Ashok Malik

New Delhi | Partner and Chair (India) @TheAsiaGroup

[Riaz Hamidullah @hamidullah_riaz]

Last evening, signed off as 🇧🇩 High Commissioner to India.
Ended an eighteen month stint (April '25 - Oct '26), marked with times/episodes like hardly ever before (as most noted). Such were times that would fit into an examination of '#diplomacy in crisis' (without marked conflict). Yet, ...
It's mostly a solitary walk. On most occasions, 'briefs' or (previous) precedents would hardly suffice/suggest.
My limited experience merely asked me to keep walking regardless of what naysayers may say and populate the space, to touch #people and their mindscape. Just no grand scheme. Looking back, "there's no dull day", as @CSDR_India | @IndiasWorld_mag headlined (May '26).
This morning, feels like, I survived many intense episodes when I risked being mis-understood. For me as a diplomat, it's testing endurance | patience | composure yet being able to ask/plea all to hold on the shared space for 🇧🇩 🇮🇳 ordinary people, in shared interests.
Yes, its easier said than done. But, irrespective of views one is sovereign to, must pledge to, given the shared agro-ecology we belong to, forever tied to.
I thank scores of friends who quietly lend their shoulders (or may be, believed in my 'two cents').
@MEAIndia @bdhc_delhi

[Shankkar Aiyar 🇮🇳 @ShankkarAiyar]

Plus 1
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Elbert Hubbard

[Ashok Malik @MalikAshok]

"The basic laws of human stupidity" pithily spelt out below.

I have two maxims to add:

1. Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity."

2. "Rascality has its limits, stupidity has none": Attributed to Napoleon.

[Sanjay Kumar @sanjayjavin]

carlo m cipolla penned an essay in 1976 titled ,”the basic laws of human stupidity “.a stupid person is defined as one who harms the society without any personal gain/benefit to him.whereas a bandit would harm others to profit from it.
he summed up his theory by propounding 5 laws for better understanding:
1st law-the world is full of stupid individuals and their numbers are always underestimated.
2nd law-stupid persons are class/group /category agnostic. one may find the same proportion amongst nobel prize winners as amongst illiterates.
3rd law-defines a stupid person as one who would harm others with zero profit to himself.
4th law-says that non stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.
5th law-says that stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

as they say (this quote is oft misattributed to mark twain),”never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience".😀😀😀😀

[Sanjay Kumar @sanjayjavin]

carlo m cipolla penned an essay in 1976 titled ,”the basic laws of human stupidity “.a stupid person is defined as one who harms the society without any personal gain/benefit to him.whereas a bandit would harm others to profit from it.
he summed up his theory by propounding 5 laws for better understanding:
1st law-the world is full of stupid individuals and their numbers are always underestimated.
2nd law-stupid persons are class/group /category agnostic. one may find the same proportion amongst nobel prize winners as amongst illiterates.
3rd law-defines a stupid person as one who would harm others with zero profit to himself.
4th law-says that non stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.
5th law-says that stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

as they say (this quote is oft misattributed to mark twain),”never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience".😀😀😀😀

[Asian Confluence @AsianConfluence]

India–Bhutan Ties: Perspectives on Collaborations, Opportunities and the Way Forward — Inaugural Session

Mr. M.P. Bezbaruah, Chairman, Governing Council, Asian Confluence, delivered the Opening Address.

Highlighting the changing global landscape in the post-COVID world, he emphasised the importance of strategic diversification, multilateral cooperation, and leveraging the comparative advantages of India and Bhutan to build a resilient partnership. 🇮🇳🇧🇹

#ASCON #IndiaBhutan #RegionalCooperation #SustainableDevelopment #Connectivity

[Arvind Gupta @buzzindelhi]

Five of them not born in USA :)
Elon - South Africa
Sergey - Russia
Satya - India
Jensen and Lisa - Taiwan

[Vikram Misri @VikramMisri]

Happy #IFSDay to all colleagues! For eighty years, we have carried India’s voice at global negotiating tables, in distant postings, and in moments when a citizen needed bringing home. My deepest gratitude to every officer and to the families who share the sacrifice.

Jai Hind!

