January 2024
In Praise of Madhu Dandavate, The Telegraph
The Indian socialist tradition is now moribund, but there was a time when it had a profound and mostly salutary influence on politics and society. Yet few people now know of its past vigour and [...]
December 2023
Hindutva as Pop Culture, The Telegraph
In recent years, a stream of books and articles have appeared seeking to analyse the theory and practice of Hindutva. They have sought to alternatively explain, critique, or justify the rising influence of the BJP [...]
November 2023
Caring for the Earth, The Telegraph
The climate crisis has brought human ill-treatment of nature forcibly to our attention, though of course India’s environmental problems are by no means the product of global warming alone. The staggeringly high rates of air [...]
October 2023
A Godson Remembers: Thammu Achaya and Indian Food History, The Telegraph
My first editor, Rukun Advani, once described himself as ‘a composite hybrid of the Indian and the Anglo-European’, who sought to reconcile ‘within himself those varying cultural influences which chauvinistic nationalists could only see as [...]
July 2023
Einstein: The Scientist as Moralist, The Telegraph
I saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer earlier this week. The main character in the film, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was a physicist whose family was Jewish, and who worked for many years at the Institute of Advanced [...]
After Sobers, Who? The Telegraph
In one of the first books I read, the writer had posed the question: ‘Who was the greatest all-rounder in the history of cricket?’, before providing this answer: ‘He was a left-arm bowler and a [...]