Narendra Modi and the father-son duo of Farooq and Omar Abdullah were on Monday engaged in bitter sparring, with the Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate alleging that the biggest blow to secularism in the country was delivered in Kashmir from where Kashmiri Pandits were forced out due to their religion.
'When Sachin Tendulkar bats, no one in India cares if he is from Mumbai or if he is a Hindu or a Brahmin or whatever.' 'We just want him to win it for India.' 'The same is with Modi and the people who voted across caste and regional lines for him.' We want him to win it for India,' says Madhu A K.
'The Ulema have come out as villains against Indian secularism, impeding the secular united resistance against violent Hindutva that is backed by ministers in the government,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Narendra Modi won't be an issue in Bihar in the next Lok Sabha elections, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday said while refusing to be drawn into a discussion on Gujarat versus Bihar models of development.
'The Congress may not be able to dump the family entirely, but it could move to a new operating model in which the family takes a 'chairmanship' role while day-to-day affairs are handled by a new CEO.'
'I could have joined the BJP in 2014, the doors were open.' 'I stayed on with the TMC, a party I was involved with since its very inception.' 'But today enough is enough.'
Here are 15 things you should know about Bharat Ratna Atal Bihar Vajpayee.
Taking a dig at Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar said he feared that there were grim indicators of Indian democracy being concentrated in one person's hand after the marginalisation of party veterans like LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi.
'I am only slightly puzzled by why the childishness has not left the minister. It is easy to be prejudiced and closed-minded when one is in one's teens. But adults should view the world as adults, not as squabbling and petty schoolchildren,' says Aakar Patel.
'If they call themselves a Hindutva party, then they must sever the alliance with the PDP in Kashmir.'
'How does relief in the form of citizenship to a persecuted Hindu in Bangladesh put the citizenship of an Indian Muslim in danger?', asks Dr Sudhir Bisht.
'We all know that when the Babri Masjid was demolished, P V Narasimha Rao was prime minister.' 'He did not do anything to stop the demolition.'
'He failed to foresee that the campaign of hatred need not be continuous; a sporadic, scattered campaign is enough.' 'What was important is to keep the pot boiling, not let it overflow like happened during the masjid-mandir days,' notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'Certainly if Advani had agreed to Vajpayee in sacking Modi, then we would never have been talking of Modi today.'
'Modi's power rests on the Hindu vote.' 'It is this vote bank that sees the Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala as an intrusion into its religious practice and is frothing at the mouth.' 'History shows us the ill-fated consequences of a strong government buckling before street power,' cautions Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Have Muslim women taken to the BJP under Modi even while their menfolk cling to 'secular' politics, asks Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Jamida K is the first Indian Muslim woman to lead the Friday prayer.
'It is this new brand of nationalism, where the saffron has elbowed out the other shades in our Tiranga, that will go before the electorate later this year.' 'And it is this new nationalism that will power Modi back into office with 300-plus seats when elections are held,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'Just as the monkey god needed a Jambavan to prod him into realising his superpowers, so did the poll panel need a poke from the Supreme Court into remembering it had an armoury of powers at its disposal to stop the infractions,' notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'This is about reviving this country as a centre of Hindutva at Ayodhya.'
By all yardsticks 2024 isn't expected to be like 2014 or 2019. But with the mandir expected to be ready in time for the next Lok Sabha polls, Modi will have a new ally in Ram to see him through, observes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Narendra Modi on Tuesday said he would reach out to Muslim "brothers" like any other citizen of the country and made it clear that the contentious issues of Ram Temple and Uniform Civil Code would be addressed within the Constitutional framework.
The BJP's hobnobbing with M K Alagiri and ally Vaiko's controversial demands has the potential to rock the BJP's boat in Tamil Nadu, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'By holding forth on Swadeshi economics, Bhagwat is showing his intent to fight back,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'During the Emergency, it boiled down to two people: Mrs Gandhi and her younger son.' 'But today, the cancer is spreading all over.'
'Modi is given a longer leash by his fans than any other leader of our time.' 'Will he be able to continue putting himself above the fray if other scandals continue to emerge in his term? No, the erosion will inevitably come, given the awful state of this country. But for now, he has managed to shine through a period that would have tarnished any other leader but him.'
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Such direct import was formally allowed in February 2012 but the aviation companies lack the infrastructure to do so.
'The BJP wants to find an excuse to polarise people.' 'Whatever rights J&K has got from the Constitution of India, they want to snatch it.' 'By doing so, they are harming J&K as well as India.'
'Since the rise of the Modi-Shah paradigm, the BJP has followed a simple formula.' 'Sweep the Hindi heartland and the two big Western states, and you can rule India with a majority by just adding some little bits on the platter from here and there,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
'Modi wants to go down in history not necessarily as India's first overtly Hindu RSS pracharak prime minister, but as a world statesman who built the idea of India as a great nation.'
'The government know very well how to pass a bill in the Rajya Sabha with consensus.' 'They got consensus from Opposition parties on the 10 percent reservation for economically weaker sections.' 'In instant triple talaq, the BJP wanted to take sole credit.' 'They wanted to take credit and see that other parties suffer (political) loss.' 'Therefore, the bill got stuck.'
The manner in which a large proportion of common people have mortgaged their rationality and questioning spirit to let hatred, prejudice, and bigotry take over their minds is a cause of worry, observes Mohammad Sajjad.
Devanik Saha wonders if saffronisation of India is on the rise
Presenting a report card of two years of the Modi government, BJP chief Amit Shah credited the party for giving a "decisive" government.
'...because we are truer to the spirit of the Hindu faith.' 'There is absolutely no question that the Hinduism of the mob lynchers, the people who have killed others because of what they are eating or how they are worshipping or the faith they belong to or what they're doing professionally, those are, to my mind, not Hindus at all.'
Gandhi said there's a lot of space for cooperation between the United States and India in the creation of jobs and in the education sector.
'As long as true Hinduism survives in India, we need not let the Hindutva fear factor keep us from accepting a change in Muslim personal law with a ban on triple talaq,' says Najid Hussain.
'If the museum in his memory inspires and instils among Brahminical British Indians an attitude of equality towards Dalits, the edifice would be worth it,' reports Ashis Ray.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh perceives the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections to be a fight for its own existence and all that it stands for. Archis Mohan reports
Of late, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has been concentrating on Uttar Pradesh, where he has held four rallies over a span of one month. Clearly, this was a departure from the routine as UP was not even among the states where assembly elections were being held currently.
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