He spoke the language of poetry, but he thought in the grammar of geopolitics. Jawaharlal Nehru was not only the political architect of independent India; he was also the architect of its identity in the world. When he took over as leader in 1947, India was a battered, partitioned country, impoverished from colonial exploitation and unsure about its future. Illustration by The Geostrata But Nehru envisioned something more significant than survival; he imagined an India that could embody...

Power is rarely exercised in isolation; it goes beyond laws and policies and into the realm of persuasion and perception. Authority ultimately remains in the hands of the leader and their ability to evoke, persuade and mobilise collective imagination. Illustration by The Geostrata Long before the advent of social media, politics unfolded on streets and marketplaces where the audience was not just passive observers but active members in shaping a narrative and leading to a revolution. In the ...

Languages are disappearing around the world at an unprecedented pace. UNESCO’s   Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (2023) estimates that a language dies roughly every two weeks, a quiet death that erases an entire way of viewing and understanding the world. Each time a language dies, we lose more than just the words; we lose a cultural universe of myths, songs, humour, and history. Illustration by The Geostrata In India, a country with what is usually described as linguistic...