India: How a rich nation became poor and will be rich again
19 March 2007

(Developing Cultures : Case Studies, co-edited by Peter Berger and Laurence Harrison, Routledge, 2005.)

Does 'culture' in some way help to explain the fact that the same Indian economy that was stagnating for the first fifty years of the 20th century began to grow at a respectable clip after 1980 and was amongst the fastest growing in the world by the end of the century?

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The Dilemma of a Liberal Hindu
19 March 2007

(Paper Presented at a Conference at the university of Chicago 'India : Implementing Plularism and Democracy' on November 11 - 13, 2005. Forthcoming in a volume edited by Martha Naussbaum & Wendy Doniger)

A few months ago the confident and handsome friend of our son's gave a telling reply to a visiting Englishwoman in Khan Market in Delhi. “I am a Hindu, but”, he said, and he went into a winding reply about his beliefs. He hastily added that he was an Indian first. It was a perfectly honest answer, and any otherperson might have given a similar one about Islam or Christianity. But I sensed an unhappy defensiveness“ the 'but' betrayed that he might be ashamed of being Hindu.

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