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Important note: The archive will only be online for a month at most. We hope you will explore and enjoy it while it is still available. All of these are gift links so you can share them freely with friends and family as well. 

 

The Big Story has always been the perfect epitome of splainer. Each of these required hours of painful research. We were like internet ragpickers, painstakingly picking our way through search results, hard to find links, badly written or explained articles. We then assembled these bits of information—pieces of a large, complex jigsaw puzzle—to explain what was happening and why. 

 

We all learned how to carefully read and understand dense material, to identify and fill in the gaps in reporting, to explain convoluted subjects in clear language—without sacrificing complexity. It is the single most hardest thing we ever did as a publication. And until a year ago, we did it day after day (which now seems astonishing to all of us). 

 

Here then are the Big Stories we are most proud of. They showcase the great diversity and depth of the work we have done over the past five years. Please remember, none of it would have been possible without the emotional, moral and financial support of our investors and subscribers:)

 

What Rachel John picked:  

 

One: The two part series on the theft of Indian antiquities. Part one looked at who is stealing these artworks. Part two focused on who is buying stolen goods and why it is so hard to get them back.

 

Two: The two part series on beauty products. Part one looked at the evolution of ‘active ingredients’—from arsenic to retinols—and the beauty cult of chemistry. In part two, we went looking for scientific evidence for some of the most popular ingredients in your serum.

 

Three: We have done so much on Gaza. As with other difficult news events, it ground us down—the emotional stress of not having the luxury of looking away, even for a day. But there is also the pride in doing a difficult job—even when we hated every minute of it. Our YouTube explainer pulls together the best of our reporting on the history of Palestine—and the geopolitics that caused this century’s greatest horror to date.

 

Four: Delimitation. It sounds like some obscure legal term. It is, in fact, the great Damoclean sword hanging over Indian politics—a North-South battle that will define the future of our nation over the next five years. In part one, we laid out the lopsided growth in India’s population. We also explained why delimitation according to the current formula will result in the near irrelevance of Southern states—at least on the national stage. Part two looked at possible solutions for this seemingly intractable conundrum.

 

What Nirmal Bhansali picked: 

 

One: We did a two-part series on the world’s longest happiness study—which is 85 years old—and claims to have discovered the secret recipe of the good life. In the first part, we look at the convoluted history of happiness research—and how the Harvard study reflects its trajectory. Part two examines what the study teaches us about the good life—and whether the lessons learned from this kind of research are of any value.

Two: We did a four part series on personal laws in the Constitution—and the push for the Uniform Civil Code. Yes, we did! Thanks mainly to the excellent lawyers who were part of the splainer team at the time (yes, lawyers who took the leap to join splainer on its adventure, and likely made their parents unhappy). 

 

• The first part of this series traced the birth of personal laws in colonial India—and the fierce Constituent Assembly debates over them. 
• Part two looked back at Nehru’s campaign to reform Hindu laws—while he left Muslim laws untouched. 
• Part three starts with the codification of the Shariat into personal law—and looks at the controversy around the Shah Bano judgement—including Rajiv Gandhi’s response to it.
• Part four looks at the various arguments put forward by different sides More importantly, what would such a code look like?

 

Three: We also did a two-part series on Disney. Part one examined how Disney has turned all of Hollywood into a recycling machine. Part two laid out the abysmal failures of Disney’s latest offerings—and whether they spell the beginning of nostalgia fatigue.

 

What Sara Varghese picked:

One: It wasn’t all doom and gloom. We had lots of fun doing a Big Story on Raveer Singh’s butt. When the actor Ranveer Singh was booked for a battery of ‘crimes’ for posing naked in a magazine photoshoot, our Big Story looked at the laws that cover nudity—the double standards in applying those laws—and India’s time-honoured tradition of baring it all.

Two: Our favourite V-day Big Story was penned by Sandip Roy who explored the gloriously tumultuous, subversive and many times tragic ‘love history’ of India. It was a wonderful reminder of the messy complexity of our nation and its people.

