Critical days for Modi and rivals
THE underplayed defeat for his government by 32 seats in the parliamentary elections, with a whopping loss of 63 BJP MPs from the previous tally, may have reined in Prime…
Are Muslims the only victims?
FIVE Muslim men went to meet the head of the Hindu revivalist RSS. The idea behind the visit was wrapped in the cliché that there’s no alternative to dialogue. The…
As opium is to heroin addicts
ROMILA Thapar delivered yet another magisterial lecture on history last week. Titled ‘Our history. Their history. Whose history?’, the 91-year-old professor wove the theme around a quote from Eric Hobsbawn…
India’s first tribal president
INDIA is such a complex country with its mosaic of ethnicities, belief systems, castes, sub-castes, regions, languages that are perpetually jostling to catch the eye, and so much else in…
A saffron rebirth
MODERN India’s founding father M.K. Gandhi was shot on Jan 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse, a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s secular India died on…
The Modi phenomenon
It was Nato’s provocative endeavour of extending itself to Russia’s doorstep that thrust Ukraine into a devastating war. Now India – along with Australia, Japan and the US – has…
The state of the Indian union
India is celebrating its 72nd Republic Day on January 26. Flaunting its status as the world’s most populous democracy, it nevertheless continues to drift away from the ideals of the…
The fuss about ‘reunification’
PAKISTAN’S Foreign Office offered what sounded like a high-decibel response to the routinely chest-thumping comments by Mohan Bhagwat, the head of India’s right-wing Hindu RSS. He had, not for the first time,…
RSS-BJP split?
THERE is no way the BJP will (or, indeed, can) split from the RSS. Splits are between equals. The BJP is a creature of the RSS. Without it the BJP…
Remembering Gandhi in Modi’s India
Nothing is so prized in politics as a short public memory. As India and the world mark the 150th birth anniversary of Gandhi, and world leaders ply us with the…
