Weekend Reads

  1. To get even with India, the Pakistan army could withdraw from the 2003 ceasefire or even give a leg up to terrorist activities, says Elizabeth Roche in Mint.
  2. India’s government may want calibrated strategic escalation, but this genie will not be put back in easily, argues Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express.
  3. In the Telegraph, Sujan Dutta tells the story behind India's Special Forces, responsible for the recent surgical strike into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
  4. Now 50 years old, the Economic and Political Weekly had been a chronicler of India’s ideas, writes Roshan Kishore in Mint.
  5. Given the hate for Dalit reservations in India, in Round Table India, AKD Jhadav points out how reservation aren’t a gift: they are actually a rather poor barter for Ambedkar’s strident demand for separate electorates.
  6. In the Business Line, Brinda Suri writes about how the food of Multan, West Punjab, lives on in the city of Delhi.
  7. In the Guardian, a clutch of novelists, from Hari Kunzru to Linda Grant, have their say on the controversial topic of cultural appropriation.
  8. Nation states cause some of our biggest problems, from civil war to climate inaction. Science suggests there are better ways to run a planet, writes Debora Mackinzie in the New Scientist.
  9. The Curious Wavefunction discusses if physics is now turning into a historical science like biology.
  10. In the New York Times, Anthony Doerr reviews a new book on the history of the idea of time travel.