Miffed that Narendra Modi's presence has been limited in Varanasi city on Thursday, BJP leader Arun Jaitley slammed the returning officer for denying permission to the party's Bharat Vijay rallies and the Ganga aarti scheduled in the city.
Back in September 2002, Shakti Bhatt/Rediff.com located the former Union Carbide chairman's luxury home in New York, declared unknown by the American and Indian governments. Rediff.com reproduces the feature about his life in hiding.
.jpg)
From an idea inititated in a hostel room, Hearing Plus went on to become a national chain of hearing treatment clinics.
'We saw how vigorous democracy was when it dislodged authoritarianism under Indira Gandhi. We saw its vigour again when it voted Mr Modi out of humble origins as prime minister. It was Nehru who laid that foundation for India and what is worrying today is Modi's rather imperial style of functioning,' says writer Nayantara Sahgal.
What happened in Uttarakhand is a national tragedy. Why couldn't Dr Manmohan Singh announce that he was forming an Uttarakhand Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, with himself as chairman but inviting Narendra Modi to become the deputy chairman, asks T V R Shenoy.
The propaganda aspect of the movie -- despite it stemming purely from the writer's deepest convictions -- is a clincher for it is highly unlikely that you'll walk out of a screening of Talvar saying, 'I loved the movie, but I still think the parents are guilty.' If you are swept away by the power of the movie, it's also sure to swing your perception in a certain direction,' says Sreehari Nair.
'There is nothing like the Sangh agenda or the BJP agenda... we believe only in the Nation's Agenda,' says newly appointed BJP Vice-President Vinay Sahasrabuddhe.
'This country has become cynical, the country has lost hope. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is getting back hope in this country.' 'We are deconstructing the past which had corruption, inefficiency, policy paralysis, a tottering economy where investors had lost confidence, and people had become cynical. We are changing that, we are bringing confidence back to the people of India.'
'The unique achievements have been made by engineers from small towns who have had a non elite upbringing and who have grown with the programme,' says R Aravamudan, one of the pioneers of the Indian space programme.
Rafael Nadal has withdrawn from the Paris Masters ahead of the tournament's start on Monday for "personal reasons", the French Tennis Federation announced on Friday.
'My father became a very popular villain and in some films, was paid more than the hero. He was a very simple person. All he needed was six pairs of white shirts and trousers for the whole year, one or two packets of Dunhill cigarettes a day and books.' Shehzaad Khan on his famous father Ajit.
'The people of Pakistan and India will begin to understand what the bottom lines are. What India can accept maximum is known to Pakistan. What Pakistan can accept minimum is known to India.' 'In the absence of atmosphere you can't even talk, you can't think of writing agreements and frameworks. You have to have the right atmosphere. With the previous BJP government it had started and I hope the new BJP government will continue with that.'
We're behaving like frogs in warm water. We swim around untroubled, cooled by our faith in Indian liberal democracy. We are blind to the bubbles popping around us, the bubbles warning of fundamental changes, says Mihir S Sharma.
Gujarat Lokayukta Justice R A Mehta's resignation letter is a stinging indictment of the Narendra Modi government's obstructionist attitude towards a constitutional watchdog.
Prem Panicker, on the Rediff chat, delves on what went wrong for Team India and what to expect from Sunday's trans-Tasman World Cup final.
'We were firing at Patton tanks that were moving towards India.' 'Fighter aircraft are the biggest menace for tanks because they come at great speed, attack from a height and their rockets are lethal.' 'The Hunter travels at 400, 420 knots. One knot is 1.6 times a km, so it was at a speed of 700, 800 km/hr.' 'You come at great speed and when you see the tanks, you pull up because attacks are always done in a dive.' 'You go up to 3,000 to 4,000 feet and then dive on to the target and let off your rockets...'
Most yoga teachers are not driven towards popular acclaim or fame. But Bellur Krishnamachar Sunderaraja Iyengar was goaded by the challenge to prove himself to all those who had dismissed him as a madcap yogi in the early days, and by a burning need to make yoga available to all.
'The evidence about a plane crash that killed Netaji as stated in the Shahnawaz Committee report, is quite strong.' 'None of the files that I read bear any evidence that it was Nehru who ordered this kind of intrusive surveillance.' 'The government's excuse that declassifying some files may affect India's relations with friendly foreign countries is not a credible one.' Subhas Chandra Bose's grand-nephew and Trinamool Congress MP Sugata Bose on reports that his family was under surveillance for 20 years and the rumours over Nataji's death.
'The Modi government believes the industrialist, the capitalist, has to pay for the assets of the government which belong to the people of India.'
'Hinduism is not a religion, but a way of life, a philosophy.'
Salman Khan, star of this year's Eid release Bajrangi Bhaijaan, talks about his journey from supporting actor to superstar.
The last seven Indian sailors held hostage by Somali pirates were released October 30. Chirag Bahri, Indian coordinator for the Maritime Piracy Humanitarian Response Programme that aids piracy survivors and their families, speaks to Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com on how the near-impossible was achieved.
'He was believed to finish his own work in an hour and spend the remainder of the time walking from one office to another, sitting down with the harried junior staff and helping them sort out the problems they were working on.'
Read the full transcript of President Obama's State of the Union address on Wednesday at the US Capitol in Washington.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances