.ORF has constituted a Task Force on National Security Reforms, chaired by Lt Raj Shukla (Retd) & convened by Prof Harsh V. Pant The Task Force held its 1st meeting on 23 June to chart a roadmap for a future-ready security architecture #ORF #Nationalsecurityreforms

"There's this Tagorean view of what Asia is like, mixed with a Gandhian method of negotiation and mediation...I was quite interested in how these two sources of thought become a third and completely different approach in the person of Nehru." casi.sas.upenn.edu/iit/casi-deep-…

Philosophy of History If you are looking for a brief but excellent introduction to the philosophy of history, this entry by philosopher of science Dan Little in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is highly recommended. Link: plato.stanford.edu/entries/histor…

YouTube: youtu.be/7OuCRO8STus?si…

There are two intellectual traditions which dominate modern thought. The first, which we will call the "theorists," has its roots in continental philosophy and anti-racist/anti-colonial thought. Most of its ideas are left-coded, but many of the ideas current on the right today

a welcome development...

"for every ₹100 the government spends on salaries, Indian society burns ₹168 in a collective effort of rent-seeking just to decide who gets them. The winners are happy but the loss to Indian society of unemployed young...workers is in the billions." marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

pleased to share my review of Josh Rovner's Strategy and Grand Strategy for the latest issue of India's World magazine. indiasworld.in/strategy-and-g…

Sharing my piece for India's World (Issue IV) on the ascent of the Indian whisky in the global market, including insights from a leading insider entrepreneur in the space. indiasworld.in/spirited-away-…

The Trump Factor | VOL 1 ISSUE 4: Book Review: Strategy and Grand Strategy by #JoshuaRovner In an era of rising interstate conflict and great power rivalry, “grand strategy” is back in vogue. But the term is often misused—blurred with “strategy” itself. In his Adelphi Series

The Indian humanities/social sciences, he argues, are not structured by thought but by disciplinary consensus. The human subject they presuppose is secular, rational, universal. But in practice, it is urban, English-fluent, estranged from vernacular intelligibility.

Look what (coincidentally!) just got delivered.

LaSpisa and Mitchell (2025) find that democratic dyads are more prone to maritime conflict due to stronger domestic interests, executive constraints, and weaker territorial norms at sea. academic.oup.com/fpa/article/21…

"This book...argues that the Postcolonial Left’s relentless attacks on the “epistemic violence” of Western norms of rationality and modernity are providing the conceptual vocabulary for the Hindu Right’s project of decolonizing the Hindu mind." thewire.in/culture/books/…

Out today, 20 July: Believer’s Dilemma—the second volume of my study on Vajpayee and the Hindu Right. Now available at bookshops! (Most of them are happy to ship across lands and oceans.) Please do share it with friends or family who might be interested in something like this.

Text interviews are always most welcome, as are commissions for op-eds, essays, and book reviews. I’m desperate to return to reading and writing for pleasure, and these formats might just help me rejuvenate.

Swatantra party leader Kapur Singh on the ongoing Indian debate over the abrogation of the Indus Water Treaty in the immediate aftermath of the 1965 Indo-Pak war.

Swatantra MP M Ruthnaswamy on the issue of India's laggard public diplomacy efforts vis-a-vis Pakistan in 1965.

Minoo Masani certainly understood well the dynamics of nuclear deterrence in arguing against a private extended deterrence guarantee from the US.