'Nehru remains central to the polemic between the Congress and the BJP, or stated ideologically, between secular and Hindu nationalism.' 'The reason is that Nehru represents what is optimally possible as a secular politics along with liberalism and democracy in a country like India.'
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who was sent to Tihar Jail after a court remanded him in judicial custody till April 15 in the excise policy case, will remain under 24x7 watch with CCTV cameras in his cell and could watch TV and read books, officials said.
The Hindu members in the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions resigned protesting the decision to withdraw the council's sponsorship to the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Swami Vivekananda in Chicago, scheduled for September 27-28.
'Ashok Singhal was an amazing missionary, a monk in civil dress. His personal ego and pride simply evaporated before the national cause.'
With the CAA rules being issued, the Modi government will now start granting Indian nationality to persecuted non-Muslim migrants -- Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians -- from the three countries.
Following the Chola era tradition, the pontiff of the Thiruvaduthurai Aadeenam presented the sengol to the first Prime Minister of India Nehru signifying the transfer of power from the British to Indian hands.
Asserting that terrorism is not linked to any religion, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Tuesday said it is no coincidence that despite there being around 200 million Muslims, the involvement of Indian citizens in global terrorism has been "incredibly low".
Muslims' share in the reservation will keep on increasing also because of "conversion and infiltration because they are having a secular cover from them (the Congress)", he added.
This year, eight eminent individuals are being given Padma Bhushan and 54 are being conferred with Padma Shri awards, besides the two Padma Vibhushan recipents.
India previously rejected the US religious freedom report, saying it sees no locus standi for a foreign government to pronounce on the state of its citizens' constitutionally protected rights.
Wouldn't it be better to join the celebrations with the vast Hindu majority while at the same time criticising Mr Modi/BJP/RSS for politicising it? notes Shekhar Gupta.
'The people of Gujarat understood this a long time ago and has since been rejecting the party and its programmes.'
The plea, filed by a religious guru based in Mathura, Devkinandan Thakur, has challenged the constitutional validity of Sections 2, 3, and 4 of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act 1991, stating that it offends Articles 14, 15, 21, 25, 26, 29 of the Indian constitution and violates the principles of secularism and the rule of law, which is an integral part of the Preamble and basic structure of the Constitution.
He was trolled during the Lok Sabha poll campaign, but despite the tactics by his rivals, action hero Suresh Gopi rose to national stardom in cinema style on June 4, winning the Thrissur seat on a BJP ticket and scripting history for the saffron party in Kerala.
They all seem to forget that the Music Academy is as much an independent institution as T M Krishna is an individual musician. In drawing those red lines for the Academy management, they do not even seem to recognise that they too have crossed a red line themselves, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
...close to the 2024 general election. The BJP calling the Congress 'seasonal Hindu' is as laughable as the saffron party sparing itself the title of 'seasonal extreme Hindu.'
How else should one describe its election campaigns of the past years?
It was typically obsessive religion and personality cult with economic development for fig leaf, asserts Shyam G Menon.
It then went on to ask whether a lion could be named after Swami Vivekananda or Ramakrishna Paramahansa.
Bhagwat said a sense of idealism is good and described himself not as 'anti-modern', but as 'pro-future'.
An FIR has not been registered by the police following the complaint.
The Indian Mujahideen wanted to kill Narendra Modi before he reached the venue of his Patna rally but aborted the plan because of the thick security cover, Vicky Nanjappa reports
As a consequence of prominence given to the brutality during those few days, a very important aspect of that episode got almost glossed over. This was the intervention by a very significant section of people who restored faith in humanity, and conveyed the message that only a small section of Indians, that too politically backed, were consumed by anti-Sikh majoritarianism. The overlooked facet of the events of 1984 was the story of significant sections of the city's populace, public figures and nondescript ones, stepping out hand-in-hand, to first stand with little but bravery in hands, in the way of attackers, and thereafter to provide immediate relief to those who lives were uprooted and who lost family members in the violence, recalls Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav has advised party workers, leaders, office bearers and TV panellists to refrain from debating on communal issues during discussions on TV channels, party's national secretary Rajendra Chaudhary said.
Modi believes that the Congress leadership does not have the political sagacity to undertake a course correction because of its preoccupation about not losing its current gains in the voter base, observes Shekhar Iyer.
Secularism for India does not mean being non-religious but an equal respect to all faiths, but the "appeasement" government policies of the past made the biggest religion of the country feel like it had to be self-deprecatory in the name of equality, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said.
Obama in an interview to CNN on Thursday had said that India may "pull apart" if the rights of the religious and ethnic minorities are not upheld.
Hindu festivals are now becoming occasions when anti-Muslim hatred is expressed freely through slogans and songs that are full of abuse against Muslims or calls to either kill them or humiliate them, observes Apoorvanand.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday attacked the Congress over party president Mallikarjun Kharge's recent remark on Lord Ram and Lord Shiva, and accused the opposition party of trying to divide Hindus for its appeasement politics.
Moitra on Tuesday stirred a controversy with her remarks that she has every right as "an individual to imagine Goddess Kaali as a meat-eating and alcohol-accepting goddess", as every person has the right to worship god and goddess in his or her own way.
Aligarh Muslim University on Wednesday suspended a professor who referred to examples of "rape" in Hindu mythology during a forensic science class, provoking accusations of hurting religious sentiments.
The two-day event at the ancient shrine, categorised as 'Great Living Chola Temples,' by the UNESCO, faced the ire of pro-Tamil outfits.
'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.'
Struggling to gain political traction on issues of corruption, the West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party is shifting its focus to emotive topics such as the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in a bid to achieve its target of securing 35 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state.
A look at the top tweets from your favourite Bollywood celebrities:
Police have booked more than 10 people for 'promoting enmity' after they allegedly burnt photocopies of the pages of Ramcharitmanas in the Vrindavan area of Lucknow on Sunday.
Mumbai-based author Ranjit Hoskote has quit the Finding Committee for the upcoming Documenta art festival in Germany, following criticism for signing a letter that compared Zionism and Hindu nationalism.
The Moplah rebellion, also known as the Mappila riots, of 1921 was one of the first manifestations of the Taliban mindset in India and the Left government in Kerala was allegedly trying to whitewash it by celebrating it as a communist revolution, Rashtriya Swayasevak Sangh leader Ram Madhav claimed on Thursday.
At a time when the BJP's stars are at the top on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls, the Puri-Joshimath Sankaracharyas may have kick-started a row whose efforts might be to divide Hindus, not in the name of castes, but on what passes for greater belief, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto has said it "deeply regrets" causing offence to members of the Hindu and other faith communities and has removed the presentation of the documentary Kaali, after the Indian mission in Ottawa urged the Canadian authorities to take down all "provocative material" related to the controversial film.
Kharge accused PM Modi of inciting people over the issues "that the Congress will never do".
