Zakir Naik, a gentle, rockstar televangelist, is dangerous as young Muslims may be swayed by his fundamentalist interpretations of Islam and justify victimhood and extremism, says Shekhar Gupta.
'The Congress has become two distinct parties, one of the durbar, the other of the field and if they keep drifting apart, death is a certainty,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The resurgence that Congressmen feel is in fact more sentimental than substantive. The substantive reality is that the Congress is a party in terminal decline since 1989, says Shekhar Gupta.
The BJP's panicky return to basic-instinct majoritarianism in Bihar has pushed Muslims back into the 'secular' basement, says Shekhar Gupta.
'The new generation voter is hyper-nationalistic, but it isn't essentially illiberal.' 'They will find the rants of Adityanath as laughable as Irfan Habib's. They will also find the BJP's polarising approach to vote-gathering unacceptable if it fails to deliver jobs and growth,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'Modi and Shah know their politics. That is why the alarmed switch to reservations, and raising the threat from 'vote bank' politics,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'Unity in diversity is a dated notion as India, today, is more unified and cohesive and yet more pronouncedly diverse than ever in its history,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
We get tangled up in our own crooked web on purchases, and the murky arms bazaar knows it, says Shekhar Gupta.
'In this resurgent India, class is the new caste. We are shaken up only occasionally, and briefly, when a battered, tribal teenager from Jharkhand looks us in the eye from our closet,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'Usually, the Left backed the Congress and other 'secular' parties on the justification of keeping the BJP out. In Bengal, the alliance targets a truly secular rival,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'You can see the essential contours of his new Pakistan strategy. Rather than keep engaging with or humouring them, he'd rather work on taking their four biggest supporters -- the US, China, the UAE and later Saudi Arabia -- away from them.' 'In his calculation,' says Shekhar Gupta, 'with the total support of all four of these, Pakistan will be forced to moderate its policies.'
GM is already in our food chain for years. The approval for indigenous GM mustard should put fake fear-mongering to rest, says Shekhar Gupta
'One big problem for the RSS is, while they spread their ideology of hard, Hindu-ised Indian nationalism, the absence of their own pantheon of modern nationalist giants. They missed out on the freedom movement quite comprehensively, in some ways comparable to the Muslim League and latter-day Communists. They have to find heroes elsewhere.' 'They borrow who they can from the Congress, like Madan Mohan Malviya and Sardar Patel, and then steal the entire lot of revolutionaries, from Bhagat Singh to Netaji, never mind that many of them were extreme leftists.'
The real brilliance of this RSS campaign, therefore, lies in building a dominant power base with, and for, a mostly non-RSS leadership. That is why the rise of the BJP in Assam is their stand-out victory, says Shekhar Gupta.
'Pakistan needs to be constantly at war with somebody, ultimately resulting in it waging war on itself and its own people,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Indians thrive in ordinariness -- from academia and science to business and military power. Sports is just an apt metaphor, says Shekhar Gupta.
Tubes gone, Irom Sharmila the brand is dead. As long as she was trying to kill herself, she had value to the cynics trying to build their careers over her fast, says Shekhar Gupta.
'Lending to Mr Mallya was the bankers' season ticket to corridors of power and glamour. Borrowing from them was like a favour Mallya did to them,' says Shekhar Gupta.
What got the Jats of Haryana so furious?
'The Ishrat encounter was neither genuine, nor fake. I believe it was a 'controlled killing,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Do you have the courage to look through failures and unexpected pitfalls?
'The Congress, all these decades, worked on a slow Hindi-isation and Indianisation of Arunachal tribes. The RSS wants rapid Hinduisation,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'His Promised Land was India.' Shekhar Gupta salutes General J F R Jacob, the incredible soldier who passed into the ages this week.
'He is still compulsively an operations man. Just a whiff of a live operation, and he is back in the field, at least in his mind. That is why the immediate decision to send the NSG to Pathankot.' 'But there is a difference between classical intelligence or counter-terror operation and dealing with a larger threat to a place as sensitive and sprawling as an air force base. This is what led to confusion and mix-ups,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'This is a new phenomenon,' says Shekhar Gupta. 'Does it point to the rise of egomania, and could it also be a reason our politics is broken and Parliament non-functional? Where our biggest leaders talk not to, but at each other.'
'A close look at the time-lines tells you that exactly as the back-channel negotiations were in their most crucial stage, "somebody" was planning the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai,' says Shekhar Gupta questioning Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri's account of a peace deal with India.
Ironically, amid these struggles, interest in these taxi services has grown, as concerns over women's safety have escalated.
The former McKinsey India head is presently on board of many big Indian conglomerates.
'Competition makes us better. I lose a little bit of sleep because I have competition.'
The biggest success of Nawaz Sharif's visit to India is that it will lessen mistrust between the two countries, writes Amir Mateen from Islamabad.
'Soft power is the power really to win friends and influence people with the strength of your ideas.' 'India's greatest soft power is being India itself. A nation of varied beliefs, states, creeds, castes, languages and yet embodying that spirit of unity in diversity.'
Why does the army remain embroiled in counter-insurgency, denying itself a peace dividend even after expending blood and treasure in imposing calm?
'It was almost as though there was widespread relief that the defence bureaucracy, and the minister, could find someone willing to shoulder the blame for everything that had gone wrong with the services under Antony's charge -- the poor preparedness of the forces, slow acquisitions caused by indecision, cancellation of contracts and whimsical blacklisting of defence contractors over the tiniest suspicion that they may have paid speed money or kickbacks.'
The 'secularists'are more adept at the politics of intense and alarmingly exaggerated fear-mongering, as this kind of politics provides easy votes of Muslims without making them answerable for the concrete issues of poverty, unemployment, lawlessness, and of basic needs like roads, electricity, etc, which is exactly how Nitish Kumar was defeated in the elections, says Mohammad Sajjad.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances