'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.
Patcy N/ Rediff.com had spoken to Mubarak Begum back in 2011. We republish the interview.
'One big problem for the RSS is, while they spread their ideology of hard, Hindu-ised Indian nationalism, the absence of their own pantheon of modern nationalist giants. They missed out on the freedom movement quite comprehensively, in some ways comparable to the Muslim League and latter-day Communists. They have to find heroes elsewhere.' 'They borrow who they can from the Congress, like Madan Mohan Malviya and Sardar Patel, and then steal the entire lot of revolutionaries, from Bhagat Singh to Netaji, never mind that many of them were extreme leftists.'
After being deserted by people whose battles he fought, Amar Singh is going to have another go at politics, says Aditi Phadnis
In our special series re-visiting great Hindi film classics, we look back at Sanjeev Kumar's Dastak (1970).
Six Kashmiri Muslim students belonging to Sarhad, an organisation which brings semi-orphans from strife-torn regions to live and study at their school and college in Pune, share their hopes for their state and their experiences outside it. Jyoti Punwani reports.
Death was staring them in the face as flood waters rapidly rose and there were no rescuers in sight. Relief came only after the Indian Army, the Indian Air Force and teams from the National Disaster Rescue Force swung into action with the needed equipment. And with that, dimming hopes soared up, says our correspondent Mukhtar Ahmad, who himself had a narrow escape in Srinagar.
Here's a glimpse at what happened around the world last week.
Muslims constitute 20% of UP's electorate. Currently, Muslim voters are divided between Akhilesh's SP and Mayawati's BSP. What will tilt the balance? Can Muslims back the winning party? Mohammad Sajjad explains the mysteries of UP's Muslim politics.
'Consider this image of today's youth in Bihar -- armed with a bike, a smartphone and possibly some illegal arms too, imbibing incessant stream of images from the Internet and television.' 'Some of them would turn into gau bhakts, some would listen with interest the exploits of Salafism, dig deep into the Internet to come out with images which cry vociferously that their respective religions are in danger.'
Mohammad Salim cited a news magazine which quoted Singh as reportedly saying -- after Narendra Modi and BJP's victory last year -- that India had the first "Hindu ruler after 800 years."
Non-Congressism is the answer to India's current difficulties, says Dr Shambhu Shrivastava, who gives a historical perspective of non-Congress experiments in 1967, 1977, 1989 and 1998.
Minister of State for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Ansari believes a national debate on a Uniform Civil Code is a must. 'The need of the hour is to debate this issue at length in order to create a consensus,' Ansari tells Rediff.com, adding, 'Such a debate must take place at the grassroot level. We must understand all the divergent viewpoints before any draft can be prepared.'
In an interview to Rediff.com's Anita Katyal, Shambhu Srivastava speaks about the need of breaking out of the communal-secular paradigm and focusing on the Congress party's poor performance and its track record in fuelling communalism.
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