Stealing Shivaji: Why liberals hate the Hindu emperor but also want to make him secular
In 1925 an Indian revolutionary wrote a letter to Mohandas Gandhi, accusing the Congress leader of stifling India’s freedom movement due to his non-violent approach. The gist of this most interesting letter is More...
Book Review: Shivaji the Great Maratha by Ranjit Desai
The book is available for purchase from Amazon. I believe that the most important national problem that Indians have to solve is not as such poverty, nor strategic weakness, nor terrorism. Of course these are huge More...
Hinduism vs Hindutva: What is the debate about
Shashi Tharoor is an erudite author and his English prose is eminently readable. He generally makes sense in his views and opinions on many issues, in spite of being a Congress politician. But his recent book “Why More...
Sinhgad: The Astonishing Escalade of Tanaji and His 300 Marathas
On February 4, 1670 in a stunning act of daredevilry, 300 Maharashtrian soldiers led by Tanaji Malusare, one of the ablest commanders of Maratha king Shivaji, climbed the almost vertical rock face of the fort of More...
Shivaji: The Great Maratha- An excerpt
Editor’s Note: “Shivaji: The Great Maratha” chronicles the magnificent life and times of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in graphic detail. This epic text, originally written by Ranjit Desai in Marathi More...
The Mughal tax break that cost India its freedom
It was a Mughal emperor who in 1717 paved the way for British colonial rule in India. This is how it happened. Since the year 1600 the English had been trying to gain a foothold in India, but were not able to break More...
Maratha Refusal to Dethrone the Mughal
A question is often asked – why did the Marathas, the dominant power of India in the eighteenth century, still continued with the Mughal emperor? Why wasn’t the Mughal dynasty destroyed by the Marathas, More...