Politics
Whatever the Outcome
Mar 20th
TAX – In the old days, every time a king wanted to wage one of his “just” wars or impress the neighbouring king’s wife by building another palace, he simply took a little bit more of his peasants’ grain, land, cattle or women.
India’s tryst with NRIs
Mar 13th
We Indians have a peculiar relationship with our NRI cousins. Sometimes we laugh with The Kumars at No 42, sometimes we laugh at them.
Yes, once we loved and lauded NRI achievers, particularly those who wrote withering novels about their identity crises, and those who achieved fame in glamourous fields like fashion, entertainment and sport. The More >
The Marketing of Rushdie
Jan 21st
Authors nowadays are just marketers, say their detractors.
But here we have the curious case of the detractor marketing the author.
I am speaking of course of how the Darul Uloom Deoband has done Salman Rushdie the great service of giving him and his Satanic Verses a new lease of life just as they were fading into More >
Polls and Prejudice
Jan 17th
India on a mission to villify its best and brightest. We have the dubious distinction of being the only democracy to ban, exile and censor Salman Rushdie, Hussain and Arundhati Roy, when others see them as some of the finest minds in the world.
Ironically, it was a government man, A.K. Antony, who plainly, and painfully, More >
Hate at Home
Jan 10th
People like a strong government. It makes them feel secure. So when a government looks weak, voters almost always swing to the right.
It happened in the U.S after Jimmy Carter’s failed presidency. It happened in Russia after the years of Boris Yeltin’s alcoholic More >
