For decades now, India’s global influence has been greater than China’s in only one sphere: soft power. Yet, as the former Indian foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao, has warned, that relative...

Chennai and the rest of Tamil Nadu experienced massive floods in November 2015. The Conference of Parties on climate change had taken place in Paris that year. In a tragic coincidence, Tamil Nadu suff...

One of the most remarkable individuals I have known was K. Swaminathan, a professor of literature from Madras who went on to become Chief Editor of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Swaminat...

Salman Khurshid compared the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to the ISIS and sparked a furore. The burning flames of the outrage reached the home of the veteran Congress politician in Shimla quite literal...

Apologists of an insensitive regime are expected to make outrageous claims. Kangana Ranaut’s statement, that India achieved freedom in the real sense in 2014 with the Independence of 1947, there...

When, in 1995, Bombay was renamed Mumbai, it led to a spurt of such renamings of buildings, streets, parks, and railway stations in the city. However, a few dead foreigners were spared the fate of bei...

Re-examining periods of the past is crucial to deepening our understanding of history. Today, when we are fighting a massive, relentless hijacking attempt on the history of our freedom struggle by the...

Glorious win Sir — The clash between the Chennai Super Kings and the Kolkata Knight Riders in this year’s Indian Premier League final made for a delightful game of cricket (“Dhoni&r...

In 1931, the annual meeting of the Indian National Congress was held in the port city of Karachi. Vallabhbhai Patel was elected president. Early in his address, Patel remarked: “You have called ...

Diplomacy, it is often assumed, is the art of communicating through winks and nudges. Yet there are times when a message can be passed on without subterfuge. Consider Joe Biden’s recent remark o...