At a gathering a couple of years ago in the Maharashtra hill station of Panchgani organised by Professor Rajmohan Gandhi, I was challenged by an angry young man: “Keep your Hinduism in your house. Why do you need to bring it into the streets?” The young man could have been a conservative Hindu offended by… Read More Sunita Viswanath: Why I feel the need to bring my Hinduism to the streets
An alarming report by the news agency Reuters quotes corporate India to say “everyone is scared” of the Narendra Modi government and does not want to run afoul of it. It reported several industry executives claiming that “a public diatribe against two Indian business giants by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s officials and his ideological allies… Read More Bharat Bhushan – Fear factor: Corporates must resist intimidation
For some time now I’ve been wanting to work on a book called “constitutional Indians” – a concept that I have briefly touched upon in the conclusion of my book Christianity and Politics in Tribal India: Baptist Missionaries and Naga Nationalism, just published by Permanent Black and Ashoka University in collaboration with the New India Foundation. Partha Chatterjee:… Read More G Kanato Chophy: For Nagas, the idea of India is not defined by the Brahmanical notion of a timeless civilisation
The Andhra Pradesh government has a Veda Vyasa Scheme for Vedic Education. Let us, for a moment, put aside the question of whether there is a secular pedagogical argument for the state supporting Vedic education. But who is eligible for this education? Students should belong to the Brahmin community by birth. Similarly, the parallel schemes… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The little farce of Brahmin welfare schemes is a sign of India’s great tragedy
Hundreds of thousands of farmers from Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan and Maharashtra gathered for a kisan mahapanchayat in Muzaffarnagar on Sunday, months ahead of assembly polls in the first three states, demanding that the central government roll back three contentious farm laws passed by Parliament a year ago. Addressing the event organised by… Read More Massive show of strength at farmers’ UP mahapanchayat
An upcoming conference in the USA, “Dismantling Global Hindutva”, organized by Indians in the USA, most of whom are legally “Hindus”, and supported by over 40 US universities, has provoked the ire of the Hindu Rashtravaadis there as well as in India. Conflating Hindutva with Hinduism is the first step. Based on this, the Hindu… Read More NIVEDITA MENON: If Hindutva is dismantled, whom will it harm?
A massive landslide that struck National Highway number 5 near Nigulsari of Kinnaur district on August 11 killed at least 23 people and several people are still believed to be trapped under debris. Teams from National Disaster Response Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and other agencies are engaged in rescue operations. The increasing incidence of landslides… Read More Mahesh Chitnis – Landslide lessons: Kinnaur villagers vow to protect their hills from hydro projects
On a normal day, the Grand Trunk (Karnal) road is a highway running northwards from Delhi. Cutting through flashes of fields, small roadside villages, food stalls, shops, and strangely grotesque marriage halls, one does not dwell in the highway. The speed of the highway is such that it passes as a blur of non-destinations. Embedded… Read More Sarover Zaidi: The Gift of Food
In April 2018, a large group of policemen arrived at the Delhi flat of Rona Wilson, a 47-year-old human rights activist. They had travelled from Pune in the western state of Maharashtra, and appeared, accompanied by Delhi police officials, at Wilson’s single-room flat at 6am. For the next eight hours, they scoured the modest premises, searching the… Read More Siddhartha Deb: The unravelling of a conspiracy: were the 16 charged with plotting to kill India’s prime minister framed? / Sudhir Chandra: More than a Judicial Murder
In the joint press conference that ended his one-day visit to India, United States secretary of state Anthony Blinken did not try to hide the US’s discomfiture over the turn that Indian democracy has taken in the past several years under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Answering a question posed by the Wall Street Journal’s correspondent, he readily… Read More Prem Shankar Jha: Anthony Blinken Conveyed a Warning to the Modi Government But Did the Prime Minister Hear It?
After the truth-shower 