Madhav Das Nalapat

Madhav Das Nalapat was appointed India’s first professor of geopolitics and subsequently the UNESCO Peace Chair by Manipal University in 1999, positions he still holds. Professor Nalapat previously edited The Times of India, and before that the Mathrubhumi. Among the concepts originated by him are Asian NATO, the constrainment of China, the phenomenon of the proxy nuclear state, the danger of the Arab Spring morphing into a Wahhabi winter, the use of social media by hostile lobbies to widen societal faultlines in the US and India, as well as the concept of the twenty-first century Anglosphere based not on ‘blood of the body’ but of the mind. Professor Nalapat divides his time between Delhi, where he is Editorial Director of ITV Network, Manipal and his home in Trivandrum where he lives with his wife Lakshmi Bayi, XII Princess of the erstwhile state of Travancore. He has authored nine books and contributed to the Asian Wall Street Journal, The Diplomat, The Beijing Review, Japan Forward, Taipei Times, CNN and numerous other media platforms in India and abroad. The son of poetess Kamala Das, Professor Nalapat comes from a family that has, among others, contributed satirist Aubrey Menen (uncle), Poetess Laureate of Kerala Balamani Amma (grandmother), chronicler of philosophy Narayana Menon (grand-uncle), founder of the first English-language journal in Malabar, C.V. Subramanya Iyer (paternal grandfather) and former chairman of the Press Trust of India, V.M. Nair (maternal grandfather).