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

Book review: Approach to Battle: Training the Indian Army during the Second World War

Approach to Battle is an excellent and meticulously researched narrative of pure vanilla military history. It explores the transformation of the Indian Army from a bloated, undertrained, and poorly led force during World War I and the early years of World War II into a fighting machine that gave the British Empire one of its most… Read More Book review: Approach to Battle: Training the Indian Army during the Second World War

Dilip

George Monbiot: Dead Line – Future corporate profits are officially more important than life on Earth

The human tragedy is that there is no connection between what we know and what we do. Almost everyone is now at least vaguely aware that we face the greatest catastrophe our species has ever confronted. Yet scarcely anyone alters their behaviour in response: above all, their driving, flying and consumption of meat and dairy.… Read More George Monbiot: Dead Line – Future corporate profits are officially more important than life on Earth

Dilip

NIVEDITA MENON: If Hindutva is dismantled, whom will it harm?

An upcoming conference in the USA, “Dismantling Global Hindutva”, organized by Indians in the USA, most of whom are legally “Hindus”, and supported by over 40 US universities, has provoked the ire of the Hindu Rashtravaadis there as well as in India. Conflating Hindutva with Hinduism is the first step. Based on this, the Hindu… Read More NIVEDITA MENON: If Hindutva is dismantled, whom will it harm?

Dilip

Simone de Beauvoir’s Lost Novel of Early Love. By Merve Emre

The legend of Simone de Beauvoir—of how an obedient Catholic schoolgirl cast off her rigid, patriarchal upbringing to become the high priestess of existential feminism – is often narrated as a love story. Her biographers trace her escape from the bourgeois Parisian milieu into which she was born, in 1908, first to the Sorbonne and then… Read More Simone de Beauvoir’s Lost Novel of Early Love. By Merve Emre

Dilip

Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann – Repetition and rupture: Reinhart Koselleck, theorist of history

In the summer of 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War, the British historian Eric Hobsbawm travelled to the British occupation zone of Germany to re-educate young Germans. A recent graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, where he had also joined the Communist Party, Hobsbawm was working on his PhD dissertation and… Read More Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann – Repetition and rupture: Reinhart Koselleck, theorist of history

Dilip

Partha Chatterjee: No one, not even Indians, can claim to be part of an ancient nation

There are no ancient nations anywhere in the world. All nations (rāstra) are modern. Ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, ancient China, ancient India – all of them may have had great civilisations whose architecture, art, and literature are objects of admiration. But they were not nations. To realise this truth, you will have to forget for the… Read More Partha Chatterjee: No one, not even Indians, can claim to be part of an ancient nation

Dilip

Mohammed Hanif: In Pakistan we cultivated the Taliban, then turned on them. Now we can only hope they forgive us

Not too long ago, Pakistan and Afghanistan were called Af-Pak: two countries joined at the hip, doomed to live and die together. You didn’t get to choose your neighbours, we were told. Geography, we were taught, was our destiny. There was a lot of talk about geostrategic significance – which was the Pakistan military’s way of saying there were… Read More Mohammed Hanif: In Pakistan we cultivated the Taliban, then turned on them. Now we can only hope they forgive us

Dilip

What the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan means for India and Pakistan | The Economist

It was only a question of time before Kabul fell, says A.S. Dulat, a former head of India’s top spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, speaking from Delhi. The only surprise was the speed of the Taliban’s advance, concurs the ex-boss of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence, or isi, Asad Durrani, speaking from Islamabad. The two… Read More What the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan means for India and Pakistan | The Economist

Dilip

Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the sins of empire // Anti-Taliban Forces Say They've Taken 3 Districts In North Afghanistan

American empire has been stuck in a place where, to use Polybius’s words, “it can neither endure its condition, nor the means to overcome it.” In the context of Afghanistan, learned strategic thinkers and broadsheets of imperial privilege like The New York Times, will fulminate over roads not taken. But this exercise, as valuable as… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the sins of empire // Anti-Taliban Forces Say They've Taken 3 Districts In North Afghanistan

Dilip

In pictures: Afghans mark Independence Day as challenges to Taliban rule rise

The Taliban celebrated Afghanistan’s Independence Day on Thursday by declaring they beat the United States, but challenges to their rule ranging from running a country severely short on cash and bureaucrats to potentially facing an armed opposition began to emerge. The holiday commemorates the 1919 treaty that ended British rule in the central Asian nation.… Read More In pictures: Afghans mark Independence Day as challenges to Taliban rule rise

Dilip