How a loaded memory met a generation in crisis, 1991–2026. Why 2014, Not 2004 On 16 May 2014, the votes of India’s general election were counted, and the Bharatiya Janata Party won 282 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha: the first single-party majority in thirty years, and the first ever for a party
The Wounded Civilization — Part 4: The Crystallization Read Post »
How the Indian republic carried the wound, 1947–2008. Three Shots at Birla House On the evening of 30 January 1948, Mahatma Gandhi walked out to his daily prayer meeting in the garden of Birla House in Delhi. A man stepped from the crowd, bowed to him, and fired three shots at close range. Gandhi died
The Wounded Civilization — Part 3: The Inheritance Read Post »
How British rule wrote, counted and divided India’s memory, 1757–1947. The Insult of Eight Hundred Years In late 1842, the Governor-General of India, Lord Ellenborough, issued a proclamation to the princes and chiefs of India. A British army, retreating from a disastrous war in Afghanistan, was bringing home a pair of gates taken from the
The Wounded Civilization — Part 2: The Narrators Read Post »
Seven centuries of Islamic rule, and how a civilization remembered them. The Question This Series Asks In June 2014, in his first speech to the newly elected Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of a “slave mentality of 1,200 years” that was still troubling India. The number deserves a second look. British rule lasted,
The Wounded Civilization — Part 1: The Soil and the Encounter Read Post »
