Dilip Hiro

Dilip Hiro is a playwright, political writer, journalist, historian and analyst specializing in South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Islamic affairs. He was born to Hindu parents in Larkana, British India, who migrated to independent India after partition in 1947. Hiro received a Master's degree from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He currently lives in London, where he settled in the mid-1960s.

He has published 33 books and contributed to another 17. His most recent book is APOCALYPTIC REALM: Jihadists in South Asia (2012) published earlier in India as Jihad on Two Fronts: South Asia's Unfolding Drama (2011). His 31st book, Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Iran, was listed as one of the best history books of the year by the Financial Times (2009). His 30th book, Blood of the Earth: The Global Battle for Vanishing Oil Resources (2008), was described in the Guardian as an "encyclopaedic yet racily readable account of the economy, science and geopolitics of oil over the past century." He is editor of the most recent edition of the Babur Nama: Journal of Emperor Babur (2007). He has also written Secrets and Lies: Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ and After (2003). It was long-listed for the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in Britain and listed in the Financial Times’s Best Politics and Religion Books of the Year.

He has contributed to 17 more books, including The World According To Tom Dispatch (2008), and Encyclopedia of Global Studies (Editors: Helmut K. Anheir & Mark Juerensmeye), published by SAGE Reference (2012). He is noted for his opposition to the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, arguing that it will only fuel more fundamentalist terrorism and further destabilize the Middle East.

In After Empire, his survey of the world’s major powers, Hiro shows how the steady decline of America as the sole superpower is leading to the emergence of a multipolar world. It was shortlisted for the Geneva-based Mirabaud Prize in 2011.

As a journalist he contributes to The Observer, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post as well as YaleGlobal online magazine of Yale University and TomDispatch.com, and is a commentator on the BBC, Sky News, CNN, and various radio stations.

To Anchor a Cloud, his 3-act stage play about Moghul emperor Shah Jahan and his favourite wife Mumtaz Mahal (for whom he built the Taj Mahal) premiered in London in 1970 and had a public reading in Delhi in 2008. Re-titled Tale of the Taj, this play was staged by Pierrot’s Troupe in Delhi at Shri Ram Centre in October-November 2011 to much media acclaim. "In Dilip Hiro's play, Mumtaz Mahal can give Lady Macbeth a run for her money... A Shakespearean play...it captures various moods of human life." (Times of India). "A new play by a NRI writer that looks beyond the conventional character of Mughal empress Mumtaz Mahal" (Economic Times). "Casts Mumtaz Mahal as the protagonist... as an astute manipulator." (Indian Express). "New twist to the Taj Mahal love saga." (Mail Today). "The production is as ever elegantly mounted, with authentic costumes headgear et al." (Asian Age). "Shows the Shah Jahan-Mumtaz Mahal relationship in a new light...Deserves to be seen." (The Hindu)

His film, Moving Portraits, directed by Horace Ové and produced by Vijay Amarnani, was screened by Channel 4 in 1987. He is the co-scriptwriter of A Private Enterprise, a British feature film about a young Indian in the Midlands, which won a silver Hugo Award at the Chicago Film Festival of 1975, and was listed as one of the 10 Best Films of the Year by some of the leading film critics of Britain.