The Opening and Closing of the Hindu Mind, The Telegraph
“What am I? Asiatic, European, or American? I feel a curious medley of personalities in me.” — Swami Vivekananda In 1873, the social reformer, Jyotirao Phule, published a searing critique [...]
Where the Hard Right Meets the Hard Left, The Telegraph
I have been reading the memoirs of Dora Russell, a pioneering British feminist and educationist. These were published in three volumes, of which I have just finished the first. This [...]
Why Modi and Shah Fear Young Activists, NDTV.com
Why would the Indian state arrest a twenty-one-year-old woman activist who seeks a cleaner and safer planet? Should not the country want young people to look beyond their narrow personal [...]
The Moral Evolution of Mohandas K Gandhi, The Telegraph
The American writer Louis Fischer is best known for his book The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, which Richard Attenborough drew upon while making his award-winning film of 1982. Fischer’s book [...]
In Praise of Archives and Archivists, The Telegraph
In the third week of January 2020—exactly a year ago—I was in New Delhi, working in the collections of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. I first discovered the archival [...]
A Man to Match His Mountains, from the Introduction to The Chipko Movement by Shekhar Pathak
I first came across Shekhar Pathak’s name in the files of the Uttar Pradesh State Archives in Lucknow. The year was 1983, and I was working on a dissertation on [...]