Vamsee Juluri

Satyamev Jayate is an ancient Sanskrit saying that means "truth alone triumphs." It is India's national motto and appears on the national symbol. Since it is so closely associated with government iconography, its mention in a conversation is likely to be steeped in irony, rather than optimism or...

One year after Sri Sathya Sai Baba's passing on April 24, 2011, I have yet to find the right words for what he meant to my family and to me. It is not a cliché but a professional admission, since I rarely feel such an inadequacy. My belief in Baba...

Like millions of people, I grew up thinking of Lord Shiva simply as Lord Shiva, a God, one of the many forms of God. From his depictions in paintings and sculpture, he was clearly a smiling, adoring, adored sort, despite slightly wild hair and wild creatures around him. His consort,...

Baba loved us. Like a father, a mother, a guru, a friend. Like Krishna or Shiva, as we imagined them to be from our stories. Like a simple and affectionate village elder from Rayalseema. Like a celebrity whose grace and poise could electrify a hundred thousand spectators at once. Like...

Rarely has ignorance made a mockery of greatness on the scale that it has in the past few days. If our world has taken to calling Gandhi a racist and a cheat, then we better invent new words to describe racism and dishonesty. Gandhi was a man who became a...

We should look at Groupon's Tibet ad not just in terms of sensitivity in advertising but in terms of what five hundred years of colonialism have done to us and to our ability to tell a simple story about our world and its people. We may have developed sophisticated means...

Long before America rearranged my name into its present form, I was known largely as Jamuna koduku. Jamuna's son. Not that my name was unknown. To this day I meet people who say their nephew or cousin was named Vamsee because their mothers were fans of my mother's. Thanks to...

If it weren't for the father of your nation, I wouldn't have been here today as the president of mine. I cannot imagine a better way of saluting the interconnectedness of the world we live in than what President Obama said in his speech to India's parliament. I...

In an age when the word "reality" has become synonymous with nasty behaviors on TV shows and "truth" seems impossibly divided between political cults, perhaps we could find a better sense of both in what we lightly call "myth." The tales of the gods and goddesses that we have told...

The gods of Hinduism have never been up there in some cold palace playing cruel whimsical games of fate with us humans. Instead, they have taken their place among us. They have let us call them friend, cousin, son, mother, teacher, and adore them as such. For it is only...

In an age when "reality" means anything but, it was inspiring to see two of our culture's most luminous diviners of truth on the same screen. What Stephen Colbert did for a fear-torn, war-hawked nation a few years ago, Jonathan Safran Foer is doing now for a dietarily-deceived...

All prejudices are unpleasantly alike on some level, but the prejudice that India and Indians face on a global scale has proven to be exceptionally resistant to change.

In a week that saw innocent Indians being murdered and imaginary Indians being maligned on opposite ends...

Hyderabad is the sort of city that makes poets out of ordinary men. It has a history of being home to different sorts of people, accepting them with an easy charm that only Hyderabad knows. Centuries ago, in the days of the Golconda kingdom, it was the center of international...

It may be true that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for promise rather than achievement, but let us not forget that there is at least one point on which he has already proven himself -- and this is a point that Mahatma Gandhi, that greatest of Peace...

1) Listen to Yesudas's beautiful rendition of the song "Ahimsa."

2) Visit (online at least) the Gandhi gallery of the Sacred World Foundation.

3) Watch the 2006 Bollywood hit Lage Raho Munnabhai.

4) Make a list of truly Gandhian things one could do instead if one could...

Rock may have smashed the iron curtain, but it was just the moonwalk that did it for India.

My generation came of age during the last years of the Nehruvian era. Among other things, what this meant was that Western pop culture was barely affordable or accessible to most...

Two days before Earth Day, I took my Global Media class out on a limb by relocating us to the shade of a giant tree to begin a discussion of the history of human culture through the seemingly odd reference point of our relationship to the cow. Before we...

With all the issues whirling about in the wake of Slumdog Millionaire's Oscar sweep, a two-letter word from the acceptance speech of the winner of an award in a technical category may seem far too obscure to blog about. But the word was "Om," and the category was sound.

"The One" is now President and has already done one nice thing no President apparently did before. The newest of messiahs has acknowledged the oldest of religions. He mentioned Christians, Muslims, Jews, and non-believers. And he mentioned Hindus. Those are the words on the front page of today's Times of...

One thing I heard frequently from my American friends in San Francisco as the attacks on Mumbai unfolded was the hope that India would not react to them the way the U.S. did to 9/11. I understood the decency of that sentiment, and agreed with it. Over the next few...