Biography presents word-portraits of a range of fascinating or forgotten individuals in India and beyond.
Shortly before he demitted office as Prime Minister in 2014, Manmohan Singh said that history would judge him more generously than the media was then doing. Now, reading the outpouring of adulatory tributes to Singh after his passing, this historian is led to wonder—are these eulogies altogether merited? Was he the wise, all-knowing, and apparently flawless [...]
The first time I knew myself to be in the presence of greatness was while sitting under a shamiana in New Delhi’s Modern School sometime in the last quarter of 1974. I had recently joined college, and a group of friends had taken me along to hear a music concert. The performers were Ali Akbar Khan, [...]
My first editor, Rukun Advani, once described himself as ‘a composite hybrid of the Indian and the Anglo-European’, who sought to reconcile ‘within himself those varying cultural influences which chauvinistic nationalists could only see as contradictions.’ This self-characterization I might avow as my own. One mark of the Anglo-European in me is that, unlike members of [...]
I saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer earlier this week. The main character in the film, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was a physicist whose family was Jewish, and who worked for many years at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton. In these respects he was akin to Albert Einstein, who makes several appearances in the movie itself. Although [...]
I have had a long-standing interest in South Africa, and in 1995 briefly contemplated moving there to work. The country had just had its first multi-racial election, and the great Nelson Mandela had been elected President. I was deeply curious to see, at first-hand, what the land and its people would make of their hard won [...]
Born in 1958, a decade after Gandhi’s death, I grew up in an atmosphere of veneration towards the Mahatma. One of my great uncles helped edit Gandhi’s Collected Works; another founded a pioneering initiative in community health inspired by Gandhi. These familial influences were consolidated and deepened by the public culture of the time. Gandhi was [...]
In 1922, a professor at Lucknow University named Radhakamal Mukherjee published a book called Principles of Comparative Economics. Reading the book one hundred years later, I was struck by the attention it paid to the impact of the natural environment on the social and economic life of Indian villages. Mukherjee was perhaps the first Indian scholar [...]
One of the most remarkable individuals I have known was K. Swaminathan, a professor of literature from Madras who went on to become Chief Editor of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Swaminathan was born in the town of Pudukkotai on 3rd December 1896. When his centenary was observed in 1996, I wrote a biographical profile [...]
When, in 1995, Bombay was renamed Mumbai, it led to a spurt of such renamings of buildings, streets, parks, and railway stations in the city. However, a few dead foreigners were spared the fate of being consigned to the dustbin of history. Among them were Annie Besant, after whom a major thoroughfare in central Mumbai is [...]
In 1931, the annual meeting of the Indian National Congress was held in the port city of Karachi. Vallabhbhai Patel was elected President. Early in his address, Patel remarked: ‘You have called a simple farmer to the highest office to which any Indian can aspire. I am conscious that your choice of me as first servant [...]