Author: Dilip

I'm a scholar, writer and teacher; and my blog is designed for intellectual exploration. It carries no advertisements and requires no cash subscription

Sixty years ago, true statecraft avoided a nuclear war. We need that again over Ukraine

Jonathan Steele NB: While I appreciate Steele’s evocation of moderation and restraint, there’s just one big problem with this article. One man alone saved the world from nuclear war in 1962, and his name was Vasili Arkhipov, one of three senior officers in the Soviet nuclear-weapon equipped submarine, the B-59, off the Cuban coast, which… Read More Sixty years ago, true statecraft avoided a nuclear war. We need that again over Ukraine

Dilip

Migrants and Minorities in Ceylon: Lessons for the Present

RITESH KUMAR JAISWAL Sri Lanka was just about recovering from a devastating civil war and its aftermath when it plummeted into an unprecedented economic and political crisis. Mass protests beginning in March, in response to alarming inflation and shortages of food, fuel, medicines, fertilisers, and other essential items, forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa into brief exile. His replacement, Ranil Wickremesinghe is… Read More Migrants and Minorities in Ceylon: Lessons for the Present

Dilip

The US is on a knife-edge. The enemy for Trump’s Republicans is democracy itself

Jonathan Freedland s in all the best horror movies, at first glance everything looks normal. It’s a classic scene of the American autumn: campaign rallies outside community centres, battle buses emblazoned with candidates’ smiling faces, kids wearing badges and holding up signs, while TV screens fill with debates, punditry and an endless loop of focus-grouped… Read More The US is on a knife-edge. The enemy for Trump’s Republicans is democracy itself

Dilip

The Rubble

Seema Chishti What was lost in the Babri Masjid demolition, thirty years ago, and what remains IN 1992, I worked as a correspondent for Eyewitness, a monthly video newsmagazine owned by Hindustan Times TV. The senior journalist Karan Thapar was the show’s executive producer. Our team had been covering Uttar Pradesh regularly, and I had… Read More The Rubble

Dilip

Bhagwat eclipsed

DHIRENDRA K JHA is a contributing writer at The Caravan November 1, 2022 NB: How things have changed since June 4, 2024. Mr Bhagwat, not to mention Messrs Naidu and Nitish, have been emboldened by the unforeseen successes of the opposition INDIA alliance. The two N’s are sneering at the opposition, which is ironic, because it is… Read More Bhagwat eclipsed

Dilip

US quietly publishes once-expunged papers on 1953 Iran coup

John Gambrell First posted June 29, 2017 NB: President Biden was cited yesterday as saying ‘We’re gonna free Iran‘. This is calculated to weaken the Iranian people’s democratic protests. We have become used to American arrogance and idiocy raised to stratospheric heights by the talking baboon Donald Trump; but Biden is not far behind. The… Read More US quietly publishes once-expunged papers on 1953 Iran coup

Dilip

The joint CIA – MI-6 instigated coup in Iran that changed the Middle East, and the cover-up

First posted August1, 2020 Vanessa Thorpe The hidden role of a British secret service officer who led the coup that permanently altered the Middle East is to be revealed for the first time since an Observer news story was suppressed in 1985. The report, headlined “How MI6 and CIA joined forces to plot Iran coup”, appeared… Read More The joint CIA – MI-6 instigated coup in Iran that changed the Middle East, and the cover-up

Dilip

Amarjit Chandan: The Great War & its Impact on Punjabis

Presented at Across the Black Waters One-Day Symposium at the Imperial War Museum, London, November 7, 1998 Don’t go don’t goStay back my friend. Crazy people are packing up,Flowers are withering and friendships are breaking.Stay back my friend. Allah gives bread and workYou won’t find soothing shade anywhere else.Don’t go my friend don’t go. –… Read More Amarjit Chandan: The Great War & its Impact on Punjabis

Dilip