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Around Town

Romila Thapar’s packed IIC lecture had scathing questions for NCERT and Hindutva

At the third Kapila Vatsyayan Memorial Lecture at IIC, the historian’s one-hour speech was nothing short of a ‘Romila Thapar ki Paathshala’ for today’s India.

‘Dangerous anti-democratic shift’—former diplomat Shyam Saran issues warning at book launch

At the launch of his book, Democracy’s Heartland, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi said he attempts to highlight why the Indian subcontinent matters.

‘In an ideal world, there would be 10-15 Muslim women in each Parliament’: Omar Abdullah

‘Politics is a boys’ club. Muslim women face a double entry barrier,’ said TMC leader Sagarika Ghose at the launch of ‘Missing from the House’ by Rasheed Kidwai and Amber Kumar Ghosh.

Dancing in mosques, ash-coloured highlights, ‘evaporated social fabric’— a Srinagar in flux

Arshi Javaid’s essay collection ‘Yaadgah: Memories of Srinagar’ brings out bittersweet memories of a multicultural Srinagar where Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits co-existed.

Business-politics nexus benefited Congress first and then BJP, says Mani Shankar Aiyar

India’s democratic drift was analysed threadbare at the launch of The Dismantling of India’s Democracy: 1947-2025 by senior journalist Prem Shankar Jha.

The many lives of Indian sadhus—rebels to arts to politics

Alongside diverse works, the DAG exhibition explores spiritual, cultural, and artistic expressions across the Indian subcontinent.

The Untold Kargil Story—100 Bofors guns, satellite phones, and ‘did Musharraf tell Sharif?’

The book launch of Maj General (Retd) Lakhwinder Singh’s book Artillery’s Thunder: The Untold Kargil Story revisited some of the questions that still linger.

Scholars call for digitisation of Indus script symbols. It’ll make decoding easier

The Indus script is one of the most fascinating puzzles of Indian history. Unlike Egyptian hieroglyphics, there is no Rosetta stone to help decipher it.

‘Covid was an opportunity’—book launch on India’s pandemic fight draws many govt officials

The launch of ‘At War with the Single Strand’, attended by numerous senior officials from the science and health ministries, was all about India’s ‘scientific triumph’ over Covid-19.

Arthashastra to Ganita Kaumudi—rare manuscripts on display at Gyan Bharatam conference

"These manuscripts may be under someone's ownership, but these belong to the country. It's a part of Indian heritage," said Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat at Gyan Bharatam International conference in Delhi.

On Camera

Trump’s unpredictability is not the absence of strategy—it works on everyone but China

The Italian term sprezzatura—a studied nonchalance that conceals intention—best captures the spirit of Trump’s foreign policy so far. The pattern is unpredictability, transactionalism, and disruption as diplomacy.

Asia’s ‘weakest’ link: Yunus on a tightrope as Bangladesh tries to fix banks without breaking economy

With 20.2 percent of its total loans in default by the end of last year, Bangladesh had the weakest banking system in Asia. Despite reforms, it will take time to recover.

‘Let them see’: Putin says new nuclear-powered missiles in the making, in message to Washington

At a ceremony felicitating Russian military engineers, Putin highlights Moscow’s 'parity' in defence technologies for the next century.

Trump’s trade wars have rewritten powerplay, but India didn’t get the memo

This world is being restructured and redrawn by one man, and what’s his power? It’s not his formidable military. It’s trade. With China, it turned on him.