{
  "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
  "title": "VK Singh Vashisht Institute for Critical Studies",
  "description": "Critical theory spanning comparative religion, film and media theory, legal thought, and political economy. Essays, named series, frameworks, and instruments.",
  "home_page_url": "https://vashisht.institute/",
  "feed_url": "https://vashisht.institute/feed.json",
  "language": "en",
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "ICS-2026-001",
      "url": "https://vashisht.institute/essays/what-they-called-themselves",
      "title": "What They Called Themselves",
      "summary": "History is written by the inheritors. The Zoroastrians built the theological infrastructure of Western civilization and were written out of the credits.",
      "date_published": "2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "VK Singh Vashisht"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Comparative Religion",
        "The Erased Foundation"
      ],
      "_institute": {
        "persistentId": "ICS-2026-001",
        "series": "The Erased Foundation",
        "seriesNumber": 1,
        "precisOf": null,
        "domain": "Comparative Religion",
        "lens": "Religion, Myth & Consciousness",
        "frameworks": [],
        "wordCount": 3169,
        "citation": "VK Singh Vashisht. “What They Called Themselves.” VK Singh Vashisht Institute for Critical Studies, September 2026. vashisht.institute/essays/what-they-called-themselves. ICS-2026-001.",
        "revisions": [],
        "brief": null
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "ICS-2026-002",
      "url": "https://vashisht.institute/essays/sanskrit-mirror",
      "title": "The Sanskrit Mirror",
      "summary": "The same civilization produced the Rigveda and the Gathas. They are not two traditions that happened to share vocabulary.",
      "date_published": "2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "VK Singh Vashisht"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Comparative Religion",
        "The Erased Foundation"
      ],
      "_institute": {
        "persistentId": "ICS-2026-002",
        "series": "The Erased Foundation",
        "seriesNumber": 2,
        "precisOf": null,
        "domain": "Comparative Religion",
        "lens": "Religion, Myth & Consciousness",
        "frameworks": [],
        "wordCount": 4507,
        "citation": "VK Singh Vashisht. “The Sanskrit Mirror.” VK Singh Vashisht Institute for Critical Studies, September 2026. vashisht.institute/essays/sanskrit-mirror. ICS-2026-002.",
        "revisions": [],
        "brief": null
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "ICS-2026-003",
      "url": "https://vashisht.institute/essays/and-then-came-nanak",
      "title": "And Then Came Nanak",
      "summary": "The Rigveda opens: 'Neither being nor non-being existed.' Three thousand years later, Guru Nanak opens the Guru Granth Sahib with two characters: Ik Onkar. One Reality.",
      "date_published": "2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "VK Singh Vashisht"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Indic Religion & Philosophy",
        "The Erased Foundation"
      ],
      "_institute": {
        "persistentId": "ICS-2026-003",
        "series": "The Erased Foundation",
        "seriesNumber": 3,
        "precisOf": null,
        "domain": "Indic Religion & Philosophy",
        "lens": "Religion, Myth & Consciousness",
        "frameworks": [
          {
            "id": "masands-cycle",
            "url": "https://vashisht.institute/frameworks/masands-cycle"
          }
        ],
        "wordCount": 5243,
        "citation": "VK Singh Vashisht. “And Then Came Nanak.” VK Singh Vashisht Institute for Critical Studies, September 2026. vashisht.institute/essays/and-then-came-nanak. ICS-2026-003.",
        "revisions": [],
        "brief": null
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "ICS-2026-005",
      "url": "https://vashisht.institute/essays/they-scheduled-the-cure",
      "title": "They Scheduled the Cure",
      "summary": "In the winter of 1934, a hopeless drunk named Bill Wilson was admitted to Towns Hospital in New York City. He had been there before — twice — and had failed to stay sober each time.",
      "date_published": "2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "VK Singh Vashisht"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Political Economy",
        "Managed Suffering"
      ],
      "_institute": {
        "persistentId": "ICS-2026-005",
        "series": "Managed Suffering",
        "seriesNumber": 1,
        "precisOf": null,
        "domain": "Political Economy",
        "lens": "Political Economy & Society",
        "frameworks": [],
        "wordCount": 2960,
        "citation": "VK Singh Vashisht. “They Scheduled the Cure.” VK Singh Vashisht Institute for Critical Studies, September 2026. vashisht.institute/essays/they-scheduled-the-cure. ICS-2026-005.",
        "revisions": [],
        "brief": null
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "ICS-2026-006",
      "url": "https://vashisht.institute/essays/no-key-to-the-house",
      "title": "No Key to the House",
      "summary": "In Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd (2006), there is an exchange that functions as the quietest act of violence in American cinema. Joseph Palmi, a Mafia figure played by Joe Pesci, asks Edward Wilson, the CIA architect played by Matt Damon, what the WASPs have.",
