The ‘Moment of Madness’ that Embroiled the British Sikh Community

The fall-out of the stabbing of Henry Nowak by a young Sikh shows the vulnerability of Sikhs who, despite being British-born or British citizens, are often viewed as foreigners. This reflects the racialisation of Sikhs as non-white and raises significant questions about home, identity, & belonging.▶02-Jul-2026
Shinder S. Thandi

July 3, 2026

The racialisation of British Sikhs, UN report on Palestinian children, Arms markets across the world, and more.

The ‘Moment of Madness’ that Embroiled the British Sikh Community

The fall-out of the stabbing of Henry Nowak by a young Sikh shows the vulnerability of Sikhs who, despite being British-born or British citizens, are often viewed as foreigners. This reflects the…
▶02-Jul-2026
Shinder S. Thandi

Arms Markets across the World

Mapping the world’s largest military-industrial complexes, their relationships to one another, and their overlapping structures of corporate ownership suggests that their expansion is, in the final…
▶30-Jun-2026
Anna Stavrianakis

Killing the Future: The UN’s Findings on Israel and Palestinian Children

A UN Commission has found that Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza with more than 20,000 killed; this is evidence of genocidal intent. Israeli attacks have affected every…
▶29-Jun-2026
D.J. Ravindran

School Education: From Right to Reimbursement

A quiet redesign has been going on of India’s public education system, like the transport voucher which shifts responsibility for access from the state to the household. The southern states show an…
▶28-Jun-2026
Vijayalakshmi Balakrishnan

Caste Census: Useful Affirmative Step, But No Magic Wand

A caste census would make caste’s pervasive influence harder to ignore, spurring caste groups to assert constitutional equality against those above them. But there is the challenge that these groups…
▶28-Jun-2026
Arvind Sardana

Has the Demography of the Border Districts in Eastern India Changed?

District-level data from West Bengal and Assam show only modest and uneven growth in Muslim populations in border districts between 2001 and 2019. The evidence does not support political claims that…
▶24-Jun-2026
Abhishek Shaw, C. Rammanohar Reddy

Alternative Responses to India’s Economic Difficulties

India should prevent real exchange rate appreciation rather than aim for a “strong currency”. It should redirect savings from speculative bubbles to productive investment, and shift policy from…
▶23-Jun-2026
Ajay Shankar

Beyond Big Data: Language, Biology, and the Limits of Next-Token AI

LLMs are powerful statistical learners, but human language acquisition is biologically constrained and structurally selective. For a multilingual society, conflating LLM usefulness with genuine…
▶23-Jun-2026
Sayantan Mandal, Rakesh Sengupta
Book
Book Review

Documenting the Pandemic

The essays in ‘Documenting Lost Time’ seek to capture many aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic that ravaged India. It is an uneven collection, but it yet contains individual essays that together provide…
▶22-Jun-2026
Kalpana Sharma

India-UAE Deal on Petroleum Reserves: Endangering Strategic Autonomy

The May 2026 India-UAE agreements represent a structural erosion of India’s autonomy. By storing strategic petroleum reserves in Fujairah and deepening defence ties with the Emirates, India has…
▶21-Jun-2026
Amit Kumar