On election night in New York, the story didn’t read like the familiar script. A little-known state lawmaker—young, openly Muslim, and proudly calling himself a democratic socialist—didn’t just squeak through a fractured field. He won. And in doing so, Zohran…

The picture of a self-sufficient, unchanging Indian village society has been painted for long by orientalist thinkers. Metcalfe was the modern progenitor of the idea where an Indian village was viewed as an autonomous, isolated and idyllic body with its…