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A Bitter Education

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A Bitter Education Pankaj Mishra In its quiescence to the West’s war on Iran, India is squandering a precious legacy. April 9, 2026 issue Aga Khan Museum, Toronto Abbas II of Persia receiving the Mughal ambassador; painting attributed to Abu’l-Hasan Mostawfi Ghaffari, circa 1780–1794 This article was originally published online March 13, 2026. —The Editors Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in The Discovery of India that “among the many people and races who have come in contact with Indians and influenced India’s life and culture, the oldest and most persistent have been the Iranians.” It is the kind of historical fact readily verified by ordinary experience. My grandfather was more fluent in Persian than in any other language; I grew up using Persian words in everyday conversations, eating food that originated in Persia, and listening to music whose most widespread and enduring forms— qawwali and the ghazal —were refined by a medieval poet in Persian. For nearly a millennium, Persian was the li...
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Seeing with the heart

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  Obituary | Seeing with the heart Raghu Rai’s whole canvas was India The country’s most famous photojournalist died on April 26th, aged 83 Save Share Photograph: Magnum May 14th 2026 | 5 min read Listen to this story I t was hard to walk down a street with Raghu Rai. One friend estimated that, in a ten-minute trot to tea, he had stopped at least 100 times. He had seen what others did not see. A shadow on a wall that dramatised a woman passing, and the way her sari fell. Three sleeping dogs composing the centre of a terrace. Two commuters at a railway station standing stock still, reading their newspapers, while the crowd surged past them. Two old men walking in opposite directions, one a well-suited businessman, the other a bent, ragged beggar. This was seeing that did not miss an inch of space; seeing, or darshan , that recognised the connection between all things. Through his camera he met his god. Out in the fields he could spend hours too, enjoying the elegance of humped Zeb...
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My Friend, Stalin’s Daughter

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  Personal History My Friend, Stalin’s Daughter How “the little princess of the Kremlin” became the Cold War’s most famous defector, then struggled to create a new life in the United States. By  March 24, 2014 In a childhood game, she would issue orders to her father. He’d answer, “I obey.” Photograph by Gasper Tringale Save this story On April 21, 1967, Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Joseph Stalin, bounded down the stairs of a Swissair plane at Kennedy Airport. She was forty-one years old and wore an elegant white double-breasted blazer. “Hello there, everybody!” she exclaimed to the crowd of reporters on the tarmac. “I am very happy to be here.” Advertisement Svetlana immediately became the Cold War’s most famous defector. She was the only living child of Stalin, who had died in 1953, and she had been known as “the little princess of the Kremlin.” Until a few months earlier, she had never left the Soviet Union. But, at Kennedy, she talked of the freedom and opportunity...
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