October 2008
CAMUS AND AMERICA, The Hindu
In the spring of 1946, Albert Camus visited the United States for the first time. He came at the invitation of his American publisher, Alfred Knopf. Like some other French writers he had profoundly ambivalent [...]
THE TRIPLE TRAGEDY OF THE INDIAN MUSLIMS, The Telegraph
An influential editor from Delhi, visiting Bangalore, hosted a dinner for some local politicians, and invited me along. Among the netas present was the Karnataka Youth Congress president, the spokesman for H. D. Deve Gowda’s [...]
TRIBAL TRAGEDIES, Hindustan Times
Fifty years ago, in October 1958, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a short note explaining what the state’s policies towards the tribals of India should be. He urged that tribal rights in land and forest be protected, [...]
THE CERTITUDE OF CONQUERORS, The Hindu
I have been reading A. N. Wilson’s book After the Victorians, a survey of British social and political life in the first half of the twentieth century. Unlike some other British historians, Wilson is aware [...]
September 2008
A FORGOTTEN BENGALI HERO, The Telegraph
Nothing gives the historian greater joy than to discover an individual significant in his time but forgotten in our own. I was thus very pleased to have brought, to the attention of the present generation, [...]
RAJIV RE-ASSESSED, Hindustan Times
I think it was Voltaire who said that while we can flatter the living, the dead deserve nothing less than the truth. I recalled that injunction when reading Vir Sanghvi’s tribute to the late Rajiv [...]