It is difficult to be completely impersonal about what happened in Mumbai last week. Some friends lost their near and…
Reflections on the future of Indian democracy
Mumbai 11/26
This is a collection of responses to the terrorist attacks in India in November 2008.
You can find reflections from one year later in our off the cuff series, “Mumbai revisited.”
zzThe death of secular India is greatly exaggerated
As the citizens of this vast metropolis seek to restore some semblance of normalcy to their lives, it is important…
Restore us to fire
The leitmotif of old Bombay is its diversity. Populations with varied beliefs and languages were agglomerated by the British into…
Is Mumbai’s resilience endlessly renewable?
I grew up in Bombay (now Mumbai) in the 1950s and early 1960s. I spoke Tamil with my mother, a…
Jihad, fitna, and Muslims in Mumbai
While the dichotomy of "moderate" Muslims and "extremists" is prevalent in many media representations, this binary hides more than it…
Attacking Mumbai
Whatever the global elements involved in these brutal events, from militant methods to media coverage, crucial is the fact that…
Violence, publicity, and sovereignty
Today we are once more at a time when lawless violence proliferates and territorial boundaries are infringed upon, when state…