RSS, BJP & Modi
Narendra Modi’s anointment as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate shows that while the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has tightened its grip over its political front (the BJP) Modi…
Kashmir saga
It is amusing as well as instructive to watch unionists Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti and separatist Mirwaiz Umar Farooq vie with each other in singing hosannas to former…
The Priyanka blunder
After years, somebody in the exhausted, jaded Indian National Congress had a bright idea – fielding Priyanka Gandhi as its Lok Sabha candidate against Narendra Modi in Varanasi in Uttar…
Modi’s media apologists
When Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency in 1975, the vast majority of Indian intellectuals and media commentators refused to support her. Most newspapers carried sharply critical comments and truthful accounts…
Modi: plumbing the low depths
Many Narendra Modi zealots are acting as if the man had already been sworn in as India’s prime minister, or as if that were inevitable. They take their cue from…
Righting the left
Where is the left in the crucial Indian elections and what role is it hoping to play when the hurly-burly is done with? People say the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)…
Anger and amnesia
THE last Indian politician to send journalists to jail, most notably Kuldip Nayar, was Mrs Indira Gandhi. Her reason was an Emergency she imposed upon India in 1975 to preserve…
Secularism as a joke
NDTV’s Barkha Dutt wrote a fine piece for Hindustan Times last week. Bemoaning the continuing degeneration of Indian politics coupled with the rise of the Right, she voiced eminent jurist…
No absolution for Gujarat massacre
Ever since Ahmedabad magistrate BJ Ganatra rejected Zakia Jafri’s petition in the Gujarat carnage case in December and held that Chief Minister Narendra Modi was not part of the “larger…
Not a firecracker godown
ANY political party that rises from street turmoil must of necessity reflect the varied character of its origins. Everyone wearing a Gandhi cap does not become a Gandhi. But the…
