Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amanda Marchant, Research Assistant & PhD Candidate in Mental Health, Swansea University
Family courts step in at some of the hardest moments in a child’s life, when parents separate or when there are concerns about their safety.
We already know that children involved in care proceedings are more likely to self-harm. But most children who come into contact with family courts are there because of disputes between parents, not safeguarding concerns. Until now we have known comparatively little about these children or what happens to them after court proceedings end.
For the first time, our research tracked self-harm over time in these children. We found that children who go through the family courts, whether because of parental separation or welfare concerns, are more likely to self-harm than those who do not.
This doesn’t mean the courts themselves are causing harm. This increased risk is more likely linked to the circumstances that lead families to court in the first place. Family courts are an often-missed opportunity to offer help.
We analysed anonymised family court records alongside routinely collected health data for more than 700,000 children between 2011 and 2018. Around 17,000 had been involved in private cases – usually disputes over finances or living arrangements after separation. Another 5,500 were involved in public cases, where local authorities step in over concerns about a child’s welfare.
The risk of self-harm was about twice as high after private cases and more than three times as high after public ones.
Children involved in family court were more likely to self-harm than those with no court contact. Diana Parkhouse/Shutterstock
Previous research shows that families in contact with courts often face challenges beyond the courtroom. They are more likely to live in deprived areas and to experience mental or physical health problems, in both caregivers and children. These factors are already known to increase the risk of self-harm in young people.
Historically, people designing services for families have not always had enough data to guide the decisions made in family courts. Evidence now shows elevated risks not just of self-harm but for a range of adverse outcomes, including depression, anxiety and poorer educational attainment. Yet family courts receive far less public attention than many other issues affecting young people.
A warning sign we shouldn’t ignore
Self-harm is relatively common in adolescents. Most young people who self-harm do not go on to die by suicide. However, it is one of the clearest signals of distress and one of the strongest risk factors for suicide. This makes early identification and support especially important.
Children who come into contact with family courts should be a priority for support.
Parental separations are common. Many children experience them and their effects can be underestimated and downplayed because of that. Around one in ten separating families turn to family courts to resolve disputes, often as a last resort because of the financial and emotional costs. It may also reflect high levels of conflict between parents.
The decisions made during these proceedings can be life changing for children. Where families reach the point of involving family courts, we should ensure that support is available for the whole family, especially for children.
Family courts are in a unique position. They come into contact with children and families, with complex and intersecting needs, at important moments that have the potential to shape the rest of their lives.
We believe that contact with the courts should be seen as an opportunity to identify the needs of these families and offer practical, timely support to children and their families. This might include wider networks such as schools, community services and primary care or to provide clearer pathways to specialist mental health support where needed.
Decisions made in family courts have the potential to shape children’s lives at critical moments. These moments should be seen as signals of need, not just legal milestones. If we act on them, we have a real chance to support children at the point they need it most.
Amanda Marchant receives funding from Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW).
Ann John receives funding from MRC, Health and Care Research Wales and NIHR.
Begos’ Friends by Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani, painted in the 1910s. At a keipi or festive supra, the tamada holds a kantsi (horn) and introduces a toast. Wikiuka/Wikimedia
When Soviet president and Communist party secretary Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the policies of perestroika (reconstruction) and glasnost (openness) in the mid-1980s, it marked the beginning of cautious reforms of the Soviet Union. Georgia, or the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, to give it its full name at the time, was on the periphery of the union.
Far from Moscow, it lay hidden on the other side of the Caucasus mountain range on the edge of the Black Sea. As a doctoral candidate in linguistics on a research grant to Tbilisi University, I spent one year living there, between 1987 and 1988. I was conducting research on the Georgian language.
Travel at the time was very difficult, and could only happen via Moscow. I did not return to Sweden for the duration of my stay. In the recent publication, We Witnessed the Soviet Break-Up: Five Scandinavian Researchers on the Final Years of the USSR, Seen From the Caucasus, I detail how this gave me a front-row seat from which to observe the speed at which society was shifting – and how language was key to that transformation. I also observed how old cultural traditions had endured despite decades of Communist propaganda and harsh Sovietisation.
Rapid transformation
The May Day parade was long one of the key moments in the Soviet calender. I witnessed the last time it was held in central Tbilisi, in 1987. People were carrying red flags. Banners declaiming “Glory to the Communist party” and “Glory to our multinational Soviet Fatherland” were draped on the main buildings.
Next year, however, the national movement across the republic was pushing for a free Georgia. In November 1988, many took part in a hunger strike in front of the Georgian parliament against changes in the constitution that would reduce the rights of the Georgian republic. Protesters wanted what they termed the “Russification of Georgia” to come to an end.
Georgian society was multiethnic and multilingual, counting Russians and Georgians alongside Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Abkhaz, Ossetians, Greeks and many others. Georgian was the main language within the Georgian education system as well as in broadcasting and the press and, technically, according to Article 6 of the Constitution of Soviet Georgia recognised as the republic’s official language. However, during the Soviet period, Russian speakers could easily live and work in Georgia without knowing Georgian: Russian was the lingua franca for inter-ethnic communication within the republic and the Soviet Union at large.
As a non-Indo-European language, Georgian boasts its own script and a written history that dates back to the 5th century AD. It is a cornerstone of the Georgian identity. Within the wider push for greater political freedom, Georgians now fought for the implementation of the constitutional status of Georgian. This included increased demands for knowledge of Georgian in workplaces and administration, while also investing in teaching Georgian as a second language.
Efforts were made to develop Georgian terminology in technology, science and other fields where Russian had been dominant. Citizens who had little or no knowledge of Georgian were under pressure to learn.
During my time in the country, I was welcomed with more openness and engagement, and less suspicion, than during the three years I had spent in Moscow. I experienced the extent to which hospitality was an ancient Georgian virtue. “A guest is a gift from God,” local people would say.
Georgians were proud of their cuisine and ancient wine production. When a guest entered a home, the dinner table would quickly transform into a feast, what is know as a “supra”. This came with its own specific structure and rules. The man of the house would assume the role of toastmaster (tamada), and the wife and female members of the family would prepare and serve the food. They would be called in from the kitchen for a toast in honour of the women. In some traditional families, the men would sit at one end of the table, and the women and children at the other.
These traditions were discernible across the different cultural communities within Georgia. Tensions at the time were growing between Tbilisi and the central Soviet authorities in Moscow, and within Georgia itself, with minorities in the autonomous entities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
In the summer of 1989, the first violent Abkhaz-Georgian clashes took place. I was on a day trip, travelling from Sokhumi, the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, to a wedding in a small town called Zugdidi in the Megrelia region when violence broke out. Unable to return to Sokhumi as planned, I ended up spending one week with a family on the outskirts of the town.
Being there was like stepping back in time. The household was run by a young woman called Tsira, who, as a widow, dressed all in black. According to tradition, she would remain in black for the rest of her life. Her eldest son, who was 12-13 years old at the time, appeared to be seen as the man of the house.
Tsira’s neighbours came round and my friends from Sokhumi sat with them, discussing the conflict in Megrelian, the local language. Tsira prepared food, chicken and maize porridge over an open fire in a small wooden hut in the yard. Smoked cheese hung from the ceiling.
At one point, we visited the cemetery. Tsira sat on a stone bench by a black marble bust of her husband while relatives and guests sat around the grave. The women brought out Soviet champagne and food. I observed how toasting and eating bread dipped in wine were important in a ritual of honour and remembrance.
