Sunday, Sep 25, 2022
Journalism of Courage
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Contributing Editor at the Indian Express. He has been vice-chancellor of Ashoka University and president, Centre Policy Research, New Delhi, one of India's top think tanks. Before he started engaging with contemporary affairs, he taught political theory at Harvard, and briefly at JNU. He has written extensively on intellectual history, political theory, law, India's social transformation and world affairs. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize, the Adisheshiah Prize and the Amartya Sen Prize.
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More From Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: From Leicester to New Jersey, the diaspora is reflecting the divisions of Indian politics
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: A Vishwaguru wearing a robe of Hindutva cannot but export all the fault lines that come with it
Sat, Sep 24, 2022
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Madhava Rao, a statesman from a princely state whose administrative qualities PM Modi extolled
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Madhava Rao's treatise on governance offers a window into an alternative modernity and alternative genealogy of secularism – it has relevance even today
Sat, Sep 17, 2022
‘Is this how justice ends?’: Bilkis Bano’s question should haunt the Indian republic
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: We live in an age where crime and justice, innocence and guilt, have no autonomous meaning of their own, other than as part of a communal project
Fri, Aug 19, 2022
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: The Nine Lives of Nitish Kumar
Drama in Bihar is fascinating. But this is not a moment for euphoria for the Opposition, or a pathway to national regeneration
Thu, Aug 11, 2022
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: By upholding PMLA, SC puts its stamp on Kafka’s law
The money laundering Act is opaque and draconian, gives state arbitrary powers over citizens. Now, it has the SC's approval
Fri, Jul 29, 2022
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Littleness of Opposition makes the BJP look big
In a context where the BJP is too easily running away with a narrative of inclusion, mobility and newness, all that the Opposition could do was remind people how much it is stuck in the past
Sat, Jul 23, 2022
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Obstacles to a diplomatic solution in Ukraine
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: India and China are not helping the cause of peace. Diplomacy in G20 is about deflecting blame rather than solving the problem
Wed, Jul 13, 2022
Udaipur murder: The executioner’s strategy
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Will to condemn this act must be accompanied by commitment to build a free society. Otherwise Kanhaiya’s executioners win
Thu, Jun 30, 2022
Mohammed Zubair’s arrest is an inversion of justice
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: This arrest has to be seen as part of the larger pattern: ED and CBI raids whenever political convenient, use of UAPA charges against innocent students, communally targeted bulldozing of properties, control over the media
Thu, Jun 30, 2022
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Why Agnipath is not the reform the armed forces need
PB Mehta writes: Reform of the armed forces should be governed by a sound sociological, professional, institutional and strategic logic. Agnipath fails the smell test on all four
Fri, Jun 17, 2022
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes | Nupur Sharma hate speech row: Beware of half victories
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: A short-term blow on behalf of civility could be weaponised to endanger free speech and communal harmony in the long run
Wed, Jun 08, 2022
Why today’s debates over Aurangzeb, Shivaji, Rana Pratap or Prithviraj Chauhan are not about good or bad history, but tussles over memory
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: It's not about rewriting Marxist or Nehruvian history but putting facts at the service of creating kinship and finding enemies.
Fri, Jun 03, 2022
The conviction of Yasin Malik
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: As is often the case in Kashmir, one act of closure may open up new and even more ominous questions.
Fri, May 27, 2022
What the two-front war in Ukraine means for the world
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: In the long run, something creative may emerge from this crisis as economies restructure. Under present conditions, the second-order effects of the war have magnified a great deal
Fri, May 20, 2022
Like Nero, we fiddle as the world burns
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Climate deniers are not the real challenge. Those who do not deny climate change are imprisoned by a sense of unreality.
Wed, May 04, 2022
With eyes wide open, we’re hurtling into an abyss
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: The new Hinduism is about widespread acceptance of vile prejudice, alignment of state with majoritarian power, contempt for rights, glorification of violence
Tue, Apr 26, 2022
Putin may lose, but Putinism will survive
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Putin may lose, but Putinism is ascendant as an ideology — now aligning itself with white supremacism, French chauvinism, Israeli right wing assertion, Ottoman dreams, Chinese aggression or Hindutva aggression.
Fri, Apr 15, 2022
Ukraine invasion has revealed a new world disorder
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: The self-serving stances of all the great powers make it more likely that the world will be marked by more miscalculations, conflict and hubris
Thu, Mar 24, 2022
What the March 2022 assembly election results reveal
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: The BJP has transformed the nature of politics in ways to which the Opposition has no answer.
Thu, Mar 17, 2022
The world must do more to put pressure on Russia
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: The brutal truth is that despite outrage in the West, the appetite for doing what it takes to put pressure on Putin is not yet in evidence.
Sat, Feb 26, 2022
Hijab debate is a pretext for institutionalising state cruelty
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Progressives in India have fallen into the trap of being seen to oppose or defend the hijab, where the truth is that it is presumptuous to do either
Wed, Feb 23, 2022
Lata Mangeshkar was India’s inner voice
She represented us collectively. She also represented each one of us in our singularity
Tue, Feb 08, 2022
Kumar Gandharva exemplifies the unity of form, meaning and being
🔴 Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: By the time he took his last breath, he had not only become one of the greatest musicians of all time, he had arguably become the highest point of Indian culture
Fri, Jan 14, 2022
A separate entrance test for DU won’t solve anything
🔴 Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: The pressure on Delhi University will be eased if our regional universities are vastly improved
Sat, Jan 08, 2022
Can 2022 be a year of cooperation?
Let us hope that the world can steer clear of the conflicts that the major crises of 2021 seem to have made inevitable
Tue, Jan 04, 2022