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Narendra Pachkhédé

is a critic and writer who splits his time between Toronto, London and Geneva.

38 articles published

Is Pluralism the New Orthodoxy in Global Art?

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased.” —Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham,…

ByNarendra PachkhédéMay 4, 20250Comments

Liberalism’s Stage Directions

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple” —Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays. Penguin Classics, 2000, p. 293. It began with a slip—not of the tongue, but of an unguarded conscience. At a campaign rally in…

ByNarendra PachkhédéApril 12, 20250Comments

The Hollow Centre – How Canadian Elections Became a Ritual of Consent.

The current framing of Canadian elections is fundamentally flawed "We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” —Didion, Joan. The White Album. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, p. 3. Canadian electoral politics presents a carefully crafted facade of choice. Party platforms, debates, policy pivots, and rhetorical clashes all contribute to the illusion of a functioning…

ByNarendra PachkhédéApril 5, 20250Comments

Adolescence : Toward a New Grammar of Feeling

If Kill All Normies maps the ecosystem, Adolescence renders its phenomenology "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." — Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. V: The Captive & The Fugitive, Modern Library, 2003. p. 262. In the poignant scene of…

ByNarendra PachkhédéMarch 29, 20250Comments

The Anatomy of an arrest: Mahmoud Khalil and the State

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” ― George Orwell, 1984, p.162 “Where exactly are we in the poem that begins, ‘When they came for the Communists, I did not speak out’?” Alluding to the poem by Martin Niemöller, the question echoed across the stone steps of a New York…

ByNarendra PachkhédéMarch 22, 20250Comments

The Ugly American Show

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.” —Henry Kissinger in William F. Buckley Jr. United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey (1974), pp 56–57. In the spring of 2008, a nation's intricate history was brought to the forefront in a televised spectacle: 'Great…

ByNarendra PachkhédéMarch 3, 20250Comments

Gaza Is Not for Sale: Sovereignty Isn’t a Real Estate Deal

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things... can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and…

ByNarendra PachkhédéFebruary 19, 20250Comments

The Classroom as a Battleground: Teachers as State-Builders

By Narendra Pachkhédé "The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality” — Mahmoud Darwish In the dusty classrooms of Gaza during the 1920s, an unassuming act of defiance unfolded—a quiet yet profound rebellion that spoke to the paradoxes of colonial rule, the audacity of educators, and the fragile scaffolding…

ByNarendra PachkhédéJanuary 28, 20250Comments

POLITICS Poetry

Temples of Memory, Monuments of Forgetting

There is no crop other than god and god is harvested here around the year. —Arun Kolatkar, verse 22, Jejuri, 1976 Located in the ancient city of Ayodhya in northern India, the Ayodhya Temple, is one of the significant spiritual landmarks. Revered as the birthplace of Lord Rama, a central figure in the Hindu…

ByNarendra PachkhédéJanuary 10, 20250Comments

Canada at the Edge of Its Idea

“Having to wait until one’s death to be allowed to live is really quite an ontological feat.” - Robert Musil, Austrian Novelist, Journalist and Writer Like a phantom limb, the unfinished The Man Without Qualities haunts the landscape of modern literature. It is…

ByNarendra PachkhédéJanuary 7, 20250Comments