Columns

[Published by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. 2025] Before we get into this thought provoking book two things need to be said about it. One, it reaffirms that courageous journalism and writing still breathes in India, notwithstanding the utter capitulation of most of the shameful media to power and commerce. Second, the book raises troubling questions about […]

Recent events have given a new twist to history. A Chicago-born Pontiff from Rome has publicly rebuked an American Christian crusader. Normally, popes issue insipid encyclicals or harmless homilies. In 1968, for example, Pope Paul VI issued ‘Of Human Life’ – a justification of the Catholic Church’s opposition to methods of birth control. (One sceptic

I’ve been feeling a bit low these last few months, enveloped in a feeling of missing out on something, what the acronym generation would term FOMO- Feeling Of Missing Out, but is actually more of FOBLO- a Feeling Of Being Left Out. Somewhat like Sanju Samson being left out of the team for the first

It’s a disturbing sign of the times that the global levers of power today are controlled by genocidal murderers, sex offenders, megalomaniacs, war criminals and rapacious billionaires who should all be in jail. Collectively, these psychopaths are driving the human race ever closer to the seventh mass extermination, this time of homo sapiens- which is

WILL the world see another Nuremberg Trial? Or is accountability only for the history books? In 1946, an International Military Tribunal representing the victorious Allied powers (the US, UK, USSR and France) passed judgement at Nuremberg on 24 Nazi acolytes of Hitler. They included Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and Joachim von Ribbentrop. At the Potsdam

Only a man with Napoleon’s vision would have seen the potential of linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea by digging a canal. During his campaign in Egypt (1798–1801), Napoleon saw a commercial advantage in shortening the trade route to India. A miscalculation by his engineers caused him to abandon the project. Sixty years later,

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again for the doubtful benefit of this hearing impaired government- putting old wine in new bottles doesn’t change the wine for the better. A prime example of this is the Indian Railways, their slew of hyped up new trains- Vande Bharat, Tejas, Namo Bharat, etc.- and the claim

Preservation and protection of the natural environment has never been a priority in our annual Budgets; ALL Finance Ministers have taken it for granted and have treated it as an infinite resource rather than a living entity to be nurtured and carefully harvested on a sustainable basis. In July 2014 I had written a blog

THE British Raj has been a long time dying. One vestige — the restaurant Veeraswamy — established 100 years ago in London’s Regent Street, is threatened with closure. Before 1947, visiting Indian aristocracy patronised it. it catered also for ‘India-returns’ — a sentimental breed of white Britishers who wished to recall imperial aromas. The restaurant