(The article was originally published by Indian Express on July 21, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) There is much to celebrate in the election of Droupadi Murmu as the 15th President of India in the Amrit Mahotsav year of independence. In Murmu, the country not only has a Santhal tribal woman as the head of […]
(The article was originally published in Indian Express on July 12, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Indians were great warriors. From the epics to history, India’s story is full of wars and conquests. Empire building was seen as a virtue, through concepts like the Rajasuya. Over millennia, the concept of “dharma yuddh” (just war), a […]
(The article was originally published by India Today on July 9, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Loya Jirga or Grand Assembly of religious leaders and elders, elected at the local levels, is the Afghan traditional democratic assembly system, in vogue for several centuries. In the Afghan political system, ratification by the Loya Jirga was considered […]
(The article was originally published in OPEN Magazine on June 30, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Someone needs to challenge the radical and revisionist interpretations of Islam The horror of Udaipur is a chilling reminder of the deep penetration of Islamist radicalism among the Indian Muslim youth. Hindu–Muslim tensions have a history of more than […]
(The review was originally published by Chintan – India Foundation Blogs on June 21, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Francis Fukuyama is one of the West’s most renowned public intellectuals with profound liberal credentials. Once acquired name and notoriety for his theory of the “End of History”, Fukuyama traveled a distance in the last three […]
(The review was originally published by Chintan – India Foundation Blogs on June 9, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Do identities matter? A debate has been raging in the Western world for several decades now. While classical liberalism rejected group identities in the name of individual liberty and freedom, neo-liberals tend to emphasize identities of […]
(The text of the interview was originally published by The Print on June 8, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) The three concepts of kafir (‘unbeliever’), ummah (a supra-national community tied by religion) and jihad (‘struggle’, often used in the sense of ‘holy war’) are hindering the assimilation of Muslims into Indian society at large, senior […]
(The article was originally published in Times of India on June 7, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Politics is about leadership and narrative. Jawahar Lal Nehru, the longest serving Prime Minister of India, who held that portfolio for seventeen years – “six thousand days” as Amiya Rao and B G Rao called in their book […]
(The article was originally published by India Today on May 18, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) Until a decade or two ago, Sweden, the Nordic country in Northern Europe, was considered one of the safest European destinations. But last year, a German newspaper, Bild, headlined that “Sweden is the most dangerous country in Europe”. Today, […]
(The review was originally published by Chintan – India Foundation Blogs on May 7, 2022. Views expressed are personal.) The Covid pandemic has highlighted one important probability – mankind’s ability to self-destruct. The virus, that had caused SARS two decades ago or Covid two years ago, was suspected to be a byproduct of human experimentation […]