These religious practices showed how, within the official atheism of Soviet society, Georgian Orthodox traditions persisted – as they still do today. Another such religious practice common in Georgia during Soviet times was to hold a commemorative supra 40 days after a person had passed away. During this period, the men were not supposed to shave. The 40 days are considered the time it takes for the soul to reach heaven and God.
In 1990, I heard the crowd shouting “occupiers, occupiers” in front of the general staff of the Caucasian Military District in Tbilisi. The newly adopted Soviet law, dubbed the “law of non-secession” made the idea that the Soviet Union might break up feel a utopian dream. And yet it did, merely a year later. Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union on April 9 1991 and the split was finalised on December 26 with the dissolution of the USSR.
In the intervening decades, the ethnopolitical conflicts that were fomenting during this early post-Soviet period have only deepened, not least following the Russo-Georgian war of 2008. Today, they remain largely unresolved and the situation in Georgia, highly volatile.
The Georgian language, however, has reclaimed the media, education and the streets. Russian has been replaced by English among the young generation of Georgians who do not carry this Soviet heritage.
Karina Vamling received funding from the Swedish Institute, Åke Wiberg Foundation, Swedish Network for European Studies in Political Science and the Längman Cultural Foundation. She is affiliated to the research group Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus Regional Research (RUCARR), Malmö University, Sweden.
Pope Leo’s decision to make Africa one of the early destinations of his young papacy signals the continent’s importance in global Catholicism. His April 2026 visit reflects both his personal ties to Africa and the rapid rise of Christianity across the continent.
His 10-day itinerary to Algeria, Angola, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea is also historically significant. In Algeria, for instance, Pope Leo will walk in the footsteps of Augustine of Hippo (who lived around the year 400), his spiritual father, highlighting the African roots of Christianity.
But when the pope announced his Africa trip in February 2026, few could have anticipated how rapidly the global security landscape would deteriorate. There is a real risk that ongoing global crises, such as the conflict in Iran, will dominate attention, overshadowing both the significance of Pope Leo’s visit and the persistent, often overlooked, conflicts across Africa.
The last papal visit to Africa – by his predecessor, Pope Francis, in 2023 to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan – was similarly intended to draw attention to Africa’s enduring wars. Vast refugee settlements across the continent stand as stark reminders of lives suspended in uncertainty and suffering.
I am an African theologian and my work examines how contemporary Catholicism is changing. My research goes beyond tracking the demographics of Christian expansion. It asks how Christian communities, rooted in diverse cultures, are transforming societies and cultures in line with the Gospel.
By choosing to visit Africa now, Pope Leo is making a clear statement: Africa matters. The Catholic church on the continent can seize this moment to build more equal, non-patronising partnerships with churches in the global north, where membership is declining.
Christianity’s African roots
Christianity is not a recent import to Africa brought by European missionaries. The continent has long provided deep cultural, spiritual and theological roots for Christianity. This includes Joseph and Mary’s flight into Egypt when the life of Jesus was threatened by Herod after his birth, and the catechetical school of Alexandria, the world’s oldest centre of Christian higher learning.
Pope Leo’s visit offers a powerful historical reminder of the continent’s foundational role in shaping the church, particularly in its first five centuries.
Additionally, Africa is home to the fastest-growing Catholic population, now estimated at 280 million Catholics, or 19.8% of the world’s Catholic population. In 2025 alone, the African Catholic church had 8.3 million new members.
Africa contributes significantly to the church’s global human capital. Nigeria, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among the top 10 “sending nations” in the missionary exchange from the global south to the global north.
Pope Paul VI was the first modern pope to visit Africa, in 1969. He said the time had come for Africa to have “an African Christianity”.
Many African Catholics see this speech as an invitation to Africans to take responsibility for making Christianity truly Catholic and truly African.
Pope John Paul II later, in 1995, affirmed that the “hour of Africa” had come. Pope Benedict XVI, during his 2009 visit to Africa, described the continent as a “spiritual lung” for a world in crisis.
These expressions signal a shared conviction: the church in Africa has come of age and stands as a major spiritual force in the contemporary expansion of global Christianity.
Some challenges persist
Pope Leo is no stranger to the continent. He visited several African countries during his two terms as the global head of the Order of St Augustine, headquartered in Rome.
However, he will encounter a persistent and troubling paradox that marks both the church and wider society. The rapid growth of Christianity has not consistently translated into better lives for people. If the church is to remain relevant, it must more convincingly embody the Gospel’s transformative power within the lived realities of African societies.
It needs to address the fluid religious imagination of many African Christians who easily migrate from mainline Christian groups like Catholicism to Pentecostalism and African traditional religion. This means the Catholic church needs a moment of self-introspection to ask if it is really meeting the people at their points of need. Is it a church that bears the narratives and wounds of the people?
Without addressing the deeper crisis of faith and the battle for survival in Africa by so many believers walking in poverty, the church risks becoming a provider of charitable services. It could instead be a force for deeper social transformation, religious and moral conversion, and spiritual renewal.
Pope Leo’s visit also unfolds within politically sensitive contexts.
In Cameroon, the long-running conflict in Anglophone regions and President Paul Biya’s long rule have raised concerns. A papal visit could be interpreted as legitimising power structures that many see as repressive. Biya’s decades in power have been associated with electoral manipulation, repression of dissent and state capture.
Similar tensions exist in Equatorial Guinea. President Teodoro Obiang has been in power for 47 years. His rule has been marked by the suppression of the opposition in an oil-rich yet deeply unequal nation.
The image of two long-serving rulers standing with Pope Leo will be striking. It will raise questions. But it will also create an opportunity for the pope to speak some hard truths to leaders who are destroying Africa.
By contrast, Angola offers a more hopeful narrative of post-conflict recovery. It demonstrates how collaboration between the church, state and civil society can yield gradual but meaningful progress.
Africa and the future of a listening church
For all that was said about Pope Francis’ love for Africa, it remains striking that, by his death in April 2025, no African cardinal headed a dicastery (a ministry-level department of the central administration of the Catholic church in Rome).
Africans accounted for barely 12% of the College of Cardinals. Its members are the closest advisors of the pope and choose new popes.
Pope Leo has already begun to address this imbalance in key commissions and administrative structures by appointing Africans to positions of real influence.
One of the most notable traits attributed to him is his capacity to listen. In my view, this listening must confront three interrelated realities if the church in Africa is to become a credible agent of transformation.
Dependency: Parishes and pastoral programmes in Africa still depend on financial support from Europe and North America. This is a major obstacle to the emergence of a mature and self-sustaining African Christianity. The church risks reproducing asymmetrical power dynamics that weaken human agency and pastoral creativity.
Decolonisation: Inherited church structures and theological frameworks should be interrogated. Without this, the church won’t be rooted in the lived experiences and realities of African peoples.
Leadership: The crisis of leadership in Africa is mirrored within the church. What is needed is a transformational, humble and servant leadership grounded in accountability, transparency and shared responsibility. This means greater inclusion of the voices and assets of the laity, especially of women.
Pope Leo’s visit is a key moment for the Catholic Church in Africa. Will it remain a recipient of global Catholicism or help shape its future?
Stan Chu Ilo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Roundhead and cavalier soldiers, wearing partisan hats, face each other and urge their dogs to attack each other (1643). State Library Victoria, Melbourne , CC BY-SA
Around 8pm on a cold February evening in 1733, a gentleman named Francis Peters was returning to his home near Knightsbridge, London, in a hackney cab, when someone knocked on the wooden shutters of the door. An armed horseman thrust a pistol inside, demanded Peters’s money and valuables and snatched a ring from his finger. Peters handed them over without fuss. But when the thief also snatched his hat and wig, he protested vigorously, though in vain – the robber rode away with his booty.
