Vietnam celebrates 50 years of its reunification this year. In Ho Chi Minh City, amidst overflowing cafés, restaurants, boutiques, souvenir shops, and museums, Anjum Hasan finds the ultimate triumph has been of consumerism
The daily hope and despair have never appeared more vivid and more insignificant, the abstractions of politics never felt this gigantic and remote, and never has religion seemed so weak a palliative
TCA Raghavan is a former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan and Singapore. His first book, Attendant Lords: Abdur Rahim and Bairam Khan: Courtiers and Poets in Mughal India, was awarded the Mohammad Habib Prize by the Indian History Congress. He is also the author of The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan and History Men: Jadunath Sarkar, G S Sardesai, Raghubir Sinh and Their Quest for India’s Past. His latest book is Circles of Freedom: Love, Friendship and Loyalty in the Indian National Struggle