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
China has a strategy and Britain doesn’t
A roadmap to better relations requires realism. Beijing’s interests and goals are openly stated—if you know where to look
The plague
Standpoint goes to press as the pandemic rages. So too does the search for blame and the political fall-out
Defeat begets defeat for Britain’s cloth-eared Left
The censorious culture of the liberal Left is hostile to freedom of expression. The fate of the trans-rights movement evinces this pointless politics