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Friday, November 21, 2025
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Book Excerpts

India’s Act East policy is slowly becoming Act Indo-Pacific policy under Modi government

India has placed the Indo-Pacific at the heart of its engagement with the countries of south, southeast and east Asia to counter China, writes Prabir De in his new book.

Disaster of communism overshadowed damage done by slavery and colonialism

In Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty writes on the ‘naturalisation’ of disparity by the elites and how history proves them wrong.

I went undercover with women social media extremists. They want traditional roles to return

In Going Dark, The Secret Social Lives of Extremists, Julia Ebner talks about her experience with ‘Trad Wives,’ a women’s group where feminism is banned.

From religious meetings to music concerts, how ‘sabha’ culture changed in Madras

The book Music, Modernity, and Publicness in India edited by Tejaswini Niranjana explains how musicians moved to colonial cities and formed exciting spaces of listening and desire.

When Dalai Lama was talking about asylum in India, Nehru almost fell asleep

In The Dalai Lama: An Extraordinary Life, Alexander Norman writes about the time the Dalai Lama came to India to discuss asylum, but Nehru had already made up his mind.

India has too many tiny farms in agriculture and tiny firms in industry. That’s a problem

In his new book India Unlimited, economist Arvind Panagariya writes about the problem of tiny firms in India, which has reduced output per worker.

Petty, bad tempered Kasturba — What Gandhi said while courting Sarladevi & Esther Faering

In Kasturba Gandhi: A Biography, B.M. Bhalla writes about one of Kasturba’s most trying times when Gandhi would obsess over other women and mock her publicly.

India-Pakistan diplomacy wasn’t poisoned after violent Partition. Officials kept their calm

In Animosity at Bay, Pallavi Raghavan writes about how India and Pakistan together prioritised creating a mutually-acceptable administrative architecture.

Gifts from Jaganmohan Reddy to Nagarjuna but PV Sindhu has no idea of number of awards

Few Indian sportspersons, outside cricket, have made it to Forbes’s list of ‘richest’ sportspersons. Sindhu is an exception, writes V. Krishnaswamy in Shuttling to the Top.

Rajendra ‘Jubilee’ Kumar’s lonely years: ‘I helped all those I could. Where are they today?’

In Jubilee Kumar, Seema Sonik Alimchand writes about the life of one of Bollywood’s biggest superstars and the year he almost had no films.

On Camera

Hasina’s was a trial in absentia, but not a trial without justice

The Sheikh Hasina trial represents an inflection point in the struggle to place citizens above rulers and prevent the next massacre.

At Charcha 2025: Local entrepreneurship, not just big IT, will drive next wave of distributed AI work

While global corporations setting up GCCs in India continue to express confidence in availability of skilled AI engineers, the panel argued that India’s real challenge lies elsewhere.

IAF’s leased KC-135 lands in Agra, American firm’s pilots to man mid-air refuller

India’s refueller fleet comprises six Russian Ilushin-78 tankers, first inducted in 2003, which are facing huge maintenance and serviceability issues.

INDIA has a Congress-sized hole. And the fix begins with a little humility

Without a Congress revival, there can be no challenge to the BJP pan-nationally. Modi’s party is growing, and almost entirely at the cost of the Congress.