The Dead King Problem: On India's Compulsive Return to Its Historical Dead

Paricharchā - Thinking Culture & Rethinking Society (Monsoon 2026)

Paricharchā invites contributions that interrogate, interpret, and reimagine the epistemic, aesthetic, and affective dimensions of culture and society. We welcome works that are theoretically grounded yet accessible — engaging both the public intellectual and the informed reader in conversation around heritage, language, and contemporary experience.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The Dead King Problem: On India's Compulsive Return to Its Historical Dead

The dead kings can inspire. They cannot govern. That remains, as it has always been, the irreducible responsibility of the living...

Soumyaranjan Sahoo

Jun 316 min read

The Archaeology of Forgotten Urbanism: Understanding the Iron Age City Beneath Bhubaneswar

Beneath the expanding city of Bhubaneswar lies Sisupalgarh, one of eastern India’s most significant early urban settlements. Its ramparts, gateways, streets, & buried civic order ask us to rethink...

Soumyaranjan Sahoo

May 257 min read

The Super El Niño of 2026: The Cultural and Anthropological Conversation That We Must Have Now

In May 2026, the World Meteorological Organisation confirmed what climate scientists had been tracking with growing alarm for months.

Soumyaranjan Sahoo

May 2312 min read

What Do You Dream When the World Goes Silent?

On visual overconsumption, AI-generated imagery, the death of inner picturing, and what happens to the dreaming mind when it has been fed another person's imagination for long enough.

Soumyaranjan Sahoo

May 1813 min read

Where Do We Go When the World Weakens?

A study of how weakening communities reshape the inner life of individuals, turning home, love, and kinship into fragile spaces of refuge from an anthropological lens.

Soumyaranjan Sahoo

May 1615 min read

Understanding Literature as the First Step of Democracy

Understanding literature as the first step of democracy involves recognising its capacity to cultivate engagement with plurality.

ParibhaAsha Editorial Team

Apr 276 min read

Performing Culture, Producing Belief - Rethinking Odia Identity in an Age of Narration

Culture today exists simultaneously as lived practice and articulated narrative. Belief exists simultaneously as an inherited disposition and a constructed understanding.

Soumyaranjan Sahoo

Apr 223 min read

Hermann Kulke and the Historiography of Odisha: Remembering the German Historian Who Reframed the Study of Jagannath, Kingship, and Regional Identity

Professor Hermann Kulke, the German historian whose scholarship fundamentally reshaped the academic understanding of Odisha’s past, passed away at the age of eighty-seven. For more than four decades, Kulke dedicated his intellectual life to studying the historical processes that shaped Odisha’s society, religion, and political traditions.

Soumyaranjan Sahoo

Apr 148 min read

Heritage and Culture in Public Policy: A Comparative Reading of the Union Budget 2026–27 and Odisha Budget 2026–27 in a Global Cultural Policy Context

The Union Budget and the Odisha Budget offer an opportunity to examine how cultural policy is evolving in India. By comparing these budgets with international models of cultural governance, it becomes possible to assess both their achievements and their limitations.

ParibhaAsha Editorial Team

Apr 147 min read

2 3 4 5

SUBSCRIBE

Stay Updated

Receive cultural event alerts, new essays, publication releases, and heritage walk announcements & more.

The Dead King Problem: On India's Compulsive Return to Its Historical Dead

Paricharchā - Thinking Culture & Rethinking Society (Monsoon 2026)

Featured Essays

The Dead King Problem: On India's Compulsive Return to Its Historical Dead

The Super El Niño of 2026: The Cultural and Anthropological Conversation That We Must Have Now

What Do You Dream When the World Goes Silent?

Where Do We Go When the World Weakens?

Understanding Literature as the First Step of Democracy

Submission Invited

The Dead King Problem: On India's Compulsive Return to Its Historical Dead

The Archaeology of Forgotten Urbanism: Understanding the Iron Age City Beneath Bhubaneswar

The Super El Niño of 2026: The Cultural and Anthropological Conversation That We Must Have Now

What Do You Dream When the World Goes Silent?

Where Do We Go When the World Weakens?

Understanding Literature as the First Step of Democracy

Performing Culture, Producing Belief - Rethinking Odia Identity in an Age of Narration

Hermann Kulke and the Historiography of Odisha: Remembering the German Historian Who Reframed the Study of Jagannath, Kingship, and Regional Identity

Heritage and Culture in Public Policy: A Comparative Reading of the Union Budget 2026–27 and Odisha Budget 2026–27 in a Global Cultural Policy Context

Stay Updated