Mukul Kesavan
The Telegraph
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Past articles by Mukul:
Alone with Covid-19
The narcissism of bourgeois life is concealed in normal times by good manners but becomes obvious in moments of crisis. When I discovered I was running a temperature one afternoon late last month, my world shrank to me. The middle-class Indian’s ability to quarantine painlessly via digital payments, vendors at the gate and an inherited gift for social distancing induces an expectation of… → Read More
Different graphs
Covid-19 comparisons are going out of style. Boris Johnson’s briefings have stopped using a graph that tracked international death tolls. Pressed on the omission by the leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer, Johnson declared that inter-country comparisons were premature. Writing in The New York Times, Ross Douthat argued that critics like George Packer, who saw Donald Trump’s incoherent… → Read More
Imagined worlds
The Plot Against America is an unsettling mini-series based on a novel written by the great American writer, Philip Roth. Roth imagines the history of the United States of America taking an alternative turn in 1939. Charles Lindbergh, America’s aviator hero who had retired to Europe after his infant son’s horrific kidnapping and murder in 1932, returns to his country in 1939 and defeats the… → Read More
Caste and contagion
Covid-19 is a desi disease accidentally invented by the Chinese → Read More
As the bell tolls, it tolls for thee
Coping with Covid-19: In India, all we can do is apparently wait → Read More
The perils of pragmatism: How can Opposition parties remain relevant
Should the Congress adopt radical BJP positions to avoid political marginalization? → Read More
Escape velocity: Less-than-brilliant science fiction offers more joy that mainstream novels
Edgar Allan Poe and H.G. Wells are worth a round dozen of Henry James or D.H. Lawrence → Read More
Modi's Chandrayaan 2 praise: Science as a kind of aarti, Bharat Mata is the goddess
For Modi, ISRO’s achievements are of the same order as miracles worked by India’s mythical ancients → Read More
False citizens: What does a nation do with a minority that it cannot purge?
Demanding obedience, deference and public abasement from minorities is the majoritarian’s stock-in-trade → Read More
Referendums subvert representative democracy
A ‘decisive majority’ in a referendum can’t be a subjective judgment: it has to be legally defined → Read More
Kisan politics shows the way to a possible populism
There is something heroic about tens of thousands of farmers marching and wringing concessions from a BJP state government → Read More
The #MeToo reckoning
Invocation of proof beyond reasonable doubt and due process may end up defending male impunity → Read More
Kavanaugh: When guilty elites are presumed innocent
Why subaltern movements seek to partly shift the burden of proof from vulnerable accuser to privileged accused → Read More
Desi dictionary on today's politics
If you think India, Hindusthan and janmabhoomi mean the same place, read on → Read More
Desis in Goa
The North Indian need to live in Goa has very little to do with beaches and swimming pools → Read More
An Atlas among men
There was a moment in India's second innings, when England reviewed an lbw decision. The score was 62 for 3, the batsman was India's Atlas, Virat Kohli, and the bowler was England's terrier prodigy, Sam Curran. Kohli, batting well outside his crease, had taken a big stride forward and though the ball hit his back leg, ball-tracking showed that it would have sailed over the stumps. Against… → Read More
Kairana as canary
The election of Tabassum Hasan, the joint Opposition candidate who defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mriganka Singh in the Kairana by-election for the Lok Sabha, is significant for several reasons. She’s a woman, which takes the number of women elected from UP’s 80 parliamentary constituencies to 14. She’s also a Muslim, which takes the number of Muslim MPs from UP to 1. → Read More
Against governors
If the office of the state governor didn't exist, no republican democracy would invent it. A state's governor is a provincial pro-consul. In British India, its institutional necessity was obvious: the governor represented viceregal authority in the same way as the viceroy represented the British monarch's imperial prerogative. → Read More
Branding India
The news that a hundred major monuments and historical sites are up for 'adoption' by private corporations, public sector undertakings and individuals under the government's 'Adopt A Heritage' (sic) plan came to public notice when the news broke that the Lal Qila had been given over to the care of the Dalmia Bharat Group for the next five years. A newspaper report quoted the company's CEO as… → Read More
Killing a child
Empathy doesn't come easily to India's prime minister. His silence after a number of Muslims were lynched by murderous vigilantes in the name of cow protection was broken only after gau goondas attacked Dalits since Dalits are part of the 'Hindu' constituency that the Bharatiya Janata Party wants to consolidate. → Read More