Number of words: 5,386 Everyone knows that South India and North India are very different in culture, language, and socio-economic development. But the most dramatic regional disparity may be in gender relations. Southern and North Eastern women are more likely to survive infancy, be educated, marry later, choose their own husbands, interact more closely with … Read more

Number of words: 492 It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate.I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in … Read more

Number of words: 644 In the brief span between 1846 and 1867, two discoveries swept away these two quandaries that had haunted surgery, thus allowing cancer surgeons to revisit the bold procedures that Hunter had tried to perfect in London. The first of these discoveries, anesthesia, was publicly demonstrated in 1846 in a packed surgical … Read more

Number of words: 447 A wondrous lineage of crocodile relatives that developed into fast-swimming seagoing predators at a time when dinosaurs dominated the land adapted to life in the open ocean with a pivotal evolutionary modification also present in whales. But the crocs did it more than 100 million years earlier. Research published on Monday … Read more

Number of words: 650 On that afternoon it was really made easy by Miss Bentley, the viceprincipal. Miss Bentley offered us the example of the Army. The Army, she submitted, was an organization of people given certain tasks to perform. So was a school. The tasks were vital. Perhaps, she grinned, those of us old … Read more

Number of words: 2,440 Like all good Anglophiles, I went to one of India’s best schools in Bombay. Among the many things they taught me was that the epics—the Ramayana and the Mahabharata—were mythologies. And I believed this till, one day, I decided to read Valmiki’s Ramayana in Sanskrit. And there I read that, as … Read more

Number of words: 89 Savarkar thesis of Hindutva so inspired Dr. K.B. Hedgewar that before syarring the volunteer organization known as that Rashtriya Swayamsevak  Sangh Dr. Hedgewar  had a long discussion with Savarkar over the faith, form and future of the organization thus from the beginning the RSS philosophy got interwoven with Savarkar Hindutva – … Read more

Number of words: 1,902 It began with a cryptic remark. In 2012, when I was teaching at Princeton, a set of bright students enquired whether I might teach a course on Indian political thought. At the time, my rozi roti was teaching one of those broad introductions to “Western” political thought affectionately termed “Plato to NATO” courses. … Read more

Number of words: 85 On the other side of the country, close to Aurangabad, is the small town of  Khuldbad. Here lies the tomb of Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal emperor, who died in the eighteenth century, and ruled an empire stretching over most of India. Aurangzeb was a devout Muslim. In keeping with Islamic … Read more

Number of words: 85 Israel’s electrol system has the virtue of being democratic. If a party gets, say, 1 per cent of the votes it will get 10 percent of the seats. The lottery element, which one finds in the British system, is removed. It has the serious disadvantage that as the whole country is … Read more