The Citizenship Amendment Bill would possibly be the first piece of legislation that is perniciously discriminatory on the basis of religion/faith, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'India's reputation is not and cannot be dependent on the whimsical opinions of some obscure foreign advisory committee packed with Hindu-phobic acolytes,' declares Vivek Gumaste.
At the age of 39, Centrist Emmanuel Macron will become France's youngest leader since Napoleon.
We sorted through countless photographs taken around the world to come up with the top photos of 2019. Together these images tell the story of the year -- capturing moments of hope and heartbreak, triumph and tragedy.
81 per cent voter turnout recorded in West Bengal, 80 per cent in Assam.
'Nitish Kumar has only done what any smart politician will do in his place,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
In an interview to Rediff.com's Anita Katyal, Shambhu Srivastava speaks about the need of breaking out of the communal-secular paradigm and focusing on the Congress party's poor performance and its track record in fuelling communalism.
'Nobody is going to fight India's war.' 'India has to fight its own war against the rogue State and the evil forces nurtured by it.'
'Under Justice Gogoi's tenure, the Supreme Court has gone from an institution that was at least formally committed to the protection of individual rights as its primary task, to an institution that speaks the language of the executive, and has become indistinguishable from the executive,' warns Gautam Bhatia.
'While Television generally tends to Clarity,' says Sreehari Nair, 'Arnab Goswami's The Newshour Debate portrays our confusions. Each episode offers both the potency of an intensely-fought boxing match and the giddy pleasures of an orgy.'
'There was an overt campaign and there was a covert campaign. The overt campaign may be development, government, and all this nonsense. But the covert campaign, which Mr Amit Shah was doing, was far more important with the help of RSS cadres. This has been an RSS election. From day one I have been saying, this is not Congress versus the BJP, this is Congress versus the RSS,' says Jairam Ramesh, one of the key strategists of the Congress party.
'Narendra Modi could be too old to change his personality. On the other hand, his attachment to the RSS could be mostly sentimental. So one must hope that if he becomes prime minister, he is able to detach himself from the RSS view of the world as completely as Narasimha Rao detached himself from the Congress's First Family.' 'India cannot be governed by the autocratic methods by which he has governed Gujarat. If he becomes prime minister he will have to learn to speak in a more civil language about his political opponents,' historian Ramachandra Guha tells Arthur J Pais/Rediff.com
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's spin doctors are on an overdrive these days to project him as a "tough talking" leader following a spate of critical media reports about his sudden silence on key issues, says rediff.com contributor Anita Katyal.
A combative Rahul Gandhi on Saturday signalled an aggressive campaign against the RSS soon and declared that a reinvigorated Congress alone can "smash" the BJP and its ideological mentor.
Addressing the plenary session of the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit here in the Mongolian capital, Vice President Hamid Ansari said, "all our societies today face unprecedented levels of threat from terrorism in all its manifestations. The most recent example is what has happened, most unfortunately in France."
An aggressive Pyongyang is likely to force Seoul and Tokyo to build nuclear deterrents and thus thwart Beijing's ambitions.
Separatists and their wide network must be neutralized for peace in the Valley
From India's fight against COVID-19 to China face-off, Kovind spoke on several issues during the televised address.
'Trump's desecration of all that Obama represented can be seen at different levels: Personal, political, systemic and structural,' explains Ambassador B S Prakash.
If Narendra Modi wants to become prime minister, he needs to do better, argues Amberish K Diwanji.
'Too much energy these three years has been invested in turning the party into an election-winning machine.' 'To recover its mojo, the Modi government needs a more impressive set of economic figures to flaunt,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Beijing is clearly rattled by the Dalai Lama's visit. Unlike the 2009 visit, which was a four-day religious tour, the current visit is a high-decibel, 10-day affair, without the fig leaf of a "religious event", reports Ajai Shukla.
'As he has no executive track record, so far, he is all talk and hence essentially a braggart and a bigot.' 'That he is described as the 'Trump of the tropics' should give a shorthand summary to what he stands for on issues in general,' points out Ambassador B S Prakash, India's former envoy to Brazil.
The Congress said arrogance of the BJP has touched its zenith as it turned 'blind' to farm distress.
Why Dalit leaders cross over to the BJP
Rediff.com lists 10 new countries that were formed over the last two decades
Those who have studied Assam elections say the high turnout has the Congress worried.
'Nitish is now a helpless junior ally of Hindutva.' 'He just cannot think of reining in the hoodlums raging, marauding and killing in the mohallas,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
We take a look at Time magazines top world leaders.
'There is a design of fundamentalists that the north east must become an Islamic country.'
Why not agree that, yes, India is a Hindu country though not all Indians are Hindus? And that for those who are not, our Constitution is sturdily secular and always will be, says Karti Sandilya.
Since the US and India broadly share similar interests in Sri Lanka, they should coordinate closely to ensure that the country preserves its democratic institutions, says Lisa Curtis
For the family and supporters of blogger Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death in Dhaka in February, it is a time to reflect on where Bangladesh is heading, says Indrani Roy.
'If you are in Punjab, Modi is omnipresent as if he is going to be chief minister of Punjab.'
'If he is in Uttarakhand, he presents himself to be the chief minister of Uttarakhand.'
'When he is in UP, he is touted as the chief minister of UP.' 'There is a personality cult which is being built around a person... that he is the panacea of every democratic exercise in India, from panchayat to Parliament.' 'Modi at some point will pay the price for trying to build a very ambitious personality cult.'
A group of retired civil servants also called upon the PM to reach out to the families of the victims in Unnao and Kathua and "seek their forgiveness on behalf of all of us".
'The original dream of people like Faiz was that Pakistan would be something different from the old India: Progressive, forward looking, democratic (if not socialist), tolerant, diverse and pluralistic.' 'I don't think anyone foresaw the catastrophe that Partition was to become.'
52 world leaders, including Narendra Modi, will attend this week's Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC. Obama will meet separately only with the Chinese president.
'Bhagwat, aware of the advantages of keeping the BJP in power, is wary about the RSS taking steps that would undermine the popular standing of either the PM or the party.'
'The CBI and its independence was discussed in great detail. We invited and sought the views of the CBI director as well as several government officials. But the ingenious solution to the problem came from within the committee. The effort was to somehow find a solution. It would not have been possible to draft this Bill if members had not been liberal in their views and if they had not been prepared to rid themselves of their political bias.' Congress MP Satyavrat Chaturvedi, who headed the Parliamentary committee which proposed the recommendations for the Lokpal Bill, speaks to Anita Katyal in an exclusive interview.
'Our prime minister manifests a vision for India to be great and powerful, but the modernity required -- of thinking, attitudes, behaviour -- seems alien, if not abhorrent, to his constituency and associates,' says Ambassador K Shankar Bajpai.
