Anuj Ghai

[Śrutaṃ me gopāya @shrutammegopaya]

I've no words to describe some of the legends of early 20th cen India

People like Mysore Hiriyanna (philosophy), Ramanujan (math), Alladi Krishnaswamy (law), Rajaji / Patel et al (politics), CV Raman (science)

Such high achievement despite in many cases being the first generation with modern English education in their lineage.

Hiriyanna for instance was born in 1871! Thats a super-early date. For him to become a legend of modern academia is remarkable (hailing from practically the old world)

Goes to show how high the cultural capital must have been for these guys to excel in modern world with no background or money or familial backing

[Ryan @bernardooooV3]

Even as a rival fan, I have to admit this penalty technique from Bruno Fernandes is unsavable.

[krithika sivaswamy @krithikasivasw]

Old India looked so peaceful, clean and less chaotic

[Pratyasha Rath @pratyasharath]

All this deep realization only came after a defeat!!!
If they had won, she would have doubled down on their criminal ways of operating.

[Swati Chaturvedi @bainjal]

Sorry Mr Yadav, you sound like a sore loser. If you have no faith in the judiciary you shouldn’t have been an appellant. Now that the judgement has come you cry foul. Please just stop. We are all Indian citizens & it does nothing for us to try & erode people’s faith in Indian democracy. I don’t understand why you always have issues with everything & seem to act as a suicidal signpost for the opposition

[HindolSengupta @HindolSengupta]

That eternally happy place, at the feet of Shri Radha Vrindavanchandra.

[Rory Talks Football @Rory_Talks_Ball]

Only right to have it by the corner flag 🤣

[Premier League @premierleague]

In a league of his own.

Bruno Fernandes breaks the record for the most assists in a Premier League season!

[Adam @AdamJoseph]

Those who listen to Jamie Carragher baffle me. I struggle to see a single reason he still has a job.

Pep had every resource imaginable, with a club accused of the kind of cheating & systemic corruption that has never been seen in English football before. Like Jürgen Klopp, he lasted 10 years in the Premier League, he was done, he couldn't do it anymore.

All that financial power & his 'advantages', the PL's too, the decline of European clubs, he won 1 Champions League from 10 tries. Meanwhile Sir Alex won two - despite the ban on English clubs, the strength of Europe the entire time he was in charge etc.

He dominated England for three decades. He turned Manchester United into an gargantuan juggernaut, rebuilt on the fly & took down challenger. He couldn't buy whoever he wanted & replace players as he pleased either. He made it work with what he had.

Oh, and I didn't even get into what he achieved in Scotland before he even arrived at Old Trafford, the likes of which Pep could never do because he needs every single tool to be perfect to succeed.

So no, we don't 'insist' that Sir Alex is ahead.. he just is.

[Śrutaṃ me gopāya @shrutammegopaya]

Reforms just don't happen in India unless there is a crisis

That's a given

We are a promiscuous democracy and our middle class is still not large enough to influence political economy considerations. Plus there are aspects to Indian culture that hinder radical change. These aspects are reflected in the ways of our bureaucracy and elsewhere in our society.

Given these constraints and the lack of a big crisis, Modi has done pretty well. He could've done more. In which case likely he'd have been voted out by now.

As a part of the aspirational class of urban India, we can at best opt for the lesser evil. The alternative is a far-left party that could take India back by a couple of decades, and also potentially weaken / endanger national security and bolster the prospects of balkanization

[Sneha @HonestlySneha]

FYI, her father knew that his daughter was being beaten for dowry, and he went to her matrimonial/in-laws' house after her distressed calls. But, instead of bringing her back home alive, he tried to 'suppress' the matter (in his own words).
Deepika's in-laws murdered her, but her own parents enabled her murder.

[Narendra Modi @narendramodi]

A glimpse of Kashi in Rome!

Mr. Giampaolo Tomassetti, an Italian painter, presented his work on Varanasi. His passion for Indian culture goes back over four decades. In the 1980’s he started as an illustrator for books on Vedic culture. From 2008 to 2013 he worked on 23 large paintings relating to the Mahabharat.

[Abhijit Iyer-Mitra @Iyervval]

Some “tough” gems by Rajdeep:

To Priyanka Gandhi “I’ve heard you’re a good cook. What do you cook? Dare I say Italian?”

To Sonia Gandhi “did your mother in law ever ask you where you were going out”

[Abhijit Iyer-Mitra @Iyervval]

Rich coming from the fellow who sparked multi day riots in India in which 12 people were killed - and one had his head sliced off on a WhatsApp broadcast. All this because a BJP spokie quoted the Sahi Bukhari.

[Siddhartha Speaks @SAMaskeri]

Firstly, if you had actually bothered to read the dynasty’s own court histories instead of posturing about who “thinks like a historian,” you would know that they did not primarily describe themselves as “Mughals.” They consciously identified themselves as the Timurid Gurkaniya, heirs to Timur and the Turco-Mongol imperial tradition. Unlike you @vikramsampath actually does that.

So perhaps a little less academic sneering and a little more textual familiarity would help.

Secondly, nobody serious is demanding cartoonish “heroes versus villains” history. The problem is that for decades, sections of Indian historiography tried so hard to appear sophisticated that they often ended up sanitising or downplaying imperial violence, temple desecration, sectarian policies, political coercion, and civilisational trauma.

If history had been written with greater honesty and balance from the outset, there would be far less public appetite today to revisit inherited narratives and challenge officially curated memory.

No serious person denies the enormous political, architectural, administrative, and cultural impact of the Timurids in India. But history does not become mature simply because one chooses to foreground court culture and state formation while treating excesses as intellectually inconvenient distractions.

The world they built and the brutality through which parts of that world were consolidated are both history.

A historian’s responsibility is not to curate emotionally comfortable memory for modern sensibilities. It is to document power honestly, including achievement, violence, contradiction, and consequence.

And frankly, the instinct to minimise or sideline imperial excesses while lecturing others about objectivity does not come across as neutrality. It comes across as ideological selectivity dressed up as sophistication.

No empire should be reduced entirely to heroes or villains. But no empire should be insulated from moral scrutiny either.

[Nandini @NBDwrites]

This person needn’t have written this long rant when all he wanted to say was -
1. How dare @vikramsampath write a piece on our beloved Mughals when only a tight circle of Nehruvians have been ordained to do so.
2. My presumptions, assumptions and confirmation bias improves public discourse in India and the rigour of scholarship, which Sampath so lacks.

[Priyanka Chaturvedi🇮🇳 @priyankac19]

Can’t imagine someone is defending a man caught urinating in a Delhi Metro lift that too in front of two girls by calling it hate and bigotry. Try defending this act by a senior citizen in London, Singapore, Dubai or any civilised city in the world & you’d get your answer! This act doesn’t need sensitivity and empathy it exposes lack of civic sense & disregard of public utility.

[Swati Chaturvedi @bainjal]

Unclear to me why defending the indefensible whether terror attacks, TCS sexual harassment & conversion & now a Muslim man pissing in a lift in full view of two women & then attacking them verbally is kosher for the “Zulm, zakm & now piss in public gang” Worse calling our terrorism, extremism or even just plain civic sense attacked as being “Islamophobia”. Wow just wow

[Gaurie Dwivedi @GaurieD]

Bigotry against minorities??!

It takes a special kind of skill to justify a man urinating in a public space and blaming it on hate against Muslims.

[sai priya @priya_27_]

this “way of life” garbage has done so much ham to hindus and hinduism