There is a delicious irony in the Congress-led UPA government declaring national mourning for Varanasi icon Bismillah Khan on the very day that Union HRD minister Arjun Singh issued a directive making the recitation of Vande Mataram optional in educational institutions on September 7, the centenary of its adoption. Consider … Read More
Strongly affirming the role of religion in defining individual and group identity, Jharkhand’s beleaguered Sarna tribe is demanding immediate withdrawal of reservation benefits in government jobs and educational institutions from members who have converted to Christianity. The Kendriya Sarna Samiti (KSS), which has taken the lead in this matter, asserts … Read More
The word Hindutva entered our contemporary political vocabulary nearly two decades ago, along with the movement to liberate the Ram Janmabhoomi. Since then, it has been a loaded concept, infused with negative connotations imposed by its opponents who have failed to comprehend, much less appreciate it, but have nonetheless obliquely … Read More
The BJP’s rise in national politics, to the point where it led a national coalition in 1998, was both the triumph of Hindu nationalism for the first time since 1947 and a powerful affirmation of the RSS’ goal of empowering the Hindu community. Naturally, this was bad news for our … Read More
Archbishop Mar Varkey Vithayathil recently startled India’s intellectual elite with his call for more babies to arrest the decline of Kerala’s Catholic community. Perturbed at the toll taken by abortion and the small family norm on the Syro-Malabar Church, he insisted the burgeoning national population is no problem and that … Read More
If I were Prime Minister of Hindu-majority India, I would discard without delay the debilitating missionary propaganda about turning the other cheek (interestingly never followed in Western Christian nations), and respond to the grave national challenges with manly valour and statesmanship. In the penumbra of the approaching Krishna Janmasthami, this … Read More
Indians have taken so many of their modern political ideas and values from the Western Christian tradition that they naively assume that the West lives up to all its stated political idealism and professed civilisational values. That this is far from the living reality was brought home to many people … Read More
The US $ 50,000 Magsaysay Award was recently conferred upon Arvind Kejriwal, a former Indian Revenue Service officer campaigning for the Right to Information (RTI). Though several Indians have received this prize from Philippines, not many citizens are aware that this is actually an American award for Asians. Set up … Read More
The alleged LeT agents are Indian Muslims, who have procured army and police employment in a regular way, and were recruited by LeT either after being thus employed, or even before, which is doubly disturbing. It would be in the fitness of things for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to disband … Read More
In the western world, politics is more about serving covert, mainly illicit economic interests, than about meeting the genuine aspirations of the people. The most glaring example of this, of course, is the September Eleven incident in New York, which enabled President George Bush to bomb Afghanistan into the Stone … Read More
