March 2015
Judging The Judges, The Telegraph
Here, in full, is a recent news item in a New Delhi newspaper: ‘When former Chief Justice of India and current Kerala Governor P Sathasivam came to Delhi to attend the wedding reception of BJP [...]
February 2015
Two Leaders and Their Parties, The Telegraph
I visit Delhi half a dozen times a year. I was most recently there from February 5th to 11th, to fulfil commitments made several months ago, these fortuitously coinciding with the casting and counting of [...]
How Gandhi’s Martyrdom Saved India, Hindustan Times
On the 31st of January 1948, a former Indian Civil Service officer named Malcolm Darling, then living in retirement in London, wrote in his diary: ‘Gandhi was assassinated yesterday. … Very difficult to say what [...]
January 2015
Seven Threats To Freedom Of Expression, The Telegraph
India, I have long maintained, is a fifty-fifty democracy. In some respects—such as free and fair elections, free movement of people—we are as democratic as any other country in the world. In other respects we [...]
History As Myth Myth As History, Hindustan Times
In the early years of this century, people—within and outside India—began speaking of our country emerging as a ‘knowledge superpower’. The proximate reason for this was the country’s then rising software industry. As that sturdy [...]
Wealth and Power in Modern India, New Republic
Book Review of "Capital: The Eruption of Delhi", Rana Dasgupta, Penguin Press. I The novelist and critic U. R. Ananthamurthy once said that India lives simultaneously in the twelfth and the twenty-first centuries. He might [...]