May 2008
HOW NOT TO FIGHT EXTREMISM, Hindustan Times
In the spring of 1990, a great Indian patriot, the liberal jurist V. M. Tarkunde, led a team of independent citizens on a study tour of the Kashmir Valley. Many cases of police and army [...]
THE TATTERED IDEAL, The Hindu
My friend T. R. Ramakrishna, a sportswriter and sports buff of an uncommon intelligence and senstivity, recently sent me a book published in the past which speaks directly to the present. The book is called [...]
WATCHING THE WATCHDOG, The Telegraph
The formal institutions of Indian democracy are not especially marked by the capacity for self-correction and self-criticism. One fact should make this clear—that no senior politician, civil servant, or judge has ever been successfully convicted [...]
April 2008
A MAESTRO IN MANIPUR, The Telegraph
If the mast-head of this newspaper was long enough, or if the type it uses was smaller, this column could have carried the title: ‘MEETING A MAESTRO ON A MISTY MORNING IN MANIPUR’. Over the [...]
March 2008
VARIETIES OF THE GAME, The Telegraph
In my opinion, Test cricket may be compared to the finest Scotch, fifty-overs a side to Indian Made Foreign Liquour, and 20-20 to the local hooch. The addict who cannot have the first or the [...]
THE RISE AND FALL OF INDIAN ENVIRONMENTALISM, Hindustan Times
Thirty-five years ago this week, a group of peasants in the upper Alakananda Valley stopped a group of loggers from felling a patch of forest. That act of protest gave birth to the Chipko Andolan [...]