Some things to Reconsider

History, if you care to look, is not some boring classroom lecture. It is a living, breathing reality that keeps reminding us: “Power never comes with a lifetime warranty.” But human beings—especially those who smell the intoxicating aroma of authority—refuse to believe it. Pick any date in Saddam Hussein’s bloody calendar and you’ll find a crisis hotter than the desert sun. The war against Iran bleeding Iraq dry. The financial debt mountain taller than his palaces. Israel casually bombed his nuclear toys. Kurds raising hell in the north. And later, Uncle Sam’s sanctions choking Iraq for nearly a decade. Yet Saddam’s moustache stayed upright and his statue taller than reason—until the Americans decided they’d had enough. South Africa offers another case. A system so brutally racist it shocked even its Western friends. From the sixties onwards, global opinion began to turn. Sports boycotts, diplomatic isolation. Yet apartheid, shameless and gasping, dragged on for decades until Mand...

  For a decade now, the oratory from India’s right-wing leadership has been less about neighbourly affection and more about fanning fears, feeding bigotry, and occasionally—just for sport. In today’s hyper-connected world, foreign policy is no longer defined solely by strategic alliances, trade deals, or ceremonial photo opportunities between heads of state. Modern diplomacy now unfolds not just in official channels but also across the vast, unruly terrain of social media. Among the most affected is our immediate neighbourhood, where we are deeply intertwined through geography, history, and shared cultural ties. Yet, despite these affinities, New Delhi's soft power diplomacy has come under strain, partly due to the unchecked and inflammatory rhetoric proliferating across social and televised media landscapes. Take Bangladesh for example. Over the last few years, Indian political leaders have made several controversial remarks that have not gone unnoticed across the eastern bord...