Author: Deshwale Editorial Desk

Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First is not simply a history of Israel’s intelligence services. It is a meditation on the uneasy marriage between morality and raison d’état in the modern world. Written with the authority of a seasoned investigative journalist, the book traces the evolution of Israel’s policy of targeted assassination from the state’s founding to the present day, situating it within the broader dilemmas of global counterterrorism and clandestine warfare. A Nation’s Doctrine, Drawn From Ancient Wisdom At its core, Bergman’s narrative is about survival. Israel, a small state surrounded by hostile neighbours, developed a doctrine that prioritised…

March 9 has witnessed moments that altered the course of empires, economies, science and sport. Here is a look at ten events that made this date matter. Emperor Wu Takes the Han Throne – 141 BC Liu Che ascended to power in China at a young age and went on to rule the Han Dynasty for 54 years. Known posthumously as Emperor Wu, he expanded China’s territory significantly, pushed trade along the Silk Road and left a legacy that shaped Chinese civilisation for centuries. Few rulers in history governed for as long or as consequentially. Cabral Sets Sail for India…

From AIIMS Ward to UPSC Rank One: Anuj Agnihotri and the Anatomy of India’s Toughest Exam On some nights during his internship at AIIMS Jodhpur, Anuj Agnihotri would finish stitching a patient’s wound, wash his hands, and return to a different kind of case file. That was, ‘The Indian Constitution’. In the quiet hours after emergency rounds, between ward calls and exhaustion, he revised polity, economy, and ethics. The scalpel and the syllabus shared his time. Three years later, on Friday, 6 March, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) announced the Civil Services Examination results. Agnihotri, 26, from Rawatbhata near…

The commute was punishing. The office was rigid. But embedded in all of it was a mercy that nobody noticed until it was gone. There was a time when work in India was exhausting but containable. The suburban train was punishing. The traffic was relentless. The office hierarchy was rigid. But embedded in all of it was a psychological mercy: work had a geography. You left home. You travelled. You arrived. You returned. The commute, whether on Mumbai’s crush-loaded locals, Bengaluru’s Outer Ring Road crawl, or Delhi’s Metro, was not merely transport. It was a boundary ritual. It separated the…

March 7 has witnessed moments that cut across empires, science, religion and sport. A Roman decree, a royal rejection, a stolen heiress and a batting record that rewrote cricket history all share this date. The ten events below trace a path from ancient Rome to a cricket ground in Ahmedabad. Antoninus Pius Dies and Rome Gets Two Emperors for the First Time – 161 Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius died on this day, triggering an arrangement that had no precedent in Roman history. He was succeeded not by one emperor but two – Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus ruled as co-emperors.…

Think about the best leader you have ever known. Not the most famous. Not the most powerful. The best. The person who made you feel seen. The manager who stayed late not to look good but because the work mattered. The teacher who changed the direction of your life with a single conversation. The local councillor who actually showed up. The doctor who ran the understaffed ward like it was the only ward in the world. Now ask yourself one honest question: where are they today? Chances are, they are exactly where you found them. Still in that classroom. Still…

Tamil Nadu does not reject the BJP emotionally. It rejects it structurally. Political Analysis | Tamil Nadu | Strategic Affairs For six decades, the state’s politics has been organised around a Dravidian axis: social justice, linguistic pride, welfare expansion, and calibrated regional autonomy. Any party seeking power here must operate within that grammar. The Bharatiya Janata Party has made incremental gains. But it remains an outsider to the Dravidian consensus. Now, the emergence of actor Vijay and his political formation, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, complicates the chessboard further. The 2026 Assembly election will not merely test the BJP’s growth. It will…

March 6 carries more historical weight than most calendars let on. From a landmark chemistry presentation in St Petersburg to a colonial treaty signed on the Iberian Peninsula, the date sits at the crossroads of science, politics and human conflict. The events below span five centuries and touch almost every corner of the world. Portugal Cedes the Canary Islands – 1479 The Treaty of Alcáçovas reshaped the colonial ambitions of two Iberian powers. Portugal agreed to hand over the Canary Islands to Castile, and in return secured recognition of its claims along the West African coast. The deal marked an…

Every five years, a billion people exercise the world’s largest democratic exercise. Then the files move. And nothing changes quite as much as the ballot promised it would. There is a performance that takes place every five years in India. It is magnificent in its scale: six hundred million voters, a million polling booths, ink-stained fingers held up like evidence of civic virtue. Leaders rise. Leaders fall. Oaths are taken on the steps of Rashtrapati Bhavan. Television anchors declare mandates, revolutions, historic shifts. And then, somewhere in the middle floors of North Block, a file moves from one desk to…

Significant events across political, military, technological, sporting and scientific domains have dotted the landscape of March 5 in the past. Different regions of the world have borne the brunt of these events. Here is a chronological look at 10 of these events. Julian Marches Against the Sassanids – 363 Roman Emperor Julian left Antioch on 5 March 363 with an army of 90,000 men to wage war against the Sassanid Empire. The campaign was one of Rome’s most ambitious eastern offensives. Julian was mortally wounded during the expedition, and his death reshaped Rome’s strategic posture along its eastern frontier for…