Sikh activism is on the rise in the diaspora but it would be wrong to read it as all 'Khalistani'. India’s outreach policies need to acknowledge Sikh pluralism and respect the democratic…
On 7 October, Hamas committed a war crime when in its attack on Israel, hundreds of civilians were killed, but since 1948 the scale of the crimes against the Palestinians repeatedly committed by…
In a work of deep introspection that is free of rhetoric, well-known Pakistani nuclear physicist and essayist, Pervez Hoodbhoy re-examines the history of his country, asking how it got to where it is…
The idea of Athens as mother of democracy was pushed by modern scholars of ancient Greece and Rome. Ancient Greek and Roman writers on India themselves found several similarities with political…
A war-ravaged country torn apart by militancy and poverty; Afghanistan is now a textbook example of a failed state. But the region was once home to a civilisation that was muse to the great Persian…
Har Dayal, a founding member of the Ghadar party, was an anarchist who moved between advocacy of revolution to pacificism, later advocating a utopian “world state”. An account of his years (1911-14)…
Cheetahs were highly prized in medieval and colonial India. They were trapped to meet the demand from royalty, a practice that continued well into the 19th century, leading to their ultimate…
It would be wrong to use present-day norms to label certain historical events as crimes. If we must judge the past, it should be in relation to its time, rather than our present.
"We were, in many ways, coached into listening—casually, closely, intimately, itinerantly—by the cassette tape. It made sound available to us beyond broadcast radio, and allowed us to curate our…