On a whim and dare
By Swapan DasguptaEarlier this month, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee convened a meeting of industrialists in New Delhi. The purpose was obvious and unexceptionable: to talk up West Bengal...
View ArticleWhy young MPs avoid insolent India
By Swapan DasguptaThe protests that gripped Delhi over the past 10 days may have begun as a spontaneous expression of outrage against a particularly brutal gang-rape. But somewhere along the way, they...
View ArticleArnab wins Bharat as 'nation wants to know'
By Swapan DasguptaIt may sound flippant but if I was to name the Indian of the Year for 2012, my choice would be Arnab Goswami of Times Now. The reason has nothing to do with the fact I am an...
View ArticleA DIGNIFIED RESURGENCE - December 2012 may have unexpected consequences
By Swapan DasguptaThe past fortnight has been rather unique for a Delhi that often gives the impression of being detached not merely from Bharat but from India as well. For the first time in living...
View ArticleRape is rape, in India as in Bharat
By Swapan DasguptaIn the late-1980s, and for a time between 1987 and 1991, Devi Lal became a prominent player on the national scene. Deeply rooted in the politics and rural ethos of Haryana, he was...
View ArticleA dish best served cold
By Swapan DasguptaLast Wednesday, Pakistani troops crossed the Line of Control, fired on an Indian army patrol and killed two jawans. They then subjected the bodies to “barbaric and inhuman...
View ArticlePakistan provocative, India squeamish
By Swapan DasguptaThere were two template reactions within India to the killing and mutilation of two jawans by Pakistani troops along the Line of Control last week. First, apart from an influential...
View ArticleSEARCH FOR A BETTER LIFE - In economic terms, Gujarat is on a roll
By Swapan DasguptaAttending the Vibrant Gujarat summit at Gandhinagar last week, I was pleasantly surprised to find a good representation of journalists from Kolkata-based media organisations....
View Article‘The Poor And Afflicted’: Vivekananda’s Many Gods Much of the life-blood of...
By Swapan DasguptaThere is a scene from the late-Sixties’ mushy and jingoistic Bengali film Subhashchandrathat is worth recalling in a less innocent age. The moustachioed head of the local thana in...
View ArticleThe Netaji Riddle
By Swapan DasguptaJanuary 23 is a public holiday in West Bengal and has been so since Independence. It is the birthday of Subhas Chandra Bose, the Netaji that most Bengalis and many other Indians...
View ArticleRajnath can’t hope for easy upturn
BY SWAPAN DASGUPTAIn 1940, even as Britain suffered a series of military defeats at the hands of a formidable German war machine, the top echelons of the ruling Conservative Party brushed aside the...
View ArticleOf Longing and Belonging
By Swapan DasguptaOnce upon a time, the great newspapers had a separate department devoted to obituaries. Known in the profession as the ‘morgue’, it was a treasure house of long-forgotten information...
View ArticleDELICIOUS IRONIES - Self-confident cosmopolitanism in a literature festival
By Swapan DasguptaWhen I first attended the Jaipur Literature Festival six years ago as a speaker for their concluding public debate, the event was held in the Durbar Hall of the Diggi Palace Hotel...
View ArticleIn a climate of cynicism, hope for the young
By Swapan DasguptaOnly the most audacious of astrologers would presume to anticipate the course of politics. Even the most discernible of trends can often be overturned by either events or accidents of...
View ArticleIndian Democracy Compromised
By Swapan DasguptaOn hearing that the Supreme Court has directed the police to refrain from arresting Ashis Nandy, arguably India’s most celebrated contrarian, a wicked thought entered my head. Imagine...
View ArticleLoonies of the world unite!
By Swapan Dasgupta There is a famous photograph of V.I. Lenin, shot sometime in 1917, addressing a gathering of 'revolutionary' workers during the course of the upheaval that led to the...
View ArticleTerrorists must pay for their sins
By Swapan Dasgupta As someone who has always had ethical problems with the death penalty, I may be forgiven for not 'celebrating' the execution of Afzal Guru for his involvement in the attack on...
View ArticleA FINE BALANCE - The UPA cannot benefit politically from Afzal Guru’s hanging
By Swapan DasguptaThe functionaries of the Government of India who took the decision last Friday to proceed with the execution of the convicted terrorist conspirator Afzal Guru the next morning, didn’t...
View ArticleLater Gandhis same as later Mughals?
By Swapan DasguptaIndians have an elevated perception of their own moral standing in the world—as the nation that has been wedded to lofty spiritualism for many thousands of years, as the civilisation...
View ArticleImperial ties, modern tenor
By Swapan DasguptaMaybe it’s a question of sheer familiarity but the annual Queen’s Birthday Party hosted by the British High Commissioner on the lawns of his spacious bungalow Delhi is among the more...
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