There has been a discernible frisson of excitement in intellectual and political circles in the capital ever since the leaders of the Mohajirs, Sindhis, Baluchis and Pakhtoons met at Acton Town Hall in London recently and declared the demise of the two-nation theory. Partition, Pakistan’s minority groups intoned at the … Read More
Unlike most analysts, I do not believe that RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan’s contentious recipe for inculcating patriotism among the minorities is at all aimed at the Muslims or Christians. Like other controversies in India, this one too is essentially an intra-Hindu affair, with the minorities being used as a smokescreen. … Read More
The Vatican’s reiteration, in the wake of the recent United Nations Summit of World Religious Leaders, that its real agenda is to convert every person in the world to the Roman Catholic variant of Christianity, is a sharp reminder of the divergence between the world-views of western and eastern civilizations. … Read More
At least in one respect, the Marxian dream has come true in India – the state has withered away. It’s an all-India phenomenon, not just in the blood-red villages of Bihar or West Bengal. What’s more, it’s given us the dictatorship of the proletariat. Some of us are now beginning … Read More
The non-dualism of the Hindu tradition has received a mortal blow from the BJP–Sangh parivar’s crude and ill-conceived overture to the Muslim community. Neither the BJP nor the Sangh parivar, basking in the self-perceived glow of their new-found secular credentials, will appreciate the damage they have done to the nation’s … Read More
All animals are equal. But some are more equal than others – George Orwell, Animal Farm Recent events involving two popular film stars have brought home this banal truth somewhat forcefully, and with it, the more acute concern that we may no longer be running a democracy, but rather, an … Read More
Now that a major politician like former Defence Minister Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav has taken the lead to help articulate a fitting national response to the butchery of over a hundred Hindu pilgrims in one blood-drenched night, the Union Government would do well to take the nation into confidence about … Read More
The alacrity with which the Chief Justice of India, Mr AS Anand, has now cleared the appointment of Mr Justice BM Lal as chairman of the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission, would indicate that he wishes to put the unseemly controversy with the former law minister Mr Ram Jethmalani … Read More
Girilal Jain believed clinical analysis, not emotional indignation, can explain the shifts which led to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. This is something that eludes ‘secular’ analysts, argues Sandhya Jain INDIAN ANALYSTS have been so intoxicated with the concept of secularism as tacit parity between Hindus and Muslims and a ‘composite’ … Read More
The unfinished issue at Ayodhya has once again returned to the centre stage, and as before, reflects the intransigence of sections of the political elite on the issue of Hindu reassertion and the nations’ foundational ethos. What is also increasingly evident is that the Muslim community is essentially directionless on … Read More
