January 2017
When Eleven Women Of Bengal Took On Gandhi, The Telegraph
While working in the archives of the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, I came across a fascinating letter to Gandhi, sent by eleven young women of Calcutta. The letter was undated, but it appeared to have [...]
The Best Player Not To Play For India, Hindustan Times
This winter India play thirteen Test matches at home. The last time they played so many was back in 1979-80, when two in three Indians now alive were unborn. This (to me) welcome superabundance of [...]
November 2016
A Contemporary View Of Nehru and Patel, Hindustan Times
My home town, Bengaluru, has the country’s best second-hand bookstores. For decades now, they have sustained me in a personal and professional sense, providing materials for my bed-time reading as well as rare documents for [...]
October 2016
A Privileged Peep Into Gandhi’s Inbox, The Telegraph
Mohandas K. Gandhi’s own writings are well known to the world: through a series of books and anthologies under his name that appeared in his lifetime; and, more authoritatively and substantively, through the ninety-seven volumes [...]
September 2016
Why We Must Listen To JP On Kashmir, Hindustan Times
On the 4th of October 1966—almost exactly fifty years ago—the great Indian democrat Jayaprakash Narayan spoke at a seminar on Kashmir held in New Delhi. The Valley was in turmoil; the popular leader Sheikh Abdullah [...]
August 2016
A Modest Proposal To Improve Governance, Hindustan Times
The Harvard economist Lant Pritchett has called India a ‘flailing state’. The signs are all around us; in the decaying government schools and the declining public hospitals, in the apathy and incompetence of the police, [...]