An analysis of the results in Haryana reveals that caste-based voting is anything but dead. It could even help the Bharatiya Janata Party win a second successive term in the state in the forthcoming assembly polls, reports Nitin Kumar.
Amarinder, 75, was sworn in as the state's 26th chief minister along with nine ministers, including Navjot Singh Sidhu.
Sensing the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's attempts to rekindle Ayodhya sentiments, the Akhilesh Yadav-led government in Uttar Pradesh has banned a meeting to mark the 25th death anniversary of brothers, Ram and Sharad Kothari, who fell to police bullets while performing the symbolic kar sewa on November 2, 1990 -- two years before the Babri Masjid was brought down.
'The question of survival depends on several factors because this country is divided vertically and horizontally.' 'There will always be demands and ups and downs.'
'Why has the phrase gone missing from Modi's vocabulary?' asks Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Sukanya Verma salutes the legend and celebrates some of the finest soundtracks of his career.
Siva Sankar looks at S P Balasubrahmanyam's fantastic repertoire.
'Amit Shah and Modi have a disciple and guru relationship. But Modi and Jaitley's relationship was based on friendship. That's the difference.'
'Khaike Paan Banarasiwala doesn't sound like a Hindi song,' Kishore Kumar said. 'I don't think I can sing this song.' We pleaded with him. Finally, he relented on one condition...
Hrishi Satawane, who found love in Vinh from Vietnam, says "Society is more open minded than you think."
'If Modi were to be elected, he would be part of a coalition government, and within that he would have to take this minority into account. Muslims cannot relate to the idea of Hindu nationalism. Although it is presented as a pan-Indian idea, it appears to them to be exclusive.'
If the Congress lost in Tamil Nadu in 1967, never to return, or the DMK and the AIADMK have kept their place in power and electoral politics since then, it owes not to their love or hatred for gods or for one religion over another. Instead, they had always been linked to performance and incumbency/anti-incumbency factors. There may be something in such constructs for Rajini's strategic team to consider, especially if the superstar is to enter direct politics by around this time next year. But then, they would need to brush up their homework more than at present, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
They alleged that they fled from their country because of religious persecution from the Hindu majority.
It is mischievous to imply that the proposed bill to grant citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists from other nations implies that Muslims and Christians are not Indians, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
Tired of living under the restive shadow of communalism, Ayodhya residents, be it Vijay Singh or Mohammad Azim, do not want any fresh political trigger for communal disharmony.
'There is no remorse over the Dadri lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq or of Pehlu Khan by cow vigilante groups.' 'But should you not have remorse for those who came to kill them?' 'They were Hindus. Do you accept that?' 'That to kill one Pehlu, 20 Hindus have become murderers.' Rajdeep Sardesai in conversation with Ravish Kumar.
Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan told the bench that Justice Lalit appeared for former UP CM Kalyan Singh in 1994.
'It would be interesting to see how Yogi Adityanath is received in Tamil Nadu, where he is due to end his Ram Rajya Rath Yatra in Rameswaram on March 23.'
For the 2019 polls, the BJP chief deployed over 7,000 leaders to oversee the work of polling committees on the over 400 seats the BJP contested. These committees were asked to focus on 120 seats the party had lost in 2014, but believed it could win in 2019.
BJP MP Satish Gautam demanded the expulsion of Uttar Pradesh Labour Minister Swami Prasad Maurya from the party for calling Jinnah a 'mahapurush'
'Mulk gets a lot of things right, including its vision of the country as a place where underneath the punctilious, forced-secular surface there are volatilities waiting to go off,' says Sreehari Nair.
The Hindutva brigade's silence on the rape may possibly be explained that this incident is an intra-Hindu affair for them. What is even more intriguing is that vocal gender activists have preferred to almost ignore the incident. Why? Is it because homosexual rape does not involve the woman either as victim or as aggressor, asks Mohammad Sajjad.
What has not changed in a decade is the character of Rizwan Khan. He is complex, multi-dimensional and lovable. In fact, his character continues to grow on you, notes Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi read out the Preamble to the Constitution of India as part of the 'Satyagraha of Unity' protest.
Who do you think nailed the bridal look better than anyone else this wedding season?
The man behind Aligarh Muslim University 200 years on.
'There were areas where the JD-S put up weak candidates against the Congress to benefit the BJP.'
Jyoti Punwani pays tribute to Syed Feroze Ashraf, the eternal do-gooder who changed the lives of many children.
According to sources in Gandhinagar, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi met a range of Muslim leaders including the Deobandis in the last week of Ramazan. In an off-the-record conversation, a Muslim community leader from Ahmedabad said that an important Islamic scholar and a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board had a 90-minute discussion with Modi during Ramzan.
Mayawati urged the Muslim voters to vote for the party, saying her party has given tickets to 99 candidates from the community.
'If Mr Modi and Mr Shah have made a poisonous, polarising campaign their brahmastra for 2019, Mamata Banerjee is showing them its limitations,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'They are innovating and a new Dalit leadership could be seen at the horizon'
Narendra Modi has a once in a lifetime chance to change and take the RSS-BJP-VHP to a new level. Varanasi is the right place to turn the page on saffron history. By surrendering to the spirit of mystical Varanasi, Modi and his party can change the trajectory of their political journey.
'In a competitive industry where no one has a formula for success other than the actor's personal appeal, the need to dominate the news cycle in the interim between films is so overpowering that even the otherwise sober stars can suffer a Ghajini moment,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'Those who have followed politics even when there was no Twitter know what the word 'jumlebaaz' means,' says Utkarsh Mishra.
Bajirao Mastani has the potential to do for Maratha 'history' what Mughal-e-Azam did for Mughal 'history', says Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
The Biju Janata Dal MP from Dhenkanal says crime will come down if cannabis is legalised.
'In economic matters governments should not take sides based on religion and caste,' says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Historian Stanley Wolpert, author of several books on India, passed into the ages recently. We remember Professor Wolpert with Rajeev Srinivasan's March 1997 interview published on the occasion of his controversial book on Jawaharlal Nehru.
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