Rajiv Shah

A civilisation defends its history not by silencing uncomfortable narratives, but by creating generations strong enough to question every narrative. Manan Ahmed Asif History is not merely a record of what happened. It shapes how societies remember themselves, understand their origins and interpret contemporary conflicts. Historical scholarship is therefore a form of intellectual power. The controversy surrounding Manan Ahmed Asif’s The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India deserves...

To its west, old relationships in the Gulf are acquiring new strategic and military dimensions. Across the Atlantic, Washington is increasingly using tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy. At the same time, India holds the BRICS presidency in 2026 and prepares to host its summit when the grouping is being watched in the West as a potential challenge to the American-dominated global financial order. Individually, these developments may appear unrelated. Put together, they reveal a larger...

Democracy guarantees every citizen the right to protest. It also places an equally important obligation upon governments to listen, negotiate and, where justified, resolve genuine public grievances. But democratic negotiations become extraordinarily complex when a protest movement evolves into a political campaign whose objectives continue to expand even after its original demands are addressed. The recent agitation led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has become a striking case study in...