Wouldn't it be better to join the celebrations with the vast Hindu majority while at the same time criticising Mr Modi/BJP/RSS for politicising it? notes Shekhar Gupta.

Over a million officials are said to have been punished in Xi's anti-corruption campaign according to the official media accounts. The intensity of the campaign also attracted criticism that Xi made effective use of it to silence his critics and rivals within the party.

'Their role model is Iran: high control of the citizens by the State.' In Iran it is Islamic control; in India, it will be Hindutva control.'

Two of Xi Jinping's chosen officials have disappeared from view, an indication of turmoil in Xi's government, months after he installed a collection of loyalist leaders in his cabinet, observes Dr Rajaram Panda.

Speculation about the missing Chinese Defence Minister General Li Shangfu may have been removed and detained became rife after he was conspicuously absent at the meeting of the Central Military Commission (CMC) in Beijing on Friday.

China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang has not been seen in public since June 25. Is he unwell, or has he been purged?

'With one fell swoop he (Sharad Pawar) won the sympathies of the NCP workers at the grassroots, his own flock of MLAs and bolstered his position as the NCP chief'

'It is definitely not for someone who is sensitive or would want to pick up things and get affected by it.'

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday visited an exhibition of the Communist Party, appearing in public for the first time after his return from the SCO summit on September 16, which sparked rumours about his absence from the limelight ahead of next month's key Congress of the ruling party.

Come October 1, merchants, payment aggregators and acquiring banks can no longer store the card details of customers.

A day after he was ruthlessly removed from the Bharatiya Janata Party Parliamentary Board, Nitin Gadkari -- arguably, the top performer in the Narendra Modi Cabinet and a former BJP president -- was in Mumbai, launching one of his pet projects: Electric public transport buses for the city.

'We are seeing an era where only what Modi wishes is going to happen.' 'A clear message has now been sent to others that if this fate could befall on Nitin Gadkari, then just think what could happen to lesser mortals.'

'We like to look at a screenplay as a spiral staircase.' 'You never know what awaits at the next turning.'

'The Olympic Spirit has been thrown to the wind in Xi Jinping's China.' 'The International Olympic Committee is ready to kowtow to totalitarian China,' notes Claude Arpi.

Support from the committee gives Xi an indefinite extension on the reins of power, which will surely result in hawkish and insular policies. It does not bode well for relations with the USA, or with anyone else who does not bow the knee to Beijing, for that matter.

'Women have 100 per cent inclusion in the health sector. They are also teaching in the education sector. They are working in each and every one of those sectors where they are required'

An exclusive white paper by the Jamestown Foundation claims that the powerful figures arraigned against the President include former Vice-President Zeng Qinghong and current Vice-President Wang Qishan, The Hong Kong Post reported.

The BJP believes that the only party still capable of leading a credible challenge against it is the Congress. Please note how BJP campaigners in states where the Congress may count for a cipher or thereabouts, mostly attack the Congress, observes Shekhar Gupta.

If he doesn't win next year, it will set back the party's prospects in 2024. If he wins, it will be seen as his win as much as the BJP high command's, points out Shekhar Gupta.

Two elderly Chinese aerospace experts are hospitalised after a violent attack by a 'Princeling', states Jayadeva Ranade, the distinguished China expert and retired RA&W officer, highlighting the power the 'Princelings' ironically hold in the Communist People's Republic.

Satyajit Ray would have been a hundred years old on May 2. To mark the legendary film-maker's birth centenary, Rediff.com bring you a treasure trove of features from our archives.

Not all change is good, but this one is, applauds Shekhar Gupta.

Xi, 67, already roiling the Communist Party with a 'rectification' campaign and mass persecution of foes, will launch 'another brutal purge' following the Chinese army's failures on the Indian border, the Newsweek said in an opinion piece.

'The party in the present form cannot pose a challenge to the BJP and Modi.'

The former first lady urged those who did not come out to vote in 2016 to make their vote count this time.

'By annoying the Arabs and cozying up to Iran, Pakistan may end up losing Arab economic support, annoying the Americans and increase Shia-Sunni tensions domestically,' Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) points out.

'It doesn't look as if any sensible, worldly wise, person is in charge in China.' 'If at all anybody is in charge, it can only be a bunch of bumpkins of whom Xi has become a puppet,' observes B S Raghavan, the veteran civil servant.

'Shaheen Bagh is no longer a mere ghetto of lower middle class Muslims.' 'Now, it is a metaphor for resistance, secularism and struggle,' notes Md. Zeeshan Ahmad.

In its morning update, the Union health ministry said the total number of positive cases has reached 2,16,919 with a record spike of 9,304 new cases since Wednesday 8 am across the country, while the death toll has increased to 6,075 with 260 more fatalities in this period. A PTI tally of figures announced by different states and union territories, as of 9.50 pm, showed a higher number of confirmed cases across the country at 2,17,389 and the death toll at 6,233.

China's GDP took the worst hit since the disastrous Cultural Revolution in 1976, plummeting by 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 as the country took unprecedented measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic that brought the world's second largest economy to a standstill. China's gross domestic product stood at 20.65 trillion yuan (USD 2.91 trillion, approx) in the first quarter of 2020 amid the Covid-19 impact, down 6.8 per cent year on year, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday.

The MP for Richmond in Yorkshire, married to Murthy's daughter Akshata, first entered the UK Parliament in 2015 and has fast risen up the Conservative Party ranks as a staunch Brexiteer who had back Johnson's strategy to leave the European Union.

The total deaths from the more than two-month-old outbreak as reported on Thursday stood at 1,367, with the total number of confirmed cases mounting to 59,804, health officials were quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Kishore Singh salutes Akbar Padamsee, the legendary painter who passed into the ages last fortnight.

Nir Eyal lists 4 urgent steps to save yourself countless hours of mindless phone time.

'The brutal violence of the UP government's first response to the anti-CAA protests suggests that the BJP will test drive the NPR/NRC in UP, where it has both a massive majority in the assembly and a chief minister whose instinct for Hindutva extremism and whose appetite for punitive policing allows a prime minister as darkly majoritarian as Modi to appear statesman-like,' notes Mukul Kesavan.

'Savarkar was the closest the RSS had to a freedom movement icon, however flawed.' 'Indira Gandhi wasn't going to gift him to them.' 'And a non-career politician like Dr Singh understands it.' 'It is just that his party never listened to him,' says Shekhar Gupta.

The counsel stated that from the pillar bases, artefacts, circular shrine, intersecting brickbat walls found in excavation, an inference can be drawn that the massive structure was a temple and not any Islamic structure.

'Indian creative and digital agencies seem to be completely missing the mark,' says advertising and media veteran Sandeep Goyal.

'For Muslims it is time to understand what sense of fears are in the minds of Hindus.' 'I think the conversation somewhere is not taking place.'

'Modi's advent has made the mass of Indians realise that there was absolutely nothing wrong or objectionable in proclaiming nationalism as the masthead of the polity and Hinduism as its centerpiece,' says B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.