When China talks of peace, India must prepare for war

September 30, 2020

The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future. —Theodore Roosevelt. Nothing explains this better than the SinoIndian relations. If one wants to know what is happening at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, and why it’s happening, one just has...

Yogi Adityanath has every right to say that the Mughals are not his heroes

September 23, 2020

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath caused a lot of heartburn last week when he asked, “How can our heroes be the Mughals?” It suddenly woke up a lot of “public intellectuals”, currently in the retreat, out of their slumber. They saw it as an assault on the idea of...

New tapes reveal Nixon, Kissinger’s sexist, racist views on India, Indira

September 5, 2020

India always had love-hate relations with America. Not very long ago, if one admired the United States, they would find themselves being cornered on the high table, especially among intellectuals. Words like neocolonialism, Cuba and Vietnam would start floating in the air. Ironically, most of these high and mighty ones...

Pranab Mukherjee: The Man who knew ‘Too Much’

September 1, 2020

Pranab Mukherjee, former President of India and an illustrious politician who scaled beyond party lines and divide to help build the nation, was always “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, as the cover of the 1986 Illustrated Weekly proclaimed, though mischievously, as the interview with Pritish Nandy cost him his...

Novelist who rose from the dead

August 28, 2020

Rising HeatPerumal MuruganPenguin, Rs 399 A few years ago, Tamil novelist Perumal Murugan put a post on his Facebook wall, which read like a suicide note. “Author Perumal Murugan is dead. He is no God. Hence, he will not resurrect. Hereafter, only P. Murugan, a teacher, will live,” it said....

Raja Rao and his idea of India

August 21, 2020

I remember seeing Raja Rao’s book The Serpent and the Rope ever since I remember seeing the world. A book lying prominently in my father’s library. And I would often wonder why this “children book” -- about serpents and some rope tricks -- had no cartoons. My father would laugh...

Indian PMs and the art of not learning from the past

July 24, 2020

India’s World: How PrimeMinisters Shaped Foreign PolicyRajiv DograRupa, Rs 349 Among Indian diplomats, writing on Pakistan, Ambassador Rajiv Dogra invariably shines with his categorical assessment of what has become “a criminal enterprise” for India and the world. He is upfront and unapologetic without ever being flippant. Reading his books, especially...

Suheldev: The hero we chose to forget

July 17, 2020

Suheldev: The King WhoSaved IndiaAmishWestland, Rs 399 A few years ago, when Sanjeev Sanyal came out with The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Churned Human History, an editor — well-read and openminded — called me gushing about the book. He quoted Sanyal’s book to remind how in 731...

Akbar may have been great but why just single him out?

July 3, 2020

Upinder Singh writes an interesting anecdote in her book, Political Violence in Ancient India, about Jawaharlal Nehru introducing the new national flag to the Constituent Assembly in July 1947. It was a tricolour with three bands of saffron, deep green and white in the middle, with a navy-blue 24-spoked wheel...

‘China and WHO failed to act on time to curb Covid’

May 4, 2020

A couple of days after US President D o n a l d Tr u m p had on Thursday said that the World Health Organization (WHO) should be “ashamed” of itself for behaving like a public relations agency for China, the world’s top health body praised China for handling...