Authorities across states have identified more than 6,000 people who attended the Nizamuddin Tablighi Jamaat congregation, the biggest COVID-19 hotspot in India.
It is time the current leaders who swear by 'cultural nationalism', that is religion neutral, assert that Bharatiyata is at the core of our nationalism and India was never a 'Hindu Rashtra', argues Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'The fact that a rural Kashmiri boy was brainwashed into killing himself and others means there is an active programme that exists which does such recruiting and there will potentially be other such individuals out there,' warns Aakar Patel.
In the light of the efforts being made to forge electoral unity between scheduled castes and Muslims, Mohammad Sajjad examines what the architect of our Constitution, B R Ambedkar, had to say about the Muslim community.
A disparate global network of violent fundamentalist Islamic groups threatens India's eastern flank as much as the north and west with a real possibility of these spilling over into our borders, says Shyam Saran.
Air Commodore Nitin Sathe discovers how the IAF trained Pakistani air force pilots, during the 1971 War, which led to the birth of the Bangladesh air force.
'It is time to not merely assert that Kashmir is an internal problem, but begin to act on it,' argues Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Threats from IS militants, the Syrian conflict and the migrant crisis in Europe are some of the recent risks that have companies worried, says M Saraswathy.
A Delhi court on Tuesday extended till September 17 the National Investigation Agency custody of Indian Mujahideen co-founder Yasin Bhatkal and his close associate Asadullah Akhtar after the agency claimed they were involved in a deep rooted conspiracy and had executed various blasts in India.
'History will repeat itself after a decade or so and historians will point to the folly of May 2017 as the event that sowed the seeds of another 9/11,' warns Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The ordinary life lived in Pakistan is rarely a part of Indian imagination. This is this gap that Pakistani television serials have succeeded in bridging, says Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
Soniya Yadav, slain policeman Ramashankar Yadav's daughter, reveals to Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore that her father was not supposed to be on duty that fateful night when he was killed in the Bhopal Central Jail.
Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba was responsible for the terror attack at the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Herat province last month, the US said on Wednesday.
'The existence of Section 295A on the Indian statute books sits uneasily with India's ambitions to be seen as a progressive democracy,' says Kanika Datta.
Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed's detention may help ease India-Pakistan tension, media reports in Islamabad said on Tuesday even as supporters of the Mumbai attack mastermind launched protests across major cities against the government's decision which they say was taken under pressure from the US and India.
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 Hindu quest for political power in terms of a Hindu identity can pose a problem for tolerance, as the alignment of religion with power often does.'
There have been no major blasts in the state, but most terror operatives are trained in camps in the state. Extremely volatile, Kerala has been declared a Red Zone by the NIA.
The time is nigh for India to ensure that investment by its former citizens is encouraged by protecting their rights, says C B Patel.
Six Kashmiri Muslim students belonging to Sarhad, an organisation which brings semi-orphans from strife-torn regions to live and study at their school and college in Pune, share their hopes for their state and their experiences outside it. Jyoti Punwani reports.
A new West Asia is emerging and India must engage at the highest level and help shape this change, says Saeed Naqvi
'While we may aspire to be a democratic if smaller version of China, we may only manage to become a larger, more accomplished Indonesia,' says T N Ninan.
'Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to subscribe to the Hindutva project?' asks Shashi Tharoor.
With 2016 officially behind us, let's look forward and speculate about the events, people and issues that will shape 2017.
'We have seen in India that radical ideology has by and large not been successful in taking root.'
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board said that it would ask Qazis to tell bridegroom at the time of execution of 'nikahnama' that they would not resort to "three divorces in one sitting" as it was an "undesirable practice in Shariat".
Has New Delhi internalised the truth that it does not matter, asks Saeed Naqvi. Such deafening silence from the government, principal opposition, even the pundits!
'The best course for India is to wait out the implosion that is bound to take place in Pakistan sooner than later.' 'We have to ensure that the fallings debris from a collapsing State does not damage us,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The Congress has kept quiet on the way the Union home ministry has handled innumerable blast cases under its rule. It has not openly condemned the bias that pervades within its government and the security agencies, says Neeta Kolhatkar.
Incisive Editor, brilliant scholar on Islam, and now BJP leader, M J Akbar is at his intellectual best when he dissects the Muslim world and its problems, and offers up a solution from his unique perspective, as he did in this recent speech at the 10th R N Kao Memorial Lecture in New Delhi.
Sheela Bhatt narrates the behind-the-scenes action in the Delhi headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat that finally forced the religious sect's compliance with the coronavirus shutdown.
'The Nagas want a flag of their own, to share the Kohima skyline with the national tricolour.' 'The the government says you can have a flag for cultural and ethnic occasions.' 'The Nagas say that will be a bit like an NGO having its own flag,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
India on Monday told Bahrain that terrorism emanating from Pakistan remains its most important concern and support from across the border has incited the current unrest in Jammu and Kashmir.
The BJP knows the CAA, combined with a fresh nationwide NRC process, is an idea that's dead on arrival. Where it lives on is as a divisive, polarising instrument as its rivals have to take a position against it and thereby be exposed to the charge of 'Muslim appeasement' again, points out Shekhar Gupta.
'These young men have become religious fundamentalists and gone to lead the life of Salafis somewhere.'
Ataturk and Nehru, two liberal secular modernisers, are in peril of being disowned by their successors, says Sunanda K-Datta Ray.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has raised the Kashmir issue with almost every world leader he has held talks with on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session, but his efforts to internationalise the dispute with India appeared to have gained no traction.
"Modi's great victory was very much based on these Reaganesque principles, so I think this is a global revolt, and we are very fortunate and proud to be the news site that is reporting that throughout the world," he said, according to the transcripts of his Skype address released by Buzzfeed.
After an RSS affiliate withdrew the invitation to Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi for an iftar, senior Sangh leader Indresh Kumar on Saturday told Pakistan to worry about calls for freedom emerging within that country and stop interfering in Kashmir.
'Sridhar had the ability to paint a vision, for an activist faced with the toughest personal problems so as to see a way out by combining one's personal desires with the needs of the movement.' Arun Ferreira remembers his fallen comrade Sridhar Srinivasan.
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