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Thursday, November 20, 2025
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Book Excerpts

Eyes moist, heavy voice: Atal Bihari Vajpayee was helpless after meeting 10 Kashmiri Pandits

Former IAS officer Jarnail Singh writes in his book 'With Four Prime Ministers' about the meeting former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee had with Kashmiri Pandits.

Rajiv Gandhi had wanted to end impasse in Kashmir and saw Farooq Abdullah as its best bet

Rajiv and Farooq had virtually grown up together. Whenever the Nehru–Gandhi family was in Kashmir, the Abdullah family was always available to them.

That moment when I started questioning my support of PM Modi: Tavleen Singh

In her new book, Tavleen Singh writes about PM Modi's "disheartening response" to her questions during a private conversation when he was in his first term.

Dara Shikoh had a dream. And it was about Ram

This dream was prompted by something the prince had recently read. Its author was Dara Shukoh’s contemporary Shaikh Sufi, a mystic Mughal official.

How VSNL launched internet services in India in 1995 when even China hadn’t

India's 'Telecom Man' Brijendra K. Syngal, under whose guidance internet was introduced, recounts in a new book the pains VSNL went through to set up the system.

Rashpal Singh Chandra: Why Hindus of Punjab’s Katani Kalan village hailed this Sikh militant

The anti-Hindu and anti-Congress narrative do not completely define Punjab's militancy movement. This anecdote shows why the sage of militancy is layered.

China never had to learn English like India because its economy relied on manufacturing

Contrary to China, whose post-1993 growth acceleration was concentrated on the manufacturing sector, India’s growth was service driven.

I may be the only lady doing the skin-beating job: What mrdangam-maker Geetha told me

Mrdangam-making has always been a male-controlled territory. But Geetha has nailed, cleaned and dried skins for years, TM Krishna writes in his new book.

Hate is hot in India. Colder ideas like constitutional patriotism must work harder to win

Constitutional patriotism is a modern concept anchored in the idea of the nation-state. The problem is that it depends upon imaginings as fuzzy as nationalism itself.

Mountbatten planned to partition India into many countries. Then VP Menon stepped in

India’s future had been decided in a matter of 3 hours, between 7 am and 10.30 am, by Nehru and Mountbatten. And it was VP Menon who drew up a draft.

On Camera

Granta’s India issue goes into the heart of ‘vikas’. Restlessness written all over it

The Ramayana entering politics is not the collapse of reason alone; sometimes it is also the search for continuity in a decade that has moved faster than people can catch up with

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.

Drone manufacturer ideaForge wins orders worth over Rs 100 crore from Army

ideaForge has formed a joint venture to manufacture and market UAVs in the US. Its Q6 UAV is now included in NATO and allied procurement systems.

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.