 

Three: We have been fortunate to feature a number of guest writers. Among the best is Samarth Bansal—whose meticulous investigation of The Wire’s three-part expose of a secret BJP app called Tek Fog—offered a lesson in the perils of our ideologically polarised media.

 

Four: Each day brings a new attempt to raze down an ancient monument built by Muslim rulers. Among our best is a Big Story on the Qutub Minar—the target of Hindu groups who claim it was built using materials of 27 temples destroyed by Muslim conquerors. In fact, they are exactly right. But we showed that the Minar’s history is more complex than that of Islamic triumphalism—and cannot be easily reduced to Hindu vs Muslim divides of the present.

 

What Aarthi Ramnath picked:

 

One: We did a number of fab explainers on cricket. This Big Story looked at the origin story of cricket in the US—and how it came to host the World Cup. Just as good: Our Big Story on the history of women’s cricket in India. Both were examples of how we combined careful research and colourful images and facts to make history lessons come alive:)

 

Two: Plenty of times we just had plain fun—like this Big Story on the Hollywood rulebook for Hinduism—romping our way through the many absurd, orientalising examples. 

 

Three: Festival season offered a good excuse to revisit mythology—like this Big Story on the many lesser but no less ‘authentic’ versions of the ultimate aadarsh naari—Sita. Nope, these were not feminist retellings—but tales with as much historical, scriptural cred as the popular version. 

 

Four: As any splainer subscriber knows, we have always had a real soft spot for the weird—like a great debate over why animals have ‘virgin births’.

 

Five: We have always been open to exploring the many kinds of sexuality—incuding asexuality. This Big Story looked at a sexual orientation that can’t be entirely defined.

 

What Yash Budhwar picked:

 

One: We’ve never lost a single opportunity to include animals in our line up. We did a wonderful two-part series on Indian dogs. In part one, we offered a colourful historical guide to the place of dogs in Indian culture—and why Indian breeds fell from favour. In part two, we introduced you to these native breeds and the attempts to save them from extinction. 

 

Two: Speaking of animals, we have also obsessed over the de-extinction of species—including the woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger.

 

Three: Our great, embarrassing love for pandas did not get in the way of writing this Big Story on their uselessness as ambassadors for preservation. We trace the history of the world’s panda obsession—and explain the debate over single species conservation.

 

Four: We covered all the big MeToo stories, but the most important among them was this Big Story on the gross instances of sexual assault and harassment in Hindustani classical music—and the deep-rooted misogyny and inequality embedded in the guru-shishya relationship.

 

What Raghav Bikhchandani picked:

 

One: Indian news outlets have rarely spent much energy on global politics. Splainer was a rare exception. Our recent explainer flagged the real peril in Syria—not the domestic violence but the fact that great parts of the Middle East have now been left at Israel’s mercy. And when the shit hits the ceiling in Africa, please remember that our Big Story already flagged the resurgence of Islamic extremism in Burkina Faso—and more broadly across the Sahel. 

 

Two: We have tracked AI from the very beginning—and in all its aspects, be it job loss, rise of AI news, even AI sentience. But among the best is Samarth Bansal’s explainer on the power-hungry world of AI to understand its energy appetite and what it means for our planet.

 

Three: One of splainer’s great strengths is our lack of ideological blinkers. For example, our two part series on the Manosphere. Part one looked at what it claims about women—but also how it has shaped something called a ‘Femosphere’. Part two examined the mainstreaming of the Manosphere—and its spread to India—where Andrew Tate is god and Shah Rukh Khan is a simp.

 

Four: Splainer’s strengths have shined brightest with the thorniest of issues. Example: Kashmir. We did Big Stories on:

 

• The history of its accession soon after Partition.
• The birth of Article 370—and its evolution. 
• The Kashmiri Pandits. Part one laid out the political history of the state and the violence leading up to the exodus. Part two mapped the flight of the Pandits from the Valley—and its present-day fallout.

The bottomline: Because there is always one:) All there is left to say about our Big Stories is… yeah, we did pretty good! We hope you think so too!