January 2021
In Praise of Archives and Archivists, The Telegraph
In the third week of January 2020—exactly a year ago—I was in New Delhi, working in the collections of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. I first discovered the archival riches of the NMML in [...]
A Man to Match His Mountains, from the Introduction to The Chipko Movement by Shekhar Pathak
I first came across Shekhar Pathak’s name in the files of the Uttar Pradesh State Archives in Lucknow. The year was 1983, and I was working on a dissertation on the social history of forests [...]
Making Indian Cities Habitable – The Legacy of Patrick Geddes, India Forum
‘India lives in her villages’, said Mahatma Gandhi, and that maxim of his has been resolutely followed by Indian environmentalists. From celebrated popular struggles like the Chipko Andolan and the Narmada Bachao Andolan to quieter, [...]
September 2020
Lessons in Leadership from Satish Dhawan, The Telegraph
The late A. P. J. Abdul Kalam liked to tell stories with morals. A story he was particularly fond of related to the launch of a satellite by the Indian Space Research Organization in July [...]
August 2020
5 Reasons Why Rahul Gandhi Cannot Take on Modi for PM, NDTV.com
Those who oppose Hindutva seek to recover the founding principles of the freedom struggle, such as religious and linguistic pluralism, gender and caste equality, a critical attitude to state power, and an open-ness to other [...]
A Brief History of Cults of Personality, The Telegraph
The term ‘cult of personality’ is thought to have been first used with regard to the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Stalin died in 1953, after more than two decades in power; three years later, in [...]