'The new generation voter is hyper-nationalistic, but it isn't essentially illiberal.' 'They will find the rants of Adityanath as laughable as Irfan Habib's. They will also find the BJP's polarising approach to vote-gathering unacceptable if it fails to deliver jobs and growth,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'The one thing India has over these two States, whose toughness awes us, is our ability to embrace diversity with ease. 'The way ahead lies in learning from Vajpayee's method, not in Xi Jinping's,' says Shekhar Gupta.
What we have in the Congress is a useful glue to hold a non-cultural, unified Opposition together. That is the sacrifice the Congress must be willing to live with if showing the BJP the door is what the collective Opposition wants, observes Shyam G Menon.
'The so-called separatists are representatives of Pakistan. They get paid from Islamabad for propagating that country's policy and conniving in her ploy of accession of Kashmir to Pakistan.'
Rediff.com gives you a lowdown on the NSCN-K.
'The killings are a worrisome escalation of tensions, but little is known about the immediate causes or results of the fight in Galwan and it is not possible, at this point, to assign blame'
The decision has been taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
'This is what Hindu Rashtra looks like, which has been enabled by conditions of democracy.'
Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Science, claimed that India is provoking China because it wanted to prove to the United States that it could contain China while Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in the US.
'I am not a Hinduwadi leader, but a nationalist leader. I am a leader of every religion, every caste, every language and every class'
The operation in Nagaland and Manipur was carried out after the army received "credible and specific" intelligence.
At least seven insurgents belonging to Naga rebel group, Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang, including one woman cadre, were killed in an exchange of fire with security forces that took place at Pangsha in Tuensang district of Nagaland close to Indo-Myanmar border.
'If we cannot conclude a trade deal, both sides are likely to take trade actions that will further impair our government-to-government ties.'
In a significant move coinciding with the visit of a top United States official probing war crimes, the American embassy in Colombo on Thursday posted pictures of places where civilians had died allegedly during Sri Lanka's final war against rebel Tamil Tigers four years ago.
The US election campaign has provided plenty of ammunition for the CCP to make its case that its political system is superior.
'Nobody is going to fight India's war.' 'India has to fight its own war against the rogue State and the evil forces nurtured by it.'
The need of the hour is not a divisive, slanging match of accusations and counter-accusations, but a call for sanity,' says Vivek Gumaste.
Rahul Gandhi is neither Congress president, office-bearer nor Congress leader in Parliament. This technical leeway provides adequate cover for Shiv Sena-Congress ties taking a nosedive, says Rasheed Kidwai.
For the first time in our political history, Pakistan has become centre stage of the incumbent's campaign, points out Shekhar Gupta.
'It gives the impression that he either cannot or does not wish to control the fringe elements.' the NYT said.
'If any party talks too much about Muslims, it will lose.'
Maithripala Sirisena, the Sri Lankan president-elect, will be sworn-in on Friday evening following his stunning victory in the tightest-ever presidential race that ended the 10-year-rule of Mahinda Rajapaksa.
'Modi is the first BJP leader to try to include Dalits in its fold.' 'But the rank and file of his party is backward and want to bash up Muslims and Dalits whenever they have a chance.'
'No one, Mr Kohli, holds any kind of a franchise on nationalism and patriotism.' 'And there is no 'our' that owns India,' says Suhit Sen.
'India will come increasingly in the US crosshairs if it insists on maintaining its strategic autonomy, warns Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'He is wily and has everything that a political leader needs to succeed at that level.' 'He would be outstanding as a counter to Modi in the Lok Sabha, if he had the Opposition benches behind him,' says Aakar Patel.
All the apprehended are being handed over to National Investigation Agency for further investigation.
The briefing comes ahead of the parliament session beginning Monday.
The danger to India's democracy is coming from recourse to mobocracy encouraged by the anti-Modi gang, argues Vivek Gumaste.
In the wake of the killing of 18 Armymen in Manipur, government plans to deploy either Indo-Tibetan Border Police or Assam Rifles for manning the 389-km-long Indo-Myanmar border in the state.
Says India stands to gain by setting up a level playing field instead of creating trade barriers
'The separatist resurgence in Balochistan is thwarting Pakistan's plans to build CPEC projects to optimally utilise Balochistan's energy reserves,' points out Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Dallas police say the gunman staged a furious ambush-style attack in Dallas at a rally held to protest this week's fatal shooting of two black men by police in other states.
China would have become another India "where around 20% of the world's poorest live" if it adopted democracy
From the political maelstrom in Washington to the humanitarian disaster in Yemen to the deadly unrest along the Israel-Gaza border, photographers captured a world in turbulent transition.
While it took the Congress nearly a half century to earn the hatred of other political outfits, the BJP appears set to reach there in around six years, says Arun Bhatnagar, former secretary to the GoI.
Bangladesh's fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami was on Wednesday sentenced to death by a special tribunal for his role in the killing of thousands of people during the nation's independence war against Pakistan in 1971.
A Bangladeshi court on Thursday handed down the death penalty to 14 people, including the chief of Jamaat-e-Islami and a top leader of India's separatist outfit United Liberation Front of Asom, in the country's biggest ever weapons haul case, nearly 10 years after the seizure took place.
Tributes poured in as news came in of the death of the 10-time Lok Sabha MP who had joined the Communist Party of India-Marxist in 1968. Chatterjee was speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.
Girls in the Kashmir valley hurling defiance at the security forces will detract from the legitimacy of India's response and its standing in the world, says Ajai Shukla.
