January 2023
India Against Gandhi, Financial Times, Weekend
Born in 1958, a decade after Gandhi’s death, I grew up in an atmosphere of veneration towards the Mahatma. One of my great uncles helped edit Gandhi’s Collected Works; another founded a pioneering initiative in [...]
December 2022
Attenborough Revisited, The Telegraph
This week marks the fortieth anniversary of the release of Richard Attenborough’s epic film Gandhi. Attenborough’s papers are located in an archive an hour’s train ride from London. Visiting them recently, I found several files [...]
November 2022
In Praise of Ian Jack, The Telegraph
In the course of my life, I have met many remarkable men, who have distinguished themselves as scholars, writers, artists, sportsmen, scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and activists. These men, almost without exception, have had a high [...]
October 2022
An Ecological Pioneer, The Telegraph
In 1922, a professor at Lucknow University named Radhakamal Mukherjee published a book called Principles of Comparative Economics. Reading the book one hundred years later, I was struck by the attention it paid to the [...]
The Fear of Free Thought, The Telegraph
At a conference last month, I met the Director of one of our prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology. Himself a fine scientist and excellent administrator, he told me that no fewer than eight IITs were [...]
September 2022
50 for 75 – An Independent India Reading List, The Telegraph
In an earlier column (The Telegraph, 13th August), I provided a brief analytical history of India’s democratic institutions since Independence. In this column, I offer a list of non-fiction books that I have myself found [...]