My intellectual journey began not in a library, but within the echoing silence of a Jesuit seminary. It taught me the power of ideas, the necessity of constructive debate, and the quiet strength of discipline.
From seminary student to electronics salesman, from JNU professor to think tank director and magazine editor: my career has been defined by the conviction that the most important questions about India's place in the world deserve both rigorous academic scrutiny and honest public engagement.
For seventeen years at Jawaharlal Nehru University, I taught, researched, and argued — about India-Pakistan relations, nuclear deterrence, and what India actually is in the international system. That insistence on staying close to the evidence — on bearing witness rather than theorising from a safe distance — has stayed with me.
I now run the Council for Strategic and Defence Research, edit India's World, and continue to write and teach. My goal remains what it always was: to produce analysis that is both intellectually honest and genuinely useful — to policymakers, students, journalists, and the informed citizen.
