives in.

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
The Government Job Obsession: A Paranoia, A Mirage
The Sunday Guardian
15 Mar '26

The Government Job Obsession: A Paranoia, A Mirage

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"What makes this machinery particularly effective is that it finds its subjects already converted. By the time a young aspirant is old enough to question the direction he has been pointed in, he has already invested years, and the sunk cost holds him in place."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
The Woman Neither Tradition Nor Rebellion Prepared For
The Sunday Guardian
08 Mar '26

The Woman Neither Tradition Nor Rebellion Prepared For

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"On 8th March every year, International Women’s Day is observed, speeches are made, and achievements are listed. But the woman sitting quietly behind all of it, the one who has given and accommodated her way through life, is not waiting for a celebration. She is waiting, perhaps without knowing it, for permission to ask who she actually is beneath everything she was told to be."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
New Regimes, Ancient Hunger: Women as First Casualty
The Pioneer
28 Feb '26

New Regimes, Ancient Hunger: Women as First Casualty

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"There is a question beneath the question whenever a society turns its full legislative attention to what a woman wears, where she walks, whether her voice may be heard in a public space, and how much pain her body may absorb before the law takes notice."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Why Every Caste Debate Misses the Real Question
The Sunday Guardian
15 Feb '26

Why Every Caste Debate Misses the Real Question

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

When a social arrangement is given the name of religion, it becomes nearly impossible to dismantle. You can legislate against it, protest against it, write constitutions that explicitly forbid it, and it will survive, because people will obey the law in the open and worship the belief in private.

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Why Scandals Shock Us, And Shouldn’t
The Pioneer
07 Feb '26

Why Scandals Shock Us, And Shouldn’t

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"If one relies on events, shock is guaranteed, again and again, because most misdeeds never come fully to light. Scandals are not reliable teachers. If one understands the principle, shock loses its grip, because what unfolds is recognised rather than discovered."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Weekdays of Bondage, Weekends of Escape
The Sunday Guardian
16 Nov '25

Weekdays of Bondage, Weekends of Escape

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"In a healthy life, work does not stand outside life as a burden. It is a major part of life itself. A suitable job is not one that forces a person to seek regular rehabilitation from it, but one that does not require such rehabilitation at all."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Delicate to Dauntless: The Myth of Female Fragility
The Sunday Guardian
09 Nov '25

Delicate to Dauntless: The Myth of Female Fragility

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"This win reveals what becomes possible when women stop being ornaments and start being participants. For centuries, India celebrated women as symbols of purity, patience, and sacrifice, but seldom as doers. This reverses that. A woman is not sacred because she endures, but because she acts, strives, transforms."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
From Dharma to Dogma: The Genesis of Caste
The Pioneer
08 Nov '25

From Dharma to Dogma: The Genesis of Caste

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"If caste were only a social structure, reformers would have erased it. If merely legal, the Constitution would suffice. But caste is sustained in religious belief. It persists because it hides behind Dharma's name."

Article in Print
You Have Lifted The Cup, And Part Of The Spell
Free Press Journal
04 Nov '25

You Have Lifted The Cup, And Part Of The Spell

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

A true victory is not over an external opponent, But over one’s own limitations: personal, cultural, historical. When women play freely, the nation breathes freely. When women claim their place, the planet finds its peace.

Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
You have lifted the cup, and with it, an old veil.
News 24
03 Nov '25

You have lifted the cup, and with it, an old veil.

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

True victory is not over the opponent, but over one's own shackles: personal, cultural, historical. When women play freely, the nation breathes freely. When women dance fearlessly, life on earth finds shelter.

Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Teachers’ Day reminds us what it really means to teach
The Sunday Guardian
07 Sep '25

Teachers’ Day reminds us what it really means to teach

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"Teachers’ Day should spark gratitude but also reflection on education’s deeper purpose."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Homes as Graves: Why Outrage Never Ends Violence
The Pioneer
30 Aug '25

Homes as Graves: Why Outrage Never Ends Violence

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"Domestic violence, dowry, and oppressive marriages are symptoms of a deeper poverty — absence of inner clarity. They thrive because society at large runs on fear, desire, and unexamined habits. Outrage after each tragedy has become a ritual, but that cannot cure the blindness of the mind."

Article in Print
Holy Lies: Man's Religion, Woman's Bondage
The Sunday Guardian
03 Aug '25

Holy Lies: Man's Religion, Woman's Bondage

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"A remark by a public figure or religious authority may spark discussion, but beneath the noise lies something far older than any single controversy. At the core of this idea of ‘the woman as the body’ is an old belief that treats women as physical stuff to be owned, utilized, and consumed."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
When Protection Becomes Possession: True Rebellion Begins Where Roles End
The Sunday Guardian
20 Jul '25

When Protection Becomes Possession: True Rebellion Begins Where Roles End

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"True rebellion begins when one stops performing a role written by others and starts living from the center of understanding. Your body is a resource. It is meant to serve consciousness, not define your identity. Freedom lies in transcending inherited conditioning, whether biological, emotional, or cultural."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Before it’s too late: Living in an age of trivialized tragedy
The Sunday Guardian
22 Jun '25

Before it’s too late: Living in an age of trivialized tragedy

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"Life unfolds beyond our control. We don’t choose our gender, birthplace, or time of arrival. The belief that we control everything is comforting, but false. A tragic accident, where many lives were lost, reminds us of this."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Violent Relationships: A New Trend, or an Enduring Structure?
The Sunday Guardian
15 Jun '25

Violent Relationships: A New Trend, or an Enduring Structure?

