The Dauphin and the Figurehead

Timing is everything, and with a number of state elections soon, leading to the general election next year, cynicism and opportunism are manifest. The Congress-led…

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Calcutta is Forever

The old city is giving way to a new bright-eyed metropolis Thirty years ago, a dishevelled man leaned across and shouted at me in the…

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Friend in Need

The Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh (RSS) is everybody’s favourite bugbear. So perhaps it was inevitable that it would be accused of having a hand in the…

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The Enemy Within

Iran’s much-vaunted Islamic revolution appears to have finally spilled over into India. Chanting Allah-o–Akbar and wielding primitive weapons like lathis bristling with nails, bicycle chains,…

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Marching To Discovery

In the coolness of the early morning there is little traffic on National Highway 3. Outward bound from Nasik, the tar stretches infinitely in mottled…

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Off the Blocks

Get set: Campaign 2019 will rivet, horrify and confound you For the second time in five years, I was struck by how apposite Rud-yard Kipling’s…

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