Arguably the two greatest modern Bengalis were Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore. Both have had a colossal and still enduring influence on their state, their country, and the world. Tagore and...

There have been many protests against the citizenship (amendment) bill (now Act), and there will be many more. This piece of legislation strikes at the heart of the Constitution, seeking to make India...

“I believe that freedom of thought is a fundamental human right. I don’t want to be a nut and bolt of the state. I want to be a free person. And that is why I resigned.” — Hemantkumar Shah, fo...

In the last week of March 1959 — exactly 60 years ago — the Dalai Lama fled to India after a rebellion by his fellow Tibetans had been brutally crushed by the Chinese military. He entered what is ...

In 1940, George Orwell wrote an essay titled, “My Country Right or Left”. Britain and Germany were at war, the Luftwaffe was battering London, and the detached, sceptical writer was giving way to ...

ramachandraguha@yahoo.in ...

I have been reading the diaries of the diplomat, Ivan Maisky, who served as Soviet Russia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1932 to 1943. A scholar of history and philology, a fluent speaker o...

Nagaland is one of only three states of the Indian Union that I have not visited. I had planned to go there next February, at the invitation of Natwar Thakkar, a social worker whom I had corresponded ...

The Indian Constitution recognized two social groups as especially disadvantaged: the scheduled castes, known in everyday language as Dalits; and the scheduled tribes, commonly known as Adivasis. Both...

Ironically — or perhaps tragically — the most beautiful parts of our country are also those most ridden with conflict and violence. They include the vale of Kashmir, the forests of Central India (...