Word: forte
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the Mughal Emperor of India, led an enviable existence. He no longer hunted, as he once loved to do, but he still read and wrote poetry, flew his kites, talked to his numerous sons and grandsons, and, from his residence in the Red Fort, enjoyed the views of his beloved city, Delhi. The city was all that was left of Zafar's dominion, but even there he wasn't really in charge; the year was 1857, and the British East India Company ruled Delhi and most of the rest of India. Then, in the course...
...Zafar's court and the religiously tolerant culture of Mughal Delhi exacerbated divisions between Hindus and Muslims and fueled the rise of Islamic fundamentalism on the subcontinent. Without Zafar, Dalrymple writes, "it would be almost impossible to imagine that Hindu sepoys could ever have rallied to the Red Fort and the standard of a Muslim leader, joining with their Muslim brothers in an attempt to revive the Mughal Empire." By invoking the memory of the last Emperor, Dalrymple reminds Indians of a time when such religious harmony was easy to come...
...Watada, based at Fort Lewis, just south of Seattle, said he refused to go to war with his unit last June because he had come to the conclusion that the war in Iraq is illegal. In conversations with his superiors, in media interviews and at the court-martial this week he contended that his Army oath required him not to follow what he called an "illegal order" to deploy...
...seek the face of India - or perhaps a nice shirt, sari, necklace, stuffed paratha, air conditioner, television set or water pump - look no farther than Chandni Chowk. That centuries-old market near old Delhi's famed Red Fort is a crumbling warren of shops, food stalls, shrines, temples and mosques. Indians of varying ethnic and religious hues work and worship alongside each other in grudging harmony, sharing a common language: money...
There is nothing offhand about The Peacock Throne, named after the Red Fort seat from which the 17th century Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan held sway over all Hindustan. Saraf casts a scientist's eye on the country of his birth and finds it still preoccupied with holding sway. He starts with Indira Gandhi's 1984 assassination by Sikh bodyguards and the spasm of anti-Sikh violence that ensued. Kartar Singh, a Sikh who runs a Chandni Chowk appliance store, narrowly escapes death in the rioting - and leverages that experience to gain influence in a Hindu nationalist party...