The puzzle, to the modern reader, is that the hat was worth only five shillings – far less than the watch (worth £4), the ring and the cash he had already handed over. So why make such a fuss?
Levellers wearing their hats. Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
The robber was later arrested and Peters made a point of going to see him in Newgate Prison as he awaited trial. He told him it had been bad manners to take his hat. The Old Bailey trial records tell us that the highwayman apologised.
Historically, hats had a significance that went far beyond fashion and keeping the head warm. For any respectable man in Tudor, Stuart and Hanoverian England, to go hatless was almost unthinkable, while for people lower down the social scale, it suggested total destitution. Suspects awaiting trial were often desperate to obtain a hat before appearing in court, to present at least a shred of respectability. But what made it so unthinkable for respectable men to appear hat-less?
As my new research explains, the power of social convention is certainly one part of the answer. Another is contemporary concerns over health and the belief that it was important to keep the head warm at all times. Wearing a nightcap, after all, was common practice. Peters raised his own health concerns when he pleaded with the highwayman. A man who wore a wig as well as a hat would generally have had his head shaved, so the theft left him bare-headed and vulnerable on a cold winter night.
Madness and status
There was another factor, too – the association of a bare head with madness, which was familiar through images of the shaven inmates of Bedlam. The strength of that association can be seen through another strange story – that of Thomas Ellwood, the teenage son of an Oxfordshire gentleman.
In 1659, by chance, Ellwood and his father had come across the Quakers, a new movement at the time. Thomas was intrigued but his father was appalled, and forbade him to attend any Quaker meetings. Thomas sneaked away regardless, even after his father had beaten him and banished him from the dinner table.
Eventually his father found a bizarre tactic that did work: he confiscated all his son’s hats. Many years later, Ellwood explained in his autobiography that the move had rendered him effectively a prisoner for many months, “unless I would have run about the country bare-headed, like a mad-man: which I did not see it my place to do”. He would have appeared deranged, and he recognised the shame that such behaviour would bring to a gentleman’s family.
Hats were an indicator of status in early modern England. The only man not wearing a hat in this illustration is a servant in the gaming house and so a social inferior. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, CC BY
As that concern suggests, the hat also had a far wider significance in this period as a marker of status and in associated gestures of deference. Unlike today, almost everyone wore a hat or, in the case of labourers and poor artisans, a flat cap. And convention required men and boys to doff the hat or cap in the presence of someone of higher status – a parent, master, employer, gentleman, magistrate, peer, or monarch.
Though there was no law to underpin “hat-honour”, the convention was firmly enforced. Many people who had grown up with this convention may have accepted it as part of the natural order of things, but having to “bow and scrape” to a harsh landlord, for example, was deeply resented by others. And in times of political upheaval, such as the civil wars of the 1640s, hat-honour could take on an ideological significance.
John Lilburne was a leader of the radical Leveller movement that was pressing for social reforms and a more accountable form of government. He refused to doff his hat when he was summoned to appear before the House of Lords for publishing illicit tracts, and announced his defiance in a pamphlet.
Many other radical leaders made similar gestures of defiance. Most notorious were the early Quakers, who refused on principle to doff their hats to anyone, explaining it as a gesture against the sin of pride and vanity.
Changing fashions
Refusing hat honour was an overt gesture of defiance associated with radicals, whether political, religious. But after the civil war of the 1640s ended with parliament’s victory over Charles I, the political order was turned upside down, and such gestures might now appeal to the defeated royalists.
At the trial of the king in January 1649, Charles himself refused to remove his hat when brought into court. As sovereign, he refused to recognise any superior on earth, or to accept that any court had the right to try him.
The importance of hat-honour gradually faded in later centuries, as manners became more informal and crowded cities made it ever less practicable. And finally, in the 1960s, the practice of men wearing hats abruptly ceased, for reasons that remain largely unexplained. The “swinging sixties” celebrated youth, informality and the rejection of old, hidebound conventions – and that cultural shift may provide at least a part of the answer.
Bernard Capp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
My earliest memories are of Methodist Mission quarters in the diocese of Dilkusha, Fiji. Dilkusha, the name of a minor Indian principality, was mentioned in E.M. Forster’s classic novel A Passage to India: its name literally means “Heart’s Delight” in Hindi–Urdu.
Dilkusha was the Indian wing of the much larger Fijian diocese of Davuilevu (in Fiji’s Rewa province), site of the famous Baker Hall – named after Reverend Thomas Baker, an Australian Methodist evangelist who ended up in the pot of a disgruntled Fijian chief on July 20 1867.
We were told the reverend had humiliated the high chief in front of his people by touching his hair: a clear affront to Fijian aristocratic protocol. His spare boots, however, survived. They may be seen in the Fiji Museum.
Baker Hall in Davuilevu, probably taken around 1930. Praveen Chandra
Dilkusha, the lesser sister diocese, had no such epic tale. But it quickly became a vibrant centre for Australian Christian evangelists, eager to convert Indian heathens. My father, grandson of an indentured labourer on his mother’s side, came here in the mid-1940s as a primary school teacher.
In the end my father, like Mr Biswas in V.S. Naipaul’s great novel on the plantation Indian diaspora, built a house of his own in the adjoining village of Waila (Realm of Floods). But when I remember my homeland, it is through the decade I spent in Dilkusha Methodist quarters, in the 1950s and early 1960s.
We were part of an enclosed community run by successive Methodist priests. Our joys were few: fishing or canoeing in the great Rewa River below, attending Sunday church services or walking across the paddock to the Boys’ Hostel.
Dilkusha’s history was rich – but for me, it was a drab world. And then magic occurred: we discovered Aladdin’s cave.
Across the river from us, in Nausori Town, a Gujarati Muslim entrepreneur built a cinema hall – Empire Theatre – and my life changed.
Dilkusha, Fiji, in the early 1960s. The old church is on the left and further up is the Dilkusha orphanage. Praveen Chandra
Cinema was my world
I was five years old in 1950, a year short of six, when you could enter school and would be considered mature. Then, in 1951, Raj Kapoor’s film Awaara (The Vagabond), about geneticism and social determinism, came to Empire Theatre. Aged six, my life began to change.
I was never good at reading, unlike my Dilkusha mate Sarwesh (“Tomato”) Thakur, who was an exceptional reader. At school, we learned to read in English, but we spoke in Fiji Hindi at home. My father’s side of the family, however, were more comfortable with Fijian, or iTaukei – the language of the country’s First Nation peoples.
It mattered little that I wasn’t a good reader (or a reader at all). On Saturdays, I entered a world of my own. Over a period of time, I had a repertoire of films in me, thanks to the weekly allowance of a shilling from my parents and another shilling from my Dādī (grandmother), Nausori market’s foremost coconut-oil seller. (I have yet to work out why she did it for me alone when she had some 20 other grandchildren!)
Vijay Mishra (far right), with friends from the Empire Theatre days. Vijay Mishra
So cinema – and Empire Theatre – became my world. It was my literature, my culture, my dream world. It was my escape from failure to compete with my peers, and my school of drama – indeed, my language too. I look back and ask myself how I could have lived without the Saturday matinees – the 10am Hindi film and the 2.30pm Hollywood film.
I lived for Saturdays until I left Fiji aged 18, in 1964. In the Empire Theatre’s downstairs, one shilling (ten cents) seats, infested with khaṭmal (bed bugs), my fantasies were created.
While the films I watched there would connect me with the India I had never physically inhabited, the worlds they opened to me were like temples of desire: elusive and mysterious, as well as enchanting. This would change – but long after I had left Fiji, after I had become a film scholar, writing from distant, sometimes cold lands.
