Grand Tamasha

Despite a year marked by tariff battles, confusion over Washington’s China policy, and the shock of the 2025 India–Pakistan war, one part of the U.S.–India relationship has held firm: bilateral defense cooperation. The two sides recently announced a new defense framework, are deepening links between their private sectors, and are boosting military-to-military ties.  To review the state of the U.S....

This year, the non-profit Educate Girls  became the first Indian organization ever to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award —often called Asia’s Nobel Prize. The foundation recognized the group for its groundbreaking work enrolling out-of-school girls, improving learning outcomes, and shifting social norms in some of India’s most underserved communities. It’s a remarkable milestone for an NGO that beg...

India and the United Kingdom have spent decades trying to define their post-colonial relationship—part partnership, part rivalry, and often, part courtship. Today, that relationship is being recast amid trade talks, tech cooperation, and geopolitical shifts.  The two sides recently signed a landmark trade agreement and officials in London and New Delhi are sounding a new tone of optimism about wha...

Bihar has once again delivered a political drama worthy of its reputation—record turnout, sharp debates over the voter rolls, a decisive victory for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and a fresh round of questions about whether the opposition has what it takes to displace Modi and the BJP.  The NDA—anchored by Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal (United), together with the BJP and other allies—s...

How do non-state armed groups act when the state seeks not to crush them—but to tolerate their activities? This is the central question of a new book by the political scientist Kolby Hanson titled, Ordinary Rebels: Rank-and-File Militants between War and Peace . Kolby is an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, and his new book looks at how state toleration fundamentally transf...

For much of India’s democratic history, the woman voter has either been invisible or ignored – at times she has been spoken for, but very rarely listened to.  A new book by the journalist Ruhi Tewari  argues that this is no longer the case and seeks to understand why women have emerged from the political shadows. What Women Want: Understanding the Female Voter in Modern India  draws on years of jo...

As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait—were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the “Indian Empire,” or more simply as the British Raj. And then, in just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart, carving out...

A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India's Development Odyssey is a landmark new book by the scholars Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian . The book is an audacious attempt to trace how India—uniquely and daringly—attempted four concurrent transformations—building a state, creating an economy, changing society, and forging a sense of nationhood under conditions of universal suffrage. It is the joint...

Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud was the fiftieth chief justice of India. An alumnus of Harvard Law School, he served as additional solicitor general of India. He was appointed as a judge of the Bombay High Court in 2000 and became the chief justice of the Allahabad High Court in 2013. In 2016, he was elevated to the Supreme Court of India, where he served as chief justice from November 202...

Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a stunning $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas—the main channel through which U.S. employers hire foreign professionals in technology, engineering, and research. The move has sent shockwaves through America’s innovation ecosystem, prompting fears that companies will either look abroad—or scale back their ambitions at home. Few countries will be as...

One of the most surprising developments in Washington, if you’re a South Asia-watcher, is the surprising turn in U.S.-Pakistan relations. Having largely sidelined Pakistan over the past decade or more, the current U.S. administration has courted Pakistan with an enthusiasm that has caught many analysts off-guard. In June, Trump hosted Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, in the White House. A few we...

For a quarter century, Washington policymakers made a strategic bet on India premised on the belief that shared values, shared interests, and a shared strategic convergence in Asia would bind these two countries together as ‘natural allies’ in the twenty-first century.  All of this optimistic talk came crashing down to Earth a few months ago with the Trump administration’s decision to slap 25 perc...

India’s once-flourishing ties with Washington have soured in Trump’s second term, marked by punishing tariffs and penalties over Russian oil. This turbulence reinforces New Delhi’s instinct for “multi-alignment,” and the desire to hedge between great powers rather than bet on any single partner. Against this backdrop, a new paper by the journalist and analyst James Crabtree argues that now is the...

A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar is the new book by the author Narayani Basu . It documents the life and times of one of modern India’s most fascinating characters. Panikkar defies simple description. He was a journalist who founded the Hindustan Times ; a bureaucrat who advised India’s princely states; a poet, a philosopher, and an international relations scholar. He served as Ind...

Believer’s Dilemma: Vajpayee and the Hindu Right’s Path to Power, 1977-2018 is the much anticipated second volume of author Abhishek Choudhary’s biography of former BJP prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The book traces his life from his stint as external affairs minister in the short-lived Janata government to his death in 2018 following a period of prolonged illness. The first volume of this b...

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order slapping India with a 25 percent special tariff due to its purchases of Russian oil. This surprise measure raised the total tariff on Indian exports to the United States to 50 percent—among the highest rates imposed by the United States on any country in the world. But India is not just “any country.” Over the last quarter-century, i...

Two summers ago, Ashley J. Tellis published an essay in Foreign Affairs titled, “ America’s Bad Bet on India ,” which led to an extended, highly charged debate about the future of the U.S.-India relationship. Just a few weeks ago, Ashley published another big-picture piece in Foreign Affairs titled, “ India’s Great-Power Delusions ,” which has once again got people talking. In his new piece, Ashle...

How and why did Hindu nationalism become popular among India’s diaspora after India’s independence in 1947? This is the central question of Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism , a 2023 book by the historian Edward Anderson . The book interrogates the distinctive resonance Hindutva ideology has overseas, and the multiple ways in which the di...

India’s celebrated education technology company Byju’s went from being one of the world’s most hyped start-ups to being sued for fraud in a Delaware court and accused of engaging in unethical, if not illegal, behavior. The episode serves as a cautionary tale about the world of start-ups, venture capital, and the crushing social pressures Indian children and parents face to climb up the social ladd...

Indira Gandhi’s ascent as prime minister of India in 1966 seems obvious with the benefit of hindsight, but it was entirely unforeseen at the time. Within years—if not months—she emerged as one of the most powerful political leaders of her era—serving as prime minister for fifteen years, leaving behind a complex and deeply controversial legacy. A new book by the historian Srinath Raghavan , Indira...

Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America is a new book by the author and journalist Meenakshi Ahamed.  While many immigrant groups have found success in the United States, few have excelled as far and as fast as Indian Americans, reaching heights in a single generation that many thought would take the better part of a century to achieve.  Ahamed’s new book offers fascinating portrait...

Anticolonial movements of the 20th century generated audacious ideas of freedom. After decolonization, however, the challenge was to give an institutional form to those radical ideas. Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony is a new book by the scholar Sandipto Dasgupta which provides an innovative account of how India ultimately addressed this daunting challenge. I...

At this point, you’ve probably read 1,001 post-mortem analyses of the India-Pakistan conflict, desperately searching for some new nugget or data point that helps you understand this brief, but intense clash between these two South Asian rivals. In this sea of hot takes, one essay stands out both for its analytical clarity and its wisdom. That piece was written by the scholar Joshua T. White and it...

On Saturday, India and Pakistan announced a ceasefire, ending—at least for now—the latest bout of armed conflict between the two South Asian rivals. The announcement followed the launch of “Operation Sindoor”—India’s response to the April 22nd terrorist attack in Kashmir, which claimed the lives of 26 innocent civilians. India’s strike prompted a worrying tit-for-tat standoff which quickly escalat...

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World is the new book by the celebrated historian William Dalrymple . For listeners of Grand Tamasha, Dalrymple surely needs no introduction. He is the bestselling author of nine books, including The Last Mughal , The Anarchy , and City of Djinns . He is cofounder of the Jaipur Literature Festival and cohost of the wildly popular podcast, “ Empire...