A look at few gurus who have attracted controversy in recent times.
'I like to see myself as a troll-slayer and I have realised the best way to do that is to ignore them. Nothing bothers them more,' Barkha Dutt tells Rashme Sehgal.
'We say we are proud to be Indian. Can we be proud of such an India where its people are hungry and on the streets?'
'Even though the film focuses on caste discriminations in rural India, it is first of all a riveting police procedural, and one of the best made in India,' says Aseem Chhabra.
'Is this protest real or a manufactured one? Is this not a case of ideological intolerance?" the finance minister writes in a Facebook post.
The RSS on Sunday said it has not abandoned its commitment to build a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya and sought speeding up of the case proceedings in the Supreme Court.
Gujarat Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Saturday sharpened his attack on the Congress in general and party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi in particular at a rally in Udaipur, Rajasthan.
Madhu Kishwar, noted activist, has raised eyebrows with her stand on Narendra Modi, another instance of her long insistence on questioning of peer opinion, notes Aparna Kalra.
Madhu Kishwar, noted activist, has raised eyebrows with her stand on Narendra Modi, another instance of her long insistence on questioning of peer opinion.
'You know, there's not much else happening other than the juicy murder story starring the TV mogul's trophy turned huntress wife,' says Mango Indian.
When an accused gets attacked on the way to court, and again within the court premises, with no intervention by a judicial officer, which space is safe, asks Jyoti Punwani.
'It is time someone told BJP leaders that they were not elected to remind people of Congress corruption. The people of India voted for Narendra Modi and the BJP because they believed that he and his party were clean, unlike the Congress-led government,' says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
The tragedy is that, at least on social media, the narrative that was being lapped up by many Indian Muslims was that Yakub Memon was being victimised. The purveyors of this poisonous line of thinking of course want this sentiment to grow since communal polarisation is the primary pillar of their political strategy, says Sushant Sareen.
After Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi attacked Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi over acknowledgement of his marital status, BJP on Friday asked why an issue was being made out of it when the Gujarat chief minister has "never lied" on the matter and there was "no aggrieved party".
'It is very hard to get the police to file a report against someone from an upper caste.' 'Things are so bad that sometimes we have to sit on a dharna with the body of a Dalit victim to get the police to file a complaint.'
The JNU student leader said, "There is an atmosphere of fear in the country and anybody who speaks against the government is threatened."
From the Aadhaar verdict to #MeToo's arrival in the country to the entry into the Sabarimala temple -- India had a newsworthy 2018. As we step into 2019, these are the top moments from the year gone by.
Though the list of superstitious beliefs is long, often dissolving distinctions of class, caste, religion and education, Karnataka's anti-superstition bill is seen as a big step ahead.
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has justified the Narendra Modi government's move to raise the rail fare by 14.2 per cent, saying it was a result of the policies undertaken by the previous United Progressive Alliance government. In an exclusive interview to CNN IBN, Prasad blamed the UPA II government for leaving Indian Railways in shambles, adding that his government never knew that the railways was bleeding, thanks to the Congress-led regime.
The murders of journalists in 2015 underscore the rising power of regional language media, especially local-language newspapers, says Nilanjana S Roy
She accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being 'anti-Dalit' and recalled the Una incident and the death of Dalit scholar Rohit Vemula to back her assertion.
'Human rights violations are there in rural areas and in cities. In rural areas it is crude and in the open. In urban areas it is well hidden.' 'Awareness has grown several fold. India has 160 national and state human rights institutions. No other country in the world has this.' 'Unfortunately the right to association, right to assembly, freedom of expression, right to protest and discuss are all being curtailed systematically one by one.'
'How can the monument where the prime minister unfurls the flag on Independence Day, in a ceremony broadcast and telecast nationally, be maintained by a private entity?' asks Jyoti Punwani.
'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.'
2014 will be a watershed election. Much is at stake and much needs to be changed. Women need their voice to be heard and they need representation with real power, says Sunanda Vashist.
Despite their depleted numbers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday extended an olive branch to the opposition, saying he would take them along in decision-making and would work for development of all sections, including Muslims.
'Today, in response to the rape of a foreigner in the city, AAP leaders are saying the Delhi police is not under them -- when I had said the same, nobody wanted to hear it. They themselves are facing the same situation. I would say, it is a learning process for the AAP,' says former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, who was vanquished by the AAP's Arvind Kejriwal in the recent assembly elections.
'The cow is sacred to many of us, but these killings are definitely not part of the Hinduism we know and practise,' says Jyoti Punwani.
A combative Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday mounted a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of running a government "of some people, by one person for a select few" and said he has not much to showcase even as the government completes one year.
Rediff.com contributor Anita Katyal explains why the Congress is ill-equipped to battle the Narendra Modi government in the forthcoming Budget session of Parliament.
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In the last 10 years, when the people looked at New Delhi, they saw two centres of power and not one decisive leader between them. There was nobody who could speak in a language people wanted to hear. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt reveals the true reason why the UPA appears rudderless on the eve of Election 2014.
'I know of at least one techie who quit his job to join the AAP in Delhi. Many others traveled to India to volunteer during the election. If you ask these volunteers why they were doing it when they can't even vote in India, they say, "We want a corruption-free India".' Ritu Jha looks back on the year that was; it was party time, she says, for news junkies like her.
'We cannot be the country that created the Kamasutra and then we show flowers kiss and a child is born.'
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.
Let Bihar be damned under its contradictions of having gone 'dry' and then having been submerged under flood, which is a recurrent phenomena? After all it is a godforsaken land, having lost its promises of overcoming its problems, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Transcript of the political resolution adopted by the Bharatiya Janata Party in its national executive meeting in Panaji, Goa on Sunday.
Sheela Bhatt meets Bharti Patel, a truly exceptional mother of our times whose son Dr Vikram Patel was recently ranked among Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2015, to find out her recipe for a remarkable upbringing.
Rajeev Srinivasan on whom the Congress might put forth as its leader in 2014.
'The AAP is likely to take root in some metropolises -- although it won't be easy to replicate the small-scale Delhi model with equal intensity or cadre-strength in a large state,' says Praful Bidwai.
'It's very expensive for a girl to become an actress. I remember I was nominated at all the award shows for Tanu Weds Manu, and conscientiously, like a new actress, I attended all of them and I was bankrupt by the end of it! I had to find a costume stylist, a hair stylist, a makeup stylist...!' Ronjita Kulkarni/Rediff.com gets inside Swara Bhaskar's mind.