      "date_published": "2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "VK Singh Vashisht"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Film & Media Theory",
        "SICI"
      ],
      "_institute": {
        "persistentId": "ICS-2026-006",
        "series": "SICI",
        "seriesNumber": null,
        "precisOf": null,
        "domain": "Film & Media Theory",
        "lens": "Media & Film",
        "frameworks": [
          {
            "id": "cee",
            "url": "https://vashisht.institute/frameworks/cee"
          },
          {
            "id": "capture-cycle",
            "url": "https://vashisht.institute/frameworks/capture-cycle"
          },
          {
            "id": "masands-cycle",
            "url": "https://vashisht.institute/frameworks/masands-cycle"
          },
          {
            "id": "panj-chor",
            "url": "https://vashisht.institute/frameworks/panj-chor"
          },
          {
            "id": "sici",
            "url": "https://vashisht.institute/frameworks/sici"
          }
        ],
        "wordCount": 4782,
        "citation": "VK Singh Vashisht. “No Key to the House.” VK Singh Vashisht Institute for Critical Studies, September 2026. vashisht.institute/essays/no-key-to-the-house. ICS-2026-006.",
        "revisions": [],
        "brief": null
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "ICS-2026-007",
      "url": "https://vashisht.institute/essays/the-cows-lament",
      "title": "The Cow's Lament",
      "summary": "The same cry. Separated by geography, by millennia, by the full width of the Indo-Iranian civilizational split — and yet structurally identical.",
      "date_published": "2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "VK Singh Vashisht"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Comparative Religion",
        "The Erased Foundation"
      ],
      "_institute": {
        "persistentId": "ICS-2026-007",
        "series": "The Erased Foundation",
        "seriesNumber": 5,
        "precisOf": null,
        "domain": "Comparative Religion",
        "lens": "Religion, Myth & Consciousness",
        "frameworks": [],
        "wordCount": 3483,
        "citation": "VK Singh Vashisht. “The Cow's Lament.” VK Singh Vashisht Institute for Critical Studies, September 2026. vashisht.institute/essays/the-cows-lament. ICS-2026-007.",
        "revisions": [],
        "brief": null
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "ICS-2026-008",
      "url": "https://vashisht.institute/essays/what-grows-in-the-dung",
      "title": "What Grows in the Dung",
      "summary": "The previous essay in this series established that Yasna 29 and Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.1 preserve two branches of a single Proto-Indo-Iranian narrative template: a sacred bovine, embodying a suffering world, appeals to divinity, which responds by sending a protector. The structural argument was textual.",
      "date_published": "2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "VK Singh Vashisht"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Consciousness & Epistemology",
        "The Erased Foundation"
      ],
      "_institute": {
        "persistentId": "ICS-2026-008",
        "series": "The Erased Foundation",
        "seriesNumber": 6,
        "precisOf": null,
        "domain": "Consciousness & Epistemology",
        "lens": "Religion, Myth & Consciousness",
        "frameworks": [],
        "wordCount": 4305,
        "citation": "VK Singh Vashisht. “What Grows in the Dung.” VK Singh Vashisht Institute for Critical Studies, September 2026. vashisht.institute/essays/what-grows-in-the-dung. ICS-2026-008.",
        "revisions": [],
        "brief": null
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "ICS-2026-004",
      "url": "https://vashisht.institute/essays/zoroastrian-rulers",
      "title": "Zoroastrian Rulers and the Naming Erasure",
      "summary": "The founding names of Western civilization's first imperial dynasty were not Greek transliterations. They were Avestan — drawn from the same linguistic substrate as Sanskrit, carrying cosmological meaning that the renaming actively suppressed.",
      "date_published": "2026-03-17T00:00:00.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z",
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "VK Singh Vashisht"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Indic Religion & Philosophy",
        "The Erased Foundation"
      ],
      "_institute": {
        "persistentId": "ICS-2026-004",
        "series": "The Erased Foundation",
        "seriesNumber": 1,
        "precisOf": "what-they-called-themselves",
        "domain": "Indic Religion & Philosophy",
        "lens": null,
        "frameworks": [],
        "wordCount": 1272,
        "citation": "VK Singh Vashisht. “Zoroastrian Rulers and the Naming Erasure.” VK Singh Vashisht Institute for Critical Studies, March 2026. vashisht.institute/essays/zoroastrian-rulers. ICS-2026-004.",
        "revisions": [
          {
            "date": "2026-09-20",
            "note": "word count corrected; this piece is the précis of Erased Foundation I."
          }
        ],
        "brief": null
      }
    }
  ]
}