The role of China will have a direct bearing on the Indo-Pacific security matrix given China’s warm relations with most of the Indo-Pacific states
How Communities Behave or Respond: The Architecture of Religious Identity in a Plural World
Across all these traditions, a small minority of extremists sometimes distort religious teachings to justify violence. This is not unique to any one faith. In recent decades, for example, some fringe groups have invoked highly selective interpretations of jihad to justify suicide attacks, claiming spiritual reward. Mainstream Islamic scholars overwhelmingly reject these interpretations. Similar distortions have appeared in other traditions as well
Myanmar Transition: Opportunity for India
Myanmar links India with ASEAN and BIMSTEC. The Asian Highway is to run to Thailand through Myanmar and much can be done to enhance linkages and cooperation with these organisations through stronger links with Myanmar. Proximity and first mover advantage should not be lost.
What is the West Asia Conflict Really About?
There are also questions being raised, quietly in some quarters - more openly in others - about whether broader strategic objectives are at play, including the possibility of regional influence being exercised through existing alignments. Whether such perceptions are accurate or not, they exist and they shape how actions are interpreted.
Why Workers Are Leaving Delhi: When Policy Needs to Align With Ground Reality
What emerges from this moment is not a singular crisis but a layered one, shaped by global disruptions, local cost pressures, and structural vulnerabilities. Workers are leaving Delhi not because the city has stopped offering work, but because it has become increasingly difficult to live sustainably in the capital city while working.
More on Perspective
Kashmiri Pandits - Old and New: And how a film created a broad tent of a pan-Hindu identity
Why did the influential Purana Kashmiris not think of the 1990s Kashmir Pandit exodus as a personal issue and raise their voice? Why did they take part in the conspiracy of silence that seems to have cloaked the issue for 30 odd years?
Russia’s misadventure: Will it herald a setback for populists and return of liberal democracy?
One other unintended consequence of the potential failure of the Russian operation is that it could slow down - and possibly stop the triumphant march of the autocrats – or so-called strongmen - the world over, writes Frank Islam for South Asia Monitor
The aura of Bhagat Singh - and the neglected historiography of British colonial violence in India
The manner in which Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were, first, officially executed on March 23, 1931, and their bodies brutally chopped, marks one of the darkest chapters of British colonialism in India
Will the Ukraine war be a major inflection point for India?
In Washington, Price acknowledged Monday at a briefing that India developed defence ties with Russia because the US was not ready for such a relationship when the Soviet Union and India drew close
US showing some understanding of India's delicate balancing act
The Biden administration and India are evolving a delicate balance at the centre of which is China on how New Delhi reacts to the Russia invasion of Ukraine
A film on Kashmir reignites old wounds
Beyond the number of deaths and whether to define the Pandits’ barbaric displacement as genocide, this is a chapter of contemporary Indian history that has received woefully inadequate media and scholarly attention, writes Mayank Chhaya for South Asia Monitor
The medicalisation of death: Isolation of the dying is cruel
"The unbalanced and contradictory picture of death and dying,” tells the tale of a society lost in modern medicine and unmindful of where this is taking us, write M.R. Rajagopal and Jagdish Rattanani for South Asia Monitor
Rahul Bajaj was a visionary, an industrialist who promoted Gandhian values
He used his annual presence in Davos to make a convincing tour de horizon of the great strengths and resilience of the Indian economy, writes Amb Bhaswati Mukherjee (retd) for South Asia Monitor
Cooked meals for the poor in India: An idea whose time has come
If the rural poor can be given a basic ‘thali’ at subsidized price, they will not only get proper food but do away with the drudgery of cooking, writes Anil K. Rajvanshi for South Asia Monitor
Film on Godse’s killing of Gandhi: Falsehoods galore
The real motive behind murdering Gandhi was that he was for inclusive nationalism, the dream of revolutionaries, and for his attempts to work against untouchability and caste inequality, writes Ram Puniyani for South Asia Monitor
'Learning from Ghalib about the world we live in': Cross-border collaboration around shared couplets
This unique India-Pakistan collaboration developed into this latest venture, “Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation”, a collection of 30 couplets with translation and commentary, write Anjum Altaf and Amit Basole for South Asia Monitor
Can the subcontinental deadlock be broken?
If the meeting of Indian and Pakistani officials—expected to take place next week as per a report in The Hindu– comes through, it will be a departure from the recent past as formal dialogue has remained frozen for almost two years, writes Shraddha Nand Bhatnagar for South Asia Monitor
Historic changes at India Gate and their significance
The Amar Jawan Jyoti -- an upturned rifle with a helmet customarily marking a battlefield grave -- amounted to nothing short of a poor apology for a war memorial at India Gate
South Asia's divisive politics: Modi election speech stirs up an 'artificial' boundary issue between India and Nepal
India’s position on the boundary issue is “well known, consistent and unambiguous”, the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu said, days after political parties in Nepal stoked a simmering territorial dispute in Lipulekh, Limpiyadhura and Kalapani, especially after Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned road construction in Lipulekh at an election rally in Uttarakhand state
