'It used to sound very strange.' 'That the same child who used to sing Jana Gana Mana the loudest in class, who celebrated August 15 and 26th January with such fervour and who has always nurtured the desire to make India a better nation being called desh drohi.' 'It was very painful.'
'This is a movie made with this gaze fixed on its immediate well-wishers, while at the same time it squints hard looking for those swaying back and forth on the fence,' notes Rohit Sathish Nair.
The following is the full text of US President Donald Trump's first address to a joint session of the Congress on February 28, as prepared for delivery and released by the White House press office.
As the island heads for elections, two major factors worry Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. One is the division in the Sinhala vote and the other is the prospect of the Tamils and Muslims voting heavily against him.
'In each hartal, enormous amount of public money is wasted. The entire state comes to a standstill. How long can this go on?' 'Every year 3 crore people sit at home not because they support hartals, but because they are forced to do so.' 'This is part of a larger measure to curb democratic rights.'
'The nation State can thrive if all communities believe they have a stake in it; that their interests will be safeguarded; that there will be no discrimination; that there will be justice.' 'The political leadership of this country needs to decide whether it wants to mitigate these challenges to the nation by making necessary correction or whether it wants to ignore these questions that Yakub's noose has left behind,' says Ankur Bhardwaj.
Son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Robert Vadra said he was being "singled out" and "lies" were spread about him.
'Much of the Socialism that we attribute to him actually came during Indira Gandhi's time,' says M J Akbar who believes that Nehru's convictions helped shape modern India.
In anticipation of a verdict to be delivered by the International Tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on Tuesday, China has orchestrated a worldwide campaign to defuse its findings.
In his fifth address as President, Pranab Mukherjee asked authorities and institutions of the State to adhere to the 'dignity' in discharging their duties.
'I do not call the BJP or RSS as extremist groups, but some small groups all over India have started behaving aggressively after the BJP came to power.' 'These groups think they have the authority to attack anyone and impose their ideas on people.'
Instead of repealing Section 295A of the IPC, which criminalises speech that offends the religious, India intends to further criminalise offence against religion, says Mihir S Sharma
Attired in his trademark half sleeves kurta and sporting a Rajasthani turban, Prime Minister Narendra Modi devoted a bulk of his 90-minute address on the occasion of the 70th Independence Day to presenting in effect a report card of his government's work particularly in boosting economic growth, ease of doing business and welfare schemes for the poor and farmers.
Forty years after the declaration of Emergency by Indira Gandhi, the Sunanda K Datta-Ray recalls life when civil rights were suspended and press censorship was in force
Rohith, like Mahatma Gandhi, was not allowed to speak the truth by the forces who killed him, said Congress vice president.
Governments must give companies a hearing before blacklisting them.
'Despite living in a free nation for so many years, if atrocities like rapes, public flogging, social boycotts are faced by Dalits, then conversion is the only option.'
Here is the full text of the joint statement issued by India and the US.
Since 2004 the Congress has hung onto power in a situation in which it was on track to be out of power. In each case, it effectively gamed the system through Constitutional coups, argues columnist Rajeev Srinivasan.
Indian cricket's fortunes ebbed and flowed in 2015 with Virat Kohli successfully leading the national side in Tests and Mahendra Singh Dhoni appearing to be losing his midas touch, while in off the field drama Shashank Manohar returned as the president of Board of Control for Cricket in India.
The West has always preferred a timid, half intelligent and a dependent India rather than a decisively independent and self-reliant one. A pliable Indian leadership suits the West best, says Tarun Vijay.
The joint statement issued after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama's first-ever summit is high on intent and ambition. Notably missing from the statement is India's refusal to be America's partner in its war against ISIS.
Tarun Vijay visits 20 Durga Puja pandals in five towns in Bangladesh and comes back impressed.
'The government's proposal to store citizens' data including Aadhaar data under its Digital India initiative on cloud is violative of the citizens' human rights because the cloud is admittedly beyond India's jurisdiction.'
Chaitanya Tamhane's National Award-winning film seems more relevant today than when it released, says Sreehari Nair.
'In her insecurity, she destroyed the institutions of democracy.' 'She packed Parliament with her supporters with loyalty being more important than ability; she superseded judges; she corrupted the civil service.' 'She knew how to use people against each other and was quite a master of that.' 'She would do this with calculated skill and in the bargain cause enmity between brothers, split up families.'
'Without doubt, Narasimha Rao confronted huge challenges. Yet, in the very brief period I saw him at the closest of quarters, I have to say that he was simply magnificent. A lifetime of circumspection gave way to courage.'
'The Kashmiri wants freedom, the dignity that comes from it and the intellectual versatility that flows from the combination of the two,' says political historian Siddiq Wahid.
'We saw how vigorous democracy was when it dislodged authoritarianism under Indira Gandhi. We saw its vigour again when it voted Mr Modi out of humble origins as prime minister. It was Nehru who laid that foundation for India and what is worrying today is Modi's rather imperial style of functioning,' says writer Nayantara Sahgal.
'What hurts people most is dynastic impulses and corruption under a family-ruled Congress party -- and Nehru has borne the brunt of it... I cannot be blinded by how the Nehru family has functioned but just as Gandhi can't be judged by his descendents, why should Nehru?' asks political scientist Ashutosh Varshney.
'With the recent challenging of the notion of the Indian Ocean Region being India's strategic backyard, China is gradually upping the ante in the maritime realm around India.'
The history of the Cauvery and Mullaperiyar cases has shown how helpless the constitutional processes and judicial verdicts have been in enforcing the law of the land in inter-state and state-Centre disputes, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Even though he knew full well that the manipulation went against the facts as he knew them, Pillai nonchalantly contented himself with stating that since the file came from the minister himself, he just passed it on as it was,' says B S Raghavan.
'By resorting to divisive issues, the BJP is giving the impression that even if it is voted to power it won't do anything new to give Bihar a facelift. It will repel voters with the belief that the BJP can't do anything without communal polarisation as its core ideology. This is sad and unfortunate,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Meet Mona Patel, one of CNN's Top 10 Heroes of the Year.
Here is the full transcript of Congress vice president and Lok Sabha poll campaign chief Rahul Gandhi's first formal TV interview with Times Now Editor-In-Chief Arnab Goswami.
'Asked which Dilip Kumar films were among her favourites, she said she had seen not a single movie of his until that time. This became a sensational issue. She did not mean to offend Dilip Kumar. There was not a bone of diplomacy in her and she never acquired that calculating attitude even at the cost of some of the roles that she would eventually lose.'
'There are problems related to the Indian film industry that I'd like to address rather than to keep harping on the negative zone of hurdles in film certification,' Minister for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore tells Subhash K Jha.
You should know who your customer is and what problem you are going to address with your blog.
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