Junaid was my son. He was son and brother also to the people on the train compartment of his last journey. He was son or brother also of those at the railway station where he breathed his last breath. This moving excerpt from Harsh Mander's Partitions Of The Heart: Unmaking The Idea Of India reveals why we must immediately end the hatred surging across north India before it consumes us all.
Top 21 images of all the events of the week that was.
'The top level will be development and then sab ka saath, sab ka vikas.' 'But at the street level, the tongue will be vicious.'
'Gandhi was ambivalent about the RSS; the Sangh, for their part, actively distrusted him.'
"Whatever he (Som) spoke has been videographed. I have asked legal experts to examine his statement....the statement he made in the village and the statement he made to the media persons. If any action is needed to be taken as per law, it will be taken," the District Magistrate N P Singh said.
Any city that imposes a ban on food of any kind to appease the sensibility of a particular religion has lost any right to be called cosmopolitan and progressive, feels Tanmaya Nanada
'Gauri was a woman of great integrity and few people know how modestly she lived, generously sharing the little she had.' 'Her only asset was the home her mother built.' 'But she had even bigger riches -- her capacious heart,' remembers former husband and close friend, Chidanand Rajghatta.
'When Irshad Khan approaches the Supreme Court, he will undoubtedly have the best and most committed of lawyers to represent him.' His case will be reported on the front pages.' Neither the BJP government in Rajasthan nor at the Centre can stop this,' says Jyoti Punwani.
BJP President Amit Shah -- arguably the second most powerful politician in the nation -- granted a rare television interview to the Network 18 group of news channels. Rediff.com's Rajesh Alva checks out what the BJP boss said in this word cloud assessment of the interview.
'While the government must be relentless in its efforts to curb unruly elements to ensure secular harmony and protect its goal of national development,it must not lose the moral high ground by giving in to the antics of the anti-nationalist lobby.' 'They must be countered and relegated to the dustbin of history,' says Vivek Gumaste.
'The Parivar's ideology and politics was and remains the very opposite of what Dr Ambedkar stood for.'
'Even if the national security framework is to be threat-based, then the division of security threats between Pakistan and China is absurd. The two threats are one.'
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
'There is a remarkable link between the eating of beef (or at the very least, tolerating the eating of beef) and India being a superpower.' 'In India, whenever an empire was strong, religion took a back seat.' 'Alternatively, whenever religion asserted itself, the main empire of India crumbled...'
'If chutzpah nationalists brought the Babri Masjid down, chutzpah secularists did precious little to stop it from being torn down.' 'If chutzpah nationalists ensured carnage in Gujarat, chutzpah secularists allowed Muzaffarnagar to become their next hunting ground.' 'Chutzpah secularists readily banned SIMI, but dragged their feet when it came to banning the Bajrang Dal.'
'Hindu voters in coastal Karnataka lean more towards Hindutva than Hinduism which explains why the Siddaramaiah government's perception as anti-Hindu worked wonders for the BJP in coastal Karnataka.'
