'For the last 10 years the Congress made the RSS an idea of intolerance, anti-minority, especially anti-Muslim, and an idea of fascism.' 'That has been demolished now by Pranab Mukherjee.'
'Soft power is the power really to win friends and influence people with the strength of your ideas.' 'India's greatest soft power is being India itself. A nation of varied beliefs, states, creeds, castes, languages and yet embodying that spirit of unity in diversity.'
Sudhir Kumar Chaudhary, a one-of-a-kind cricket fan, who worships Sachin Tendulkar and follows the Indian team wherever it goes. For the upcoming India-Sri Lanka series, he has bought three litres of saffron, white, green and blue paint and is looking for the cheapest ticket to Colombo!
Saturday marks the Zoroastrian New Year or Navroze. Coomi Selod shares with us these special recipes that are prepared on this special day.
'By not letting bankrupt banks fail, we have discouraged ordinary folk from taking precautions while choosing their bank or at least when they hear bad news about their bank,'says S Muralidharan, former MD, BNP Paribas.
20 times increase in people joining RSS on rss.org, Marginal increase in number of branches. Archis Mohan reports
As the Lok Sabha election draw closer, a weary Congress is gradually getting reconciled to the idea of a stint in the opposition even though its strategists are convinced that the party will win up to 140 seats. Anita Katyal reports.
The Baharatiya Janata Party condemned Uttar Pradesh government's crackdown against VHP yatra from Ayodhya and accused it of playing vote bank politics while Samjwadi Party said it won't let the state "become another Gujarat" or a repeat of Dec 6, 1992, when the Babri mosque was demolished.
When he was chief minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was able to blunt inter-regional and inter-communal tensions which Farooq and Omar Abdullah could not do. Whether he can repeat it with the BJP by his side would have to be seen, says Mohammad Sayeed Malik.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's solid solo performance in Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections confirms continuation of some of the trends that emerged in the Lok Sabha elections in May this year.
The vituperative campaign against the BJP by the Shiv Sena does not make for an easy post-poll tie-up should either of the two be forced to come together to cobble the numbers. Either must get a clear 145 seats to avoid a forced remarriage to the same political spouse. Any one going with Congress or the NCP only means the platter serves up a goulash, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
While the PM is trying to hardsell his developmental agenda, his rivals are targeting him in the run-up to the assembly election
The Narendra Modi wave seems to have reached the Bengal shores, indicated by the more than two-fold increase in the membership of the Bharatiya Janata Party's state unit.
'Kejriwal has shown that not only can Modi-Shah be stopped, they can in fact be routed... Today, as the Delhi votes are counted, it shows not only the AAP's victory or BJP's defeat. But also the Congress's final irrelevance.'
The new PDP chief will have to work hard to keep everyone in the state happy.
After weeks of bargaining and protesting, the BJP and the TDP came to a seat sharing arrangement for the May 7 polls in Andhra Pradesh. But will this alliance help the saffron party make inroads in the Telangana region? Vicky Nanjappa finds out
The results for the bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tripura were announced on Tuesday.
Master Chef Vikas Khanna conceived a seven-course, 26 dish, menu for Prime Minister Narendra Modi' Fortune 500 dinner in New York. His recipes, exclusively on Rediff.com
On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded his Cabinet and inducted 21 new ministers. Of these, 4 - Manohar Parrikar, JP Nadda, Suresh Prabhu and Birender Singh were appointed as Cabinet ministers. Other than this, Modi has inducted 17 other ministers of state. Here's a quick look at them:
The fate of 1,351 candidates will be sealed by 1.63 crore voters in high-stakes multi-cornered contest in Haryana which goes to polls on Wednesday with top guns including the kin of the three famous 'Lals' battling it out in the state.
'Compared to other social groups, managing the Muslim constituency has always been easier for the secularists.' 'Just some symbolic measures and window-dressing would keep the Muslim flock together.' 'Having been betrayed by all the supposedly 'secular' political parties, Muslims should turn into citizens without any ascriptive identity marks,'says Mohammad Sajjad.
Rediff.com gives you a look at newbies in the Council of Ministers
'The real danger in India right now is that identity politics is being stoked in extremely dangerous ways.' 'The narrative you get about churches in the mainstream Indian media and the narrative you get in the social media is very different.' 'Many Americans today want to appropriate Indian culture. They want yoga, but they say yoga has nothing to do with Hinduism. They want Ayurveda, but they say it's got nothing to do with Hinduism.' 'Hinduism has been failed by political constituencies in India -- seculars and the right-wing.'
Mrinal Pande remembers Rajendra Yadav, one of the most prolific fiction writers and thinkers of Hindi literature in the recent times, who passed away on Monday.
Chef and author Rakhee Vaswani talks about her passion for cooking, her daily struggles as a mompreneur and how she's spreading smiles through her recipes.
Could the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP become the rallying point of new energies that are getting unleashed all over urban India, in quest for a different kind of politics, to such an extent that he can rein in Narendra Modi? It all depends on how it pans out its politics in the coming weeks, says Neerja Chowdhury.
Amit Shah is the man of the moment. The architect of the BJP's stunning transformation in the Hindi heartland during the Lok Sabha elections is all set to emerge as the CEO of Modi's political dreams and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's cultural passion, says Sheela Bhatt.
It is unusual to see Narendra Modi highlight his OBC status -- something he has never done in his long political career. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com examines Modi's compulsions for bringing his caste to the foreground
The year 2014 has been an eventful one for India. The country got a new government and a new state, broke new frontiers in various fields and of course its share of controversies.
Sunday's results may be a bitter pill that the Congress has to swallow -- that its future cannot be hitched to Rahul unless he can resonate with the people, feels Saroj Nagi.
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