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

In 1204, a Japanese poet wrote in his diary that the sky turned blood red for 3 nights.

800 years later, scientists drilled into buried trees and confirmed: he was witnessing a catastrophic solar storm that would have fried every satellite on Earth today.

[Asian Confluence @AsianConfluence]

We are honoured to welcome Mr. M.P. Bezbaruah, Chairman-Governing Council, Asian Confluence. He will deliver the Opening Address during the Inaugural Session at the One-day seminar on "India-Bhutan Ties: Trade, Connectivity, Education, Tourism & Health: Perspectives on Collaborations, Opportunities and the Way Forward"

📅 9 October 2026 | 📍 Thimphu, Bhutan
🔗 More details: https://t.co/wDOu2bUr9b
📝 Register Interest: https://t.co/D7SJzQLjLJ

@cbs_gnh @Indiainbhutan

[Sidhant Sibal @sidhant]

Flash: India has proposed the name of Indian Diplomat Sudhakar Dalela (1993 batch) @SudhakarDalela as Indian Amb to Nepal. Name was proposed by the Indian side ysty to Kathmandu. He has been India's BRICS Sherpa, Indian envoy to Bhutan, & JS North in the past

[Danish Khan @DanishKhan80]

Who gets remembered when we tell the history of capitalism in India?

Tata. Birla. Bajaj. Godrej; Parsis. Marwaris. Jains. Banias.

What about the Bohras, Khojas & Memons? They were among Bombay's most important trading communities. Their story is the subject of my new book. 1/10

[India in Iran @India_in_Iran]

H.E. Shri Vishwesh Negi presented his credentials as Ambassador of India to the Islamic Republic of Iran to H.E. Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Ambassador reiterated India’s commitment to further strengthening the India-Iran partnership and advancing the vision set out by the leadership of both countries.

جناب آقای ویشوِش نِگی استوارنامه خود را به‌عنوان سفیر هند در جمهوری اسلامی ایران به جناب آقای دکتر مسعود پزشکیان، رئیس‌ جمهوری اسلامی ایران، تقدیم نمود.

سفیر هند بار دیگر بر تعهد هند به تقویت هرچه بیشتر مشارکت هند و ایران و پیشبرد چشم‌انداز ترسیم‌شده از سوی رهبران دو کشور تأکید کرد.

@MEAIndia @IndianDiplomacy

[Eleftheria Cheese @eleftheriaindia]

On 5 October in New Delhi, three of our cheeses, Gulmarg, Konark and Yeoor, were presented by our Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi @narendramodi Ji to the President of Switzerland, Mr. Guy Parmelin, as a state gift.

Indian milk, handcrafted in Mumbai, by a team that has spent over a decade on its craft.

Honoured, grateful, and so proud of our team. 🇮🇳🧀
.
Last slide picture courtesy - @firstpost

[BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking]

Bestselling author and former politician Jeffrey Archer dies aged 86
https://t.co/61TnrZ6V5p

[VIF India @vifindia]

VIF extends a warm welcome to Gen. Anil Chauhan as he assumes charge as Director of the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF).

As VIF begins a new chapter under Gen. Chauhan’s leadership, we also acknowledge with sincere gratitude the distinguished tenure of Dr. Arvind Gupta and his valuable contributions to the Foundation.

India’s second Chief of Defence Staff and former Director General Military Operations, Gen. Chauhan is widely regarded as a distinguished strategic thinker and defence scholar. His extensive experience in national security, defence policy, geopolitics and military transformation will further strengthen VIF’s research and strategic dialogue.

We look forward to this new chapter of institutional excellence and strategic engagement under Gen. Chauhan’s leadership and wish him every success in his new role.

[Ben Judah @b_judah]

Not that this is a debate about intellectual history but it’s been forgotten by everyone Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland actually describes an autonomy under Ottoman sovereignty, making payments to the treasury in Constantinople. This for Herzl was how he understood the relationship with the Muslim world, then with an Ottoman Caliph.

Ottomanist too was the vision of Ahad Ha’am, who popularised cultural Zionism and imagined an autonomous cultural centre for the Jewish people in the Ottoman Empire.