Years later, writing from Perth, Australia, I watched Bollywood fantasies shift from their roots in melodrama to an endorsement of a nation ideologically defined as Hindu. This often involved demonising India’s non-Hindus, especially its age-old Muslim inhabitants. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, elected in 2014, this is also the nation’s political agenda.
It is strikingly displayed in the jingoistic espionage thrillers Dhurandhar I (The Stalwart, 2025) and Durandhar II (The Revenge, 2026) – the latter currently screening in Perth. These films, based on the adventures of an Indian spy in Karachi, Pakistan, define an Indian nation obsessed by the spectres of an enemy that is both another nation (Pakistan) and a “nation”, the Muslim minority within India.
Fantasies on film
Back in 1950s Dilkusha, my Empire Theatre fantasies were of a different order. They began with the Arabian Nights. The defining film in that genre, Homi Wadia’s Alibaba and the Forty Thieves (1954), was properly introduced to me when my father’s friend, the cook at Dilkusha Boys’ Hostel, took me to watch it one Wednesday night in 1955.
Alibaba and the Forty Thieves was a first film love. IMDB
I knew the Alibaba tale, but Wadia’s rendition is a great piece of cinema. It captured Oriental fantasies way better than his Hollywood counterparts. I have seen it more than any other film – and consider it the finest version of an Arabian Nights tale ever.
I also loved sentimental songs from the films of Bollywood’s Golden Age, roughly spanning the films made between Deedar (Sight, 1951) and Gumrah (Infidelity, 1963) – and often marked by a final shot of the lonely hero walking away towards the horizon.
It was in Empire Theatre that I saw the original version of Aah (Sighs, 1953), actor and director Raj Kapoor’s homage to P.C. Barua’s foundational 1935 Bollywood film Devdas (based on a Bengali novel by Saratchandra Chatterjee). Sadly, soon after its initial release, the tragic ending of Aah was changed and the original is no longer available.
Barua’s film had celebrated the entry of the English melodramatic “Man of Feeling” – for whom sentiment and sensibility were allied with true virtue – into the Indian film aesthetic for the first time. (The concept goes back to 18th-century English writer Henry Mackenzie, whose novel The Man of Feeling named it.) The sentimental hero, unable to declare his love, takes to drinking and dies a lonely man.
Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420 (1955) transformed the Man of Feeling into a picaro figure around whom the tensions of tradition and modernity in capitalist India unfold. It also holds a special place, with its appealing cosmopolitanism noted as well in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.
Singing in the rain: Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Shree 420, 1955. Praveen Chandra
In spite of Shree 420’s political message, melodrama remained the overarching genre of Bollywood films. Melodramatic sentimentality found its consummate expression in the films of Dilip Kumar, Bollywood’s finest actor. We sang our own songs of love and longing through films such as Deedar (Sight, 1951), Daag (Blemish, 1952) and Madhumati (1958).
But we also felt at home in his phenomenal banditry drama of peasant rebellion, Gunga Jamna (1961), because of Dilip Kumar’s extraordinary mastery of Avadhi, a Hindi dialect very close to Fiji Hindi. Although the film’s theme of agrarian rebelliousness against the landed gentry was not uncommon, we were attracted to its use of a language that returned the one repressed in us.
Bollywood and Indian nationalism
When I left for New Zealand in February 1964, my relationship with Empire Theatre came to an end. I never returned to that theatre, but it had already made me.
Some 35 years later, quite suddenly, in the subzero temperatures of Edmonton, Canada, where I was a professor of English at the University of Alberta, Wordsworth’s sense of place and spots of time resurfaced as the repressed “aching joys” of times past. The second millennium, too, was coming to an end.
Vijay Mishra around the time he left Fiji, aged 18. Vijay Mishra
Sitting at my desk in an office overlooking the Saskatchewan River, I took out my Waterman fountain pen to write the first sentence of what would grow into a book, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (2002).
In that first sentence, written in longhand, I described cinemas, recalling films seen in Empire Theatre as “the temples of modern India”. While in the book I wrote the films remained temples of desire, Bollywood cinema this century embodies a different kind of desire: a desire where the nation itself is at the centre.
The founding fathers of independent India (notably Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister) established a multicultural India within a secular state. But under Modi and his Bhartiya Janata Party (the BJP), India has been discarding these credentials in favour of a religiously sanctioned nation state.
Bollywood’s new nationalism is a radical refashioning of Gandhi’s idea of the nation, which was based on the principle of denial. He promoted fasting, vegetarianism and non-violence as ways of “renouncing” the self – and hence, the nation.
Naturally, that idea produced cinema such as Guru Dutt’s classic Pyaasa (The Thirsty One, 1957) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper Flowers, 1959), which positioned the hero as renouncer: the melodramatic sentimentalist whose life was one of sacrifice. The songs the hero sang embodied mourning and melancholy.
No foundational film captured that renouncer ideal better than the 1935 version of Devdas, in both Bengali and Hindi, about two lovers – Debdas and Parbati – divided by class. Essentially, it is a film about a Man of Feeling, for whom abjection and denial define love, with death the redemptive act.
Bollywood cinema endlessly reprised the narrative – finding in it, precisely if absurdly, the ideal of renouncement. The better known 1955 Bimal Roy version endorses this reading.
Director P.C. Barua, Amar Mullick and Chandrabati in Devdas, 1935 – a film that captured the renouncer ideal. Wikipedia
But in the 21st century, the Man of Feeling’s sentimentality has been repackaged as glossy spectacle.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2002 remake of Devdas was the most expensive production in Indian film history at the time. Its extravagance pushes the old sentiments of the Man of Feeling aside, presenting the historical past as bold, eye-catching performance.
The operatic form of Bhansali’s Devdas, with its elaborate sets and costumes, and its overwhelming “item numbers” (where the song is carefully choreographed), emphasises a new Indian modernity and self-assuredness. The renouncement theme of earlier versions is less important.
It is as if, in the new tech-savvy India, one lives with the sentimental past only as spectacle. A decade later, under Modi, this would become a national mantra.
Aishwarya Rai and Shah Rukh Khan in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s extravagant remake of Devdas, 2002. IMDB
Shammi Kapoor and desire
The cinema of desire and spectacle had existed last century, too (a point, regrettably, not made in the book I wrote) – but with a difference. In the 1960s, Bollywood superstar Shammi Kapoor began to redefine the Bollywood hero by embracing, through bodily gestures, the nation itself as the object of desire.
The ‘Elvis inspired’ Shammi Kapoor in Bluff Master, 1963. Wikipedia
His homoerotic moves, with Elvis Presley-inspired pelvic gyrations and gestures, marked his signature style – notably in Junglee (1961), Bluff Master (or Wild, 1963) and Laat Saheb (Leisured Dandy, 1967).
In films such as these, the Indian nation suddenly came alive. Here was an actor who would show us how to enjoy a nation, to embrace it. He spoke through his body – and unlike the dominant sentimental heroes of melodrama, there were no songs of loss and love-longing. Desire had to be grasped and experienced.
Kapoor also made me and my Empire Theatre friends enjoy the Fijian nation state – which we felt was ours, as much as the First Nation people’s – after some 80 years of longing for a faraway nation, as descendants of indentured labourers.
Our forefathers and mothers had come to Fiji as the answer to its dwindling supply of labour. From May 1879 until 1917, 87 shiploads of Indians travelled to Fiji to work out their five years of indentured slavery – the girmit (from the word agreement). The first ship brought 463 immigrants. Conditions on the cane plantations were miserable and the Indians called that part of their lives narak (hell). Once the five years of servitude were over, the Indians were given a certificate of residence.
