It has been in the news lately that Gujarati migrants make up a huge portion of those who have been deported by the Trump administration to India. In fact, it is understood that Gujaratis are overrepresented among illegal Indian migrants in the US at large. In 2023, out of 67,391 Indian illegal migrants in the US, […]
The government took almost a day to come up with estimates of the dead in the Kumbh stampedes. It did its best to not give out details, until being forced to say “30 died”. Subsequent reports put the numbers of the dead at 79, at least. Official figures are gung-ho on bathers attending the grand event, they […]
The Congress Party is entitled to its view that the Delhi vote is by no means an endorsement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership but a rejection of Arvind Kejriwal’s experiment in politics of deceit and deception. A grain of truth, perhaps. The BJP, of course, has earned crowing rights. The established rites of sycophancy […]
Eighty-seven-year-old Zakia Jafri passed away on February 1, 2025. But our country’s judiciary did not give her justice till the end. The heinous incident of Gulbarg Society was not carried out by just an agitated mob, a very big personality was behind it. Doubts arise because despite the police commissioner of Ahmedabad and the local […]
As Delhi went to polls on February 5, 2025, the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party may have just fought its biggest battle in its little over a decade of existence. Confronted with the proverbial 10-year-old itch of the electorate, the Arvind Kejriwal-led organisation had three mammoth challenges. One, it had to overcome the increasing impression that […]
New Delhi: The air hangs heavy with the combined weight of dust, diesel fumes, and simmering discontent. As the spring sun begins its descent, casting long shadows across the labyrinthine lanes of Karawal Nagar and Mustafabad, the residents of these two Northeast Delhi constituencies prepare to make a choice that will shape not only their immediate […]
New Delhi: Ever since 42 persons were killed in a stampede at the Allahabad Railway station during the 2013 Maha Kumbh Mela, Mohammad Azam Khan, the senior Muslim leader of the Samajwadi Party, has been widely projected by the Bharatiya Janata Party as the villain behind the tragedy. Khan, who was the state’s urban development minister […]
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 […]