Bharat Bhushan Union minister of state for law and justice, Satyapal Singh Baghel, made a statement that there were very few tolerant Muslims, and even those who appear to be tolerant use it as “a mask” to stay in public life; to become governors, vice presidents and vice-chancellors. Nobody reacted; not the Opposition parties, not… Read More Indian Union Minister’s hate speech about Muslims liable for prosecution
Mukul Kesavan To watch an election show as an anti-majoritarian spectator in the time of Narendra Modi is a traumatic business for two reasons. One, you mostly lose and two, sometimes even the ones you win, you lose. There was a moment during the Karnataka results show when the Congress’s leads dropped to a bare… Read More BJP-bin Dakshin
The BJP has grown and thrived by evoking the worst in this country’s citizens. It cannot be the presumption that what has been evoked, and what is on display, will disappear on its own by not facing up to it. This is just wishful thinking. What is the point of an opposition that is afraid… Read More The call for banning the Bajrang Dal shows rare electoral courage
By Faisal Mohammed Ali Ash, soot-stained walls, burnt furniture and charred pages: that’s all that remains of a 113-year-old madrassa library in India that once housed more than 4,500 books, including ancient manuscripts and sacred Islamic texts written in beautiful calligraphy. The library was part of the Madrassa Azizia – a well-known religious school in… Read More Bihar Sharif: The 113-year-old India library torched in a riot
First posted November 19, 2011 NB: I wrote this article in the aftermath of the January 2011 judgement by two Supreme Court judges on the murder of Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa in 1998. The debate on religious questions is a secondary one. The first major point of my article is this:… Read More Terrifying implications of the Supreme Court’s Staines Judgement
Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law. Albert Camus; The Rebel (1956) Bharat Bhushan Support for harsh penal policies is often the result of two interconnected phenomena. One, viewing criminals as those outside of… Read More Death by ‘encounter’: Yogi Adityanath’s penal populism
First posted February 20, 2019 NB: It has been a long-standing feature of communal politics to make innocent people pay for the crimes of a few. This noxious habit is now being pushed and encouraged by the political fronts of the RSS, which in effect means the Government of India. These people claim to hold a… Read More Ramachandra Guha: Why attack young Kashmiris for a crime committed by someone else? / This Student Helped Evacuate Hundreds Of Kashmiris After Pulwama
First posted February 21, 2019 NB: The CRPF officers and jawans deserve our thanks for defending the truth in their hour of grief; and exposing the fraud being perpetrated on the country by the fake news brigade. The measures they have taken to combat communal propaganda is in marked contrast to the thuggish behaviour of the… Read More Our Men Didn’t Die So Someone Could Spread Communal Hatred: CRPF
Every time the student activist’s bail has been approved by a court, the police slapped new charges against her to prolong her imprisonment. Currently, her bail plea is pending before the Delhi high court. Tarushi Aswani “If you remain quiet despite injustices, you will survive. But if you criticise them (government), they will open the… Read More Delhi Riots: New Charges, Multiple Bail Rejections Keep Gulfisha Fatima Lodged in Jail for 3 Years
Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past: George Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty four The will cannot will backwards… That time does not run backward, that is his wrath; ‘that which was’ is the name of the stone he cannot move. And so he moves stones out of wrath… Read More Rectifying the past
After the truth-shower 