If the mast-head of this newspaper was long enough, or if the type it uses was smaller, this column could have carried the title: ‘MEETING A MAESTRO ON A MISTY MORNING IN MANIPUR’. Over the past decade, the little and beautiful state of Manipur has replaced the larger and even more beautiful state of Nagaland as [...]
In my opinion, Test cricket may be compared to the finest Scotch, fifty-overs a side to Indian Made Foreign Liquour, and 20-20 to the local hooch. The addict who cannot have the first or the second will make do with the last. The pleasures of the shortest game are intense but also wholly ephemeral. There is [...]
Thirty-five years ago this week, a group of peasants in the upper Alakananda Valley stopped a group of loggers from felling a patch of forest. That act of protest gave birth to the Chipko Andolan and, by extension, to the Indian environmental movement. Through the 1970s, other peasants in the Himalya successfully prevented other loggers from [...]
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was by birth a Gujarati bania, but the admiration for his life and work transcended the boundaries of caste, language, religion, and gender. He was a man who was trusted by women, a Hindu who reached out to befriend Muslims, and a suvarna who fought for the rights of the lower castes. Above [...]
Many years ago, I had an argument with the philosopher Ramchandra (Ramu) Gandhi about his grandfather’s faith. I had always admired the Mahatma, but my secular-socialist self sought to rid him of the spiritual baggage which seemed unnecessary to his broader message. Could we not follow Gandhi in his empathy for the poor and his insistence [...]
In an interview given recently by the Pakistani cricketer-politician Imran Khan to Newsweek magazine, he said: ‘My vote bank is increasing’. To whom do we owe the term ‘vote bank’? I wager few readers of this column can answer the question. Nor can Imran Khan, although—like the rest of us, its use comes naturally to him. [...]
The two greatest comebacks in the history of Indian sport were both conducted in the great city of Kolkata. The better-known, since more recent, was the magnificent 281 scored by V. V. S. Laxman in the Eden Gardens in March 2001. After Australia had forced India to follow on, and four early wickets had fallen, Laxman [...]
Article 44 of the Constitution of India reads: ‘The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India’. The first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the first Law Minister, Dr B. R. Ambedkar, were both modernists who wished to reform archaic personal laws and bring them [...]
A mail arrived in my Inbox last week, as part of a circular sent to many people with some connection to the press. Addressed to ‘the Chief Editor/ Photographer’, it read: ‘We request you to cover the demonstration that AIDWA is organizing against the violence perpetrated on a (sic) tribal women in Assam at 1.30 pm [...]
I have been reading the correspondence of the American polymath Edmund Wilson. Wilson was the most influential literary critic of his day, whose essays and reviews could make or break a writer’s career. He was steeped in American and European literature, and taught himself Russian and Hebrew. His range was enormous; he read and wrote about [...]