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The politicisation of this year’s Maha Kumbh has reached unprecedented levels with the number of attendees taking a dip in the Ganga being inflated to unreasonable figures, solely to make the fair appear excessively grand. The Shahi Snan has also been renamed as Amrit Snan – a bath to attain immortality – perhaps to appease an inherent inferiority complex. […]
New Delhi: The Daulat Ram College (DRC) in Delhi University (DU) on Wednesday (January 22) organised a religious programme in the premises of the institute commemorating the first anniversary of consecration of Hindu deity Ram’s idol in the newly-constructed temple in Ayodhya. Labelled as “Shri Ramlalla Virajman ki Pranpatishtha ki Pratham Varshgaanth (first anniversary of the consecration of […]
New Delhi: Anita Bose Pfaff, daughter of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, has made a heartfelt appeal to the Union government to bring back her father’s mortal remains from Tokyo, Japan, where they have been kept in Renkoji Temple for decades. This demand comes on the eve of Bose’s 128th birth anniversary, which is celebrated as Parakram […]
New Delhi: A bailable arrest warrant against self-styled Yoga guru Baba Ramdev and his associate Acharya Balakrishna has been issued by a Kerala court after a complaint was filed by Kerala drug regulators against Patanjali Ayurved for misleading advertisements on its healthcare products. The warrant was issued by the Palakkad district court on Thursday (January 16), […]
Ahead of the organisation of the Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, strident calls were made by some sadhus and prominent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders occupying high constitutional posts in Uttar Pradesh appealing to bar Muslims to enter the mela. Against this backdrop, it is instructive to revisit Mahatma Gandhi’s travel to the Kumbh Mela […]
Elon Musk’s high praise for the German far-right political party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and his recent conversation with its chancellor candidate Alice Weidel has relaunched a debate around the world’s richest man’s influence in global politics. With little over a month to go for Germany’s federal elections, Musk took to X – a platform owned […]
Can the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) upset the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) cart in Delhi? This is the question in the minds of a number of observers in the run-up to the Delhi assembly elections, scheduled on February 5. Prime minister Narendra Modi has already thrown his hat in the ring by labelling the […]
Illiberal regimes do not only resort to censorship, they also rewrite history – and not only in textbooks, but on screens too. Modi’s India is no exception, as evident from the recent films produced in the country, including The Kashmir Files, to Bastar: The Naxal Story, The Kerala Story and the recently released Sabarmati Report. The latter has been explicitly […]
Mumbai: After over six years and six months of incarceration, the Bombay high court today, January 9, granted bail to two human rights defenders, Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale. Both Wilson and Dhawale were among the first group of human rights activists to be arrested in the highly contentious Elgar Parishad case over what law […]
New Delhi: Notwithstanding the government’s reluctance to reveal the cost of the prime minister’s gifts to foreign dignitaries, a disclosure made by Washington has said that a diamond Prime Minister Narendra Modi gifted to US first lady Jill Biden in 2023 is worth about $20,000. At the rupee’s closing exchange rate on Tuesday (January 7) of roughly 85.7 to the dollar, the […]
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on January 7 granted over a two-month period of interim bail to self-styled godman Asaram Bapu. Asaram, who is serving a life sentence in a rape case in which he was convicted by a Gujarat court, will be free till March 31, LiveLaw has reported. A bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Rajesh […]
The proponents of Hindutva – from V.D. Savarkar, B.S. Moonje, K.B. Hedgewar, and M.S. Golwalkar – to their contemporary successors, have long admired the methods of Mussolini and Hitler. Despite differences in time and circumstances, striking parallels can be drawn between them and their fascist predecessors in Europe. Perhaps the most telling similarity is their […]
For all the occasionally toxic and personal attacks that mark political exchanges in this country, there is a great unifier in Indian politics that cuts across party lines, draws snickers from all sides and has remained constant over time. It is the male gaze. In 2005, when Lalu Prasad Yadav, then a minister in the […]
In the recently concluded Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, the Congress adopted a new slogan – ‘Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhan’. It’s a call to revisit the foundational values and principles of India. In an era marked by growing polarisation, social inequalities and challenges to democratic institutions, this slogan embodies the ideals of non-violence and social […]
Srinagar: Union home minister Amit Shah’s attempt to link the name ‘Kashmir’ with Hindu Vedic sage Kashyapa has revived the debate about the Bhartiya Janta Party’s (BJP) alleged policy of imposing Hindutva on the country’s only Muslim-majority region. “We all know that Kashmir has been an abode of Kashyapa. It is possible that Kashmir was named […]
Surat: Panch Manzila (five-storied building), as locals refer to the building, has a quaint and regal ring to it. But neither its run-down facade nor the dilapidated interiors offer opulence to hundreds of Odia migrant workers, mostly from southern Odisha’s Ganjam district, who live there and eat at one of the eight messes in the building. As […]
On March 24, 2002, while living in Ahmedabad, I received an invitation to an unusual Oscar viewing party. The party began in the wee hours of the morning, given the time difference with Los Angeles, and since flat screen TVs were unheard of back then, the invitation came with a request to help the host […]
New Delhi: 11 Indian nationals tragically died from carbon monoxide poisoning at a restaurant in Gudauri, a popular mountain resort in Georgia. The incident was confirmed by the Indian Mission in Tbilisi and Georgia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to a PTI report. Initial inspections revealed no signs of injuries or violence, with local police attributing the deaths to carbon […]
New Delhi: In the first structured diplomatic engagement after the Awami League government’s ouster, India on Monday (December 9) expressed its desire for a “mutually beneficial” relationship with Bangladesh, while raising concerns about the safety of minorities. Bangladesh, in turn, voiced apprehension over “propaganda” by the Indian media and the repeated statements made by former Prime […]
American expert on India’s constitutional history, Granville Austin, who authored a book The Indian Constitution: A Corner Stone of a Nation observed in it: “With the adoption of the Constitution by the members of the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949, India became the largest democracy in the world.” He then remarked with emphasis, “By this […]
