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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<i>Mantriji</i> may be a rogue, but he’s popular too
Should there be a law debarring charge-sheeted politicians from holding public office? This debate is marked by two forms of disingenuousnes...
Wed, Aug 04, 2004Stories of Us
The dominant academic historiography of modern India has, in recent times, been marked by what can best be described as a form of hyper self...
Sun, Jul 18, 2004Democracy doesn’t keep faith with reservations
The Andhra Pradesh government’s announcement of a five percent job reservation for Muslims is treading down a dangerous legal and polit...
Thu, Jul 15, 2004The Heart is Full, the Mind Empty
The great Hindi writer, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, in a brilliant essay Jabki Dimag Khali Hai (When the Mind is Empty) published in 1939, outlin...
Sun, Dec 21, 2003No just solution
Any increase in activity over finding a settlement to the Ayodhya imbroglio, produces more anxiety than clarity. The circumstances that have...
Wed, Jul 02, 2003Capitalists against capitalism
When the history of India’s reforms during the nineties is written, scholars will blame the slow pace of reform on many factors: The ve...
Fri, May 09, 2003An open letter to Digvijay Singh
As you know, many citizens have of late been distressed by your attempts to open up more spaces for mixing religion and politics. Your attem...
Fri, Mar 07, 2003Let’s set up a Condemnation Inc.
The Prime Minister’s recent speech to BJP parliamentarians, the one were he spoke of Muslims not having condemned the Godhra incident e...
Tue, Dec 24, 2002Teachers on contract: Read the small print
The University Grants Commission’s proposal to introduce a contract system for teachers seeks to address a problem that the teaching co...
Tue, Nov 12, 2002Your Lordships, a humble open letter
Honourable Justices, An alarming spectre is haunting the country: the spectre of religious intolerance. While this may have complex roots, i...
Fri, Nov 01, 2002We don’t need no education control
When the obituary of higher education in India is finally written, ‘‘throttled by government regulation’’ will in all li...
Tue, Sep 24, 2002Dividing the Kashmir blame pie
The two new controversies that were added to the quagmire in Kashmir this week should remind us of the fact that the diplomatic and politica...
Fri, Aug 02, 2002Caste aside illusion
The last few months have witnessed the passing away of another illusion. Caste politics was seen by many as one of the defining narratives o...
Thu, Jul 04, 2002Be tough, be creative
There is no doubt whatsoever that the outrageous acts of terror being conducted inside Jammu and Kashmir deserve the strongest possible resp...
Wed, May 22, 2002Confronting democracy
Of the many vexed questions raised by the Gujarat crisis, the complicity of democracy in the whole process is the most challenging.Many of t...
Fri, Apr 26, 2002The saffron riptide
The BJP is the architect of a political strategy that is perhaps unique in the annals of democratic politics. It makes apparent to onlook...
Sat, Sep 12, 1998Don’t blame democracy
There have recently been a particular set of polemics expressing serious doubts about liberal democracy's capacity to provide an adequate f...
Tue, Oct 07, 1997