Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs, is currently an MP for the Indian National Congress and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. He is the author of Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.
In a country where the national hero is the saintly Mahatma Gandhi, who considered alcohol an unmitigated evil, drinking has always carried a whiff of disrepute – one that has led to repeated attempts… read more
Since the victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP in 2014, a wave of Hindu chauvinism has swept India, bringing with it not just new cow-protection laws, but also vociferous demands for their st… read more
The practice of film censorship is yet another relic in India of a bygone colonial era, the values of which Indians have too readily internalized. Nearly seven decades after independence, it is time f… read more
India's renowned Kota coaching institutes – whose sole purpose is to prepare high-school students for brutally difficult university entrance examinations – have produced nine suicides this year, and 5… read more
Britain owes its former colonies. Yet, instead of returning plundered patrimony to its rightful owners, the British are clinging to stolen artifacts such as the Kohinoor diamond, which they embedded i… read more
Section 377 of India's penal code – which criminalizes “whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman, or animal" – is a tool for the harassment, persecuti… read more
India's British-drafted penal code includes some highly problematic provisions, which define "sedition" far too vaguely, criminalize homosexual acts, and allow for the prosecution of adultery (but onl… read more
India has been shaken by the suicide of a Dalit student in Hyderabad – a stark reminder of the durability of India's rigid, caste-based social stratification. Why, despite constitutional guarantees of… read more
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore, Pakistan, on Christmas Day brought his hyperkinetic year of global diplomacy to a headline-grabbing close. It also raised serious questi… read more
