THE DAY IS overcast and, in his quiet Ahmedabad office, Tridip Suhrud is busy at work, occasionally puffing at a roll-your-own cigarette and sipping tea. The light music in the background seems to add to the charm of his literary pursuit: demystifying Mahatma Gandhi. Suhrud, India’s foremost Gandhi scholar and former director of Sabarmati Ashram—where … Continue reading ‘On His Sexual Experiments, Gandhi Refused to be Swayed by Disapproving Associates’
Noted historian Ayesha Jalal, an expert on global jihadist trends, India’s Partition, Kashmir and Pakistan, has hit out at New Delhi over its latest legislative manoeuvres on Jammu Kashmir that she emphasised have destabilised the subcontinent. In a brief chat with Open, the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University, said that the Narendra Modi-led … Continue reading India’s Move on Kashmir Undemocratic, Provocative: Ayesha Jalal
Amid deep uncertainty and a massive security build-up that threw life out of gear in the Valley, the Union government on Monday scrapped Article 370 that offered special status to Jammu and Kashmir. It was this “temporary” provision that ensured the then princely state’s accession to India in 1947 when the country was partitioned and … Continue reading In a Stroke, J&K Loses Statehood, Special Status
I remember visiting Harkishan Singh Surjeet’s ancestral home in Bundala in early 2005. It was a long drive from Delhi and we got lost more than once after reaching this large village in Jalandhar district of Punjab. But thanks to a couple of cheerful young men who were ready to accompany us to our destination … Continue reading The Ideology and Generational Divide That Contributed to the Left’s Rout in India
MUGHILAN Thiru Ramasamy, the co-founder and CEO of Bengaluru- based Skylark Drones, set up more than four years ago, is 28 years old, the average age of start-up founders in India. This alumnus of Purdue University has built an entity that uses drones mostly in infrastructure, agriculture, mining and solar energy to collect data and … Continue reading Start-ups Want Concrete Steps by the Government to Help Them Grow
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a tireless campaigner with a mission: to strike a chord with the masses in as many ways as possible. As the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led federal coalition, he is prepared to go the whole hog to endear himself to men and women across the country. His use … Continue reading The 12 Bureaucrats Entrusted with Implementing Vision Modi
One of the instructions that senior Congress leader and former Defence Minister AK Antony reportedly made to a junior colleague at an informal ‘core group’ meeting of the party in the national capital on June 12th was to enquire how a move to form a new decision-making panel to work in tandem with the party … Continue reading The Growing Irrelevance of the Opposition
IS FIRST NAME on his British passport is ‘Darren’ and his sniper name ‘Azad’. As a child from a Kurdish family who grew up in Iran in the 1980s, his parents used to call him ‘Sora’. Yes, we don’t know his real name yet, and we may never know. For his riveting book Long Shot, he … Continue reading Memoir of a Kurdish Sniper Who Helped Stop the ISIS in Syria
Tushar A. Gandhi, the great-grandson of the Mahatma, is the author of the nearly 1000-page volume titled Let’s Kill Gandhi! A Chronicle of His Last Days, The Conspiracy, Murder Investigation and Trial. It is a product of years of exhaustive research into the previous attempts on Gandhi’s life starting from 1934 by Hindu fanatics and his assassination on January … Continue reading ‘Savarkar escaped because nobody probed how Godse got an Italian revolver from a Gwalior dealer’
PAWAN KUMAR BANSAL is dapper, sharp and warm. As I walk into his home in the sweltering heat of Chandigarh, soft drinks are served immediately, but the Congress veteran and former Union minister must leave for a function and a party meeting soon thereafter. Yet, he doesn’t sound one bit like a man in a … Continue reading Civic issues dominate the national poll debate in Chandigarh
