MJ Akbar

MJ Akbar is an MP and the author of, most recently, Gandhi’s Hinduism: The Struggle against Jinnah’s Islam

Destiny’s Doctrine

THE PAST IS A courtroom without walls, its simultaneous trials a contentious cacophony, every judge sifting evidence through the sieve…

1 year ago

One Vote for One Nation That Is Bharat

Niggles apart, only two prime ministers were in office when one nation had one election on the same day, across…

1 year ago

Tripping in alliance hall

The difference between clarity and confusion is often found on the flipside of a phrase. Watching the sudden resurrection of…

1 year ago

The Age of Hypercontrol

Guns, gas and gossip The 21st century, still young, is already in the grip of three superstates: the defence industry;…

2 years ago

Syed Mahmood’s legacy as colonial India’s dissenting judge

<p> <strong>Colonialism split the personality of the subjugated. The demands of survival under an alien power could rarely synchronise with…

2 years ago

Imran Khan—The self-acclaimed messiah bites the dust in Pakistan

<p> <strong>Politics, for Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi, was the day job of a messiah. His logic followed a course through…

3 years ago

Vladimir Putin is only as strong as Joe Biden is weak

<p> <strong>The sunset of Kabul has slipped into the twilight of Kyiv and the American era will fade into darkness…

3 years ago

What if…

<p> <em><strong>Bose had returned home in 1945 and won the General Elections of 1957?</strong></em></p> <p> What would have happened if…

3 years ago

How Jinnah Divided Muslims

<div id="cke_pastebin"> <p> <em><strong>An error and a tragedy</strong></em></p> <p> <em><strong>Did the Partition of an India ranging from Iran to Burma,…

3 years ago

Why Modi wins

<p> <em><strong>He understands that a political party survives on ideology, but ideology withers if it is not nourished by ideas…

3 years ago

Afghanistan: No Emirate for Women—Part 1

<p> ON THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY of 9/11, two remarkable young women, Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez, played the finals of…

3 years ago

Painting India as an “electoral democracy” or “ethnic democracy” fails the stress test

<p> Crusaders survive on blind faith; the more blind it is, the deeper become their faith. A small but inexhaustible…

3 years ago

The Rediscovery of Nehru

<p> <strong>How Nehruvians revised their idol</strong></p> <p> POVERTY WAS THE price Mahatma Gandhi extracted from his disciples for passage into…

3 years ago

Return of the Taliban: Who Wants the Peace of the Graveyard?

<p> The Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar is one of those urban oases which sidestep progress in favour of romance.…

3 years ago

Dilip Kumar: The First Khan was also a First Patriot

<p> <strong>Life can be as bewildering as death. A sudden cataclysmic event, its origins wrapped in some game of dice…

3 years ago

The true lessons of Covid-19: Give people health, not just hospitals

<p> <strong>Every crisis has a lesson for the government. Does the Covid pandemic contain a lesson for the electorate as…

3 years ago

A bookworm’s lockdown

<p> <em><strong>A loincloth for Prince Philip and the Quran written in Saddam’s blood.</strong></em></p> <p> Computers are useless. They can only…

3 years ago

The Republic of Sorrow

<p> <em><strong>In life, prayer is hope; in death, prayer is solace</strong></em></p> <p> If death does not unite us, how will…

4 years ago

A weekend snapshot of political Bengal

<p> Anyone seen a pandemic lately? Not in Bengal. The long journey from Calcutta through Bantalabajaar, Ghatakpur, Bhangor, Minakha, Bidhyadhari,…

4 years ago

Assembly elections 2021: An East Bengal In West Bengal

<p> <em>The 2021 struggle for power is shaped by history, geography, demography—and a miracle by the mahatma, argues MJ Akbar…

4 years ago