The Contrapuntal magazine

26/07/2026

Reflections | Through the lives of people with spinal cord injuries, an anthropologist explores how futures are imagined, negotiated, and made possible through bodies, care, and relationships.

Through the lives of people with spinal cord injuries, an anthropologist explores how futures are imagined, negotiated, and made possible through bodies, care, and relationships.

26/07/2026

In Pictures | For a generation facing intense competition for limited opportunities, the exam controversy has crystallized anxieties that extend far beyond a single examination. As a result, the movement now poses not merely an educational challenge but a political test of whether India’s institutions can rebuild public trust among the country’s largest and most consequential demographic.

A medical exam scandal in India has grown into a nationwide youth movement against corruption, unemployment and government failures.

18/05/2026

A drive through Delhi's grey-skinned air, its crumbling walls, and the names of those rotting inside Tihar — an honest reckoning with a city that murders slowly.

A drive through Delhi's grey-skinned air, its crumbling walls, and the names of those rotting inside Tihar — an honest reckoning with a city that murders slowly.

18/05/2026

A Kashmiri journalist has spent more than 1,100 days uncharged in a Delhi prison. Across 800 kilometres, his wife, ailing father, and grieving mother keep an agonising vigil. Safeena Wani

A Kashmiri journalist has spent more than 1,100 days uncharged in a Delhi prison. Across 800 kilometres, his wife, ailing father, and grieving mother keep an agonising vigil.

22/03/2026

Book Review | Imran Mulla’s debut book, The Indian Caliphate: Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Prince, brings to light what he calls a “forgotten tale of an idea, a scheme, a possibility that never came to pass.” It reconstructs a neglected historical moment in which South Asia stood at the centre, rather than the periphery, of Muslim political thought at the onset of the First World War.

Imran Mulla's debut reclaims a forgotten chapter of Islamic political history, tracing how exiled Ottoman caliphs, Indian princes, and Khilafat activists once imagined Hyderabad as the centre of a revived Muslim world order.

22/03/2026

22/03/2026

In Pakistan's Sufi shrines, the ancient cry of Qawwali is growing quieter, moved indoors, managed, and contested, as cities modernise and the meaning of devotion is slowly negotiated.

In Pakistan's Sufi shrines, the ancient cry of Qawwali is growing quieter, moved indoors, managed, and contested, as cities modernise and the meaning of devotion is slowly negotiated.

21/02/2026

We are inviting pitches from investigative journalists, academics, artists, and practitioners to help us map how power concentrates through surveillance — and how we might analyse and understand it.

We’re looking for cross-disciplinary work that explores:
• The technologies shaping contemporary surveillance
• The institutions driving and benefiting from it
• The cultures that normalise and sustain it
• The forms of resistance, opacity, and autonomy that push back

This is a call for deeply researched, critical, and imaginative contributions that connect theory and practice — from data infrastructures and AI systems to borders, policing, workplaces, platforms, and beyond.

💶 Commissioning fee: €500–1,000 per article (depending on scope and length).

Submission guidelines & themes can be found here: https://thecontrapuntal.com/call-for-submissions-post-panoptics-surveillance-and-architectures-of-control/

Please share widely.

10/02/2026

From the q***r tenderness of Sophie Hyde’s Jimpa to the contradictions behind John Lithgow’s Harry Potter casting, Prof Wendy Harcourt asks: can art truly resist fascism when its makers align with money backing anti-trans movements?

Sophie Hyde's Jimpa honours gay activist Jim Hyde, but star John Lithgow's Harry Potter role raises questions about artistic integrity.

06/02/2026

Pandit’s book examines how militarisation shapes everyday life in Kashmir, challenging nation-making myths and Western postcolonial theory through feminist, anti-colonial, lived analysis experience.

Pandit’s book examines how militarisation shapes everyday life in Kashmir, challenging nation-making myths and Western postcolonial theory through feminist, anti-colonial, lived analysis experience.