Utpal Kumar

MY NAME IS INDIA AND I DENY MY OWN PAST

September 6, 2021

As I hold J. Sai Deepak’s new book, India that is Bharat: Coloniality, Civilisation, Constitution, a tweet by a former journalist, with whom I had worked in a newspaper years ago, caught my attention. She has now left journalism and become an entrepreneur—and a reasonably successful one, I am told....

THE INCREDIBLE FLIGHT OF INDIA’S PARACHUTE MAN

September 3, 2021

Harsh Mariwala is an Indian entrepreneur, who is the founder and chairman of Marico, a Fortune India 500 company. Mariwala has penned a memoir of his business journey, Harsh Realities: The Making of Marico, covering everything from his successes and failures as an entrepreneur to how he built a consumer...

ATTACKING HINDUISM IN HINDUTVA’S NAME

August 24, 2021

In 2016, Rajiv Malhotra, an intellectual of repute, wrote The Battle for Sanskrit, in which he recalled an incident where a group of wealthy non-resident Indians (NRIs) in New York had teamed up with the top administrative leaders of Shringeri Peetham in India and representatives of Sringeri Peetham in the...

BIDEN’S FAUSTIAN BARGAIN WITH ‘SMART, MEDIA-SAVVY’ TALIBAN

August 18, 2021

“I stand squarely behind my decision,” said President Joe Biden in a televised address on Monday on his decision to withdraw US forces, which led to the immediate collapse of the Afghanistan government. “This did unfold more quickly than we anticipated,” he said. But then, while conceding that the “the...

THE GREAT AMERICAN ART OF LOSING WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

August 12, 2021

Author Mark Mazzetti, in his highly engaging book, The Way of the Knife, recalls how “the Afghan war would be decided not by soldiers in mountain redoubts but by politicians in Washington who had an acute sensitivity to America’s limited tolerance for years more of bloody conflict”. Today, as the Taliban’s...

GUJARAT HIGH COURT TAKES RIGHT STEP, TIME FOR SUPREME REFORM

July 23, 2021

Last week when the Gujarat High Court became the first court in the country to formally start live streaming of proceedings, one realised how some of the most revolutionary steps often get stuck not because these can’t be done but because there’s a natural human—and even institutional—tendency to be comfortable...

NEHRU, NORTHEAST AND NOT-SO SPLENDID ISOLATION

July 16, 2021

With Manipur entering India’s railway map late last week after a passenger train reached the state for the first time, it symbolised a marked change in the way New Delhi has started looking at the Northeast ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. One can gauge...

WITH TALIBAN AT KANDAHAR GATES AND CHINA CHECKING IN ON KABUL, INDIA TO REORIENT ITS AFGHAN POLICY

July 13, 2021

When India decided to pull out around 50 diplomats and security personnel from its consulate in Kandahar in Afghanistan on Saturday, in view of the Taliban gaining ground in new areas around the southern Afghan city, India once again found itself at a crossroads in what is believed to be...

LAKSHADWEEP NEEDS PROGRESS, NOT PROTEST

July 6, 2021

Change is always opposed. By those who are uncertain about the changes. But more often by those with vested interests. The reaction of the first set of people is spontaneous and can be dealt with much easily by proper dissemination of information. The problem is with the second set of...

DRAGON SHOWS ITS TRUE NATURE, TIME FOR DEMOCRACIES TO UNITE

July 2, 2021

As President Xi Jinping was addressing the centenary celebrations of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, where he called for building a strong military to defend the country and integrating Taiwan with the Chinese mainland, besides strengthening jurisdiction over Hong Kong and Macau, it...

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