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
Is crypto mania more a symptom than a cause?
🔴 Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: We must ask what makes it alluring in the first place, instead of rooting for its ban.
Sun, Nov 28, 2021
What the withdrawal of controversial farm laws means
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: It dents government’s image of total control, but whether it leads to a constructive dialogue or a sharpening of contradictions remains to be seen
Sun, Nov 21, 2021
We need greater global cooperation
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: In new era of great power rivalry, countries are choosing to preserve national supremacy over global problem-solving. This will have consequences.
Tue, Nov 09, 2021
What is the harassment of Aryan Khan really about?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: It's not about establishing that everyone is equal before the law. There are larger ideological connections here.
Wed, Oct 27, 2021
Violence and communalism: South Asia’s disturbing commonality
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Fundamentalists, even as they create walls between communities, recognise that South Asia has a connected destiny: They bank on it to achieve their ends
Thu, Oct 21, 2021
What the attacks against minorities in Kashmir reveal
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: India’s security environment is precarious, its political future fragile, and its human sympathies dead. It will require a great act of statesmanship to overcome these challenges.
Sun, Oct 10, 2021
The Quad is an important political signal. But it will be tested
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: It is consolidating at a moment when its grade on the three ‘Cs’ — Climate, Covid and Critical Technologies — is, from the point of view of the rest of the world, already a ‘C’.
Wed, Sep 29, 2021
A new English translation of Gyan Chaturvedi’s Hindi classic satire Baramasi kindles nostalgia but labours emotionally
Translator Salim Yusufji has done a commendable job with Alipura, in deftly recreating a vanished way of life and character portrayals — but the tragic absurdity of their situation is lost in translation
Sat, Sep 25, 2021
What 9/11 unleashed on us
PB Mehta writes: The twin crises of liberal statecraft and of authority from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan are still with us.
Sun, Sep 12, 2021
The little farce of Brahmin welfare schemes is a sign of India’s great tragedy
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: It reflects a nation with diminishing prospects for everyone, encouraging them to reach into the narrowest-minded conceptions of identity and calling it social justice.
Thu, Sep 09, 2021
What the global flow of guns tells us about how states fail
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: The supply of weapons matters, and unless controlled, acquires an autonomous dynamic. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is the latest example
Fri, Sep 03, 2021
The American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the sins of empire
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Fundamentalism draws its motivating energy from cultivating grievance against imperial hierarchies. The US management of the withdrawal will give fillip to fundamentalism’s deepest psychological impulses.
Sun, Aug 22, 2021
At 75, will India embrace the logic of freedom or Partition?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: One concentrates on the true foundation of national greatness, the other creates an impostor-like substitute. One is premised on fear, the other on hope.
Sun, Aug 15, 2021
US vs China is the new Cold War
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: It’s a bumpy ride ahead, with China seeking to displace America and remake the world order in its own image
Thu, Aug 05, 2021
Why Roberto Calasso told stories of the gods
Remembering the Italian writer and publisher who passed away last week.
Sun, Aug 01, 2021
What the Pegasus surveillance scandal means for Indian democracy
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: It has great implications for our institutions. Government cannot sidestep questions by alleging conspiracy
Wed, Jul 21, 2021
How India and China are shaped by the idea of national humiliation
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: While China uses it to legitimise authoritarian rule, India’s lack of egalitarianism makes it harder for national humiliation to be owned equally.
Tue, Jul 06, 2021
The religious life of Indians, according to a recent survey
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Indians are committed to religious diversity, but exclusionary and segmented in toleration, and tempted by authoritarianism.
Fri, Jul 02, 2021
Women as temple priests: An idea whose time has come
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Not just social engineering, there are good religious grounds for opening all ritual functions to women. The rest of India must follow Tamil Nadu’s example
Tue, Jun 22, 2021
Has the blackbox of UAPA finally been opened?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Bail order for Asif Tanha, Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita is a welcome effort to prevent our civil liberties from being swallowed up by the black hole of state power.
Fri, Jun 18, 2021
Can the G-7’s ‘Cornwall Consensus’ give new direction to globalisation?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: If the G-7 wants to truly exercise more leadership, it will have to convince the world that all its new principles are not simply ruses to serve only the interests of the developed world.
Sat, Jun 12, 2021
How ‘The Dharma Forest’, a retelling of the Mahabharata, deep dives into the question of meaning and futility
Keerthik Sasidharan’s incandescent masterpiece points at, among many things, the fact that the very thing that gives your life meaning also raises questions of accountability
Sun, Jun 06, 2021
Why isn’t the prospect of long-term economic stagnation giving us nightmares?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Even as we battle Covid, we have to think about what will truly reverse the diminishing of our economic fortunes.
Wed, Jun 02, 2021
For the sake of Indian democracy, the UP governance model needs to be challenged
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: A moral psychology legitimising an unprecedented ruthlessness is now becoming the default of civil society in the state.
Fri, May 21, 2021
Israel’s actions are destroying the moral legitimacy of its own claims
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: The world cannot ignore the Palestinian question, which is not an object of geo-political opportunism, but one of basic dignity and justice.
Fri, May 14, 2021