Great discoveries, Ganapathi, are often the result of making the wrong mistake at the right time. - Shashi Tharoor

History belongs to the past, but understanding it is the duty of the present

The Indian tricolour was raised just before sunset, and as it fluttered up the flagpole a late-monsoon rainbow emerged behind it, a glittering tribute from the heavens.

Colonialism was made possible, and then sustained and strengthened, as much by cultural technologies of rule as it was by the more obvious and brutal modes of conquest that first established power on foreign shores… Colonialism was itself a cultural project of control.