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1792: This is what revolution looks like

Contending for the living Red Pepper, October-November 2012 In France, 1792 was the year of “the second revolution.” On 10 August, the King was overthrown, bringing to an end three years of uneasy “constitutional monarchy”. For months the Legislative Assembly had been locked in conflict with Louis XVI, while at the same time fighting a… Read more

Becoming British, at last

The Guardian, 16 February In my case, the past is literally “another country”. I spent my first 18 years in the US, moved to Britain in 1971, and have been ensconced here ever since. But I applied for British citizenship only a few months ago. It’s been a curious exercise. I’ve spent a good deal… Read more

Thomas Paine: restless democrat

CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING Red Pepper, June-July 2009 “This interment was a scene to affect and to wound any sensible heart. Contemplating who it was, what man it was, that we were committing to an obscure grave on an open and disregarded bit of land, I could not help but feel most acutely.” The occasion… Read more

Life-changing happenstance: discovering India

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 25 January 2009 will be marked by the usual crop of anniversaries. Twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 200 hundred years since the death of Tom Paine, forty years since Woodstock, and on a micro-scale, thirty years since my first visit to India. A life-changing event for… Read more

India’s tryst with the death penalty

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 11 February [Note: Muhammed Afzal has been sentenced to death by hanging for his alleged role in the attack on the Indian parliament on 13 December, 2001.] IN 1793, the French Convention was debating the fate of the deposed and imprisoned king, Louis XVI. Thomas Paine, an Englishman who had… Read more