Grand Tamasha

Two summers ago, Ashley J. Tellis published an essay in Foreign Affairs titled, “America’s Bad Bet on India,” which led to an extended, highly charged debate about the future of the U.S.-India relationship.

Just a few weeks ago, Ashley published another big-picture piece in Foreign Affairs titled, “India’s Great-Power Delusions,” which has once again got people talking.

In his new piece, Ashley argues that India is on its way to becoming a great power, but perhaps not the kind of power that many in the world are expecting.

On this week’s season finale of Grand Tamasha, Ashley makes his return to the show. Ashley holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served in the U.S. government during the George W. Bush administration, where he was intimately in involved in negotiating the U.S.-Indian civil nuclear deal.

Ashley and Milan discuss the U.S. policy of “strategic altruism” toward India, compare India and China’s growth record, and unpack the drivers of India’s quest for multipolarity. Plus, the two discuss India’s growing illiberalism and the complex ways domestic politics shapes foreign policy.

Episode notes:

1. “Reexamining America’s Bet on India (with Ashley J. Tellis),” Grand Tamasha, June 21, 2023.

2. Ashley J. Tellis, “Great Expectations: India amid US-China Competition,” in Hal Brands, ed., Lessons from the New Cold War: America Confronts the China Challenge (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025).

3. Ashley J. Tellis, “India Sees Opportunity in Trump’s Global Turbulence. That Could Backfire,” Carnegie Endowment Emissary (blog), April 9, 2025.

4. “Trade, Tariffs, and India's Silver Lining (with Shoumitro Chatterjee),” Grand Tamasha, April 16, 2025.

5. “The Precarious State of U.S.-India Ties (with Rajesh Rajagopalan),” Grand Tamasha, February 26, 2025.

How and why did Hindu nationalism become popular among India’s diaspora after India’s independence in 1947? This is the central question of Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism, a 2023 book by the historian Edward Anderson.

The book interrogates the distinctive resonance Hindutva ideology has overseas, and the multiple ways in which the diaspora engages with British politics and society, while sustaining connections back home in India.

Anderson is assistant professor in History at Northumbria University in Newcastle. He was previously the Smuts Research Fellow in Commonwealth Studies at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained a PhD in History.

Anderson joins Milan on the show this week to discuss the trajectory of Indian migration to Britain, the founding of the first overseas Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) shakha, and the Emergency’s impact amongst the diaspora. Plus, the two discuss the role of the diaspora in funding politics and the emergence of “neo-Hindutva.”

Episode notes:

1. “A Reappraisal of Indira Gandhi’s Life—and Legacy (with Srinath Raghavan),” Grand Tamasha, June 11, 2025.

2. “The Secret to Indian Americans' Success (with Meenakshi Ahamed),” Grand Tamasha, June 4, 2025.

3. “The Indian American Vote in 2024 (with Sumitra Badrinathan and Devesh Kapur),” Grand Tamasha, November 6, 2024.

4. “What to read about Hindutva,” The Economist, April 5, 2024.

India’s celebrated education technology company Byju’s went from being one of the world’s most hyped start-ups to being sued for fraud in a Delaware court and accused of engaging in unethical, if not illegal, behavior.

The episode serves as a cautionary tale about the world of start-ups, venture capital, and the crushing social pressures Indian children and parents face to climb up the social ladder. 

The story of the rise—and sudden fall—of Byju’s and its founder Byju Raveendran is detailed by the journalist Yudhijit Bhattacharjee in a new piece for the online magazine Rest of World titled, “The math tutor and the missing $533 million.”

Bhattacharjee is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine whose writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Wired, and other U.S. magazines.

He is also the author of the New York Times-bestselling nonfiction thriller, The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell, and host of the podcast “Scam Likely.”

To talk more about his recent reporting, Yudhijit joins Milan on the show this week. They discuss the rags-to-riches backstory of Byju Raveendran, the anxiety Indian families experience around education and career success, and Byju’s miraculous rise—and sudden downfall. Plus, the two discuss the larger lessons of this episode for start-ups, investors, and India’s future as a consumer market.

Episode notes:

1. Pradip K. Saha, The Learning Trap: How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech For A Ride (New Delhi: Juggernaut, 2024).

2. Chloe Cornish, Jyotsna Singh, and Mercedes Ruehl, “How a teaching app feted by Silicon Valley was left chasing the Indian dream,” Financial Times, October 3, 2022.

3. “When venture capitalism goes wrong,” Financial Times, October 23, 2024.

4. “Understanding the Delhi Education Experiment (with Yamini Aiyar),” Grand Tamasha, January 22, 2025.

Indira Gandhi’s ascent as prime minister of India in 1966 seems obvious with the benefit of hindsight, but it was entirely unforeseen at the time.

