The nine-day Mahamaham festival, known as the 'Kumbh Mela of the south', concluded In Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu on Monday, with conduct of the most important event 'theerthavari', witnessed by lakhs of people.
Protests broke out in some states on Friday, including Delhi's Jama Masjid and stone-petling at policemen in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj and Saharanpur, over the controversial remarks on Prophet Muhammad by two now-suspended Bharatiya Janata Party functionaries with demonstrators in Jharkhand injuring a few policemen while authorities in Jammu imposed a curfew in few areas and parts of Kashmir observed a shutdown.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee directed the director general of police to instruct all the superintendents of police to take strong action against those who carried arms in the rallies.
Amid tight security and monitoring by two Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, the 136th Lord Jagannath rath yatra began in Ahmedabad on Wednesday morning.
Hasty, ill-conceived steps show how isolated Mamata Banerjee had been from the national political trend. A fascinating excerpt from Sugato Hazra's Losing The Plot: Political Isolation Of West Bengal.
Amid tight security, the 137th edition of Lord Jagannath's rathyatra began in Ahmedabad on Sunday morning from the ancient Jagannath Temple in Jamalpur area.
'Please do not threaten us with street violence.' 'Do you have some humanity left in you?'
There is a deep-seated sense of rejection that the new generation Tamil youth have felt for a decade and more now, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Is it not a crime to physically harm children?' 'Piercing children with needles is a crime.'
Sources said the parties have sought settlement under the provisions of The Places of Worship Act, 1991 which provides that no dispute with regard to any mosque or other religious places, which have been constructed after demolition of temples and are existing as in 1947, would be raised in a court of law.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi began the rathyatra procession after performing the pooja following which hundreds of devotees began pulling the chariots out of temple premises.
During the hearing, Chief Justice of India JS Khehar also offered to serve as a mediator, if negotiations broke down.
Kangana Ranaut's Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi releases this week, a cinematic tribute to one of India's most courageous monarchs. In this fascinating excerpt from Moupia Basu's new book The Queen's Last Salute, the British conspire with Indian malcontents to bring Rani Lakshmibai's empire under the Englishman's yoke.
Xi and Modi are scheduled to hold informal summit talks on Friday evening and on Saturday.
'The sooner Pakistan and India face these geopolitical realities, the better it will be for their own security and prosperity,' observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Swaraj is in Bahrain for a two-day visit to attend the first ministerial meeting of the India-Arab League Cooperation Forum to be held on Sunday.
India and Indians can ignore Pakistan, but that cannot be said of other nations in the neighbourhood, where New Delhi's 'Neighbourhood First' policy constantly reverberates. Four of the eight SAARC member-nations are Muslim -- Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The rulers decide the nation's India or anti-India policy in the first two, and street-opinion contributes to the same in the latter two, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
One of prominent religious leaders of South India, the 88-year old Swamiji was admitted to a hospital at Manipal a few days ago for breathing difficulty and his end came on Sunday morning, they said.
Addressing Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray, Ranaut posted a video message saying his 'ego will be destroyed' the way her Bandra home was demolished.
Devaswom sources said they were planning to apprise the high court of an earlier supreme court verdict on conduct of the Pooram festival.
Vice President Hamid Ansari on Thursday visited Angkor Wat days after India allayed Cambodian concerns over reports of building of a replica of the world heritage site in Bihar.
'The Covid situation is like demonetisation.' 'People were upset with the government initially, but eventually they voted for the BJP again.'
Verdicts paving the way for construction of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya and India's multi-billion dollar Rafale fighter jet deal with France were 2019's landmark imprints of the Supreme Court, which also found itself at the centre of a controversy with then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi being accused of sexual harassment before getting the clean chit.
Xi arrived at the Nyingchi Mainling Airport on Wednesday and was warmly welcomed by local people and officials of various ethnic groups, Xinhua news agency reported.
Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, representing the Muslim parties in the case, tore up a pictorial map.
'Parsis are brought up with a great sense of the importance of truth and speaking your mind.'
Indian officialdom enjoys well over a week of Sundays every month
Wellness expert Roopashree Sharma answers your health queries.
'I meet him recently.' 'He was his usual cheerful, boisterous, self.' 'You didn't even get an iota of feeling about what he had gone through or may be going through internally.'
With the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government marking its first anniversary on Saturday, the first year is likely to be remembered for the fulfilment of decades-old Hindutva demands as Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the huge majority his party won in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to push through its core agenda.
Maharashtra and Punjab, which are recording a surge in new COVID-19 cases, tightened curbs on Friday and the chief minister of the western state said lockdown is an option, as India added close to 40,000 cases in the biggest daily increase in nearly four months.
'Many Indians are not voting mostly on the basis of issues like the economy and their own well-being as measured by data provided by the government.' 'They seem to be as concerned and perhaps more concerned about other things, especially those that have to do with the harassment of India's minorities,' asserts Aakar Patel.
Here's a recap of events that occurred in India in the past 24 hours.
The arrest came barely a few hours after a Bhagalpur court rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Shashwat against whom an arrest warrant was issued on March 24.
The incident prompted National Commission for Women to set up an inquiry committee which will meet the students who were forced to strip. A girl alleged that the principal of the institute blackmailed and forced them to withdraw the complaint.
Issues including the Rafale deal, construction of Ram Temple and Cauvery river water caused disruptions in the House.
'There is a part of me that says it is a great time to tell stories from my own land.' 'But then opportunities are coming my way from all over the world.' 'So one foot is here and one foot is in the West.'
The court declined to increase the number of people or allow use of other floors of the mosque for offering prayers as sought by senior advocate Ramesh Gupta on behalf of the Delhi Waqf Board, but allowed them to move an application before the SHO for the same.
The bench directed that the mediation will be held at Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh and the process should start within a week from Friday.
The Bureau of Indian Standards has certified 33 hallmarking centres in the country to act as collection and purity testing centres for the gold monetisation scheme.
