Some things to Reconsider

 Donald Trump is back doing what he does best — throwing tantrums in prime time and calling it policy. His latest target? India. From parading deported Indian immigrants in chains — yes, actual chains, mid-flight — to snatching credit for ending Operation Sindoor, Trump’s message is simple: “I’m the boss of Vishwaguru.” He’s slapped tariffs on Indian goods, frowned upon Russian oil imports, and hiked H1B visa fees — a direct jab at the Indian tech class. And New Delhi’s response? Silence . The kind that pretends to be strength but smells suspiciously like fear. Spin doctors call it strategic restraint . The rest of us call it waiting for Trump’s next mood swing. When Trump wished Modi on his 75th birthday or extended his velvet glove , BJP’s online cheerleaders pounced on it like a Bollywood twist — “See! Friendship restored!” — until, of course, Trump’s next tweet arrived with his usual thunder. As the American columnist Ashley Tellis politely put it, India’s “extreme discipl...

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...

The job of a Prime Minister is never an easy one. Some inherit a storm; others inherit calm seas with a steady wind. Jawaharlal Nehru got the raw end of the deal: a traumatised, partitioned land, millions uprooted, and the Cold War beginning to freeze the world in two hostile blocs. Lal Bahadur Shastri died a war time Prime Minister, and Indira Gandhi presided over a war-ravaged economy, staring across hostile borders at Pakistan and China while the superpowers treated India as a pawn. Morarji Desai stumbled into South Block after the Emergency, the West reeling from stagflation and his own coalition too weak to command authority. Rajiv Gandhi, with a brute majority in Parliament, was besieged by multiple insurgencies at home and a belligerent Zia-ul-Haq across the border. P.V. Narasimha Rao had to deal with the mother of all crises—the 1991 balance of payments collapse —just as the Soviet Union, India’s security blanket, disintegrated into history. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who loo...

https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/show-of-honour-the-tweak-in-indias-military-traditions-prnt/cid/2118942 Two images remain stuck in my mind—not painful, but irritating thorns you can’t quite pluck out. The first is of Colonel Santosh Babu, killed in the brutal hand-to-hand clash with Chinese troops in Galwan in 2020. He was posthumously awarded the Maha Vir Chakra, India’s second-highest gallantry honour. So far, so dignified. But at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the medal wasn’t simply handed to his widow, Santoshi Babu. No, his mother, Manjula, was pulled into the frame. The cameras swooned, godi-media cheered —“See, for the first time, both wife and mother honoured. A new age of female emancipation!” My question was, where was the father? Is his grief of lesser value in the marketplace of sorrow? Or simply inconvenient for the photo-op? Grief, too, had been scripted for the storyboard. Call me old-fashioned, even chauvinist, but found it theatrics in poor taste. The second image ra...

 When the history of Indian diplomacy under Narendra Modi is eventually written, it may be remembered not for its strategic breakthroughs, but for its theatrical excesses, its silences in moments of crisis, and its worrying penchant for personalisation over institutional prudence. Modi’s foreign policy, by design, was never meant to be quiet or cautious. From the grand gestures of “Namaste Trump” to his surprise visits to Pakistan, it has been high on drama and low on deliverables. It has sought headlines, not long-term relationships. Unfortunately, in foreign affairs, style without substance often invites consequences. Let us begin closer home. In 2015, when a devastating earthquake struck Nepal, India was the first responder. This was an admirable and expected act by a regional power. However, what could have been a reaffirmation of India’s neighbourhood leadership quickly descended into a public relations disaster. Kathmandu’s citizens and civil society accused India of using ...