Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah and chief ministers of National Democratic Alliance-ruled States are at the ceremony.
Annet Mahendru -- the half-Indian making waves in The Americans -- on her love for Bollywood, daal-chawal and being a Russian spy.
The Sindhis are a lesson in perseverance. Once uprooted, they've started all over, often reinventing themselves
Sarvesh Agrawal tells Shobha Warrier about how he built a start-up "of the interns, by the interns and for the interns."
'Politics is about caste in Eastern UP and religion in Western UP.' Rediff.com's Archana Masih gets a sense of the fault lines in this election's most volatile region -- that can make or break the future of political parties in UP.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's landslide election in 2014 raised hopes he would draw a line under India's socialist past, cut welfare and reduce the government's role in business.
India needs to build its Grand Narrative, and its cultural power, which conquered all of ASEAN (then known as Indo-China), needs to be forcefully projected while simultaneously hard economic and military power are also emphasised, says Rajeev Srinivasan.
Samuel Stokes made India his home and participated in the freedom struggle. He was the only American to be imprisoned for sedition; the British CID maintained a special file on him.
Have Muslim women taken to the BJP under Modi even while their menfolk cling to 'secular' politics, asks Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'I hope the prime minister starts telling those abusers to stop abusing... Because when he remains silent, these people get more muscle,' journalist Rajdeep Sardesai told Chaya Babu/Rediff.com soon after he was heckled and pushed around in New York on Sunday.
Aseem Chhabra's take on the highlights of Indian cinema this year.
'The sadhus and sanyasis of UP are not for any economics.' 'They only know the religious agenda and the RSS will support them.' 'Modi does not have full control of the party at the ground level like Indira Gandhi had.'
Almost three hours go like a breeze in the company of Bahubali's eclectic protagonists, where every single one makes an 'entry' designed for wolf-whistle.
'Bangladeshi Muslims want to increase their population in India.' 'They have made colonies in India.' 'Rohingyas are doing the same.' 'This has to stop.'
'I went away from the industry because all the people I enjoyed working with, like Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra, are no more.' 'They left this world and went away, so I lost interest in my work.'
Be a traveller, not a tourist.
'A false narrative is being created, that Modi is a habitual offender when it comes to lowering the political discourse in the country.' 'Nothing can be farther from the truth,' argues Sudhir Bisht.
Sreehari Nair presents his Top 20 movies of the decade.
'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.
Meraj Khalid Noor, who is popularly known as Bihar's Osama bin Laden for his uncanny resemblance with slain most-wanted Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, has said that he will contest the Lok Sabha polls against the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi from Varanasi.
'The man stood alone, fought alone.' 'Some of those battles appeared Quixotic at times.' 'Ultimately, it was he who won though it may have seemed as if a Sancho Panza was fighting a relentless battle against the windmill.' N Sathiya Moorthy salutes the fearless editor who has passed into the ages.
'Omerta is a work of true moral force; it is, at the risk of sounding fancy, a motion picture for our times,' says Sreehari Nair.
'People, who were killed, didn't even know why they were being killed.' 'Because a couple of Sikhs assassinated Indira Gandhi, the whole community had to pay for it.'
Aditi Phadnis and Archis Mohan take a state by state takedown of the party's chances in the poll-bound states.
Here's a glimpse of Modi's first day in Israel.
Rai says the story is a 'sordid saga of the relations between the Indian state and minorities'.
What got the Jats of Haryana so furious?
Because no other leader cared for Indians as selflessly as he did -- and it all started from a remote corner at the edge of this vast country, 100 years ago.
'She was the only prime minister who won a decisive military victory.' 'She won a real war; she didn't play video games on prime time TV over surgical strikes!' 'She understood power better than any other politician, saw it as her birthright and used it with inborn expertise.' 'Every politician today who tries to be a "supremo" through populism and absolute control over his or her party is referring to the Indira Gandhi playbook!'
'Even if Akhilesh Yadav opens up the entire state treasury for us we will not vote for the Samajwadi Party... ''...I don't want to return to my village, my head will be chopped off. They want me to press the button on the lotus.' Caught between an aggressive BSP cornering Dalit votes and the BJP cornering other Hindu votes, the Muslims of Muzaffarnagar have nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt presents the grim situation on the ground in western Uttar Pradesh.
'Make no mistake, depriving water deliberately to a nation of 190 million people is a repugnant idea.' 'The world community won't forgive us.'
Looking at the most touching Hindi movies inspired by true-life events.
Businessman P C Mustafa wants Indian Americans to return home, Cognizant CEO Francisco D'Souza outlines how Indian tech companies could grow, Gaurav Dalmia has some investment recommendations while Subramanian Swamy warns that India is flirting with a debt trap.
'Madhubala told me that of all the addictions, the biggest addiction is make-up; once you put it on, you can never leave the limelight even if you want to,' Tabassum tells Patcy N.
As a child, Sufal Das used to dream of becoming a dhaki. But a life full of adversities, and dwindling popularity of the dhak, has made him regret his dream.
Sitaram Yechury speaks about the Left's future in politics and their chances in the Bihar polls.
This is just a brief reminder, dear fellow citizens, that none of us needs permission or sanction to be Indian, in whatever way we choose, as long as it doesn't break the law.
Faceless Ambedkarite groups from across the country are running BSP's election war rooms, writes Archis Mohan.
Theatre director Saif Hyder Hassan talks about his new play Ek Mulaqat.
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