A speaker in a television debate was deploring the paucity of hospital beds. A simple soul would have gone on to say, ‘We need more beds.’ This philosopher astutely stressed another logica...

When politically mobilized majorities (or politicians acting in their name) single out minorities for oppression, writers reach for historically loaded comparisons. Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán,...

A moment of crisis is often seen as a call to realism, a summons to the moment of truth. But crisis in recent times has been more a pretext for fictions, a strengthening of stereotypes. The first sit...

In its initial phase, the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic left a trail of devastation across India, leading to the Narendra Modi government being at the receiving end of international media outra...

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the 1991 reforms in India. There is intense commemoration of what is considered to have been a paradigm shift in Indian economic policies. Thirty years are rar...

Powerful internet intermediaries began filing “compliance reports” this month, caving in to the pressure from the Government of India. The reports were in response to the new rules announc...

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I first visited Ahmedabad in 1979, and in the following decade went back often for both professional and personal reasons. Then I began research on Gandhi, and my attachment to the city deepened even ...

Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s first military dictator, was once asked by a close associate how he made the error in judgement of approving ‘Operation Gibraltar’ that led to the 1965 war with...

The custodial death of Father Stan Swamy, a physically frail octogenarian social worker, left me thinking, as a citizen, about its larger significance. It is obviously something to be deeply ashamed a...