Articles

Many people ask me what will happen at this week’s meeting of the World Trade Organisation at Cancun. Well, don’t pay much attention: any changes will probably be marginal. More important, media reports on the WTO are typically in the […]

Some time ago, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman posed the question, why do Muslims join Al-Qaida in so many Arab countries but not in India? The answer, he said, lay in India being a secular democracy. In autocracies

As a frequent visitor to the US, I can say that most Indians do not have the foggiest idea of American attitudes and trends following the Iraq war. Many Indians ask me whether President George Bush is in serious political

Although the BJP and Congress Party both seem keen on banning cow slaughter throughout India, it looks as though dissent from other parties has blocked the move for the time being. Some critics protest that cow worship is a strictly

Another Independence Day has come and gone. Right through history, imperial powers have clung to their possessions to death. Why, then, did Britain in 1947 give up the jewel in its crown, India? For many reasons. The independence struggle exposed

The British Raj believed in the white man\’s burden. Rudyard Kipling saw Indians as \”lesser breeds without the law\”, of whom no decent standards could be expected. But he saw the white man as a superior species, of whom the

The British Raj believed in the white man\’s burden. Rudyard Kipling saw Indians as \”lesser breeds without the law\”, of whom no decent standards could be expected. But he saw the white man as a superior species, of whom the

Intellectuals sometimes say Western countries are hypocrites who extol free movement of goods and capital, but control free movement of people through visas. True, but our own curbs against Pakistani and Bangladeshis are no less stringent. Nor do our neighbours