Rewriting the India Story

The Incident of the Wine Bottles

The Limits of Allegory

There are some who say ‘Jana Gana Mana' is sung in the raga Alhaiya Bilaval; there are others who believe it is in raga Gaud Sarang. It is neither but has some of their characteristics. This is the kind of freedom I have taken as a given

The Fugitive’s Tryst with Destiny

As I travelled around India by retracing the steps of my great-uncle who landed here 80 years before I did, the irony struck me: here I was, an Italian in India by choice, chasing the ghost of a dear relative who had been brought to Bombay in chains in December 1940 by the British

The Post-Imperial Hangover

Britain did not take easily to its diminished status after 1947. Britons loved the men that India had made of them. India held mythic status in the minds of upper-class Brits. Nothing quite like that has appeared to take India’s place

Tracing the Roots of Self-Governance to the Countryside

It takes a village

Requiem for the Gandhi Topi

After a brief revival, the cap that once adorned nearly every leader’s head is almost extinct

The Grace of the Guru

Sree Narayana Guru’s genius lay in offering a synergistic model for holistic human liberation. The three pillars of castelessness, education, and enterprise formed an unbreakable chain of progress

The Song of the Nation

National anthems, like national flags and independence days, are shortcuts to patriotism. Their elevation to iconic status makes them supersede their immediate contexts by becoming timeless emblems of peoples nations

Digital Sovereignty

National autonomy will be lost and won at the altar of artificial intelligence and the odds are against democratic societies. There is a perfect storm coming from China. The price of India’s AI revolution is a permanent state of high alert