Only after another five years would they become eligible for a paid ticket back to India. But few returned.
After all those years, Shammi Kapoor, in a strange sort of a way – and belatedly – reminded us the Fijian nation state was ours too, and that we too could enjoy it, which we did as we guzzled large quantities of Fiji’s national drink, yaqona (kava).
In spite of this, we Fiji Indians – who had no other homeland – lost our nation in 1987, because we forgot the First Nation people (who also guzzled huge amounts of yaqona) enjoyed the same nation differently. That difference led to a military coup that pitted two incommensurable readings of the nation against one another: one ancestral or “nativist” and culturally rooted, the other a reading of the nation as an abstract democratic polity with equal rights.
Shammi Kapoor (in Bluff Master) spoke through his body – his acting was an early demonstration of how to enjoy, not renounce, a nation. Vijay Mishra
Hindu superheroes and spectacle
Indian cinema now is unabashedly – even uncritically – celebratory. The nation state itself functions as its revisionist historical backdrop. In many ways, Bollywood films now are a propagandist instrument of Modi’s Hindu India, as it repackages and reformulates its narratives into an Indian version of Marvel Comics.
The superheroes re-enact the roles of Hindu gods – notably the great epic god Rama, whose life combines heroism with the possibilities of a new, paradise-like nation state. This is promised by Hindutva politics.
Ramyana is an example of how Bollywood now makes Hindu narratives into a version of Marvel Comics. IMDB
Indeed, a new Bollywood film, Ramyana (2026), following Rama’s life story and clash with a demon king that will “determine the fate of gods and mortals”, will be released this year, directed by Nitesh Tiwari.
Hinduism does not have a unified system of personal and common law – and for almost two millennia, Hindus have not had an empire comparable to the Ottomans or the Mughals. In the absence of a sophisticated technology of writing and reproduction, historical documentation and its preservation of Hindu empires did not carry the same weight. Dates and detailed references to governance are simply not readily available.
Indian history, based on documentary evidence and accounts of witnesses, was thus principally written by the Muslim Mughals or British colonials. Bollywood steps in to fill the void, turning once again to fantasy linked to a revisionist version of Indian history.
Bhansali’s body of work traces Bollywood’s shift from last century’s mournful detachment from the nation – and, in the case of Shammi Kapoor, a subdued libidinal desire for it – to today’s nationalism. In Saawariya (The Beloved, 2007), Bhansali’s first major work after Devdas, the familiar theme of love-in-estrangement (key to Bollywood’s old sentimental melodramas) is depicted with a new colour and excitement.
Bhansali self-assuredly confronts Luchino Visconti’s 1957 Italian romantic melodrama Le Notti Bianche (White Nights) – based on Dostoevsky’s 1848 short story. Visconti’s manifestly fake scenery functioned like “stilled” photographs. Bhansali takes this up to create a dream scenario, its scenes dominated by blue and red colour palettes. The new India does not just imitate, but transforms the borrowed text.
Bhansali’s films also transform the sentimental Bollywood song – traditionally the cornerstone of Indian popular cinema – into a choreographed item number.
Song-in-performance once made concessions to Indian Muslim culture, through chaste Urdu poetry and the qawwali, or the dance of the courtesan – marks of cultural incorporation for a multicultural society. But as early as 1999, in films such as Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (I Gave My Heart Away, My Love), that concession is gone, and the display of the body elicits a collective erotic or libidinal desire in viewers.
Now, Bollywood cinema characteristically doubles as both digital spectacle and sociopolitical statement.
Celebration and protests
This self-assuredness made its way into Bhansali’s other work, too. Goliyon Ki Raaslila: Ram-Leela (A Dance of Gunshots: Ram-Leela, 2013), set among two warring families in Bhansali’s home state of Gujarat, takes Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as its source.
The tragic ending is maintained, but the spectacle is what truly impresses the viewer, with its lavish, computer-generated arrangements of props, scenery and backgrounds.
The film was originally titled Ram Leela. But in this new India, Hindu sensitivities dictate culture. Critics petitioned a Delhi court, saying “the movie hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus as it contains sex, violence and vulgarity”, according to the Times of India. There was also unease about the film’s depiction of Hindu history.
The staged performance of the final episode of the Rāmāyaṇa (the Ram-Leela) – which marks the triumph of Lord Rama over the demon kind Ravana – is presented as a grand spectacle without its redemptive religious meaning.
This cinematic style is maintained in Bajirao Mastani (2015), another tale of doomed love, this time set during the Maratha Empire’s ascendancy.
This empire (1674–1818), which originated with a Hindu warrior, is revered by Hindu nationalists today. The film follows the life and career of Bajirao Ballal, the peshwa, or chief minister, of the Maratha Empire from 1720 to 1740. His conquests contributed to the decay of the Muslim Mughal Empire.
Ram-Leela had a unified narrative, while Bajirao Mastani functions as a series of set pieces with item numbers. Yet in both films, a Hindutva cultural unity of the nation is endorsed.
This is true, too, when the source text is pure fantasy. Bhansali’s Padmavaat (2018) tells the story of a 14th-century Muslim emperor’s attack on a kingdom after forcefully abducting Hindu queen, Padmavati. Bhansali transformed 16th-century poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s epic poem Padmaavat (written in the Hindi dialect of Avadhi, as a grand Hindu epic of love) into a heroic romance in which the queen and other aristocratic Hindu woman would rather commit sati (self-immolation) than succumb to rape.
In 2018, this film too – essentially a romance – sparked controversy. There were months of protest across India, as well as a physical attack on the director and threats of violence against the lead actress. Again, fantasy is read as real, lived history.
For Bhansali, however, fealty to history (authentic or otherwise) is not the aim. His fealty is to the power of the moving image, which is then consumed uncritically as either Hindu triumphalism or Muslim depravity.
Hindu propaganda on film
In some films, Bollywood nationalism has taken the form of uncompromised Hindu propaganda, including the outright demonisation of Muslims. Chhaava (The Lion Cub, 2025) is based on the despised Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who ruled from 1658 to 1707 – and under him, the Mughal empire reached its greatest extent. In the film, he is depicted as nothing but a tyrannical ruler.
Director Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files (2022) and The Bengal Files (2025) ostensibly deal with the ethnic cleansing of Hindus on the part of Muslims, but that history – and its portrayal – is contested. In Singapore, The Kashmir Files was banned for its “provocative and one-sided portrayal” of Muslims. In India, Modi praised it as reflecting the “truth”.
The exceptionally popular Dhurandhar franchise (The Stalwart, 2025, and The Revenge, 2026) “paints Pakistan as a lawless, almost barbaric land that’s pathologically hostile towards India”, according to critic Uday Battia. These films have been criticised for their “hyper-nationalist tone”, as well as historical inaccuracies.
The Durandhar franchise ‘paints Pakistan as a lawless, almost barbaric land’. IMDB
Bollywood often chooses fantasy over history. It embraces the nation anew – but within its own conventions of an imagined world.
International Bollywood
Originally, Bollywood mostly meant Hindi–Urdu cinema produced in Bombay/Mumbai. Now, Indian commercial cinema in all its languages (especially Hindi, Tamil, Telegu and Punjabi) are effectively Bollywood.
Two remarkable examples explain the emergence of Bollywood as an international home of Indian popular cinema.
In the past, films made in Dravidian languages (non-Sanskrit or Prakrit based languages) were markedly different from the Hindi (Bollywood) films. Different cultural nuances were often highlighted, especially in their song and dance sequences. The generally Shaivite religious ideology (where the worship of Lord Shiva takes pride of place) gave them a different cultural complexion.
