Articles by Hiren Gohain

Ever since the advent of capitalist modernity, nation and nationalism have conferred a sense of identity on large numbers of people all over the world. While not proposing a rendering of the history of a region to the exclusion of the bigger currents of Indian history and culture, this article makes a case for greater emphasis on the regional history of Assam.

Romila Thapar’s impressive scholarship is deployed to a more or less discursive reading of Ashoka’s pronouncements. But the socio-economic base of such studies tends to get blurred.

The valorisation of the liberal state and democracy in Dipankar Gupta's article comparing Gandhi and Habermas is erroneous and elides the well-known shortcomings and biases of this dispensation. This article also misreads Gandhi and its use of Habermas as a point of comparison appears to be a case of over-interpretation which does not fit the facts.

By any criterion, the inauguration of President Barack Obama is an unprecedented event, historic in its implications. Two million people gathered in a disciplined crowd and watched the ceremony in biting cold.

A reading of Balachandra Rajan's The Dark Dancer on the 50th anniversary of its publication - a fictionalised Partition narrative that did not get the attention it deserved.