Namit Arora

A recent Scroll interview that features me and the inimitable Romila Thapar, focusing more on the interface between history and modern politics—a key topic in Speaking of History. This well-produced video also has Prof. Thapar (94) in great form. Do watch! blog.shunya.net/2026/05/why-is…

NEW | “Mohammad Deepak” is not secular politeness. It’s something deeper: the claim that India once had room for overlapping selves—and can again. @Rajeev_Bhargava writes. frontline.thehindu.com/columns/mohamm…

Would you support legislation that makes housing discrimination a jailable offence? Also, would you endorse a call to fund a pan-india report on housing discrimination + a report on who is most affected by communal violence (to update the book साम्प्रदायिक देंगे और भारतीय पुलिस)?

"Loktak Lake in Manipur, India, is a living mosaic of floating islands called phumdis. The region is home to Keibul Lamjao National Park, the only floating national park on Earth." youtu.be/oeiT85Y38tY?si…

The worship of Satyapir, involving both Hindu & Muslim symbolic elements, points toward forms of communal harmony developed through popular creativity, a theological innovation that emerged from below rather than being imposed by reformist elites. scroll.in/article/108878… @ankushpal2001 writes

Meet Bengal’s New CM - Suvendu Adhikari

For @Equatormag, I spoke to @NeelanjanSircar about the results of India's state elections, and about the evaporation, one by one, of the pockets of regional resistance to the BJP. equator.org/articles/from-…

On the peopling of ancient India by @kikumbhar. Scholars have used linguistics, archeology, and now genetics to try to figure out from where, and when, people came to ancient India. aeon.co/essays/ancient…

"They can vote next time". This statement, and the Judge who said this, have entered the history books for ever.

This is not normal. Don’t normalize this. Palestinian lives matter just like yours.

This essay (3,300 wds), just published in The Spectator, distils my thinking on the relationship between colonialism and development, and a scholarship that has examined this relationship in a somewhat fragmented way. Shorter versions will appear later on LinkedIn, X, Substack.

India's Aravalli range needs protection from rampant illegal mining. Many native communities are already fighting, and now a legal challenge over its definition adds to the threat. In my story: what makes a hill an Aravalli, and the fight to protect it. dialogue.earth/en/nature/the-…

It took them a while but today's verdict in West Bengal has to be the sweetest of victories for the BJP—not the least as an emotionally symbolic homecoming to the very land of Hindutva’s birth in the Indian subcontinent. livehistoryindia.com/story/eras/bha…

Just out, an interview featuring Romila Thapar and me. @ShoaibDaniyal, political editor at Scroll, understandably focused more on the interface between history and modern politics that we explore in Speaking of History. Romila is in great form! (1:10 hrs) youtube.com/watch?v=u06Cy0…

No, #AI is not conscious, and it's unlikely to ever be conscious. Here's why. @anilkseth's brilliant and poetic #TED talk brings some sense into a field filled with outrageous claims (I suspect at least sometimes designed merely to attract attention). ted.com/talks/anil_set…

A man blinded by a flag about to step off into emptiness might be Banksy's best work ever.

In 1526, Babur won against Ibrahim Lodi on the plains of Haryana, and the Mughal empire was born. It would last more than 300 years, all the way through to 1857. Echoes still linger, in India’s bureaucracy and jewellery, art, food and fashion. In the way our capital city looks, and the shape of the civil services. Read on for essays on food, art, fashion and more by Rana Safvi, Vir Sanghvi, Swapna Liddle, Muzaffar Ali and Dhamini Ratnam. hindustantimes.com/specials/The-M…

Why popular ‘historians’ from the right (and perhaps not just of the right) fail history

Two economists just published a mathematical proof that AI will destroy the economy. Not might. Not could. Will — if nothing changes. The paper is called "The AI Layoff Trap." Published March 2, 2026. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Boston University. Peer reviewed. Mathematically modeled. The conclusion is one sentence. "At the limit, firms automate their way to boundless productivity and zero demand." An economy that produces everything. And sells it to nobody. Here is how you get there. A company fires 500 workers and replaces them with AI. A competitor fires 700 to keep up. Another fires 1,000. Every company is behaving rationally. Every company is following the incentives correctly. And every company is building a trap for itself. Because the workers who were fired were also customers. When they lose their jobs faster than the economy can absorb them, they stop spending. Consumer demand falls. Companies respond by cutting costs — which means automating more workers — which means less spending — which means more falling demand — which means more automation. The loop has no natural exit. The researchers tested every proposed solution. Universal basic income. Capital income taxes. Worker equity participation. Upskilling programs. Corporate coordination agreements. Every single one failed in the model. The only intervention that worked: a Pigouvian automation tax — a per-task levy charged every time a company replaces a human with AI, forcing them to price in the demand they are destroying before they pull the trigger. No government has implemented this. No major economy is seriously discussing it. Meanwhile the numbers are already tracking the curve. 100,000 tech workers laid off in 2025. 92,000 more in the first months of 2026. Jack Dorsey fired half of Block's workforce and said publicly: "Within the next year, the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion." Nobody is doing anything wrong. Companies are following their incentives perfectly. That is exactly the problem. Rational behavior. At scale. Simultaneously. With no mechanism to stop it. Two economists built the math. The math leads to one place. Source: Falk & Tsoukalas · Wharton School + Boston University · arxiv.org/pdf/2603.20617