In the Bahubali films, however, a pan-Indian world view took over as they internalised Bollywood. The dubbed Hindi version was read as a Bollywood film in both India and the Indian diaspora.
The narrative of the films may have been pure fiction, but they were styled in the great pan-Indian epic tradition of the Mahābhārata, one of two Sanskrit epic poems of ancient India.
Rajamouli’s next film, RRR (2022), won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2023. The song, Naatu Naatu, was performed (albeit with some non-Indian dancers) on the Oscars stage, to great aplomb.
For RRR, the song was filmed at Mariinskyi Palace, the official residence of the president of Ukraine, before war broke out. The song’s item number has received around 69 million views on YouTube to date. Many commentators have referred to the song, the Oscar performance and the item number in the film itself, as “Bollywood”. In fact, the film originated in “Tollywood” – the name given to films in the Telegu language.
RRR, like Bahubali before it, is structured on the cinematic principles that define the “new” Bollywood. Thematically, it works on the desire of the nation as a Hindu entity to be embraced uncritically.
Rajamouli’s films, like many of Bhansali’s, have a militaristic temper, whether through a version of Bahubali’s reworking of the old myths, where gods enter the spirit of humans, or through RRR’s political rebellion, where revolutionaries against the British Empire are recast as modern-day Lord Ramas.
In extending and embracing a new Hindutva triumphalism, and internalising it, the new hegemony of Bollywood is complete. The joys of Empire Theatre are now no more than a receding memory.
Vijay Mishra has received funding from Australian Research Council in the past.
Microscopic image showing newly discovered Asgard archaeon (_Nerearchaeum marumarumayae_) derived from microbial mats that offers clues to the formation of complex life. Debnath Ghosal
On the shores of the west coast of Australia lies a window to our past: the stromatolites and microbial mats of Gathaagudu (Shark Bay).
To the untrained eye they look like a collection of rocks and slime – but they are in fact teeming with microbial life. And these stromatolites are living “relics” of ancient ecosystems that thrived on Earth billions of years ago.
If you wade past, it feels like you’re walking back through time. In fact, the first bubbles of oxygen that filled the atmosphere on early Earth likely came from ancient stromatolites. You could say we owe our very existence to these piles of rocks.
So, what other secrets of our past could these ecosystems tell us? Through decades of research, we know how early life has woven its path through these “living rocks”. But most recently our team embarked on the greatest genealogy search of them all: searching for our great microbial ancestors, the Asgard archaea.
And in a new paper, published today in the journal Current Biology, we report how this search led to the discovery of a key clue that could help explain how complex life evolved on Earth.
A field of stromatolites in Shark Bay, Western Australia. Brendan Burns
The cells that comprise complex life
Asgard archaea were originally named after Norse gods. This fascinating group of microbes sits on the cusp of one of the most significant events in the evolution of life: the origin of the complex cells that make up plants and animals, known as eukaryotes.
Evidence suggests Asgard archaea are the closest relatives of eukaryotes. And that on an early Earth it was the “marriage” of an ancient Asgard archaeon and a bacterium that led to the first eukaryotes.
They formed an ancient partnership. They shared resources and physically interacted, leading to the first complex cells. Like a Romeo and Juliet tale of two distant families coming together, Asgard archaea and bacteria decided it was time to break from traditional family values.
But we have never seen a model of how this may have occurred. Until now.
Holding up a mirror to the ancient past
Our team used the mats of Shark Bay as a “seed” to establish cultures of these ancient microbes. We are one of only four groups worldwide to achieve this, through years of research with a dedicated team of graduate students nurturing the Asgards like offspring.
But the Asgards were not alone. We found them together with a sulphate-loving bacterium. Could this be a model of how complex life may have started on a primitive Earth?
We began by sequencing the Asgards’ DNA to decipher exactly how these microbes tick at the genetic level. We also used artificial intelligence to model how proteins could have behaved in a world before eukaryotes. Evidence suggested these two microbes were sharing nutrients. In other words, they were cooperating.
But we wanted to delve deeper. What do our great microbial ancestors look like? Here we turned to electron cryotomography, a high-resolution imaging approach that allowed us to observe cells and structures at a nanometre scale.
And here we showed – for the first time – an Asgard archaeon and a bacterium directly interacting. Tiny nanotubes were connecting the two organisms – perhaps reflecting what their great-ancestors did on an early Earth that ultimately led to the explosion of complex life as we know it.
Microbial mat from Gathaagudu (Shark Bay, Australia). Inset: Microscopic image showing Asgard archaeon and bacterium derived from these mats interacting as a model for evolution of complex cells. Iain Duggin/Bindusmita Paul/Debnath Ghosal/Matthew Johnson/Brendan Burns.
Weaving western science with Indigenous knowledge
This was a major discovery – one that originated in Gathaagudu, a World Heritage Site with significant environmental and cultural values.
Aboriginal people first inhabited Gathaagudu over 30,000 years ago. We wanted to recognise and celebrate the language of the Malgana people, one of the traditional language groups of Gathaagudu. We also wanted to connect western science with Indigenous Knowledge in a meaningful way.
To this end and working closely with the world’s foremost Malgana language expert, Kymberley Oakley, and Aboriginal elders, a name was granted for our novel Asgard archaeon from the language of the Malgana people: Nerearchaeum marumarumayae. The species name – marumarumayae – is derived from the Aboriginal language of the Malgana people, meaning “ancient home”, a reference to stromatolites being of ancient origin in Earth’s history.
Weaving Aboriginal language into the naming of our new microbe represents a fitting connection between unique Aboriginal culture in Australia and the ancient microbe discovered that calls the mats of Gathaagudu “home”.
Gathaagudu is under threat from global change, from increased heatwaves, cyclonic events and human activity. And among the values to preserve and conserve are the significant Aboriginal connections as well as the trails of life going back through evolutionary time.
With our study we have peered into our past. And maybe like the Montagues and Capulets of Shakespeare, we see distant families of microbes coming together to bridge the divide and ultimately form the early eukaryotes that eventually led to us: a fragile branch on the evolutionary tree of life.
Brendan Paul Burns receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Kymberley Oakley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When news of the fragile ceasefire between the United States, Israel and Iran first broke, it came via a post on X by Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif.
Securing such a big diplomatic win is highly significant for Pakistan, irrespective of how the agreement has since been tested.
Pakistan will remain central to ongoing peace negotiations, with talks between the parties being held in the country on April 10.
So how did Pakistan manage to bring the parties together? It harnessed long-running relationships, shared histories and security agreements to flex its diplomatic muscles.
Pakistan and Iran go back a long way
Pakistan and Iran have a long history as friends and allies. Sharing more than 900 kilometres of border, the countries have been involved in dispute mediation for one another since Pakistan’s creation in 1947.
During Iran’s monarchical period, which ended in 1979, Pakistan relied on Iran’s mediation in its disputes with Afghanistan, and active support in Pakistan’s wars with India in 1965 and 1971.
But the relationship has not been free of challenges. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Z A Bhutto, according to some sources on the ground, resented the Iranian Shah’s overbearing attitude.
The closeness has held since the Islamic regime took over. With nearly 20% of Pakistan’s population being comprised of Shia Muslims, the dominant form of Islam in Iran, there’s long been a close relationship between those Pakistani Muslims and the Iranian regime.
Iran has used these communities to spread their version of Islam and politics, but it has walked a fine line. The regime has ensured tensions do not exceed beyond certain point where the Pakistani government considers it to be a destabilising factor and a threat to Pakistan’s security.
