Madhu Kishwar, noted activist, has raised eyebrows with her stand on Narendra Modi, another instance of her long insistence on questioning of peer opinion, notes Aparna Kalra.
Madhu Kishwar, noted activist, has raised eyebrows with her stand on Narendra Modi, another instance of her long insistence on questioning of peer opinion.
Patrick Bhai and Stephen Bhai are old friends of Gujarat.
Vat Vrikshya -- banyan tree in Sanskrit -- helps tribal women, with absolutely zero formal education, set up businesses.
"Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton represent the values and ideals of America." "After long quarrels, it is finally getting close to being over." George Joseph hears from voters.
'Without destroying idol worship, you cannot destroy caste because idol worship keeps religious communities in its religious ideology. The RSS is a big promoter of idol worship.' 'They may have an OBC PM, but neither the RSS or the VHP talk about an OBC becoming a priest. The equation is: Business in Baniya hands. Religion in Brahmin hands. OBC votes for the BJP.'
While he has plenty of critics at home, Rajan is a favourite among foreign investors and has been credited for bringing inflation under control.
Even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept to power in 2014, Subramanian Swamy was agitating for Rajan's removal.
Though the list of superstitious beliefs is long, often dissolving distinctions of class, caste, religion and education, Karnataka's anti-superstition bill is seen as a big step ahead.
'Non-violence can be a viable tool for countering the competitive brutality of terrorist groups,' argues Rajni Bakshi.
Members of all parties condemned the killings in the name of cow.
'Cultural property crimes have been linked, by the United Nations and others, to terrorism.' 'These links show the perpetrators to be associated with major criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS.
Desis in the US recall their earliest celebration of the festival of lights on American soil. Chaya Babu reports
'No civilised nation can thrive if it is possessed with the spirit of Hindutva.'
'In all likelihood, the Congress will fall short in Gujarat.' 'The Modi-Amit A Shah duo will hold on to the state for the BJP,' predicts Sudhir Bisht.
Modi, who is undertaking his first visit to China as prime minister, will reach the ancient city of Xi'an, the home town of President Xi Jinping, for a summit meeting, an unusual departure from normal protocol and seen as a reciprocal gesture by the Chinese leader who was hosted by Modi in Ahmedabad when he visited India in September last year.
Sadly, the attitude and ada that makes Rekha so timeless is dumbed down in a role and film so behind its time, rues Sukanya Verma after watching Super Nani.
'The reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have attended the President's iftar was not merely to break a fast with the faithful, but more importantly to broker an understanding with India's second largest set of citizens,' says Shehzad Poonawalla.
'In today's India very few would, of course, stand Basavanna's test. This led Professor Kalburgi to not only take on casteist and conservative forces in general, but also some powerful conservatives among Lingayats.' 'Conservatives found him polarising and some researchers disagreed with his speculations while admiring his scholarship, but he posited that culture studies and historians have to perforce join the dots, speculate, interpret, interpolate, extrapolate and take leaps to make progress even if some of them later turn out to be wrong.' Shivanand Kanavi salutes Professor M M Kalburgi, the scholar who was assassinated in Dharwad on Sunday, August 30.
'What we see here is puppetry. The string is with the BJP.' 'All the puppets here are dancing to the direction the BJP pulls the strings.'
'Is there a connection between the way we pitched the entire issue of Udta Punjab's censorship and the apologetic, full-of-very-specific-answers tone of the movie?' 'Maybe it's just me, but as an Indian liberal, I am more scared of us liberals than I am of the average Indian conservative bloke,' says Sreehari Nair.
Each 'adarsh village' should have piped drinking water, connectivity to the main road, electricity supply to all households, library, telecom and broadband connectivity including CCTVs in public areas. Emphasis will also be on e-governance, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
All those of us who care about books should welcome the appointment, as head of the Indian Council of Historical Research, of Yellapragada Sudarshan Rao. This is not because Rao has so far distinguished himself as a writer about "history and tourism management", which is the department of Kakatiya University in Warangal he headed before retiring to head an Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed project to "write history from a nationalist perspective and popularise Sanskrit", two aims which naturally go together for the RSS.
'What has he done for the state and the people?' 'The state has witnessed extraordinary problems. Where was he then?' 'Has he spoken about any issues or taken a stand?'
'Benares has always encouraged healthy debate where disagreement and dissent was never frowned upon. Today, the people are faced with a situation where a political opponent is not being allowed to give election speeches and is being physically attacked.' 'We are going to hand over power to a person who has a reputation of being dictatorial, who does not brook dissent and is known to be vindictive to his opponents,' author Kashinath Singh tells Rediff.com contributor Anita Katyal.
Devdutt Pattanaik responds to the decision by Penguin to withdraw and pulp Wendy Doniger's book The Hindus: An Alternative History.
Sheena Bora may be the latest of India's 'gone girls' but the list is too long to enumerate, says Sunil Sethi
'Genuine secularism cannot be built on the backs of Hindus alone.' 'In a pluralistic society every religion is duty bound to respect the rights and sentiments of the others.' 'Vande Mataram was a casualty of minorityism. Bharat Mata Ki Jai cannot be allowed to go the same way,' says Vivek Gumaste.
Following is the full text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 73rd Independence Day.
'What was predictable, but entirely missed by Modi's strident critics, is that the excessive and intemperate demonisation of Modi allowed him to assume his own metaphor -- the underdog, the martyr, the marginalised,' says Dr Aseem Shukla.
Meet Cassie de Pecol, a 27-year-old traveller from Connecticut, United States, who visited 196 countries in 18-and-a-half months, making her the fastest person to visit every country in the world.
Rahul Gandhi has taken the fight to the Modi government, feels Milan Vaishnav. Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC.
'People on both sides of the Hindutva debate need to read and understand the texts first,' Bibek Debroy, translator of the unabridged Mahabharata, tells Kanika Datta as he gets started on a similar project for the Ramayana.
'There will be greater communalisation. He talks about development, but his people tell his critics to go to Pakistan and brand Muslims as 'butchers'. This is the true colour of the BJP.' 'He deliberately does not stop them because that is his real agenda; he wants to make sure that the Hindu votes come to the BJP,' says senior journalist Kalpana Sharma. Ritu Jha/Rediff.com listens in.
Rediff.com's Rajesh Karkera shares his impressions from the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India's landmark artistic extravaganza.
'It was only relatively recently that Subhash Kapoor was able to secure the sources in India, Afghanistan and Cambodia, that allowed him to get the really highest level objects, and that helped propel him in recent years up the ranks.'
Nikhil Siddhartha talks about his new film Karthikeya
A clear aim, knowledge, hard work and perseverance spells success: President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.
Why are far right Hindu organisations growing in strength? Why is there a rising subscription to Neo-Wahabism, the Saudi Arabian version of contemporary Islam?
Director Matt Brown tells Aseem Chhabra/Rediff.com what it was about The Man Who Knew Infinity that made him persevere for a decade to turn the book into a film.
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