Back seat driving won’t revive Congress
Sonia Gandhi is an expert at back seat driving. Can she revive the Congress? No. What a week where the...
Two letters from Indira Gandhi
‘Lord Louis is, as you know, incorrigible. He is friends with all the wrong sort of people and presumably believes...
Does British monarchy have a future?
At Palam airport, Prince Charles took me aside and said, ‘I would very much like to come again in October...
The Queen, Mrs Thatcher and Mrs Gandhi: The tale of a diplomatic minefield
The Commonwealth Heads of State and Government was held in New Delhi in November 1983. The Prime Minister appointed me...
Gorbachev had a soft corner for India
I met him half a dozen times. His personality was engaging, his determination to change and reform a stagnant USSR...
Britishers who became Congress president
Not even a couple of dozen Congresspersons would know the names of four Britishers, each of whom became President of...
India at 75 moving towards a bright future
India of 2022 is spectacularly different from the India of 1947. There is one vital element that has remained active,...
India, a soft power on its way to become a hard power
M.D. Nalapat’s book, 75 Years of Indian Foreign Policy: War, Peace and a World Realigned, is riveting, erudite and provocative....
Droupadi Murmu’s election is path-breaking
The spirit of Mahatma Gandhi will have conveyed its blessings to this remarkable daughter of India. This has been a...
What Gandhi thought of Mahabharata
Broadly speaking, most people assume that Gandhiji did not read books. When he was in a jocular mood he would...
Remembering Satti and the chat Castro had with Arafat
Satinder Lambah, Satti, was an outstanding diplomat, an accomplished problem solver, who understood the internal and external dynamics of an...
The lady who will be Indian President
Droupadi Murmu’s election is a foregone conclusion. In New Delhi, democracy has triumphed. In Maharashtra, it has, for the time...
Congress bedlam is anything but Satyagraha
To call the agitation Satyagraha is to do great injustice to the man who enriched our political vocabulary by inventing...
Verbal overkill is damaging our religious tolerance
Religion and politics can co-exist and have co-existed in our beloved country. China had a civil service even before Confucius...
Nehru’s letter to Gandhi
Jawaharlal Nehru replied to Gandhiji’s letter dated 5 October 1945 on 9 October 1945. My dear Bapu, I have received...
A letter from Gandhi to Nehru
On October 5, 1945, Mahatma Gandhi wrote a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru in which he took up the “difference of...
Where was democracy in ancient India?
Panchayats did exist in certain parts of Bharatvarsha, but these were not national institutions. On 10 May, the newly appointed...
Tejo Mahal? When fiction pretends to be history
The Taj Mahal did take a very long time to build. But it was never a temple. It all began...
Some thoughts on democracy; also on IPL
Nearly two billion people today live in non-democratic countries. Another two billion in semi-democracies. The well-known and widely read American...
As Congress descends on Udaipur in the height of summer
Not one speaker will have the guts even to hint that the party needs a change at the top. The...
Two friends, two autobiographies
Today I am writing about autobiographies of two friends. Both have been published recently and posthumously. “Motivated by Life and...
Exceptional diplomacy by India in these troubled times
We have not abandoned our independent foreign policy. India’s diplomacy, in these worrisome times has been conducted with exceptional courage,...
Letters from P.N. Haksar
I considered him my Guru. P.N. Haksar (1913-1998) was India’s greatest diplomat and civil servant. I owe him much. I...
Imran Khan as PM: An inglorious end?
I was among those Indians who hoped that Imran Khan would put out his hand of friendship towards India. Unfortunately,...