Because of this shared history and the geographic proximity, the Iranian regime is at least willing to listen to Pakistan.
Eyeing regional and national security
This is particularly so because of Pakistan’s own security situation, especially in the event that a weakened or fragmented Iran would result in the emergence of multiple smaller states.
Pakistan’s geographically largest province, Balochistan, has been experiencing renewed militancy spearheaded by separatist group the Baloch Liberation Army. The militants have attacked multiple military targets, law enforcement agencies and public servants, especially those hailing from the Punjab province (the largest in terms of population and resources).
There has been a growing sense in Pakistan that a weakened or fragmented Iran could further strengthen the appeal of Baloch Liberation Army ideology. The Pakistani government doesn’t want a situation where calls for a greater Balochistan encompass areas on both sides of its border with Iran.
Another consideration is that Pakistan has a nuclear program. The Pakistani government may fear its nuclear arsenal being next in line for targeting by foreign countries, and therefore seek to de-escalate tensions across the region.
It’s also worth noting the potentially precarious position Pakistan finds itself in geographically. The spectre of being sandwiched between an Israeli-controlled Iran, and close Israel ally India, would be something to be avoided.
It’s likely the Iranian regime is aware of these concerns and appreciates that Pakistan’s mediation is grounded in the latter’s own security concerns. But from an Iranian perspective, that’s hardly a bad thing: it means exploring all possible scenarios to reach a ceasefire and a settlement.
Friends in MAGA places
Pakistan is highly credible with the Trump regime. This is primarily because of the dominant role the Pakistani military has played in shaping the country’s foreign policy. This influence has existed for almost 80 years, but has ramped up recently.
In 2022, General Asim Munir took over as the Chief of Army Staff. He was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal in the wake of Pakistan-Indian “mini-war” in May 2025.
Currently occupying the position of Chief of Defence Forces with a guaranteed command of the military for the next five years with the possibility of extension until 2035, he has emerged as the strongest army general to have ruled Pakistan in decades.
Munir has established a cordial relationship with US President Donald Trump. He visited the administration twice, including a meeting in the Oval Office. This was before Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had secured even a telephone phone call with the president.
The Pakistani Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, shakes hands with US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, as Field Marshal Asim Munir watches on. Andrew Harnick/Getty
Munir has also guided Pakistan’s Gulf policy, particularly the signing of a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia in September 2025. The agreement builds on the decades of a defence relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It includes the clear articulation that any attack on one is considered an attack on both.
Though Pakistan is careful to stress that it does not extend a nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia, the agreement signals regional deterrence and ability of the two states collaborating against opponents.
The agreement was followed by a Strategic Defense Agreement between Saudi Arabia and the US during the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington in November 2025.
Effectively, therefore, a tripartite quasi alliance has emerged between the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
And then there’s China
At the same time, Pakistan also maintains strong military, economic, and political relations with China. Beijing has been keen to de-escalate the situation in the Gulf due to China’s reliance on oil supplies from the region.
This interest was categorically expressed during the visit by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, to China on March 31.
Coming soon after Pakistan’s quadrilateral meetings with Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish foreign ministers, the negotiations established Pakistan’s credentials as a state that has the backing of significant Muslim majority states. Combined with the support of China, Pakistan was in prime position to explore solutions to the conflict, without Trump losing face.
Samina Yasmeen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
After successfully completing their mission to the Moon, the Artemis II crew is about to return to Earth.
The four astronauts set a new record for how far humans have travelled from Earth, reaching a maximum distance of 406,771 kilometres from our home planet.
Their journey back will culminate in a high-speed, hypersonic and extremely hot re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere before their spacecraft splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California at roughly 8pm April 10 local time.
The re-entry will be the last challenge the crew will have to endure on their epic ten-day mission. It comes with many dangers – but their spacecraft is equipped with an array of technology to keep them safe.
A speedy re-entry
The Orion capsule carrying the Artemis II astronauts will be travelling at more than 11 km/s (40,000 km/h) when it reaches Earth’s atmosphere. This is 40 times faster than a passenger jet travels.
If we instead consider kinetic energy, which is the energy an object possesses due to its motion, upon re-entry the Orion capsule will have almost 2,000 times as much kinetic energy per kilogram of vehicle as a passenger jet.
Like any spacecraft returning home, it will have to slow down and reduce its kinetic energy to almost zero so parachutes can be deployed and it can land safely on Earth.
Spacecraft reduce their kinetic energy by performing a controlled re-entry through Earth’s upper atmosphere, where they use aerodynamic drag against the atmosphere as a brake to decelerate.
Unlike an aeroplane, which is generally designed to be aerodynamic and minimise drag forces to reduce fuel consumption, re-entering spacecraft do the opposite. They are designed to be as un-aerodynamic as possible to maximise drag and help them slow down.
This deceleration during re-entry can be extremely harsh.
Deceleration and acceleration are generally discussed in g-forces – or “g’s” for short. This is the deceleration or acceleration force divided by the standard acceleration we all feel from Earth’s gravity. A Formula One driver will experience over 5 g’s while cornering, which is close to the maximum g-forces a human can sustain without passing out.
Small, uncrewed re-entry capsules such as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx capsule which brought back samples from asteroid Bennu, just barrel into the atmosphere and rapidly decelerate. These entries occur very quickly, in less than a minute. But g-forces in that case can be upwards of 100 – fine for robotic vehicles, but not for humans.
Crewed vehicles such as NASA’s Orion capsule use lift forces to slow the entry down in time. This lowers the g-forces down to more manageable levels that humans can survive and makes re-entry last for several minutes.
The four Artemis II astronauts set a new record for how far humans have travelled from Earth, reaching a maximum distance of 406,771 kilometres from our home planet. NASA
A very hot re-entry
The Orion capsule will re-enter the atmosphere moving at more than 30 times the speed of sound.
A shock wave will envelop the spacecraft, creating air temperatures of 10,000°C or more – about twice the temperature of the surface of the Sun.
The extreme heat turns the air that crosses over the shock wave into an electrically charged plasma. This temporarily blocks radio signals, so the astronauts will be unable to communicate during the harshest parts of their descent.
Making sure it’s a safe re-entry
Spacecraft survive the extremely harsh re-entry environment through careful design of their trajectories to minimise heating as much as they can.
The craft also carries a thermal protection system. It’s effectively an insulating blanket which protects the spacecraft and its crew or cargo from the harsh hypersonic flow occurring outside.
The thermal protection system is tailored precisely for the vehicle and its mission. Materials that can take more heat are put on the surfaces where the environment is expected to be harshest, and thicknesses are precisely adjusted too.
These materials are designed to glow red hot and degrade during the entry – but they will survive. The red-hot glow also radiates heat back out to the atmosphere instead of allowing it to be absorbed by the spacecraft.
This precise design is how Artemis is to able to pass through air at 10,000°C while maintaining a maximum heat shield surface temperature of only around 3,000°C.
An image of the JAXA Hayabusa spacecraft reentering Earth’s atmosphere on June 13, 2010, with the spacecraft bus burning up behind it. NASA
Most spacecraft are protected by materials called ablatives. These are generally made out of carbon fibre and a type of glue known as phenolic resin.
These ablative heat shields absorb energy and inject a relatively cool gas into the flow along the surface of the vehicle, helping to cool everything down.
The ablative heat shield material used on the Orion capsule is called AVCOAT. It is a version of the material which protected the Apollo capsule when it returned from the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
While the Artemis I mission – an uncrewed test flight – was a great success, the heat shield ablation during re-entry was much larger than expected. Large chunks of material separated from the heat shield in some places.
