The television series Asking the Vast Earth (问苍茫, 2023) opens with a scene of a young Mao Zedong swimming in the Xiang River, swollen from the heavy rains. A fisherman calls from the bank
This article is adapted and abridged from a speech delivered by the author at the Sarmaya Art Foundation, Mumbai, on 8 August 2026. The text is based on the author’s two books
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While shooting a documentary at Göbeklitepe, I encountered strikingly different historical interpretations of the site. An international group of New Age seekers seemed to be searching for extraterrestrial connections there, but when I pointed
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Ursula Kemp was a strong-willed woman. That may have been one reason she eventually ended up on the gallows. A midwife and healer in the small English village of St Osyth, Kemp
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There are moments when words seem inadequate to express the sorrow of losing an extraordinary soul. Today, we remember Major Seevaratnam Mahindan (Retd), an exemplary officer, an inspiring instructor, a devoted Catholic,
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Murdering foreign leaders is not something any American president should ever do. How can the US uphold its claim to be a champion of laws and political decency while committing murder and
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I was only sixteen years old when I first set eyes on Fidel Castro at the 1983 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in India. When Fidel, who would have turned 100 this week,
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August 13, 2026, marks the 100th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s birth, recalling the Cuban revolutionary leader who governed the Caribbean nation for nearly five decades and became one of the most prominent
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As Der Spiegel has examined in its reporting on “Hitler’s Fangirls”, Adolf Hitler’s appeal to women remains one of the more disturbing paradoxes of the Nazi era. The man who could appear
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Erblin Ademi watched from a distance as workers began excavating recently discovered mass graves in Kosovo. Nearly 30 years after his father disappeared during the 1998-99 war, Ademi is caught between fear
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“True victory in any conflict is not found in the destruction of an enemy. It is found in the preservation of life and the healing of a community.” For Colonel D.P.K. Pillay,
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