And most importantly, prior to the First World War that was the political posture of David Ben Gurion, pictured here with Yitzhak Ben Zvi, learning Turkish in Constantinople. He actually had a dream of being an Ottoman cabinet minister.

Zionism to its political mainstream meaning explicitly the quest for a sovereign nation state and not a vaguer “national home” short of that became hegemonic in the 1930s, as the Jewish people experienced great persecution in the darkness between two world wars.

Almost all European and Middle Eastern history is still on a path wildly diverging from it might have ended up without 1914.

[Parimal @Fintech03]

The Murder Hunt That Found a Medical Book....

In 1890, a British officer chasing a killer across Central Asia bought a bundle of old birch bark from a stranger.

It was a medical book from India, about 1,500 years old.

Andrew Dalgleish, a Scottish trader, was murdered near the Karakoram Pass in April 1888. His killer, an Afghan named Dad Mahomed, shot him in his tent and then finished him with a sword.

The Govt. of India wanted the man found. The job went to Lieutenant Hamilton Bower, who was sent on a confidential mission across Chinese Turkestan.

In early March 1890, near the town of Kucha, in what is now Xinjiang, a local man who had once been in India came to Bower's camp. He told him of an "underground city." He and a friend, he said, had dug there looking for treasure and found only a book.

About an hour later, he came back with sheets of birch bark held between two boards.

Bower bought them, on 2nd / 3rd Mar, by Hoernle's later reckoning. He did not know what he was holding. He sent the bundle to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta.

The bark had come from a ruined Buddhist stupa near the Ming oi caves at Qum tura, some 20-15 KMs west of Kucha.

In Calcutta, the scholar Rudolf Hoernle took it up in Feb 1891. At the Society's April meeting, he presented his 1st decipherment and called it the oldest Indian written book then known.

It was a collection of seven fragmentary Sanskrit treatises in early Gupta script. By the handwriting, scholars date the copy to roughly the 5th to early 6th century CE. There is no date written in it.

3 of the 7 are medical. One is a treatise on garlic. Another is a formulary called the Navanītaka, a name that means "butter" in Sanskrit. The rest are about divination and charms against snakebite.

On the pages was also a name: Yaśomitra. Hoernle took him to be the likely patron / the person the stupa commemorated.

Hoernle noticed something strange. On the evidence he had, birch bark as a writing material belonged to north-western India. And the birch tree that yields it does not grow in Eastern Turkestan.

So the pages had travelled / the scribes had. Hoernle concluded the book came from a north Indian scribal tradition, carried / written by migrants far from home.

Someone moved a medical book across that distance. Someone placed it in a stupa.

Today, the Bower Manuscript is held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

As for the man Bower was sent to find, he never caught him himself. Dad Mahomed was arrested in Samarkand in 1890. He died in prison, by suicide. Bower later put up a small memorial at the place where Dalgleish was killed.

A British officer was hunting a murderer. What he left behind with the world was a doctor's handbook that had waited about 1,400 years in a ruined stupa.

[Ani @anibhat123]

Hello. My book on 1970s cinema, seen through my eyes as a child growing into my teens, releases this week. For those interested, here’s the Amazon link.

https://t.co/sdla1obHuD

[Shammi Narang @iamshamminarang]

I may not travel on these Metro trains forever… but I take immense pride in knowing that my voice will travel from one generation to another. From me to my little grandson, Rushaan, and perhaps one day to his grandchildren… and beyond ♥️

Today, we took Rushaan on his very first Metro ride. He was equal parts amazed and bewildered to hear Dadu’s voice echoing through the train… a voice he knows, but in a place he had never heard it before.

A rather special moment for us 👶🚆

@OfficialDMRC #DelhiMetro #ShammiNarang #MetroUncle

[Riaz Hamidullah @hamidullah_riaz]

During the eighteen months' stint in #India as 🇧🇩 Envoy, tried to quietly steady and advance 🇧🇩🇮🇳 relations premised on mutual trust - dignity - shared benefits, to endure for a long haul, in 'shared interests'.
Not walking conventional paths of #diplomacy, trying to touch the chords with #people.

#Bangladesh @bdhc_delhi