September 2007
DEGREES OF DEGRADATION, The Telegraph
In recent years, there has been a sharp decline in standards of political debate in India. In and out of Parliament, issues concerning the public good are rarely discussed logically or dispassionately. The arguments more [...]
August 2007
SMALL STATE, LARGE NATION, The Hindu
Goa is the youngest part of India, having joined the Union only in December 1961. It is the smallest state in the country; one can drive across it in less than a day. It is [...]
ADIVASIS, NAXALITES, AND INDIAN DEMOCRACY, Economic and Political Weekly
On 13th December 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly of India. This proclaimed that the soon-to-be-free nation would be an ‘Independent Sovereign Republic’. Its Constitution would guarantee citizens ‘justice, social, [...]
July 2007
OPEN SEASON ON GANDHI AND NEHRU, Hindustan Times
We Indians are very insecure about our heroes. A scholar who retold, without endorsing them, some old stories about Shivaji’s parentage found his book banned and burnt. A writer who made some disparaging remarks about [...]
CHURCHILL PÉRE AND INDIA, The Hindu
In the last days of 1884, an English politician named Randolph Churchill landed in Bombay. Then in his mid thirties, he was a rising star of the Conservative Party, who had made his name by [...]
June 2007
TWO CHEERS FOR BLASPHEMY, Hindustan Times
How one reads the protests by the Governments of Iran and Pakistan at Salman Rushdie being made a knight depends on where one is placed on the political spectrum. Those who incline to the right [...]