The heat shield of NASA’s Orion spacecraft after the Artemis I mission. NASA
After lengthy inspections and analysis, engineers did decide to go ahead with the same type of heat shield on the Artemis II mission.
They believe Artemis I lost chunks of its heat shield due to a pressure buildup inside the material during the “skip” part of its entry, where the spacecraft exited the atmosphere to cool down before performing a second entry where it landed.
For Artemis II, the engineers have instead decided to modify the trajectory slightly to still use lift, but include a less defined “skip”.
It is amazing to see what NASA and the astronauts have achieved on this mission so far. But like many others, I’ll be relieved when I see them welcomed safely home on Earth.
Chris James receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Commonwealth Defence Science and Technology Group, the US Office of Naval Research, and the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Just hours after the leaders of the United States, Israel and Iran reached a temporary ceasefire, it was clear that each party had its own version of what had been agreed to.
Hundreds of people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in the past 24 hours, immediately threatening to undermine the fragile agreement.
Iran had insisted hostilities in Lebanon cease as part of the deal, but Israel argued Lebanon was not included. The result is an ongoing proxy conflict alongside the main war, which has been paused for two weeks.
Given the US seems uninterested in addressing the intractable issues at the heart of tensions in the Middle East, this result was somewhat inevitable. It seems the most likely outcome now is the US will back out while claiming victory, leaving the region’s prewar status quo largely intact.
The importance of Lebanon
Lebanon has not been an official part of the war in the region, and is not a party to the ceasefire. So why is it so central to the conflict?
Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Iranian regime has funded and armed anti-Israel movements in the region including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.
Throughout its history as a nation, Israel has at times occupied and held security “buffer zones” around its territory.
Israel has diplomatic agreements with Egypt and Jordan, leaving the focus on Iran and the proxies it supports. The proxies closest to Israel, and therefore of most concern from the government’s perspective, are Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Since the October 7 attacks, the Israeli government has taken an offensive military approach to dealing with both groups. From the perspective of Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah are just as severe security threats as Iran.
While both proxy groups have been severely degraded since 2023, they are still operating.
Since the onset of the conflict with Iran, the Israeli government has taken the opportunity to extend a security buffer zone in southern Lebanon. Under President Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is very unlikely to give up this ambition.
For Trump’s part, it is unclear whether he could persuade Netanyahu to abandon it, or if he even wants to try.
Will the ceasefire survive?
Unless the US can bring Israel into line and convince Netanyahu to stop its action in Lebanon, the ceasefire will fall apart.
Iran has insisted fighting in Lebanon must end as part of the agreement. This is the regime’s way of protecting and supporting its much-diminished proxies. As negotiations get underway for a more lasting deal, the issue of Lebanon will become a key sticking point.
This is in part because resisting Israel and the US is not just politically expedient for Iran; it is at the core of the Iranian regime’s identity and existence.
While deeper antagonism that drives tensions in the region remains unaddressed, there’s little prospect of lasting peace.
Trump seems set on a US withdrawal from the war with Iran. The US leaves behind a security environment that upholds the existing tensions in the region. Iran and Israel will continue to engage in the tit-for-tat violence that led us here.
A flawed exit strategy
A key issue with Trump’s approach in the Middle East is he has no real interest in resolving the core issue of Israel’s place in the region. He’s shown little grasp of the deeper historical roots at play.
What seems to be front of mind for Trump is the unpopularity of the war within the US. With Trump’s approval ratings at a record low and the conflict already dragging on longer than many expected, the president is looking for a way out.
This might be why Iran’s ten-point plan, which was previously “not good enough”, is now a “workable basis on which to negotiate”.
While there are competing versions of the ten points, they all include conditions the US could never reasonably accept, such as leaving control of the Strait of Hormuz in Iranian hands.
Iran also insists it wants to reserve the right to enrich uranium, something that would be contrary to the stated basis for this war in the first place: Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons.
By declaring the conditions suddenly right for a ceasefire, Trump is stating a reality he’d like to see, rather than describing tangible changes on the ground.
In practice, the US has already ceded ground to Iran, which has indicated it is not willing to compromise on anything. While Iran’s military capability to interfere in the region may be diminished for now, the will remains.
So with the ten points as a basis of negotiation, it is hard to see a path towards lasting peace in the next fortnight. Instead the US is likely to exit, leaving behind a lot of damage, but little materially changed.
Jessica Genauer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Around 153 BCE, Cato the Elder, one of Rome’s most prominent senators, began ending every single one of his speeches with the same words: “Carthago delenda est”, or “Carthage must be destroyed”.
The genocide actually happened: Rome destroyed Carthage and its entire civilisation.
Fast forward to today and the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world, the president of the United States, has declared a “whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, in reference to Iran.
Donald Trump’s words were even stronger than Cato’s. Fortunately, the follow-up was not and the episode ultimately ended in a two-week ceasefire between US-Israel and Iran.
Trump’s words are unprecedented both in form and in substance.
While US presidents have used plenty of profanities and expletives in private conversations, with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon probably winning any foul-language competition anywhere in the world, Trump is believed to be the only president to have ever deliberately used “fuck” in public.
In substance, no modern US president has ever threatened or incited genocide.
Trump’s infamous “a whole civilisation will die tonight” comment, though, can only be interpreted as an open threat to all 93 million Iranian citizens.
The closest parallel anywhere in the modern world may actually be the Iranian chants “death to America” and “death to Israel”, which have featured prominently in pro-regime rallies since the 1979 revolution.
But even there, the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in 2019 the chants weren’t aimed at the US or the American people themselves, but at America’s rulers.
Is this language illegal?
Trump’s language, and that of other members of his administration, is deeply concerning and disturbing.
If these words turned into action, they would certainly constitute war crimes.
If Trump really meant he was willing to use the US military against Iran’s civilian population, this action would fall squarely within the definition of genocide provided by Article II of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
In other words, any action taken in the spirit of that post would constitute genocide and blatant violation of international law.
More broadly, the legality of the whole US attack on Iran is deeply contentious: most international and US law experts seem to agree the war violates the UN Charter.
There are also serious questions pertaining US constitutional law. The US Constitution does not grant the president the power to declare war – this power belongs to Congress.
Presidents should therefore seek congressional approval before waging war. At the time of writing, the war has been going on for 41 days and no Congressional approval has been obtained.
What can be done about this?
Probably nothing. The US political system does not include an easy way to remove a sitting president.
In the few hours between the infamous statement and the ceasefire declaration, several US political leaders talked about invoking the 25th Amendment.
Under that provision, the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can remove a president from office when they believe the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”.
It is unlikely JD Vance and most of the cabinet would be willing to make this case.
The only other avenue would be impeachment by the House of Representatives followed by removal by the Senate. Trump was impeached twice during his first term and acquitted by the Republican majority in the Senate both times.
Currently, Republicans control both chambers, making this option also very unlikely.
Will this have lasting consequences?
Definitely. As political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr – who identified the concept of soft power – famously explained, soft power is “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies”.
The US has enjoyed significant soft power throughout the Cold War and beyond.
Now 93 million Iranians have been threatened with the destruction of their entire civilisation by the president of the US, we must ask how far American soft power can realistically go in Iran and around the world moving forward.
In ancient Rome, Cato the Elder died three years before Rome destroyed Carthage. He never saw his words become action.
Hopefully neither Trump nor anyone else will ever see the destruction of Iranian civilisation. But Trump is definitely overseeing the instantaneous destruction of American soft power.
Rodrigo Praino receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Defence.
