'At this moment, the Trinamool has an edge.'
At a time when the Kashmir valley has been shut down, it is perhaps appropriate that we remember Lal Ded, Kashmir's best known spiritual and literary figure, someone remembered with divine adoration both by Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir. A fascinating excerpt from Sandhya Mulchandani's For The Love Of God: Women Poet Saints Of The Bhakti Movement.
'Sachin Pilot has revived the Congress.' 'What goes in favour of Ashok Gehlot is experience.'
"Desh ke chowikdar ki pehredari mein, sansadhono ki chori karai ja rahi hai (the country's resources are being looted under the watch of the country's gateman)," she said in a derisive reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
'...that it takes fantasy seriously as a part of real life'... A fascinating excerpt from Jonathan Gil Harris's book, Masala Shakespeare: How A Firangi Writer Became Indian.
Muslims have been given tickets in 36 of the 100 seats.
'The government says it will file a review petition against the Supreme Court, but there is no conviction here.' 'It is doing this purely because it is worried.' 'It comes from the same sentiment as asking BJP MPs to spend two nights in a Dalit village,' says Aakar Patel.
The shutdown generated tension in Mumbai and a number of towns and cities across Maharashtra.
An analysis of the results in Haryana reveals that caste-based voting is anything but dead. It could even help the Bharatiya Janata Party win a second successive term in the state in the forthcoming assembly polls, reports Nitin Kumar.
The economic muscle in the Mangalore region is generally sympathetic to the BJP, says Aditi Phadnis.
The AIADMK's staying power is not in question, but it has to regain the winning streak. That will require its leaders and leadership to re-wire themselves, to be able to re-think situations in ways different from what they had been accustomed to, suggests Sathiya Moorthy.
'Tamil Nadu's youth bulge will soon be 70 per cent of the population, many of them smartphone-toting millennials looking for gains more tangible than what screen gods can give,' says Sunil Sethi.
The foundations of the army's own peculiar secularism are potentially being destabilised
'We are telling them we have isolated them and their religion as not only unwanted,' says Aakar Patel.
'No lives should be taken during Paryushan.' 'When fish is taken out from the sea it is dead, hence no ban on it.' 'They hang the meat in shops and those who are fasting are pained by this sight.'
The Dalits of Thabola village in Rajasthan's Bhilwara district are facing social and economical boycott for a month now after two grooms from the community decided to defy the diktats of the upper caste villagers. Shahnawaz Akhtar reports.
'The fabric of democracy is fraying,' says T V R Shenoy. 'It is being attacked not just by terrorists in Kashmir or by zealots in the North-East, but is being ripped apart even in Allahabad, in the Hindi heartland.'
After a series of defeats since 2012, the results of the recent panchayat polls are being seen by her as a tide changer for the upcoming UP assembly elections
The front-runner of course is party treasurer and long-serving party legislator, S Duraimurugan. A Vanniar by caste from the rival PMK-strong northern belt, Duraimurugan makes up for his weak political grounding through his debating skills in the assembly, and witty repartee, both inside and outside. Apart from caste and regional representation, personal loyalty to the leader would count even more -- but there is no death of loyal and competent candidates in the party for the post, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Even after giving five rounds to former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee followed by the last round in 2009 to his close lieutenant Lalji Tandon, Lucknow is now all set to give a rough ride to Bhartiya Janata Party president Raj Nath Singh, who has taken the plunge after forcing Tandon's exit from here.
'Its three primary effects are to send the alcohol economy underground (depriving the state of revenue), to criminalise the casual drinker and to criminalise the police,' says Aakar Patel.
An interplay of Modi government's outreach in Bihar and the sequence of events in Chirag Paswan's life could make Bihar a game of musical chairs when the results are out.
'The problem of a Hindu rashtra is that it has no text which can be adapted to the modern world.' 'The most prominent element of the Hindu way of organising society and the State is through caste.' 'This is not acceptable to most Hindus.' 'Because a Hindu rashtra also erodes the power and the rights of the majority of Hindus, we can be assured that this is not something that the BJP, or any other force can do,' argues Aakar Patel.
"We have taken note of this anger. We should not take upper caste votes for granted believing that they will not vote for any other party as there is no option," a senior BJP leader said.
The logic behind the BJP targeting Mayawati's votes.
She has been losing her party's core voters since the 2007 assembly polls, whereas the Samajwadi Party has managed to keep its flock together. The BJP believes she is a soft target.
'One thing is clear from what happened last night; both sides are being manipulated by the same party with a lot of wrong inputs.' 'I see a hand in Delhi doing the puppet act on both sides.'
Stalin owes his victory this time, like in 2019, to the hate-campaign of the local Hindutva forces, which kept haranguing him, and even his dead father, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Unlike the regimes of Jayalalitha, Palaniswami and Karunanidhi, ministers are actually getting to make decisions on their own, with the unmentioned rider that they would be held responsible and accountable, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Dr Kaushal Kishore Mishra, the prime accused in the assault case against Somnath Bharti, says he never attacked the AAP leader. He then explains the polarisation politics of Varanasi.
Saeed Mirza on two young men who have broken barriers and emerged as beacons for a New India.
The decision was announced by Ghulam Nabi Azad in New Delhi at a press briefing.
A time has thus come when state encouragement for rural students led to empowerment of the socio-economically marginalised sections of the population. It included women. Today, with greater exposure and consequent enlightenment, it has gone beyond 'empowerment' to become 'entitlement', says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Seshadri Viswanathan tells us how he fell for Sunita.
'Why don't they suggest artificial intelligence training for SC/STs?' 'Why can't they be trained in computer programming?'
'The Dalits have always asserted themselves, but there has never been any gain for Dalits.' 'But now the most significant thing that has emerged, and which has got all the political parties in denial mode, is the assertion of smaller OBCs along with the Dalits.' 'I accept that the Dalits by themselves are not in a position to make a Mumbai bandh successful.' 'It was only because of the participation of the smaller OBCs that the bandh has become a success.'
'At a time when the news channels are screaming louder than the worst crowd, you can't be subtle if you really want to say something important,' Anubhav Sinha tells Bedika/PTI.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and chief ministers of various BJP-ruled states attended the ceremony.
Why Dalit leaders cross over to the BJP
As veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh and former Union minister and vice president of the BJP Kisan Morcha Subhash Maharia have now made the infighting within the saffron party in Rajasthan public, chances of the ruling party touching the mark of 25 seats now seems impossible, say political observers. Shahnawaz Akhtar reports
