By The Way

The end of the Second World War is imagined as this clear moment which marked the end of all hostilities and the arrival of peace. The language that surrounds 1945 is saturated with a sense of finality, surrender, liberation, and, at last, peace. In retrospect, this makes for a coherent story, one that allows the war to be neatly contained within a set of dates and the decisive events that led to the Allied victory. Yet for those living through the period immediately after the fighting ceased, the experience was far less conclusive than it appears to us today, who encounter it largely through historical narratives. In large parts of Asia and Europe, the defeat of the Axis powers removed an existing structure of authority without providing a stable replacement by the Allied powers. The military victory was decisive and absolute, but the instability of the postwar political order proved far greater than wartime planning had anticipated. Delhi Victory Week Parade -  Indian Army mounta...

India’s story over the decades since independence can be described as one of contrast. A contrast between the two republics that were and are India. One republic existed in the years after independence, shaped by the memory of empire and colonisation, and with a determination to walk on a new path. The other is the India of the present, shaped by new political ideas, rapid economic growth, and a different moral vocabulary of power. The two republics carry the same name, and the same constitution, but they rarely feel like the same political world. One placed its sense of purpose in secularism, welfare, and a principled and cautious foreign policy. The other projects confidence and ambition, but leans towards majoritarian impulse, corporatisation of the economy, and an admiration for strongmen abroad. The early republic was never perfect, but it tried to move within a framework of ideals, which it took seriously. Secularism was meant to stabilise a deeply diverse country that was emergi...

Fragmented. This is the word that keeps coming back to me, when I think about where India is right now. We are not failing, nor are we doomed just yet. But we are scattered and rather disjointed. We are drifting backwards, while pretending we are marching forward. Royal Peacock Barge, 19th Century, Murshidabad, West Bengal, India,  from the Bengal Renaissance era.  We talk about development, about becoming global super power, about reclaiming the lost greatness of our past, but when you actually sit with the reality of it, nothing about it feels pragmatic. The country looks alive on the surface, but underneath that, doesn’t it feel as if there is some sort of hollowness? People are constantly outraged, constantly reacting, constantly searching for something to attach themselves to, but very rarely stopping to think. There is no stillness, no thoughts, no depth. Just the momentum. And a pretty destructive one. It used to be about politics or media or education or the arts, but ...

There is a hope built into the idea of mobility, that getting somewhere else might change something. But for a large part of the world, mobility is not a real option. The will is there. What is missing is the freedom to act on it, and the access to make it possible. Start with the most basic of things. Physical movement within your own city, to work, to study, to just exist freely, is still a struggle for most people in the global south. Public transport is often unreliable or does not exist at all. What does exist tends to be overcrowded, underfunded, and unsafe. In many Indian cities, even something as ordinary as taking a bus or walking to the nearest train station involves a fair amount of luck, patience, and personal risk. Infrastructure fails, and so does everything tied to it. If your ability to reach a college, a job, or a hospital depends on a crumbling system, then your life is already running into walls before it has a chance to move forward. This kind of immobility shapes e...

Some books lose their relevance with time. 1984 did not. It aged differently. The world Orwell imagined was based on the politics of his own era, fascism, Stalinism, war, surveillance. And yet, it is hard to shake the feeling that his outline still lingers somewhere beneath the surface of the present. Not in an obvious way though. We don’t live in Oceania. There is no Big Brother on the wall. But parts of that world feel disturbingly close, in what we are slowly becoming accustomed to. Publicity photo on the set of the CBS anthology television series Studio One. This was a presentation of George Orwell's 1984. Orwell’s idea of surveillance was heavy-handed. Constant monitoring, screens that watched as much as they showed, the sense that you were never really alone. That’s not how it looks today. Surveillance now is quieter. It is not imposed, rather it’s accepted and volunteered for. Devices track everything from steps to speech to sleep. Apps watch us with a precision Orwell could...

Of all the wars fought between India and Pakistan, the first one, the 1947-48 conflict over Kashmir, is perhaps the strangest. It is mentioned in history textbooks as the “First India-Pakistan War,” as if the two countries were fully formed, sovereign rivals, fully ready with their armies, and their naval and air forces. But that is not how things really were. The reality is frankly quite bizarre. Indian troops landing on the Srinagar Airfield, 1947. In late 1947, India and Pakistan were not quite the “republics” in the sense we now understand them. They were dominions, legally still under the British Crown. George VI was the King of both countries. Yes,  the same King.  There was no President of India, no President of Pakistan. Jawaharlal Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan were Prime Ministers, not heads of state. Their respective countries were still transitioning out of the British Empire, and in the middle of this awkward situation, a war broke out. A war in which both dominions h...

There is something quietly terrifying about the way intelligence has fallen out of fashion. We have all seen it. Scroll through social media or tune into a primetime debate on any news channel, and you will likely run into someone proudly dismissing “experts,” mocking nuance, or declaring that their personal feelings should override facts. It’s not new, of course. This suspicion of thinkers has been around forever, but there is something particularly aggressive and oddly mainstream about it today. It is not merely scepticism anymore. It is disdain. Anti-intellectualism, at its core, is a hostility to complexity of thoughts. It flattens  the arguments, mocks the reflections, and replaces debate with the idea of ‘vibes.’ And it is not confined to one group or ideology. It creeps across the political spectrum, disguised in different clothes. Sometimes it looks like populism; other times like cynicism. But its effect is the same, that is, a quiet war on thinking. What makes it wor...