In India, critics of the 19th century statesman Thomas Macaulay portray him as some kind of cartoon villain out to destroy India. In reality, he was a brilliant man who wished Indians well. [My take] v @WSJopinion https://t.co/Ch1Xx9X4M1

Anyone interested in India-Russia relations should read this fine piece by @NMenonRao. But I do have a question about this metaphor: We know who the bear, the elephant and the dragon are, but who is the lion? (Maybe 🦅 didn’t work for some reason.) https://t.co/6sfYMdRy3F

Pakistan is basically invisible in the new U.S. National Security Strategy. It’s mentioned twice—once in the foreword and once in the main report—both in the context of Trump allegedly stopping the India-Pakistan conflict in May.

Here are the references to India in the new NSS. Three areas of potential cooperation: commercial ties, Indo-Pacific security, and coordination with Gulf on AI and critical minerals in Africa. (Trump also talks about ending the India-Pakistan conflict in the foreword.) The

The continental scale of Indian linguistic diversity makes comparisons with much smaller countries like France or Turkey moot. Some form of Hindustani might have unified a large chunk of northern and western India (including much of today’s Pakistan), but would probably have run

If the Congress Party truly believed in competence over connections @ShashiTharoor would be leading the party and @RahulGandhi would be hanging out on a beach in Thailand.

From @WSJopinion: If not for access to Western education, India today would probably look less like an aspiring global power and more like an outsize backwater, writes @dhume https://t.co/v6ADaVXENX

Hindi media is a national embarrassment for India. But evidently this is what viewers want.

My take: No reasonable person can deny that Trump has sharply set back U.S.-India relations, but this doesn’t mean that India can stop worrying about deepening Russia-China relations and what it means for Russian reliability in a crunch. #PutinInIndia #PutinIndiaVisit

You could argue that in a way India helped bring down the Soviet Union by being a major recipient of aid from Moscow. Source: @dwarkeshpodcast

Here’s a little reminder of how the balance of economic power in Eurasia has shifted over the course of this century. In 2000 the Japanese economy was larger than the Chinese economy at market exchange rates.

Update: Imran Khan’s sister says he’s alive. The post-Bhutto limits on military violence against elected civilian leaders seems to be holding, though the conditions under which Khan is being held are shameful. The Trump administration may not care, but that doesn’t make it okay.

My mistake: This is the chart I meant to post.

You can’t blame Indians for feeling good about comparisons with Pakistan, but the per capita income chart in Asia that really matters is this one.

If you think about it rationally, Poland really does have a stronger claim than South Africa to be part of the G20.

It feels like just the other day that IndiGo was far and away the best run airline in India, and comparable with well-run airlines in other parts of Asia. Now it seems like a hot mess. I would love to read a long explanatory piece on what went wrong.

The only question is whether Asim Munir will be gentler toward Imran Khan than Zia ul-Haq was toward Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. For more than 40 years, Pakistani military strongmen have stopped short of murdering popular civilian politicians who dared cross them. I doubt that Munir is

Always worth reading the excellent @RenuMukherjee1. My 2¢ on this topic: It’s pretty clear at this point that a chunk of the MAGA base is actively hostile to Indian-Americans, and sees no place for the community in the GOP coalition. If the Groypers cannot even abide Jews—another

Obvious omissions who deserve to be on the list: 1. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. 2. Chinese premier. I also think it’s ridiculous to rank Iran’s supreme leader above the leaders of Japan, Brazil and Indonesia. The leader of Saudi Arabia is also ranked too

The movement for a separate Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh started out as an expression of rivalry between Tamil Brahmins and Telugu Brahmins, but soon became a political vehicle for Kammas and Reddys. [Source: India: The Most Dangerous Decades by Selig S. Harrison.]