How Modern India Was Built on the Legacy of British Institutions

Indians Have Drawn From a Dark Colonial Past to Create a More Liberal and Open Society

In the years after India’s independence in 1947, Britons tended to congratulate themselves on their legacy to the subcontinent.

Although the empire’s successor states, India and Pakistan, had been born amid the confusion and tragedy of Partition, the British relationship with both countries remained good. Most of the British departed, peaceably, marching to their ships in Bombay harbor, but a sizeable minority “stayed on,” as the phrase went, more than 2,000 of them remaining in the armies and administrations of the new states.

When Pakistan’s leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, appointed new governors …

by Sir David Gilmour | January 30, 2019

At India’s TV Repair Shops, a Worker Discovers Technology’s False Promises

Is the ‘Use-and-Throw-Away’ Consumer Ethos Keeping Us Dependent on Corporate Giants?

by Padma Chirumamilla | October 10, 2018

In a repair shop in South India, an employee was sitting next to me, trying to figure out what was wrong with the circuit board on his worn blue work …

The Myth of a “Lost White Tribe” That Created a Global Racial Caste System

Pseudo-Scientific Theories About a "Perfect" Race Still Drive Ethnic Violence Today

By Michael Robinson | March 2, 2018

18th-century German anatomist Johann Blumenbach kept a collection of 250 human skulls, but he found one skull particularly enchanting. “My beautiful typical head of a young Georgian female,” he wrote, …

What the Path of Curry Tells Us About Globalization

Courtesy of the British Empire, the Spice Was Used to Pay Indian Workers Brought to South America to Replace African Slaves

By Lizzie Collingham | February 21, 2018

One Sunday morning in 1993, “Bushman,” “Spider,” “Tall Boy,” and “Crab Dog” were gathered at a rum shop in the Guyanese coastal village of Mahaica. The rainy season had driven …

How Tea Became a Weapon in Darjeeling’s Ethnic Struggle

An Indian Minority's Push for Independence Has Roots in the British Empire's Divide and Conquer Policies

By Erika Rappaport | October 25, 2017

Darjeeling tea is a world-renowned product that reliably flows from India’s highlands, where it has been grown for more than a century. But since early this summer, none of it …

Is India’s Rise Creating a Global Health Crisis?

The Country's Hospitals, Rivers, and Even Chickens Are Becoming a Source of Antibiotic Resistance

By Anna Trett and Ramanan Laxminarayan | October 13, 2017

A 59-year-old man from India, who was living in Sweden, visited New Delhi in late 2007, where he was hospitalized for an infection and treated with an array of antibiotics. …

What the Path of Curry Tells Us About Globalization

Courtesy of the British Empire, the Spice Was Used to Pay Indian Workers Brought to South America to Replace African Slaves

How India’s Prime Minister’s Visit to Facebook Could Help Reverse His Country’s Brain-Drain

He Should Encourage Some of His Nation's Most Impressive Diaspora to Go Back Home

The Sun Always Shines on the California Empire

The Golden State, Not the U.S., Is the Worthiest Successor to Britain’s Global Supremacy

India the Question Mark

Does Its Potential Match the Hype?

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