https://misterlove.in/writing/ Long-form work on subjects I refused to have a lazy opinion about. Researched properly, written plainly, every side given its strongest case. en Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-1/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-1/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Here is a fact that annoys people on all sides. On the day Robert Clive won the Battle of Plassey in 1757, there was no single country called India with one government, one capital, one army and one border. https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-2/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-2/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Sayyid Ahmad Khan was born in Delhi in 1817 into a family of Mughal court service. He worked for the East India Company as a judge. In 1857, when the revolt broke out, he stayed loyal and personally saved the lives of several British officials at Bijnor. The B https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-3/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-3/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India He went in 1893 on a one year contract for a Gujarati merchant firm. He stayed twenty one years. Along the way he was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg for refusing to leave a first class compartment, an event he later described as the turning point of hi https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-4/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-4/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India The Congress had adopted complete independence as its goal at Lahore in December 1929. Gandhi now had to choose a way to fight for it, and his choice baffled almost everybody at the time, including Nehru and the Working Committee. https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-5/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-5/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Bhagat Singh was born in 1907 in the Lyallpur district of Punjab, in a Sandhu Jat Sikh family already deep in politics. His uncle Ajit Singh was a revolutionary who had been exiled. He was twelve when Jallianwala Bagh happened, and he went to Amritsar and brou https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-6/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-6/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India On 3 September 1939 the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, announced that India was at war with Germany. He did not consult the Central Legislative Assembly. He did not consult the eight provincial governments that Indians had elected and were running. He did not consu https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-7/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-7/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India That is the claim in its strongest form and I have not softened it. It contains several separate assertions, and the reason arguments about it never end is that people treat them as one thing when they are five. https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-8/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-8/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India The Congress leaders came out of jail in June 1945 to find the political ground completely changed. Wavell called a conference at Simla to form a new Executive Council with equal Hindu and Muslim representation. https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-9/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-9/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India This part is built differently from the others. It is a reference section. https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-10/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-10/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India In British India in 1941, Muslims were roughly 24 percentof the population. The regions that became Pakistan had substantial non Muslim populations: west Punjab and Sindh had large Hindu and Sikh communities, and east Bengal was roughly 28 percent Hindu. https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-11/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-11/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Gandhi took a vow of brahmacharya in 1906, at thirty seven, while still in South Africa. In ordinary usage the word means celibacy. He meant something wider and stranger: he broke it intobrahma, meaning truth or God, andcharya, meaning conduct, so brahmacharya https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-12/ https://misterlove.in/writing/independence/part-12/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Counterfactuals are guesses, and I mark them as guesses. But refusing to make them is its own dishonesty, because every claim of the form "he caused it" is a counterfactual in disguise. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-1/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-1/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Before you can understand a fight, you have to understand what people are fighting over. This whole story is about one thing: farming — and the people whose entire lives hang on it. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-2/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-2/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Here is the secret to understanding the whole Kissan Andolan: the entire fight of 2020 is really a fight about one machine — the system by which a farmer sells a crop. Learn this machine, and everything else in the story will suddenly make sense. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-3/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-3/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India In September 2020, the Indian government passed three new farming laws. For the next year, the whole country argued about them — yet very few people ever read them. In this part, I'll tell you exactly what each law said, in the plainest words, with no spin. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-4/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-4/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Now I'm going to do something that may surprise you. I'm going to argue for the farm laws — as strongly and honestly as the government and its supporters did. Not because I'm taking a side, but because you cannot judge a fight fairly until you've heard the best version of each side. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-5/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-5/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India In Part 4 the government made a strong case. If you read it and thought, "these laws sound reasonable," you were meant to. Now the farmers take the stand — and here is the thing that shocks most people: they had a sharp, specific answer to every single argument the government made. They were not confused. They were afraid, and they could tell you exactly why. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-6/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-6/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India For five parts we have argued in words. Now the words run out, and the people move. This is where the story leaves paper and hits the cold tarmac of a highway — where a disagreement over three laws became one of the largest and longest protests the world has ever seen. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-7/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-7/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Every long struggle has a day it nearly dies, and a day it nearly loses its soul. This part holds both. In just a few dramatic weeks — and then one terrible October afternoon — the movement was almost destroyed, almost broken from within, and then, against the odds, saved by a single man's tears. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-8/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-8/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India This part is not about the farm laws at all. It is about something just as powerful: the fight over the story. What was this movement "really" about? Heroes or traitors? Farmers or foreign agents? Because whoever won that story would win the public — and, in the end, the politics. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-9/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-9/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India After a full year of deadlock, the break did not come on a highway or in a negotiating room. It came at dawn, on a television screen, on a Sikh holy day — when one of the most powerful governments in India's modern history did something almost no one expected. It blinked. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-10/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-10/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Part 9 ended with a movement "suspended, not ended," and a stack of promises the government had not kept. Two years later, the bill came due. The farmers returned to the road — but this time weaker, more divided, stopped far short of Delhi, and met with even harsher force. This is the round that did not end in victory. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-11/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-11/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Both sides told simple stories. The truth is messier — and more interesting. Under the shouting lie a set of uncomfortable facts that fit neither side's slogans, which is exactly why you rarely hear them. This part drags nine of them into the light. Not to attack anyone, but to finish the picture. https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-12/ https://misterlove.in/writing/kissan-andolan/part-12/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:30:00 GMT India Twelve parts. Four years. Hundreds of pages, thousands of lives, and one question that still has no answer. We have walked every inch of this story, heard every side, and lifted every hidden stone. Now, at the end, I owe you the hardest thing of all: an honest reckoning. https://misterlove.in/writing/forgotten-gods/part-1/ https://misterlove.in/writing/forgotten-gods/part-1/ Mon, 18 May 2026 18:30:00 GMT History Imagine you are a young man living in Germany (a country in modern Europe) in the year 50 CE. There is no Bible — the Bible is the Christian holy book. There is no church — a church is the building where Christians gather to worship. There is no Sunday service https://misterlove.in/writing/forgotten-gods/part-2/ https://misterlove.in/writing/forgotten-gods/part-2/ Mon, 18 May 2026 18:30:00 GMT History Let me start with something that will surprise most people. While the Egyptians were still figuring out how to build pyramids, and the people of Europe were still living in scattered villages with wooden huts, there was already a massive civilisation in India https://misterlove.in/writing/forgotten-gods/part-3/ https://misterlove.in/writing/forgotten-gods/part-3/ Mon, 18 May 2026 18:30:00 GMT History To understand why Europeans came to India, you have to understand pepper. Black pepper — the spice you grind on your food — was the most valuable trade commodity in the world for about 2,000 years. (A "commodity" simply means a good that is bought and sold in https://misterlove.in/writing/forgotten-gods/part-4/ https://misterlove.in/writing/forgotten-gods/part-4/ Mon, 18 May 2026 18:30:00 GMT History To understand why China did not convert to Christianity, you have to understand something about how China thinks of itself. For over 3,000 years, Chinese civilisation has had an unbroken sense of itself as the Middle Kingdom. The word for China in Chinese is Z