Cultivating Europe

Volume 1 Issue 5

Sep - Oct 2025

The Argument

Engaging Europe amid Global Turbulence

From the Editor

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Happymon Jacob

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Geopolitically speaking, Europe and India stand at critical crossroads today. Europe is grappling with renewed assertiveness from emerging powers, internal political recalibrations within the continent, and a rapidly unravelling multilateral order. India is carefully navigating regional and global geopolitical uncertainties and is choosing to be more multi-aligned, moving more decisively into the Indo-Pacific, negotiating FTAs, and managing the rapidly rising China challenge in the region and beyond.

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Insight

| August 29, 2025

Hervé Delphin on home, Europe, and his mission in India

Cover Story

| October 3, 2025

Europe’s China Temptations

The article warns that Europe shouldn’t react to Trump’s unpredictable, confrontational policies by pivoting toward China. ...

| September 1, 2025

Europe and the New Wolf World

This article explores how Europe navigates a multipolar ‘wolf world’, balancing geopolitics, geoeconomics and norms amid ...

Pranay Kotasthane, Anirudh Suri

| October 3, 2025

Digital Strategic Autonomy: The Case for an EU-India Open Tech Maitri

| September 2, 2025

Behind the Polished Communiqués: Diplomacy and Camaraderie in Conflicts

| September 2, 2025

Mumbai on their minds: the Europeans of Bollywood

Garima Shrivastava

| September 2, 2025

The Unravelling of Feminist Foreign Policy in Europe

| September 1, 2025

Europe-India Space Relations: Bound by Strategic Autonomy

| September 1, 2025

Migration and Mobility: Austria and India

| September 1, 2025

India and NATO: the case for greater dialogue

Geopolitics

| September 15, 2025

Above All, Look after Yourself: Conflict Mediation with Chinese Characteristics

| September 12, 2025

Growing Apart? Why Pakistan Still Refuses to Recognise Israel

| September 2, 2025

Australia’s Long Search for Multipolar Balance in the Indo-Pacific

| September 2, 2025

India must endorse the Dalai Lama’s statement on his succession

Junjun Sharma Pathak

| September 2, 2025

Balancing Faith and Geopolitics: Amitabh Mathur on Tibet’s Future and the Legacy of the Dalai Lamas

History

| September 3, 2025

Emerging shades, Unhelpful outcomes: Mapping India’s Multilateralism

India’s evolving multilateralism reflects a shift from idealistic nonalignment to pragmatic multi-alignment in a fragmented world ...

Vikramaditya Shrivastava

| September 3, 2025

From Chennai to Copenhagen: How India’s Church Records Forge Living Bridges

Discover how digitising church records and local storytelling can transform India into a living archive for ...

T.C.A. Raghavan

| September 3, 2025

Between Two Partitions: Asaf Ali and the UN

Asaf Ali, India’s first Ambassador, carried the weight of two unfolding partitions—India and Palestine—into his early ...

Vineet Thakur, Ladhu R. Choudhary

| September 3, 2025

A Nazi in postwar Delhi: Indian Anti-Colonialism and the Third Reich

In 1948, India’s Ministry of External Affairs controversially recruited a former Nazi to train its earliest ...

Civitas

| September 3, 2025

Portals to the Past: A Visual Record of Chettinad’s Transnational Heritage

| September 3, 2025

Of Money and Mansions: The Global Forces and Invisible Labour Behind Chettinad’s Grand Architecture

Book Reviews

Abhinandan Kumar

| September 3, 2025

Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India By Srinath Raghavan

| September 3, 2025

The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilisation Will Survive the Decline of the West By Amitav Acharya

| September 3, 2025

Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia By Sam Dalrymple

| September 3, 2025

A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar By Narayani Basu

| September 3, 2025

Indian Parliament: Shaping Foreign Policy By K V Prasad

India’s World

| September 3, 2025

Notables

Geo-Econ

Dhananjay Sahai, Prashant Khurana

| September 3, 2025

Stablecoins and the Trainwreck waiting to happen on India’s Exchange Control Regulations

Theory

| September 3, 2025

Why Might isn’t Right: The Moral Dimensions of Classical Realism in the Work of Thucydides

Authors & Books

| September 3, 2025

What the West Should Learn from India: Insights from a German Diplomat

Junjun Sharma Pathak

| September 3, 2025

Meet the Author: Sanjaya Baru

Art & Culture

| September 7, 2025

Artisans on the runway: from handmade to haute couture

Global demand sustains India’s artisanal heritage, but inadequate safeguards risk exploitation and erode community ownership of ...

| September 3, 2025

How Bollywood Fell for Switzerland

Switzerland endures as Bollywood’s ultimate canvas of romance, where cinema, nostalgia, and tourism blend into a ...

| September 3, 2025

Love Across the Borders: The Legacy of Amrita Pritam and Waris Shah

Despite bans and political rifts, music and poetry continue bridging India and Pakistan, carrying shared nostalgia, ...

| September 3, 2025

Kailash Mansarovar Yatra – Notes From a Journalist’s Diary

At the roof of the world, pilgrims rediscovered faith while India and China cautiously reopened a ...

Noteworthy on Screen

India’s World

| September 4, 2025

The Swimmers (2022)

India’s World

| September 4, 2025

20,000 Species of Bees(2023)

India’s World

| September 4, 2025

I’m Still Here (2024)

India’s World

| September 4, 2025

Britain and the Blitz (2025)

Letter to the editor

| September 4, 2025

Letter to the Editor

The Last Word

| September 4, 2025

Beyond the Summer of Humiliation: A Resilient Europe

Adding insult to injury, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” ideologues have intervened brazenly in Europe’s domestic politics. The U.S. State Department—once fond of lecturing non-Western nations on human rights—has turned its gaze on European democracies, raising alarms about restrictions on free speech. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance has publicly scolded Europe for abandoning “classical Western values”