//September

A FORGOTTEN BENGALI HERO


The Telegraph

Nothing gives the historian greater joy than to discover an individual significant in his time but forgotten in our own. I was thus very pleased to have brought, to the attention of the present generation, the achievements of a Bengali mathematician-turned-civil servant named Sukumar Sen. He is one of the heroes of my book India after [...]

RAJIV RE-ASSESSED


Hindustan Times

I think it was Voltaire who said that while we can flatter the living, the dead deserve nothing less than the truth. I recalled that injunction when reading Vir Sanghvi’s tribute to the late Rajiv Gandhi (Remembering Rajiv, HT, Sunday 7th February). This praises Mr Gandhi as a compassionate visionary who helped heal the wounds of [...]

THE IMPURITY OF CULTURES


The Hindu

In the 1950s, inspired by Jawaharlal Nehru, some very brilliant young Indians went into the Foreign Service. Among them was the Rhodes scholar Peter Lynn Sinai. A former Ambassador to Austria and Iraq, Mr Sinai has now chosen to make his home in Bangalore. At a dinner recently, I got talking to him, to discover that [...]