Who Are the Anglo-Indians?

Our Small, Enduring Community—Invisible in Most Colonial Histories—Straddles Two Worlds

“I thought they died out,” a woman remarked flippantly to my friend just the other day. She, like many Indians, has long believed that Anglo-Indians ceased to exist when the British left the subcontinent. But despite a recent Indian government effort to strip us of our legislative protections after a bogus census count, we have endured.

I am Anglo-Indian—AI, as we are commonly known. I am not dead. In fact, there are over 350,000 of us in India today. And our history tells the story of a group of people that …

Novelist Laila Lalami

I Pledge My Allegiance to People

Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-born novelist. She is the author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Secret Son, The Moor’s Account, and most recently, The Other Americans. She teaches creative writing at the …

UCLA’s Kal Raustiala

We’re Boxing Up Creativity

Kal Raustiala writes and teaches in the areas of international law and international relations. Since 2007 he has served as director of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International …

Decolonization Tells the Story of Today

The Ongoing Political, Economic, and Intellectual Processes Reverberate in the 21st Century

The other day, the novelist and essayist Pankaj Mishra decided to change the navigation voice on his Google Maps settings from English (Great Britain) to English (India). A friend joked …

Decolonization Is Women’s Work

March 8, 1950—International Women’s Day—Marked the Embrace of a Feminist Battle Against Imperialism

It was 1950, and the world was in flames: In Vietnam, Iran, Madagascar, Algeria, West Africa, South Africa, Tunisia, Malaya, Burma, and Cuba, wars of counterinsurgency were being waged against …

Humanitarians Shouldn’t Have to Choose Between Crises

But Race, Wealth, and Politics Are Dictating Who ‘Deserves’ to Be Saved

On February 6, two earthquakes struck near the border of Turkey and Syria. Measuring 7.8 and 7.5 on the Richter scale, they have, to date, claimed over 50,000 lives.

Those of …