Romila Thapar: Doyenne and Dissenter
A long, intimate profile of India's most renowned – and increasingly, villified – historian. At 94, she continues to defy a regime determined to erase pluralism and dissent from India’s past
Writing
Essays
Highlights
Diary: Looking for Indraprastha
Digging into the theory that the mythic city of the Pandavas, from the epic Mahabharata, lies right underneath New Delhi
Farewell to Shaheen Bagh, as Political Togetherness Yields to Social Distance
For a hundred days, Delhi had a living heart – an inclusive, peaceful protest that resisted every kind of provocation. Yet there was also a risk to the Shaheen Bagh…
Indian Liberals Must Die
A specter of elite liberals is used to erase the vernacular resistance.
Bangalore Pride
Online Only "Apparently not evil, and easily most popular at Pride 2012, were the Gayglers (“gay” + “Googlers,” but you got that)."
Everybody's Friend
An essay about the Second World War in Manipur, which was runner-up in the Financial Times-Bodley Head essay competition in 2012.
Archive
'Mother Father': Gandhi and Partition
I wrote about Gandhi's time in Noakhali, a deeply moving & strange episode that challenges our image of Gandhi on the eve of Partition
Romila Thapar: Doyenne and Dissenter
A long, intimate profile of India's most renowned – and increasingly, villified – historian. At 94, she continues to defy a regime determined to erase pluralism and dissent from India’s past
Under the Ruins
Investigating India's "epic archaeology", and making sense of the Mahabharata as a record of the real past
Sacred Geography: What was Savarkar?
I micro-dosed the Red Pill while writing this essay on Janaki Bahkle's Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva
After Modi
"The cult of personality built around Narendra Modi now aims to make him seem immortal... A flaw in the Modi-centric model of the universe, though, is that our sense of…
Diary: Looking for Indraprastha
Digging into the theory that the mythic city of the Pandavas, from the epic Mahabharata, lies right underneath New Delhi
Why People Killed by Aerial Bombing Don't Matter
The West’s monopoly over this most lethal violence has conditioned how we see the victims of bombs – if we see them at all.
Remembering Maria Aurora Couto, an Exemplary Trustee of Goan Heritage
Maria was the grande dame of Goan arts and letters. Her work as a memoirist, translator, and educator was more than testament to this.
At the U.N. Climate Summit, Could India Become a Champion, Not Just a Casualty, of the Crisis?
If the nation’s call to leadership in the twentieth century was decolonization, in this century it is decarbonization.
Submerging Nations
Once, we talked about the First and Third Worlds. Today, it’s the vaxxed and unvaxxed.