Within years—if not months—she emerged as one of the most powerful political leaders of her era—serving as prime minister for fifteen years, leaving behind a complex and deeply controversial legacy.

A new book by the historian Srinath Raghavan, Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India, unpacks that legacy, uncovering fresh material that challenges much of the conventional wisdom we’ve accumulated over the years.

Srinath is professor of international relations and history at Ashoka University and nonresident scholar at Carnegie India. He is the author of several celebrated books, including India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia and Fierce Enigmas: A History of the United States in South Asia.

He joins Milan on the show this week to discuss Gandhi’s unforeseen right to power, the daunting conditions which greeted her premiership, and her improvisatory leadership during the 1971 war. Plus, the two discuss Gandhi’s mixed economic legacy, the onset of the Emergency, and how our understanding of the “long 1970s” must be updated.

Episode notes:

1. Soutik Biswas, “The forgotten story of India's brush with presidential rule,” BBC News, June 9, 2025.

2. TCA Srinivasa Raghavan, “Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India,” Hindu Business Line, May 27, 2025.

Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America is a new book by the author and journalist Meenakshi Ahamed. 

While many immigrant groups have found success in the United States, few have excelled as far and as fast as Indian Americans, reaching heights in a single generation that many thought would take the better part of a century to achieve. 

Ahamed’s new book offers fascinating portraits of several Indian Americans in three distinct sectors—technology, medicine, and public policy. The book tries to understand what exactly accounts for Indian Americans' ability to break into mainstream American culture and their meteoric rise within its ranks.

Listeners may remember our 2021 conversation with Meena on her previous book, A Matter of Trust: India–US Relations from Truman to Trump.

To talk about her new book, Meena joins Milan on the show this week. They talk about the “godfather” of the Indian tech community in Silicon Valley, the balance between creativity and execution, and the role of caste. Plus, the two discuss the real (and perceived) influence of Indian Americans in Washington.

Episode notes:

1. Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh, The Other One Percent: Indians in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

2. “Understanding India’s Diaspora,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

3. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, and Milan Vaishnav, “Indian Americans at the Ballot Box: Results From the 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 28, 2024.

4. “Meenakshi Ahamed on U.S.-India Relations from Truman to Trump,” Grand Tamasha, February 17, 2021.

Anticolonial movements of the 20th century generated audacious ideas of freedom. After decolonization, however, the challenge was to give an institutional form to those radical ideas.

Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony is a new book by the scholar Sandipto Dasgupta which provides an innovative account of how India ultimately addressed this daunting challenge.

It's a fresh, somewhat revisionist look at the making of the postcolonial constitutional order and tries to place the current crisis of liberal democracy in proper historical and conceptual context.

Sandipto is an assistant professor of politics at the New School for Social Research, where he works on the history of modern political and social thought, especially the political theory of empire, decolonization, and postcolonial order.

To talk more about his book, Sandipto joins Milan on the podcast this week. They discuss the two-way relationship between decolonization and constitution-making, the absence of representation unity between the Congress Party and the masses, and why India’s leaders believed a planned economy would forestall a social revolution. Plus, the two discuss how the absence—rather than the excesses—of democracy have led to rising majoritarianism.

Episode notes:

1. “Republic Day Episode: Madhav Khosla on India’s Founding Moment,” Grand Tamasha, January 28, 2020.

2. Sandipto Dasgupta, “Gandhi’s Failure: Anticolonial Movements,” Perspectives on Politics 15, no. 3 (2017).

3. Sandipto Dasgupta, “‘A Language Which Is Foreign to Us’: Continuities and Anxieties in the Making of the Indian Constitution,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 2 (2014): 228–242.

At this point, you’ve probably read 1,001 post-mortem analyses of the India-Pakistan conflict, desperately searching for some new nugget or data point that helps you understand this brief, but intense clash between these two South Asian rivals.

In this sea of hot takes, one essay stands out both for its analytical clarity and its wisdom. That piece was written by the scholar Joshua T. White and it’s simply titled, “Lessons for the next India-Pakistan war.”

It was published by the Brookings Institution, where Josh is a non-resident fellow with the Foreign Policy program. Josh is also professor of the practice of international affairs at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C.

Josh has served at the White House as senior advisor and director for South Asian affairs at the National Security Council. And he’s also worked at the Pentagon, where he helped get the U.S.-India Defense Technology and Trade Initiative off the ground.

To talk more about his piece and the recent conflict, Josh rejoins Milan on the podcast this week. He and Milan discuss how the global debate on “attribution” has tilted decisively in India’s favor, troubling new precedents about military target selection, the depth of Pakistani information operations, and the widespread use of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles in the recent conflict. Plus, the two preview Josh’s forthcoming book, Vigilante Islamists: Religious Parties and Anti-State Violence in Pakistan.

