Zareer Masani
Amritsar: beginning of the end of Empire
The true casualty figures are still hotly disputed 100 years after the Punjab massacre, but its real legacy was the slow death of the Raj
Chastising Churchill
‘Seventy years after independence, bashing Winston Churchill has become a sure-fire way of attracting a mass following on Indian social media’
Last Days Of India’s Empress
A biography of Indira Gandhi’s final years offers insights into a dark period of unmitigated corruption in Indian politics
Crocodile Tears For India
A story of unmitigated British plunder in India, but one which subscribes to conventional views
Jovial Pragmatists
SOAS’s new exhibition on Zoroastrianism fails to capture the rich cultural and historical legacy of this much-misunderstood and embattled faith
The Making of the Mahatma
Dubious racial attitudes, an obsession with excrement and sexual eccentricities: Gandhi Before India reveals the unsavoury sides of the statesman’s character
The Alternative History of an Undivided India
The perils of Partition would have been averted by Viceroy Wavell’s bold 1946 plan to create a subcontinental federation
Tolerating the intolerant
“For those who thought that a global pandemic would sound the death knell for identity politics, think again”
How to prevent the next pandemic
‘I have been reporting as a science journalist for years that the world is at increasing risk of pandemics like this; that this was predicted; that we know what we need to do to prepare and we simply haven’t done it; and that more and worse pandemics are coming so we need to do that, now’
D’où parles-tu? The post-truth world
Power, illusion and the open society: how postmodernism undermines our foundational concepts