Former Union minister Farooq Abdullah on Thursday said India will not be able to keep Kashmir if the forces who see Muslims of the country with suspicion and pit the minority community against the majority are not reined in.
The former chief minister urged the people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh not to be disheartened or lose hope over the apex court's decision.
The Opposition's stand on the Ayodhya consecration is puzzling. Their only objection seems to be that the BJP has hijacked a religious event for political benefit. In saying this, the Opposition is either being naive or hypocritical, argues Jyoti Punwani.
The trigger for the stone pelting incident was not yet known, he said, adding further details were awaited.
Ever since the Sivagiri Mutt in Kerala invited Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the chief guest of the Sree Narayana Dharma Meemamsa Parishad, Kerala politics has taken a new direction.
Prayers were performed in a cellar of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi on Wednesday night following court orders allowing the resumption of a practice said to have been discontinued three decades back, Kashi Vishwanath temple trust president said.
'Our study finds that only about 20% of Indians are vegetarians and the rest of the 80% are non-vegetarians or meat-eaters.'
The Muslim Law Board contended that Uniform Civil Code, if implemented, will paint all people in "one colour" which will threaten the country's pluralism and diversity.
If we have already excluded Muslims from political office by default, and if we are already harassing them daily through laws, like Nazi Germany did and like Pakistan did, then why do we need a Hindu Rashtra or a change from the present set of laws? argues Aakar Patel.
'One can understand this prejudice in the minds of policemen against Muslims, without accepting it. But what tilts the balance disproportionately is the police's blind eye to offences committed in the name of the majority.' says Jyoti Punwani.
Amit Shah's sustained campaigning against slaughterhouses has unnerved UP's leather and meat export industry.
'Will this communal pendulum, which is swinging towards the extreme of division and violence, ever swing back to its position of the '60s and '70s within my lifetime?' 'Or will my children, and their children, have to continue to suffer the consequences of the country, that we all love, torn apart along communal lines,' asks Najid Hussain in anguish.
In the coming days, unless Modi tones down the communal spiel, it will be clear that anxiety continues to drive his mind and clouds his judgment, observes Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The famous pilgrim place of Lord Shiva, the Somnath temple in Gujarat will now be off-limits for non-Hindus as authorities have decided against entry to people following other faiths without prior permission.
Narsinghanand, notorious for making intemperate remarks against Muslims, stoked yet another controversy with his comment that "50 per cent of Hindus will convert" in 20 years if a Muslim becomes the prime minister of India.
The fundamental construct of India's neighbourhood policy still needs to be what Vajpayee postulated, Manmohan Singh embraced, and Modi energised. It's just that we need to junk domestic politics and excessive religiosity, while acquiring much humility and a renewed respectfulness towards our neighbours, recommends Shekhar Gupta.
The fisheries minister, who has often landed in controversies, said lakhs of people come to Prayagraj on the birth anniversary of tribal king Nishad Raj.
"India risks becoming one of the world's main generators of instability, atrocities and violence because of the massive scale and gravity of the violations and abuses targeting mainly religious and other minorities such as Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others. It is not just individual or local, it is systematic and a reflection of religious nationalism," he said.
'Slightly more than 50 per cent of all Keralites are Hindus. If we can unite as many as we can, we can create a huge difference in the political scene in Kerala.'
'It is important to destroy, to undermine, to debunk the narrative of ISIS,' Olivier Roy -- one of the world's leading experts on radical Islam -- tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel in an exclusive interview.
'The government is going to introduce legislation that would make it easy for Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Zoroastrians, Sikhs and Jains to migrate legally to India.' 'But looking at that list, my entire well-meaning question, as may be obvious, is: What about Muslims? They seem to have been specifically left out of this formulation,' says Aakar Patel.
"We all are scared. Some people came and ransacked and burned down everything and now because of them everyone in Nuh is suffering," Waris said.
'They told me that the marriage registrar would send a letter to my parents informing them about my marriage.'
'The BJP is spreading slow poison in India. The effect will not be seen now, but after 10 years you will see it for sure.'
A sessions court had recently rejected her discharge plea in the case, even as the Supreme Court granted her bail after the Gujarat high court denied her relief.
'The othering of religious groups inevitably leads to violence.' 'It is sadly a narrative that has echoed through the centuries since man first discovered God.'
'If we were to change the name of our country officially and become a Hindu Rashtra, will the treatment of Muslims change?' asks Aakar Patel.
'In his first speech in Parliament, Modi spoke about the slavery of 1,400 years, and though he didn't say in so many words, the meaning was that he had come to re-establish a Hindu Rashtra.'
If you are more than your rhetoric about a strong and united country, give us our due -- treat us as countrymen, says an ordinary Muslim in this open letter.
Struggling to gain political traction on issues of corruption, the West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party is shifting its focus to emotive topics such as the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in a bid to achieve its target of securing 35 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state.
'The way discrimination against Muslims has become almost normalised is very upsetting.'
The Kashmir Files, a Bollywood movie on the exodus of Hindus from the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, will be banned in multi-racial Singapore as the film has been assessed to be 'beyond' the city-state's film classification guidelines, a media report said on Monday.
Reacting to the statement, Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary said "insulting the Sanatan Dharma again and again" has become the habit of the Samajwadi Party and its leaders.
Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament Tejasvi Surya on Wednesday called the Congress the "modern-day Muslim League" and accused it of committing atrocities against Hindus after he and his party leaders were stopped from visiting violence-hit Karauli in Rajasthan.
'UCC should be across India and legally applicable to every Indian citizen.'
Acknowledging that Hindus face a lot of challenges in Sindh, sister of President Asif Ali Zardari said in Pakistan's parliament on Thursday that Hindu girls are being forcibly kept in madrassas in the province and are forced to marry Muslims.
The controversial issue of Muslim girls wearing 'hijab' in educational institutions, which had hit national headlines last year with a government pre-university college in Udupi banning it inside classrooms, does not appear to be a serious campaign issue for the May 10 elections to the Karnataka assembly.
'Free this and free that, and the voters were with them.'
'What was said about Muslims was the most important part of the three-day RSS 'seminar'.'
