This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
Amid outrage over personal accounts of Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat losing verified blue tick marks, Twitter on Saturday said the blue badge and verified status could be automatically removed from an account if it is incomplete or inactive for six months as per its rules.
Ram Janmabhoomi trust head Nritya Gopal Das tested positive for novel coronavirus infection. He shared stage with PM Modi.
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.
Addressing an event in Jaipur, the RSS leader said, "The term 'Hindu' has already entered our Constitution and country. It is a fact of history. Hindu is an identity and a culture to which people belong."
The US state department in its annual report to the Congress on international religious freedom has alleged that in India in 2021, attacks on members of the minority communities, including killings, assaults, and intimidation, occurred throughout the year.
He also said if Hindus want to remain Hindus then Bharat has to be made 'akhand' (undivided).
The organisers were told by "government sources" that security issues could arise due to Dhar's presence
As one moves towards Vadnagar, local issues such as high prices of cattle feed and inflation becomes louder.
In the last 9 years, the BJP govt has marked some anniversaries and events with more zeal than Congress-led governments.
'Islam is the oldest religion among all religions. India is the best country for Hindi Muslims'
Addressing a function to mark 'Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas' in Jashpur district, Bhagwat appealed to tribals to stay strong against those who try to dupe them by taking advantage of their innocence.
'We are very close to become a theocratic State where Hinduism is the official religion of the government.'
'The BJP has ordered the AIMIM to defame the Shiv Sena, to raise questions on Shiv Sena's Hindutva'
Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind chief Maulana Arshad Madani on Sunday stoked a controversy when he claimed that "Om" and "Allah" were the same God worshipped by 'Manu'.
Political power has now been outsourced fully to the Modi government. Even if the RSS is still, in principle, his guru, nobody would dare to whisper a word of advice to Modi, forget some whiff of criticism. When the shishya grows into such a popular and domineering leader, the guru has to applaud from the sidelines, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Thursday was the day results from the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections and by-elections in Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh were out, so what were some of our leaders up to?
'We want Muslims to go about their work and business unhindered.' 'They should not get victimised and that will only come through the process of reconciliation.'
The five-day event, to appraise and train RSS volunteers on how to propagate nationalism and promote Swadeshi along with other such issues among the masses, is held every fifth year in different cities and states of the country.
'In India, legal advocates and faith leaders from across the country's diverse religious communities condemned a case of extreme hate speech against Muslims in the city of Haridwar, calling for the country to uphold its historical traditions of pluralism and tolerance'
'Everybody knows that both of them will face loss if they are going to fight over a matter'
The stringent National Security Act (NSA) has been invoked against two people lodged in jail for allegedly burning photocopies of extracts from the Ramcharitmanas, officials said on Monday.
Several BJP leaders in the past have raised a demand for changing the name of the country from "India" to "Bharat".
What the INDIA alliance needs is neither a counter to Modi's tall personality and undiminished charisma nor a counter-narrative to his Hindutva agenda, now centred on the Ayodhya temple consecration on January 22, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
What some of our leaders were up to over the weekend.
Since 2014, many of Mohan Bhagwat's speeches have acted as cues for government policy.
'We are seeing an era where only what Modi wishes is going to happen.' 'A clear message has now been sent to others that if this fate could befall on Nitin Gadkari, then just think what could happen to lesser mortals.'
He criticised Uddhav Thackeray for not giving time to meet his supporters and leaders.
A simulated security scare situation was created wherein four "terrorists" entered the RSS building, the official said late night.
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat is expected to deliver a keynote address at a meeting aimed at 'clearing misconceptions about the organisation'.
A release issued by the RSS on Thursday had said the agenda of the four-day meeting included a discussion of Sangh volunteers' response to the coronavirus pandemic and preparations to face a possible third wave, among other things.
70-plus years after Independence, 'Hindu India, metamorphosised as 'Hindutva India', is proving the British right -- and for all the wrong reasons. Mohan Bhagwat should have answers for the why of it, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
What were our political leaders up to on the weekend?
What some of our leaders were up to on Thursday and Thursday.
Voicing his displeasure over several incidents of mob violence in the country, he said, "Lynching is not the word from Indian ethos, its origin is from a story in a separate religious text. We Indians trust in brotherhood. Don't impose such terms on Indians."
The opinion piece added that the party combines the most striking principles of three major political entities in the world -- the Likud Party of Israel, the Communist Party of China and the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.
Likening India's progress to that of a vehicle that only has accelerator and no brakes, the RSS chief said those trying to stop it will either step aside or be eliminated.
When Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi's name was floated as Venkaiah Naidu's successor as vice president, the RSS instead suggested Jagdeep Dhankar, indicating that he was also Mohan Bhagwat's choice, states Prakash Bhandari.
Former President A P J Abdul Kalam had once cancelled his visit to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters in Nagpur for an event after friends warned him that he would be labelled as an "RSS sympathiser", claims a new book, Kalam: The Untold Story.
Amidst the fanfare over Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's plans to celebrate Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's birth anniversary in Kolkata on January 23, his daughter Anita Bose-Pfaff has said that the organisation's ideology and the nationalist leader's ideas of secularism and inclusiveness are 'poles apart and do not coincide'.
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