November 2013
Nehru’s Nationalism – and Ours, The Telegraph
One of the books I read as a boy was the autobiography of the mountaineer Tenzing Norgay. I grew up in Dehradun, in a home with fine views of the lower Himalaya. From the nearby [...]
October 2013
Gandhi’s English Housemates, The Independent
In April 1931, Mohandas K. Gandhi attended an inter-faith meeting in Bombay. He had just been released from one of his many terms in prison. Now, while listening to Christian hymns and Sanskrit slokas, he [...]
Some African Gandhians, The Telegraph
I have been reading the memoirs of the Kenyan novelist Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. Here Ngugi writes of how, as a little boy in the 1940s, he saw pictures of a mysterious bespectacled man in the [...]
September 2013
Politicians and Pluralism, The Telegraph
Indian pluralism was always hard won. The riots during Partition produced an enormous sense of insecurity among India’s minorities. Mahatma Gandhi’s death, by creating a sense of shock and outrage, allowed Jawaharlal Nehru’s Government to [...]
August 2013
Development or Destruction?, The Telegraph
Thirty years, a group of students from Delhi University went on a long walking tour of the Narmada Valley. The journey was arduous, and it was not undertaken for pleasure. The students wished to study, [...]
June 2013
The Poison of Partisanship, The Telegraph
Earlier this year, I was discussing partisanship in Indian politics with a friend from Bangalore temporarily based in Boston. In no other democracy, I suggested, did the two major parties use such vile language about [...]