In the third week of August, I got a call from a friend in Delhi, the great slow bowler Bishan Singh Bedi. ‘Everyone around me is shouting Anna Hazare! Anna Hazare!’, he said: ‘A few months the same people were shouting IPL! IPL’. ‘Instead of a Jan Lokpal Bill’, remarked Bedi, ‘what Parliament should have passed [...]
When I was invited to visit Kabul, my family were naturally unenthusiastic. I disregarded their advice for two reasons: first, because my host was a brilliant and brave diplomat, whom I was loth to let down; second, because I had recently received a text message from the actor Naseeruddin Shah describing Afghanisthan as ‘[a] gorgeous country [...]
The importance of the India International Centre (IIC) in New Delhi is gauged, in part, by the number of armed security men who pass through its portals. These come to accompany—and, one supposes, protect—the big shots, the fat cats, the Ministers and MP’s and Ambassadors and Generals who wish to be seen at a place located, [...]
In August 2010 — that is, exactly a year ago — Rahul Gandhi told a group of tribals in Orissa that he would be their soldier in New Delhi. There is no record of his having acted on that promise. The Dongria Konds of Niyamgiri forgotten, his attention has more recently been focused on the Jats [...]
Debating Anna Hazare On the 27th of August, the Telegraph newspaper published an article on Anna Hazare by Ramachandra Guha under the title A PATRIARCH FOR THE NATION?. The article sparked a debate between the author and the social worker Lalit Uniyal. The debate is reproduced below, for several reasons. The dialogue is without artifice; it [...]
About twenty years ago, I found myself in the same room as Anna Hazare, at a meeting organized by the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi. Mr Hazare was becoming known in environmental circles for the work he had done in his native village, Ralegan Siddhi. His successful programmes of watershed conservation and afforestation [...]
Some commentators have compared the struggle led by Anna Hazare with the movement against corruption led by Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s. A man of integrity and courage, a social worker who has eschewed the loaves and fishes of office, a septugenerian who has emerged out of semi-retirement to take on an unfeeling government—thus JP then, [...]
In August 2010—that is, exactly a year ago¬—Rahul Gandhi told a group of tribals in Orissa that he would be their soldier in New Delhi. There is no record of his having acted on that promise. The Dongria Konds of Niyamgiri forgotten, his attention has more recently been focused on the Jats of NOIDA, and other [...]
Earlier this year, the Gujarat Government banned a book on Mahatma Gandhi by an American writer. The book was not then available in India, and no one in Gujarat had read it. The ban, ordered by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, was on the basis of a tendentious news report and a still more tendentious book review. [...]
A Tamil economist, the late S. Guhan, used to say that Delhi was a capital in search of a country. I was reminded of that remark during the fortnight of 29 May to 11 June 2011. In that fortnight, if one watched the ‘national’ channels or read the ‘national’ newspapers, one would think all of India [...]