'Reflex responses to Dalit student Rohith Vemula's suicide are band aids that stem the current hemorrhage but do precious little to the festering wound beneath,' says Vivek Gumaste.
Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba's technology chief had posed as an Indian businessman while negotiating to buy from an American company a Voice-over-Internet Phone service that was later used by the LeT handlers to communicate with 26/11 attackers while concealing their actual origin.
'Everything was sacrosanct when the BJP was led by Vajpayee and Advani.' 'That was a different culture. But with Modi and Amit Shah nothing is sacrosanct.'
'This is the first time a majority ruling government is nominating a Dalit for President.' 'So, the moral credibility definitely will go with the BJP, particularly Narendra Modi.'
As the BJP snaps at its heels, can the Communists stay relevant in the electoral game?
'We are moving away from the path of democracy and towards Hindu religious dictatorship,' scientist P M Bhargava, who announced his decision to return the Padma Bhushan, tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com
"This wasn't an attack over meat. He has been killed in the name of religion. This is a pre-planned, cold-blooded killing. It cannot be an accident," said Owaisi.
Knocking out Congress from its bastions, the Modi wave placed BJP on the cusp of forming a government in Maharashtra with unexpected support from Nationalist Congress Party while it stormed to power on its own in Haryana.
We need to question ourselves if we are to be implicated as well in the institutional murder of Rohith and many other Rohiths, if not bodily but in spirit, because of our complicity in naturalising this elitist, exclusionary, discriminatory-to-the-core conception of education, says Kishalaya Mukhopadhyay.
Rediff.com's Rajesh Karkera shares his impressions from the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India's landmark artistic extravaganza.
'When Hindus converted through inducements there was no hue and cry, but when reconversions took place, everyone cried foul. If re-conversions are bad, so are conversions.' 'Our government is not getting involved either in conversions or re-conversions. The BJP has nothing to do with it.' Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu in a candid interview.
'Counter terrorism does not appear to be good guys fighting the bad ones; it is about people being picked up, detained and charged with crimes they did not commit.'
Lunch with BS: Sukhbir Singh Badal, deputy chief minister, Punjab
'Kejriwal has taken a leaf out of Modi's campaign of 2014 and improved upon it.' 'That suit will haunt Modi till he exits politics.' 'Of all the factors that favoured Kejriwal, the biggest was the arrogance and over-confidence of the Modi-Shah led BJP.' 'What the Congress could not do in the last two decades in Gujarat, Kejriwal did it in no time in Delhi.' 'The BJP has behaved exactly like the Congress in decoding Kejriwal's politics.'
Creative and confident, these emerging fashion designers are the future of Indian fashion.
