India
Delhi notebook: Nuclear war is not around the corner
India is not preparing for war, but picking up the newspapers in Delhi you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.…
Who’s really to blame for Pakistan’s terror attacks?
Islamabad Six months into Imran Khan’s premiership and the new Pakistan prime minister has been plunged into his first major…
Meet India’s first – and only – professional western orchestra
It’s a 31ºC Mumbai morning, and on Marine Drive the Russian winter is closing in. The Symphony Orchestra of India…
Is Michelle Obama a secret Archers fan?
I wonder what Michelle Obama, the former First Lady who remade that role in her own image, would make of…
Gandhi on Hitler: ‘I do not believe him to be as bad as he is portrayed’
‘It’s a beautiful world if it wasn’t for Gandhi who is really a perfect nuisance,’ Lord Willingdon, Viceroy of India,…
Shashi Tharoor’s book is a polemic, says Kapil Komireddi – beware of Hindu nationalism
Most religions bind their adherents into a community of believers. Hinduism segregates them into castes. And people excluded from the…
Why has V.S. Naipaul rejected the Trinidad of his birth?
Savi Naipaul Akal’s publishing house is named after the peepal tree, in whose shade Buddha is said to have achieved…
India’s Sistine ceiling
In Tamil Nadu we found that we were exotic. Although there were some other western tourists around, in most of…
When will the West take a stand on the persecution of Muslims?
Anti-Christian persecution, for so long a great untold story, has started to gain the world’s attention. But the suffering of…
A Book of Chocolate Saints: an Indian novel like no other
The Indian poet Jeet Thayil’s first novel, Narcopolis, charted a two-decade-long descent into the underworlds of Mumbai and addiction. One…
Reading Norman Davies’s global history is like wading through porridge
For many of us, life has become global. Areas which were previously tranquil backwaters are now hives of international activity.…
The listening project
As Classic FM celebrated its quarter-century on Wednesday with not a recording but a live broadcast of a concert from…
Passage from India
It is not fashionable to feel sympathy for the men and women who lived and served in the British colonies…
Change and decay
Writing of his grandmother’s cremation, Kushanava Choudhury reflects in The Epic City that, while his expatriate Indian cousins are separated…
India in a day
Bold programming by the powers-that-be at Radio 4 meant it was possible to listen to all seven episodes of Ayeesha…
Separation anxiety
As Europe remembers Passchendaele, India and Pakistan recall Partition, just 70 years ago, when Britain so hastily abandoned its Indian…
Taking the Kamasutra seriously
The rough English translation of Kamasutra is pleasure (kama) treatise (sutra). In the West, since it was first (rather surreptitiously)…
The 90th birthday present that the Queen really wants
The Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations start this week with the real thing and barely stop until her official birthday in…
How trauma is passed down through the generations in our DNA
Sue Armstrong’s programme on Radio 4 All in the Womb (produced by Ruth Evans) should be required listening for anyone…
The Cauliflower®: Nicola Barker’s divine comedy
Nicola Barker is both prodigiously talented and admirably fearless. I have loved her books. But for some time I had…
Reasons to be cheerful about cricket, football and the Grand National
Well the sun is out, the sky is blue, and poor Boris Johnson is taking such a pounding from Matthew…
A devastating critique of the Indian justice system: Court reviewed
The big hitter this week is, of course, Batman v Superman, but if you want to learn something new, and…
I felt the earth move just as before: Akram Khan’s Kaash reviewed
You revisit an old love with wariness. Time’s passed for both of you — sharp edges have been smoothed, and…
Flying from Donald Trump to the beautiful ruins of another empire
Just as the presidential race in America started to get really crazy, I left for India. On the morning of…
Next time I go to India, I want imperialism 2.0
When in India, I always appal my highly educated tour guides. They despair of me, as they drag me round…
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