The US president said America's foreign policy must be focused on the threat from IS and Al Qaeda.
Capping a momentous journey, Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal took oath as the eighth chief minister of Delhi on Satutday, promising to make Delhi the first corruption-free state and act against communal elements.
'Imran and his government have obviously agreed to be subservient to the military establishment.' 'How can we expect him to take a stand on anything?'
The actor said the 'poison has already spread' and it will be now difficult to contain it.
'The key factor, to my mind, is happiness.' 'If either party, for whatever reason, is not in it, they should have the choice to walk away as painlessly as possible,' points out Vasu Primlani.
Mumbai's 45 mohalla committees and the many voluntary groups working to bring communities together in the city can be counted upon to do their utmost to stop riots.
A look at few gurus who have attracted controversy in recent times.
'He has got all the criteria that are good for running an NGO.' 'He is always doing charitable things.' 'To be a political leader you must have cunning to go for the seal.'
He said the government had examined the video recording of the February 28 condolence meeting of slain Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Arun Mahaur, where Minister of State for Human Resource Development Ram Shankar Katheria had participated.
Just to be clear, "love jihad" -- a concept that claims that Muslim men court Hindu women to convert them to Islam purely to take over India -- doesn't exist, says Mitali Saran
Launching a stinging attack on Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram for ridiculing his knowledge of economics, Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Saturday said the country was run with hard work and not Harvard, a reference to the Congress leader's education overseas.
'There are moments, and the hanging of Yakub Memon was one, where all of the gathered injustices are crystallised. Those gathered at the graveyard were not there to protest. They came to sympathise because they are also victims,' says Aakar Patel.
Modi lashed out at the Siddaramaiah government over alleged corruption, saying there is not a single minister who is not facing allegations of financial wrongdoing.
Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, whose "leaving India" comments linked to the "intolerance" debate had kicked up a huge controversy, on Monday said he never meant that he wanted to leave the country and asserted that India was intolerant.
The million dollar question that begs for an answer is: Why is it that an amateurish attempt to convert a handful of Muslims by fringe Hindu elements garners so much attention while large scale systematic attempts to subvert Hinduism go unnoticed or are deliberately overlooked? If this is not double standards then what is, asks Vivek Gumaste.
'Nobody is killing you in Kerala because you are Hindu unlike in North India where Muslims have been killed only because they are Muslims and were carrying some meat.'
A look at few gurus who have attracted controversy in recent times.
'That's the stunning achievement of two-and-a-half years of this government -- a political bait-and-switch, selling a promise of economic development, and delivering a triumphalist machine that sacralises country, nationalism, majoritarianism and tradition, to achieve Hindutva goals,' says Mitali Saran.
'Extravagant new promises can buy him time, but far from solving the problem, they compound the risk.' 'His main alternative is to stress not aspirations, but resentments.' 'He has already de-emphasised aspirational appeals: Nothing has been heard for over two years of the coming of achhe din,' points out James Manor.
'The cow is sacred to many of us, but these killings are definitely not part of the Hinduism we know and practise,' says Jyoti Punwani.
'Gujaratis, among all Indians, are supposed to be born businessmen, but if more than 80% of them do not have the ability to do basic arithmetic, the future is grim.' 'The big issues are in society and they cannot be changed by an HRD minister no matter how brilliant she may be or think of herself as being,' says Aakar Patel.
I love India and intend to live and die here, but I also want to be able to freely question its imperfections. Just as I have the freedom to say that Islam has been hijacked by a gang of demonic and utterly vile hoodlums and that the rest of us Muslims seem helpless to combat this evil, says Laila Tyabji.
'She was just a little girl. She didn't understand religion. Who is Hindu, who is Muslim.' 'She was just 8! Why punish her?' The family of the eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped and murdered in Jammu's Kathua district say everything has changed since that horrific crime.
The need of the hour is not a divisive, slanging match of accusations and counter-accusations, but a call for sanity,' says Vivek Gumaste.
'Is Rahul turning the Congress' covert soft-Hindutva support into overt support now?' 'And if so, following in the BJP's footsteps, is the Congress going to abandon Indian Muslims and Muslim causes altogether?' asks Dr Najid Hussain whose father-in-law former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed during the Gujarat riots.
He pointed out that such a restriction is not prevalent in many Islamic countries.
Over 20 political parties, except the Biju Janata Dal and the Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Front, took part in the massive rally.
'It is heartening to know that from Narendra Modi downwards every significant leader in the BJP is angry with the gushers of that nonsense about a 'Hindu Rashtra' or the questioning of Sania Mirza's credentials,' reveals Virendra Kapoor.
'The incidents that used to happen in our time, have they stopped now?' 'Can you imagine they made an acid attack victim consume acid? And when did this happen?' 'When the CM was inspecting the thana...' 'History tells us that a party does not remain in power permanently.' 'Finally, they will have to deliver.'
'Narendra Modi could be too old to change his personality. On the other hand, his attachment to the RSS could be mostly sentimental. So one must hope that if he becomes prime minister, he is able to detach himself from the RSS view of the world as completely as Narasimha Rao detached himself from the Congress's First Family.' 'India cannot be governed by the autocratic methods by which he has governed Gujarat. If he becomes prime minister he will have to learn to speak in a more civil language about his political opponents,' historian Ramachandra Guha tells Arthur J Pais/Rediff.com
The controversy over Sant Rampal and his army of followers taking the law into their hands has once again thrown the spotlight on the clout that India's godmen possess.
'Babur has been facing gross historical injustice for the last two centuries, when he had no role either in the demolition of any temple or in the construction of the so-called Babri mosque at Ayodhya.'
Rediff.com republishes an old interview of the cartoonist on politics
The prime minister, says Ram Kelkar, could do a lot to advance his stature as a national leader by speaking in strong and unequivocal terms on the subject of opposing intolerance and emphasizing the rule of law, thereby setting the tone for the nation and the party.
'It will be interesting to see how Dr Patel handles gadflies with the maturity of egregiously petulant three year olds.' 'That Dr Patel does not, in so far as we can tell, cause society matrons to gush like hormonal teenagers can only be a good thing for him.' 'Look where their febrile imaginations and breathless prose took his predecessor.'
It is rare for communal riots to spread to rural areas. The UP riot is the first time after the September 1969 Gujarat riots that a rural area have been affected. Electoral politics which divide society in majority/minority, going on since the early 1990s, is a major contributing factor to this heightened tension between communities, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale in the first of a two part series.
'If Modi arrived like a juggernaut, he left like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were being dismantled bit by bit. It was as if India had seceded quietly from him.' Shiv Viswanathan's social science fiction about what India would be like in 2020.
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