'I am only slightly puzzled by why the childishness has not left the minister. It is easy to be prejudiced and closed-minded when one is in one's teens. But adults should view the world as adults, not as squabbling and petty schoolchildren,' says Aakar Patel.
'What aspect of the air strikes would make it possible for a voter to change her mind?' asks Aakar Patel.
'Rich Indians don't give cash, they give gold. Why?' 'Because cash is spent by temples on prasad or doing some charitable work.' 'Gold remains intact with god,' says Aakar Patel.
'On the drive to the airport, the streets are lined with men in battle camouflage carrying assault rifles and bearing familiar faces -- Tamilians, Bengalis, Punjabis, feared by the locals and in turn fearing them,' notes Aakar Patel during a visit to Srinagar.
"As an organisation committed to the rule of law, our operations in India have always conformed with our national regulations. The principles of transparency and accountability are at the heart of our work.".
'He is wily and has everything that a political leader needs to succeed at that level.' 'He would be outstanding as a counter to Modi in the Lok Sabha, if he had the Opposition benches behind him,' says Aakar Patel.
'Its three primary effects are to send the alcohol economy underground (depriving the state of revenue), to criminalise the casual drinker and to criminalise the police,' says Aakar Patel.
'India's election process is smoother, more efficient, more credible, cheaper to conduct and quicker to deliver than any other large democracy, including the United States. It seems to me that the election process is getting better with each passing year and it is something all Indians can be very proud of,' says Aakar Patel.
'He was carrying his Indian passport. This seems like a very different sort of spy than the ones we see in movies, who carry fake passports and are highly trained,' says Aakar Patel.
The idea that Hindus are peace-loving and reticent is modern, says Aakar Patel.
'Our great Indian nationalists are rousing passions against their own people, not against another nation. Our fraud nationalists go after their own citizens for their religion, or for their views. Their concern and their passion is the enemy within. That is not love of nation or love of anything else. It is hatred and it is bitterness,' says Aakar Patel.
'One is forced to wonder whether Modi is serious about all the bills people want him to pass. Because to me he has made no real honest effort at getting things moving legislatively,' says Aakar Patel.
An SIT officer probing the murder case said the investigation is in final stage and a chargesheet will be filed in two months.
'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.
'There is no real doubt that the Congress government was incompetent in stopping the violence against the Sikhs and there are serious charges of mass murder that many in the party face.' 'It would do Indians a great service if the government showed that it was firm and decisive in acting against these people now.'
'A full majority might please the stock market for a couple of days, but the damage it usually does over five years is too high a price to pay,' argues Aakar
'Will Modi succeed with the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan? He will not, because cultural change does not come purely from legislation and never overnight. It comes internally and this is something Gandhi understood,' says Aakar Patel.
'Modi deliberately chose such unhinged people because they said what he wanted to, but couldn't,' says Aakar Patel.
We are spectators who have no voice and no power to influence the giant changes being imposed on all of us, says Aakar Patel.
'Why can I not access all these things -- Bhut Jolokia, Dalle, Kaachu, Bhakri, Ghari and everything else -- more easily?' asks Aakar Patel.
'The government is going to introduce legislation that would make it easy for Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Zoroastrians, Sikhs and Jains to migrate legally to India.' 'But looking at that list, my entire well-meaning question, as may be obvious, is: What about Muslims? They seem to have been specifically left out of this formulation,' says Aakar Patel.
'Many of us hope that India will soon play well enough to be part of truly global sporting tournaments like the football World Cup and the Olympics,' says Aakar Patel.
'Muslim actors like Dilip Kumar thought they had to give themselves Hindu names to be acceptable. Was their caution justified?' 'My view is that Indians, of all faiths, are tolerant. Secular is a complicated word and I do not know if I can use it in this instance. Tolerance is something that is inherently Subcontinental.'
'Some have speculated that it has to do with Doklam and the 2019 elections.' 'That Modi asked Xi not to embarrass him by sending the Chinese army into Bhutan again, this time rolling over our resistance,' says Aakar Patel.
'If 25 black men had been executed illegally in the US in one day, the government would have fallen and the population would have rallied to the victims. In India, those of us who did not applaud the police only yawned,' says Aakar Patel.
The England-India series has brought the bowler back into what has been turned into a batsman's game, says Aakar Patel.
Aakar Patel tell us why we must travel with open eyes and discover ourselves.
Anthony Bourdain thought vada-pao was so good that all other Indian food could be dismissed. He was not wrong, says Aakar Patel.
'Manto is the only writer to grasp what the project of Pakistan would eventually mean,' says Aakar Patel, who has translated a collection of Saadat Hasan Manto's essays in a just-released book Why I Write.
'What does our conservatism seek to conserve?' 'Of course its values, which are akin to religion and accepted unquestioningly.' 'Such things as respect for elders, studying 'hard', career choices being determined or influenced by parents, the idea of arranged marriage, the marking of ritual and ceremony,' explains Aakar Patel.
Elizabeth Hurley, one of the great beauties of our time, said there was only one way to lose weight, and it was 'to go to bed hungry', says Aakar Patel.
'Those who are upset by the current government's hard position against agitating Kashmiris should know it is exactly as hard as the position of previous governments.' 'Congress also killed as many, and actually more, but it spoke softly.' 'The BJP uses harsher words, but that is the only real difference,' says Aakar Patel.
'Gujarat is a high turnout state and the BJP, even if it leads opinion polls, must ensure that its base comes out and votes.' 'The Congress can be confident that, even though its base is smaller, their voters will turn out because they are angry.'
'I doubt very much if I will ever move on from his music, as I have from so much else through the years,' says Aakar Patel.
'Creativity and invention come from engaging with the physical world.' 'This is something that we in the upper classes of India do not do as much as the rest of the world,' says Aakar Patel.
'I have no problem with people from the right wing who speak with a certain integrity of position.'
'Where is the analysis that we need to spend at least Rs 4 trillion to keep India safe?'
'The more harder India pushes its nationalism on to its population, the further away we send Kashmiris.' 'We should understand that the unrest in that state cannot be solved by demonetisation. There are much deeper causes,' says Aakar Patel.
One way to begin would be to access the material of our own culture, meaning the literature of India, recommends Aakar Patel.
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