March 2009
-ITE, -IAN, AND –IST, The Hindu
A friend recently described his father, who was an esteemed newspaper editor of the 1940s and 1950s, as a ‘Nehru-ite’. Since I was more familiar with the term ‘Nehruvian’, I asked why the ‘-ite’ instead [...]
February 2009
SEARCHING FOR CHARLIE, The Telegraph
It was on on my last trip to Kolkata that I went searching for the grave of Charlie Andrews. A friend had told me that it was in a cemetery on Lower Circular Road. I [...]
THE GOOD INDIAN, The Hindu
One of the forgotten figures of Indian journalism is a man named Syed Abdullah Brelvi. Google ‘SA Brelvi’ (as I just did), and all that comes up is a road carrying that name in south [...]
CHAUVINISTS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!, Hindustan Times
In a recent essay in the Economic and Political Weekly, the political scientist Neil DeVotta quotes a Sri Lankan Government Minister as saying: ‘The Sinhalese are the only organic race of Sri Lanka. Other communities [...]
THE GOOD INDIAN, The Hindu
One of the forgotten figures of Indian journalism is a man named Syed Abdullah Brelvi. Google ‘SA Brelvi’ (as I just did), and all that comes up is a road carrying that name in south [...]
THE GANDHI-RESERVOIR, The Hindu
For many years now, my principal teacher on the subject of Mohandas K. Gandhi has been a man who is only incidentally his grandson. To be sure, Gopalkrishna Gandhi does respect and honour the memory [...]