Fake or exaggerated news against the forces and the administration are feeding public anger, often leading to violence.
Apoorvanand pays tribute to much-loved and admired Hindi literary great who passed into the ages on Monday.
'#MeToo is a giant stride towards protesting sexual/verbal assault.' 'It is very important for us, as a society, to 'listen', to introspect and to understand that this is part of 'change' towards a safer society.' 'Hushing it up will only encourage the perpetrators who will begin to feel that they are invincible.'
'What we need from the civilian and military authorities are clear strategies rather than an emotional decision to hang terrorists on death row.'
The moment any party says it will do x, y or z only for a certain section, it is insulting that section and separating them from the rest of the nation, says Jiten Gajaria
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.'
Manoj Bajpayee confides in Rediff.com's Ronjita Kulkarni about his 'long journey filled with rejection, betrayal, misery, failures and disillusionment.'
'The anti-Digital India campaign is a vindictive hatchet job rather than a fact based, rationally sound appraisal; a personal attack rather than issue based criticism; an ideological assault rather than altruistic effort. It must be called out for what it is,' says Vivek Gumaste.
News of all that's transpired on and off the football field
Imagine being a part of a country, but being discriminated against by the majority community and atrocities being committed against you by the state. This is the deplorable conditions that the Rohingyas of Myanmar live in where they are cut off from their livelihoods and sources of income, unable to access markets, hospitals and schools, and have little or no access to relief aid. In order to understand the situation and the genesis of the tragedy unfolding, Rediff.com's Archana Masih speaks to Ambassador Vijay Nambiar, the United Nations' Chef de Cabinet (Chief of Staff), who had served a long stint with the UN in New York on the issue.
For successive governments the Election Commission remains a 'holy cow', where unhealthy precedents are allowed to be nurtured since Independence, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The apex court said the exception in the rape law was contrary to the philosophy of other statutes and violates the bodily integrity of a girl child.
'The dirt in the Indian Ocean must be less than the abuses Narendra Modi got from secular forces.' 'If you are going to put the blame on the central government and the RSS for every wrongdoing, then it is not going to serve any purpose, rather it will complicate the issue instead of resolving it.' 'There are fringe elements in every society, but for an ideal State it is important to finish off the fringe elements.'
'Then all the usual troubles will break out.'
Sukanya Verma recaps all the action at this year's MAMI.
The victim, identified as 39-year-old Deep Rai, was working on his vehicle outside his home in Kent, Washington when the unidentified man shot him in the arm.
If the wave has become a tsunami, why is the BJP's prime ministerial candidate playing safe by polarising voters along communal lines, asks Bharat Bhushan.
'They have no other agenda, but to perpetuate hate.' 'They have destroyed the economy and polity and they survive only on hate.' 'They think through hatred, they can mobilise the large chunk of Hindu votes.'
Repealing the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and passing an anti-torture bill consonant with the Convention against Torture would have a more durable impact on malicious prosecutions than providing 'legal aid' or setting up special courts, according to rights groups, says Vicky Nanjappa
'Although I am from a different party, I would support this government if they draft an unambiguous section to replace 66A. That is the need of the hour, not from the government's point of view, but from the netizens's point of view,' says former IT minister Milind Deora, in this column exclusive to Rediff.com
'The BJP should avoid escalating every local issue and minor provocation into a national crisis and claiming a 'holier than thou' monopoly on patriotism.' 'And the Opposition should avoid paying the government back in the same coin by crying wolf about intolerance at the slightest provocation.'
'The mobilisation is nothing but a political ploy -- a sort of a fixed match between Hindu and Muslim communal forces, towards polarisation, in a run-up to the next election,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
The rankings were prepared after examining the volume of terrorist and rebel alerts, messaging traffic, videos, photos, incidents and the number of killed and injured in a country over the past 30 days.
Today as one sees the Owaisi brothers of Hyderabad seeking to lay claim as the custodian of the Muslim vote and the upholders of the community's interests, it is Shahabuddin who springs to mind for having been there, done that, says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
The foundations of the army's own peculiar secularism are potentially being destabilised
Sonam Kapoor is exceptional as Neerja Bhanot, says Raja Sen.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on range of issues -- from Rafale deal to Ram temple and triple talaq.
'Compared to other social groups, managing the Muslim constituency has always been easier for the secularists.' 'Just some symbolic measures and window-dressing would keep the Muslim flock together.' 'Having been betrayed by all the supposedly 'secular' political parties, Muslims should turn into citizens without any ascriptive identity marks,'says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The foundation of the 2014 triumph was Narendra Modi's appeal to voters in the Hindi belt. The Bihar Vidhan Sabha polls will demonstrate if he continues to appeal to them,' says T V R Shenoy.
Sin City 2 doesn't quite illicit the same response as the film film, says Paloma Sharma.
'Our policy is pro-Sri Lanka.' 'Burma is not the only girl on the beach in South Asia.''
Motivational speaker and bestselling author Priya Kumar has a knack of talking to people and telling them stories that inspire them to feel good about their lives even in the worst of circumstances.
The least the leaders who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi could have done was to highlight the plight of the Muslim riot victims, but they happily chose to ignore it, so privileged they must have felt to be in the presence of the prime minister, the most powerful man in the country, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Why Dalit leaders cross over to the BJP
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.
'Yes, it may have been offensive to some, but an expression of regret is all that's called for. No lasting harm has been done, and people should put it behind them, and move on,' says Rajeev Srinivasan, defending Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti who made abusive remarks in Delhi last week.
The Congress will not fall into the BJP's trap by naming anyone as its prime ministerial candidate, reports Anita Katyal.
'That has always been my ambition -- to take the reader behind the scenes, to the places he was not allowed to visit, but which I had the privilege of entering.' Haresh Pandya remembers Ted Corbett, sports journalist extraordinaire, who passed into the ages on August 9.
'The real danger in India right now is that identity politics is being stoked in extremely dangerous ways.' 'The narrative you get about churches in the mainstream Indian media and the narrative you get in the social media is very different.' 'Many Americans today want to appropriate Indian culture. They want yoga, but they say yoga has nothing to do with Hinduism. They want Ayurveda, but they say it's got nothing to do with Hinduism.' 'Hinduism has been failed by political constituencies in India -- seculars and the right-wing.'
A resident doctor, working at a government hospital, upset by the poor response from the state government, offers his side of the story.
