Archana Masih recalls that December evening 22 years ago when Atal Bihari Vajpayee logged into the Rediff Chat.
Here was an Indian like you and me, who reached the country's highest office without compromising on his integrity or values. Here was a politician who was not a Muslim, or Tamil, or a boatman's son -- but an Indian president, who opened his office to all Indians, says Sriram Karri.
A former laboratory assistant of a Delhi University college, who had set herself on fire seven days ago after alleging sexual harassment by a college principal, succumbed to her injuries on Monday.
'So you wonder, couldn't he have combined these two qualities: His love of his own voice, and his acting talents, to voice concern about the Kathua and Unnao rapes?' asks Jyoti Punwani. 'His supporters are siding with the accused in the first case, and are the accused in the second.'
Prohibitory orders were imposed in Delhi and parts of Karnataka. Police kept tight vigil in Kerala. In Gujarat, 50 people were arrested for Thursday's violence.
'Our Lockdown Life has a sort of schizophrenic, Dr-Jekyll-and-Mr-Hyde personality about it,' says Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
Ananya Chakravarty (52), who was an inspector in Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and was posted as a field officer in the Cabinet Secretariat, was found hanging from a fan while the bodies of his wife Jaishri, son Arnab (17) and daughter Disha (12) bearing blunt injury marks were found in the house which was bolted from inside, police said.
The film which is dedicated to India's mathematical prodigy, Ramanujan, is a well researched, well-written and brilliantly directed.
In 1998, the Congress asked her mother to campaign. 'We had a family discussion. We explained to our mother that you will be used, you will be discarded once you are done with the campaign.' 'A few days later I got a call from my mother. She said, "I have decided to campaign".' 'We were stunned. Why was she doing this?' Payal Mohanka listens in.
Rai Mamta Kumari's first shot at politics ended before it could begin. She had gone to file her nomination with a procession of 56 four wheelers and distributed 1,800 food packets. But then something went wrong.
At a time when the Kashmir valley has been shut down, it is perhaps appropriate that we remember Lal Ded, Kashmir's best known spiritual and literary figure, someone remembered with divine adoration both by Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir. A fascinating excerpt from Sandhya Mulchandani's For The Love Of God: Women Poet Saints Of The Bhakti Movement.
'It is important to destroy, to undermine, to debunk the narrative of ISIS,' Olivier Roy -- one of the world's leading experts on radical Islam -- tells Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel in an exclusive interview.
The proposal is currently with the finance department and is expected to be placed before the Cabinet in the coming days.
'They don't just kill their enemies, they chop off limbs, sever heads.' 'How can anyone kill a teacher in front of small children and a son in front of his parents?'
Set in the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War, Santosh Sivan's Inam brings to light the plight of the thousands of hapless Lankan Tamils, who were caught in the crossfire between the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam) and the Sri Lankan government.
A case of negligence has been registered against authorities of the Larji Hydropower project in Manali even as rescuers on Wednesday negotiated through huge boulders and high level of silt to trace 19 engineering students and a tour guide who were washed away in the turbulent waters of the Beas River.
'These inhuman people will never find a place in Jammu & Kashmir or hold in any sway over the youth here.'
'This time, even the professedly secular parties have maintained a conscious distance from being identified with Muslims.' 'This could be interpreted as a success of the BJP campaign of what it has been calling 'minority appeasement', says Mohammad Sajjad.
A 21-year-old woman was brutally stabbed to death in broad daylight on Tuesday by her 34-year-old stalker, who attacked her nearly 22 times as passersby looked on in north Delhi's Burari area.
Sreehari Nair introduces you to three promising movies coming up.
There's really no reason why one should not watch The Big C, says Paloma Sharma.
'Evacuation' has been key to disaster management in Odisha. The aim is to achieve zero casualty.
You won't believe what Kat's hichki was!
Six Indian-American students have grabbed top positions in a competition of young innovators.
The 'Shatrughan Sinha of the South' plunges into politics.
The manifesto, on the lines of the party's promise in Delhi in 2015, also says the AAP government will set up Aam Aadmi canteens at sub-division and district levels where one time meal will be available for Rs 5, and reduce the power tariff to half for usages up to 400 unit.
'There was the indisputable fact that Savarkar knew Godse, Apte and Karkare well, he had corresponded with them closely, and funded their extremely provocative newspaper, and they looked up to him as their icon.'
Here's a glimpse of all that happened around the world last week, in 10 images.
The gunman opened fire at Umpqua Community College in rural Roseburg, about 180 miles south of Portland -- the capital of Oregon -- and then went on to other classrooms gunning down his victims, witnesses said.
The 70-year-old is so unassuming that it is reported that he has not removed the name plate in his ancestral home in Jodhpur that reads, 'Judge, Supreme Court'.
Patna residents discuss what may happen when the EVMs are unlocked on Sunday morningwith Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com
The brutal Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan assault has claimed 141 lives, including 132 school children, six terrorists and three armymen.
'Raj and DK have taken the effort to look at Moosa as a person.' 'Like, what happened to him?' 'What made him become a terrorist?' 'The emotional trauma that he might have had... that clicked for me.'
No one should be allowed to use Pakistan's territory to import or export terrorism, says Hamid Mir.
The foundations of the army's own peculiar secularism are potentially being destabilised
Modi seems to have forgotten the solution to rising tomato prices he had in mind in 2014.
'Let me talk about young Indian startups with their hearts in the right place and how they are proving that innovations that represent 'affordable excellence' -- breaking the myth that 'affordability' and 'excellence' cannot go together -- is indeed possible!' says Dr R A Mashelkar, the eminent scientist, in this fascinating feature.
On Tuesday, November 20, 2018, 34 years and 19 days later after the horrific crimes, two men were sentenced to death and life in prison for their involvement in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in which over 3,000 Sikhs were killed. It was the first verdict after the riots-related cases were reopened by a Special Investigation Team in 2015. In his novel Man With The White Beard, Shah Alam Khan recalls a calamitous time in India's history.
'Karpoori Thakur must be remembered by people today who are tired of witnessing fractious politics where corruption, bigotry, hatred and violence seems to have become distressingly recurrent,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'What we need from the civilian and military authorities are clear strategies rather than an emotional decision to hang terrorists on death row.'
