Columnists

Ashok Malik

The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist

Nalanda’s cosy club

Tue, Feb 24, 2015

The revival of a university in Nalanda is a noble mission. But the past seven years have seen a hijacking of the project by a small clique.

Detox as dharma

Fri, Dec 30, 2005

What was the big story from the BJP’s silver jubilee conclave in Mumbai? On the face of it, there were two contenders — the sex sc...

He brought colour, lights to cricket

Wed, Dec 28, 2005

There is a certain poignancy to Kerry Packer’s death, coming only weeks before the Indian team embarks on a tour of Pakistan. After all...

Goodbye to ground zero

Wed, Dec 07, 2005

Many years ago, a friend and mentor introduced me to an old Chinese proverb: when the finger points to the moon, the idiot points to the fin...

Back in the picture

Wed, Nov 23, 2005

Two days before the Bihar assembly election results, Nitish Kumar was at a dinner in Delhi, still answering questions from doubting Thomases...

‘Andy told me he wanted to bring London’s Masefield to Iraq’

Thu, Nov 17, 2005

A ‘‘third man’’ and perhaps a London-based ‘‘fourth man’’ too—the K. Natwar Singh-Volcker Commi...

Natwar, Iraq and a hard place

Thu, Nov 10, 2005

On the evening of Sunday, November 6, having re-written post-Cold War history and, allegedly, told the prime minister that his removal from ...

Minister without portfolio: past, future

Tue, Nov 08, 2005

K. Natwar Singh, as minister without portfolio, has distinguished predecessors.In 1964, when Jawaharlal Nehru fell ill, Lal Bahadur Shastri ...

Congress’s oil stain has American shadow

Sat, Nov 05, 2005

Other than a mention in the Volcker Committee report, what links K. Natwar Singh and Marc Rich, America’s biggest white collar criminal...

The disaster dividend

Mon, Oct 31, 2005

Right after the October 8 earthquake in Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), the diplomatic discourse seemed to have been ...

Kashmir politician had an old Saddam link

Sun, Oct 30, 2005

Named in the Volcker Committee as a ‘‘non-contractual’’ beneficiary under the oil for food programme, Panthers Party pre...

The Spy We Loved

Sun, Oct 30, 2005

IN the mirth and naivete of youth, many afternoons are spent debating the relative merits and demerits of the movie stars who’ve played...

Phantom of the opera

Sat, Oct 22, 2005

Writing in the October 9 issue of People’s Democracy, CPI(M) politburo member Anil Biswas claimed, ‘‘The spectre of communism...

Comintern to Momintern

Fri, Sep 30, 2005

In the months and years after 9/11, it has been conventional wisdom to blame the United States for planet Earth’s jihadi mess. As such,...

‘CIA funded Cong against Left in Kerala, Bengal’

Tue, Sep 20, 2005

Reacting to The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World, former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu told The Indian Express yesterday,...

‘KGB penetrated IB to fund CPI, routed money to its members and mouthpiece’

Mon, Sep 19, 2005

Was Promode Dasgupta an Intelligence Bureau (IB) informant in the Indian Communist movement? Certainly the KGB believed so, says The Mitrokh...

‘KGB paid Congress, CPI, media’

Sun, Sep 18, 2005

One year after he died, the ghost of Vasili Mitrokhin, former senior archivist at the KGB, has returned to haunt the core of the UPA—th...

Vanishing Moments

Sun, Sep 04, 2005

FOR three decades till Indira Gandhi’s death on the last Wednesday afternoon of October 1984, Usha Bhagat was Mrs G’s secretary, c...

Mutiny’s bounty

Thu, Aug 25, 2005

Each time an Indian film-maker attempts to recreate the past, the resident bore stands up and yelps, ‘‘But this is not history.&#1...

Red, red whine

Tue, Aug 23, 2005

This past Sunday, a former Indian cricket captain wrote a newspaper column on the Ashes series. As it happened, the first half of his articl...

Delhi’s Kolkata Communists

Sun, Jul 31, 2005

BY the end of the week, it was easy to miss them in the swirl of the Mumbai deluge, and the terrorists from Jaunpur to Lal Chowk. Yet rest a...

Trivia Pursuit

Sun, Jul 24, 2005

THE quintessential cricket fan—as opposed to the face-paint fiend whose idea of fun is wild shrieks of ‘‘Sixer! Sixer!’&...

American idol

Thu, Jul 21, 2005

It must be a good month for ironies. George W. Bush and Manmohan Singh both came into office dismissed as lightweights who paled before thei...

New book says Mao-USSR deal on India

Tue, Jul 12, 2005

In a season when Cold War secrets are tumbling out with astonishing regularity, a new book has just revealed details of a Beijing-Moscow dea...

Salute the Bulldog

Sat, Jul 09, 2005

Each time they face a terrorist strike, Indians instinctively ask: why doesn’t the West take such violence against us seriously? The an...