THREE COMPARISONS


The Telegraph

As the election results started coming in on Friday the 13th, and the spectacular rout of the Left Front in West Bengal became clear, my mind went back to the spring of 1977. I was a student of St. Stephen’s College in Delhi, too young to vote, but old enough to recognize the significance of the [...]

POWER WOMEN


The Telegraph

A remarkable yet perhaps under-appreciated fact about Indian politics today is the influence, at the very top, of women. The most powerful individual in the country is a woman. The most powerful individual in the country’s largest state is a woman. The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha is a woman. In two weeks [...]

A QUESTION OF ENGLISH


The Telegraph

In 1905 and 1906, Mohandas Gandhi, his wife, and their children shared a home in Johannesburg with an English couple, Henry and Millie Polak. Later, writing of their life together, Gandhi recalled that ‘Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always [...]