Episode notes: 

1. Joshua T. White, “Lessons for the next India-Pakistan war,” Brookings Institution, May 14, 2025.

2. “Operation Sindoor and South Asia’s Uncertain Future (with Christopher Clary),” Grand Tamasha, May 14, 2025.

3. “US views of India-China ties and their impact on the US-India partnership (with Lisa Curtis, Joshua T. White, and Tanvi Madan),” Brookings “Global India” podcast, February 7, 2024.

4. “U.S.-India Ties After the ‘2+2’ Summit (with Joshua White),” Grand Tamasha, April 27, 2022.

On Saturday, India and Pakistan announced a ceasefire, ending—at least for now—the latest bout of armed conflict between the two South Asian rivals. The announcement followed the launch of “Operation Sindoor”—India’s response to the April 22nd terrorist attack in Kashmir, which claimed the lives of 26 innocent civilians.

India’s strike prompted a worrying tit-for-tat standoff which quickly escalated into the worst conflict between the two nuclear-armed nations in a quarter-century. The fighting has stopped for now, leaving policymakers, scholars, and analysts the task of deciphering the longer-term consequences of the recent crisis.

To break things down, Milan is joined on the show this week by Christopher Clary. Chris is an associate professor of political science at the University of Albany. He’s also a non-resident fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.

Listeners may remember Chris from his 2022 appearance on Grand Tamasha, when he discussed his book, The Difficult Politics of Peace: Rivalry in Modern South Asia.

Milan and Chris discuss why the Pahalgam episode marked a new chapter in India-Pakistan relations, how the recent conflict will serve as a template for the next crisis, and the possible motivations for U.S. intervention. Plus, the two discuss what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East can teach us about India and Pakistan’s likely future.

Episode notes:

1. Christopher Clary, “India-Pakistan rivalry is old, but Pahalgam marked a new chapter,” Times of India, May 11, 2025.

2. Sudhi Ranjan Sen et al., “Trump Truce Leaves India Furious, Pakistan Elated as Risks Loom,” Bloomberg, May 11, 2025.

3. Karishma Mehrotra et al., “The U.S. helped deliver an India-Pakistan ceasefire. But can it hold?” Washington Post, May 10, 2025.

4. “When and Why Do India and Pakistan Fight (with Christopher Clary),” Grand Tamasha, September 14, 2022.

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World is the new book by the celebrated historian William Dalrymple. For listeners of Grand Tamasha, Dalrymple surely needs no introduction. He is the bestselling author of nine books, including The Last Mughal, The Anarchy, and City of Djinns. He is cofounder of the Jaipur Literature Festival and cohost of the wildly popular podcast, “Empire,” with Anita Anand.

His new book, The Golden Road, highlights India’s often forgotten role as a crucial economic fulcrum, and civilizational engine, at the heart of the ancient and early medieval worlds. It tells the story of the forgotten Indosphere and its multiple legacies.

To talk more about his new book, William joins Milan from our studio in Washington, D.C. They discuss the reasons the Indosphere has been obscured from history, the alluring narrative of the Sinocentric “Silk Road,” and Buddhism’s extraordinary journey around the world. Plus, the two discuss the deep penetration of the Hindu epics into Asia, India’s scientific and mathematical discoveries, and whether an Indian mindset of cultural absorption and synthesis can be recovered.

Episode notes:

1. Abhrajyoti Chakraborty, “The Golden Road by William Dalrymple review – the rational case for ancient India’s ingenuity,” The Guardian, September 15, 2024.

2. William Dalrymple, “‘In Britain, we are still astonishingly ignorant’: the hidden story of how ancient India shaped the west,” The Guardian, September 1, 2024.

3. Willaim Dalrymple, “Vibrant, Cacophonous Buddhism,” New York Review of Books, September 21, 2023.

It’s been a typically busy few months in the world of Indian politics and policy.

To roundup all the latest developments from India, Milan is joined on the show this week by Grand Tamasha regulars Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution.

The trio discuss the recent terrorist attack which killed 26 civilians in Jammu and Kashmir, U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s recent whirlwind trip to India, and Trump’s tariff threats and India’s calibrated response.

Plus, they review the first 100 days of the Trump administration and discuss what, if anything, has surprised them about the early months of Trump 2.0.

Episode notes:

1. Sadanand Dhume, “JD Vance’s India Visit Highlights Closer U.S. Relations,” Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2025.

2. Sadanand Dhume, “Trump’s Tariffs Are Modi’s Greatest Economic Test,” Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2025.

3. Tanvi Madan, “Top Gun & Scattershot,” Times of India, January 20, 2025.

4. “Modi Meets Trump, With Tanvi Madan,” The President’s Inbox (podcast), February 18, 2025.

5. “Trump & Modi: Part Deux (with Sadanand Dhume and Tanvi Madan),” Grand Tamasha, February 19, 2025.