India
The terror of the witches of modern India
When I landed in Delhi at the height of the monsoon, the excitement in the city was palpable. The Indian…
Algeria reminds us that the current of colonisation doesn’t always run just one way
As you glide in to land at the airport outside Algiers, the landscape resembles that of Tuscany: a coastal plain…
A single man of no fortune must be in want of a job: younger sons in Jane Austen’s England
Readers of Jane Austen gain a clear idea of the task facing the daughters of gentlemen. They need to secure…
From Hong Kong to Kashmir, a new authoritarianism is on the rise
Frank Johnson, editor of The Spectator until cruelly sacked to make way for Boris Johnson, never wasted ideas. He liked…
So sloooooooow: Photograph reviewed
Ritesh Batra had a smash hit with his gentle romance The Lunchbox (2013) and then made a couple of less…
Shameless and corny: ITV’s Beecham House reviewed
ITV’s new drama Beecham House is set in late 18th-century India where the British and French were still battling it…
Police raids and chanting intruders: The strange things that happen to me in the early hours
Our upstairs neighbours are not the sort of people you want to have run-ins with. They have regular moped deliveries…
It’s not just cricket: India vs Pakistan is the greatest rivalry in world sport
There are plenty of much-anticipated contests in the 2019 Cricket World Cup. But nothing to compare with this Sunday’s match…
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)…
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