India, June 30 -- In May 2026, The Economist launched "Ashoka", a column dedicated to India. It's a rare distinction: Only a handful of countries have named columns - Britain (Bagehot), the US (Lexington), China (Chaguan), and now India (Ashoka). One would have expected the series to reflect curiosity and, given the scale and complexity of the nation, a bit of humility. Instead, it has begun with smugness. Barely a month in, the June 21 piece, "The unlikely city welcoming Delhi's intellectual refugees", tells readers that for centuries, and even post-Independence, Delhi was India's intellectual capital because of its "sheer density of serious thinkers". We are told that since 2014 the space for free thinking has narrowed: "Chiefs of public universities were replaced with more pliant figures. Private universities and non-profits came next. Authors of inconvenient papers lost their jobs. Think-tanks lost their sources of funding." Most astonishingly, that "there is no one to talk to in Delhi anymore." The article drips with misplaced condescension - presuming that the tired framework of secular liberalism is somehow the exclusive yardstick by which to measure the only civilisational democracy in the modern world. To be clear, we are not BJP bhakts. Our own criticisms of the government are many. First, it's too thin-skinned. In 2014, the vulnerability was understandable. But not after 12 years in power. India would benefit from more debate, more disagreement and more confidence in its ability to accommodate dissent. Debate is our dharmic inheritance. On substantive matters, there is no shortage of material. Throw a stone, hit a problem in India. Impossible regulatory structures, the sclerotic judiciary, billion-dollar Make in India factories with no housing solution for workers, toothless city governments. We have all heard of "double engine sarkar", but after decades of constitutional decentralisation, why not "triple engine sarkar"? These are not minor issues. They affect the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians every day. More importantly, they are exactly the kinds of issues that one associates with The Economist at its best. Instead, the magazine seems drawn to a stale story to educate its global readers - the decline of a secular-liberal establishment presented as the decline of intellectual life itself. Our issue with the article is with two foundational mistakes. First, the claim that Delhi before 2014 was a thriving centre of intellectual life. The author has mistaken density for diversity. Let's take each of the author's criticisms. Start with the replacement of dissenting voices with pliant figures. RC Majumdar was one of India's most eminent historians. He was chosen to lead the government of India's official history of the freedom movement. But when his interpretation diverged from the emerging Nehruvian narrative, the project was effectively taken away from him and an alternative official history emerged. Take institutional capture. Read Arun Shourie's Eminent Historians to learn how a small circle came to dominate appointments, grants, textbook committees, and research councils for decades. Institutions such as the Indian Council of Historical Research, National Council of Educational Research and Training, Indian Council for Cultural Relations became home to a narrow set of assumptions about India, its history, and its future. Or free speech. The article invites us to compare a liberal past with a restrictive present. Yet one of the most consequential restrictions on free speech in independent India came through the First Constitutional Amendment under Jawaharlal Nehru himself. The second foundational mistake: The deeper disservice is what sits beneath this dismissive assumption, that everybody in Delhi today, at the helm of these institutions - academia, think tanks, museums or archival places - is intellectually compromised. All of them, really? Delhi remains home to scholars, historians, economists, public intellectuals, former civil servants, researchers, writers and policy practitioners whose views are aligned with the BJP. Is there none among these with enough intellectual integrity worth engaging? One may disagree with these people. One may think they are mistaken. One may prefer other voices. But to suggest that there is no one worth talking to is not merely a criticism of individuals. It is a dismissal of the ideas they represent. Where is the attempt to understand why millions of Indians have come to see questions of history, civilisation and nationhood differently from the way Delhi's intellectual establishment had been presenting them for decades? This country is too large, too layered, and too complicated to be understood through inherited templates and intellectual tropes. Astonishingly, it isn't even liberal to do this. Classical liberalism at least asks us to engage with opposing ideas before dismissing them. To choose to dismiss the legitimacy of the "other" point of view is the antithesis of liberalism. At least understand and acknowledge the legitimacy of the ideas, even if you do not agree with them. We had high hopes for this India-dedicated column: intellectual curiosity, articles reflecting the thrust and parry of competing views. One hopes that the author of this column is not going to spend the rest of his tenure presenting such an antediluvian assessment to the global readership of The Economist. If so, this may as well be written in Delhi Gymkhana over a cup of Darjeeling tea, and asking, "How about another chukker, old chap?" There is a final irony. The Economist chose to name its India column "Ashoka". The young Ashoka was an arrogant warrior, impatient with opposing views. The Ashoka that India remembers is one filled with reflection and humility. One can only hope that the column follows a similar journey....