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"Every now and then, a disturbing news story grabs the nation’s attention – one that seems too extraordinarily gruesome to be real, yet involves seemingly ordinary people. We would like to call such incidents as aberrations. "

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
TCS Outrage: The Astonishment Is The Confession
The Sunday Guardian
03 May '25

TCS Outrage: The Astonishment Is The Confession

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"These things are not new. The predation, the cover, the reduction of religion to a numbers game: all three have been operating, visibly and continuously, across this society for as long as anyone currently registering horror at the case has been alive. And yet the country received these events as though they had arrived from somewhere else entirely. That astonishment is not innocence. It is the ego’s preferred method of self-protection: to locate the problem at a sufficient distance that no self-examination becomes necessary. To be shocked is to be excused."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Women’s Day: A Call for True Liberation.
The Sunday Guardian
02 Mar '25

Women’s Day: A Call for True Liberation.

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"Women’s Day is approaching, and soon discussions will emerge across various platforms. New slogans will be coined, and policy tweaks will be grandly announced."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Redefining Work: The Debate on Working Hours.
The Sunday Guardian
16 Feb '25

Redefining Work: The Debate on Working Hours.

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"The debate on working hours has intensified recently. Initially, it was suggested that Indians should work 70 hours a week, and recently, the chairman of a major organisation proposed 90-hour workweeks."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Breaking through the cycle of exploitation in relationships.
The Sunday Guardian
19 Jan '25

Breaking through the cycle of exploitation in relationships.

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"Our society embodies a stark contrast between its proclaimed life-affirmative ideals and the underlying suffering that prevails. Relationships, especially marriage, are often transactional and materialistic arrangements rather than expressions of love and understanding."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Swami Vivekananda: Struggle, Resilience, and Legacy.
The Sunday Guardian
12 Jan '25

Swami Vivekananda: Struggle, Resilience, and Legacy.

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"In honor of Swami Vivekananda’s birthday, celebrated as Youth Day, seminars, meetings, and resolutions around youth empowerment take centerstage. The discussions surround Swami Ji’s feat in taking Vedanta to the world, yet the immense struggles and challenges he faced often go unacknowledged."

Article in Print
Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Life without fear, and relationships without lies.
The Sunday Guardian
08 Dec '24

Life without fear, and relationships without lies.

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"Ostensibly, no one likes being lied to. Yet in our social and familial transactions, lies are so prevalent that they appear almost foundational to our relationships. Why?"

Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
Redefining Feminism
The New Indian Express
26 Apr '24

Redefining Feminism

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

Acharya Prashant delves into the intricacies of feminism, exploring identity, financial independence, and the paradox of empowerment. He addresses the dynamics of relationship choices, the question of motherhood, and the true meaning of freedom, challenging conventional notions and advocating for genuine liberation. Read more in the Indian Express.

Article in Print
आप खिलिए, आपका बच्चा स्वत: खिल उठेगा
Others
24 Nov '22

आप खिलिए, आपका बच्चा स्वत: खिल उठेगा

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

आचार्य प्रशांत ने "मयूर संवाद" में बताया कि बच्चों के मानसिक स्वास्थ्य की देखभाल के लिए उन्हें उनकी स्वाभाविकता और मौलिकता के साथ बढ़ने देना चाहिए। उन्होंने कहा कि बच्चों पर शैक्षिक सफलता का बोझ डालने के बजाय, उनके खेल-कूद और रचनात्मकता को प्रोत्साहित करना जरूरी है। बच्चों को उनके तनाव से मुक्त करने के लिए उन्हें अपनी रुचियों को खोजने और उनके अनुसार बढ़ने का अवसर देना चाहिए।

Article in Print
इंटरनेट के युग में बाज़ार से गायब होती किताबें
Swatantra Chetna
06 Nov '22

इंटरनेट के युग में बाज़ार से गायब होती किताबें

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

"स्वतंत्र चेतना" में आचार्य प्रशांत ने इंटरनेट के युग में किताबों की घटती लोकप्रियता पर चिंता जताई है। उन्होंने बताया कि डिजिटल मीडिया और मनोरंजन के बढ़ते प्रभाव के कारण किताबों की बिक्री में भारी गिरावट आई है। आचार्य प्रशांत ने कहा कि किताबें गहन ज्ञान और आत्म-विश्लेषण के लिए आवश्यक हैं, और उनके बिना समाज में गंभीरता और समझ का अभाव हो सकता है।

Article in Print
Ramifications of retribution
The New Indian Express
15 Mar '20

Ramifications of retribution

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

A criminal doesn’t just drop from the sky. He is produced in an ecosystem, which refers to how we are deciding to be, right now.

Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)
The Indispensable Spiritual Intimacy
The New Indian Express
22 Feb '20

The Indispensable Spiritual Intimacy

Area: Society, Culture & Contemporary Social Issues

In a article published in The New Indian Express, Acharya Prashant explores the profound impact of spiritual intimacy in marriage. He emphasizes that spiritual togetherness transcends the socio-physical arrangement of marriage, turning it into a harmonious and fulfilling union. By focusing on spiritual growth and understanding, couples can overcome psychological distances and enrich their relationship. The article highlights the importance of seeing marriage as a journey towards mutual spiritual evolution.

Media Website
Digital Article (PDF)