Indian law makes it clear that Sonia and Rahul are not related to Robert Vadra, nor is Sonia a relative of Pandit Nehru.
Everyone wants a piece of the Taj Mahal, but do they care about the deteriorating condition of India's best-loved monument
Bangladesh's fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami was on Wednesday sentenced to death by a special tribunal for his role in the killing of thousands of people during the nation's independence war against Pakistan in 1971.
Families, torn apart by the Malvani hooch tragedy, where 104 people lost their lives confront a dark and hopeless future.
A prominent lawmaker of the opposition Bangladesh National Party was on Tuesday sentenced to death by a special Bangladeshi tribunal for genocide during the country's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan, becoming the first Member of Parliament and seventh person to be convicted of crimes against humanity.
'While India's 'secularism' is a matter of cultural values rooted in Hinduism, the Western concept became one of rights rooted in legal rights. India would be secular with or without Article 25 of the Constitution,' says T V R Shenoy.
After many false starts, India may well be at the inflexion point that Deng Xiaoping took China to post-1978. The window of opportunity is wide open right now, says Rajeev Srinivasan.
Lawyer and scholar Vinay Sitapati says the 'Get Modi' strategy largely misses the efforts to prosecute people evidently guilty of violence and murders in the Gujarat riots in favour of "a narrow quest to stop one man from becoming prime minister."
'I do not require validation from a hostile media. My conscience is clear.'
20 times increase in people joining RSS on rss.org, Marginal increase in number of branches. Archis Mohan reports
Why has a nation created on strong secular principles slowly chipped away those essential values? Why are so many Indians willing to compromise their freedoms and those of their compatriots for the cause of economic progress and to see a shining India,' asks Aseem Chhabra.
'Criticism that Amnesty is interested in those in favour of independence for Kashmir is unfounded.'
Bestselling author Dan Brown spoke at the Penguin Annual Lecture in Mumbai on November 12. Snapshots from the evening
The issue of lynchings resonated in the Rajya Sabha; while in the Lok Sabha, the Opposition accused the government of not being sensitive towards farmers' issues.
Uncertainty lingers in the minds of retail investors due to scams.
'My feeling is that these parties will not learn their lesson despite their electoral drubbing. They cannot put forward a leader. They have no record of improving their constituents' lives by providing basic services. All they offer is their "'secularism",' says T V R Shenoy.
Bhim denotes Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar, while Mim denotes the letter 'M' in the Urdu alphabet; the party used the slogan effectively in the 2014 Maharashtra assembly elections
In conversation with Karan Thapar, former Vice President Hamid Ansari takes on one of the most sensitive issues of our times.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's success at courting Indians abroad have been as much a result of his old contacts as efforts by a dedicated arm of the BJP abroad. Archis Mohan reports
Industrialist Naveen Jindal, fighting to win the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat for a third time, has more than just Narendra Modi to contend with. Joel Rai reports.
Barring one of the earliest surveys of the kind in the country, in 1989, none has proved right in Tamil Nadu's case, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
If this election is about Narendra Modi, then it is also about the RSS, notes Mihir S Sharma.
'Only he can bring change in India that all of us have been dreaming of since we saw America for the first time when our plane touched down at JFK airport.' Narendra Modi's friends in New York and New Jersey travel down memory lane and remember a simple man with great ambition. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com tracks down the Modi bhakts, who knew since his first visit in 1993 that he was destined for bigger things.
Shubham Kumar Gautam, son of a farmer and a Super 30 student, recounts how, in a journey laced with perseverance, grit and determination, he achieved what seemed impossible.
In the media frenzy over inconsequential issues, the visit of the Emperor of Japan to India has been pushed to the margins of public discourse. Colonel (retd) Anil Athale explains the great historical and political significance of the visit.
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.
In dramatic scenes, Umar Khalid, the Jawaharlal Nehru University student who had been untraceable after being accused of sedition, returned to the campus late on Sunday evening. Khalid turned up at JNU's administration block, where hundreds of students began to gather, and gave a rousing speech just shy of 14 minutes, insisting that he would stand his ground and asked that all students unite against the attacks on our country. This is what he had to say.
A young IT grad jailed for visa fraud committed by his agent, gives an insider's view of life in jail.
Rediff.com's Love Guru has answers to all your relationship problems.
Pablo Bartholomew, the legendary Indian photojournalist whose searing images from the Bhopal gas tragedy stunned a nation's conscience 30 years ago, speaks to Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com.
Were river experts excluded from IIT consortium on the Ganga River Basin Management Plan? Rashme Sehgal reports.
'Modi, focused on youth and their aspirations, has articulated a truly disruptive change: One of hope, of duties rather than rights, of standing up to the world instead of being bullied by it,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt unearths some never-told-before details of Narendra Modi's early life. Read on!
'I have never seen anybody disliked more as prime minister than Modi.' 'What is interesting is in his prime ministership, no matter whatever happens in any corner of India, Modi is blamed for it.' 'Modi has not suspended any Constitutional liberties. No Opposition leader has been put in jail... Modi is not Hitler.'
'No one talks about the Mumbai riots anymore, though like Delhi 1984, the guilty have not been punished. In Gujarat, many powerful leaders of the state's ruling party are in jail for their role in the riots... In Mumbai, only one politician of the Shiv Sena, a former MP, was convicted of hate speech, along with two other Shiv Sainiks, one of whom was a corporator and the other a junior functionary... So why the apathy? Could it be because despite these statistics and the widely-publicised findings of the Srikrishna Commission, what remained in public consciousness was the violence by the Muslims, thanks to a highly efficient Sena propaganda machine? There's no demand for it, but would an SIT probe into the closed cases of the Mumbai riots help today?' The fadeout of Mumbai's riots from public debate can be called a triumph of the communal State, argues Jyoti Punwani.
'AAP's real value must be measured not by the number of Lok Sabha seats it wins in the election -- which may not exceed 10 or 15 -- and not even by the number of votes it takes from the BJP, but by its ability to deflate Modi's superhuman '56-inch chest' image and the charisma so assiduously manufactured around him by the corporate-controlled media.'
Despite criticism of a lack of transparency and communication from the Modi-led government, BJP leaders point to "good beginnings" on several fronts to defend its performance. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com reports.
Salman Khan's latest, Jai Ho, didn't set the cash registers ringing, and one reason could be that his diehard Muslim fans were put off by his support for Narendra Modi, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'I believe Modi mentioned Balochistan only to embarrass Pakistan and also divert attention toward the situation in Kashmir.' 'I think from now on, India intends to raise Balochistan whenever Pakistan brings up Kashmir or upsets them on the issue of terrorism.' 'Balochistan is the least developed of Pakistan's four provinces. It is the least educated and least economically developed. People are agitated that a region so rich in mineral resources and a sea-port is still so poor.' Baloch political analyst Malik Siraj Akbar on why the province wants freedom from Pakistan.
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