NB: Saleem was a dear personal friend and colleague at Ramjas College, in the University of Delhi. Both of us were also alumni of St Stephens College, albeit separated by a couple of years. He was a gentleman to his core and a brilliant historian. On the rare occasions he spoke in Staff Council meetings,… Read More Goodbye Saleem / सबके मेंटर थे सलीम किदवई
The natural living barrier was described as “utterly impassable to man or beast”, and snaked across India from the Indus River to the Mahanadi. But why doesn’t anyone remember it? In a second-hand bookstore in London, in late 1994, author Roy Moxham made a discovery that would consume the next three years of his… Read More Kamala Thiagarajan: The mysterious disappearance of the world's longest shrubbery
NB: For many decades now, the world has been held hostage by the American election cycle, and the criminal tendencies of American Presidents. Our short memories, our weakness in resisting propaganda; and the degeneration of journalism into op-ed commentary by spin-doctors have contributed to this. The rise of violent Islamist movements has a great deal to… Read More Thom Hartmann: Myths and lies about Afghanistan's role in 9/11 live on, Bush and Cheney escape justice / Karen Greenberg: The Endless Shadow of the War on Terror
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
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
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
When Jonathan Steele moved to Moscow for the Guardian in 1988, the story of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms was getting “hotter and hotter”. But with all the restrictions on foreign journalists in the Soviet Union, the question was how to report it. The sources were mainly local journalists authorised to speak to foreigners or dissidents. The… Read More Jonathan Steele: I came to Russia a political correspondent and left a crime reporter // Rafael Behr: 30 years after the Moscow coup, democracy is in a crisis of self-esteem
Being a member of the US Army wasn’t all that dangerous before America set off on its quixotic post-9/11 adventures. This was no longer the case when I was serving at the height of both “surges” to nowhere-but-failure in 2007 (Iraq) and 2011 (Afghanistan). During a 2007 spent driving down Baghdad’s bomb-laden streets and dallying around… Read More Major Danny Sjursen, US Army (retd) – A Life and Nation Transformed: 20 Years from the War on Terror
महात्मा गांधी के सचिव महादेव देसाई का 15 अगस्त, 1942 को निधन हो गया। अपने अंतिम दिनों में जब गांधी को एक ओर हिंदू-मुसलमान तनाव को दूर करने और दूसरी ओर नेहरू और पटेल की बढ़ती दूरियों को कम करने के प्रयास करने पड़ रहे थे, तब उन्होंने कहा था कि महादेव होते तो यह… Read More Ramachandra Guha: महान गांधीवादी की स्मृति, गांधी जी के सचिव महादेव देसाई की कहानी / Remembering the Greatest Gandhian
The debacle in Afghanistan, which will unravel into chaos with lightning speed over the next few weeks and ensure the return of the Taliban to power, is one more signpost of the end of the American empire. The two decades of combat, the one trillion dollars we spent, the 100,000 troops deployed to subdue Afghanistan,… Read More Chris Hedges: The Collective Suicide Machine
