All opinion polls and media reports suggest that the Narendra Modi-led BJP could emerge as the single largest party and form the next government
Sanjay Kapoor Delhi
MAY 2014
MAY 2014
Cover Story and Featured Stories
Poor infrastructure and general ugliness of B-towns of Eastern Uttar Pradesh is feeding this intense desire for change
Sanjay Kapoor Bhadoi
Moin Qureshi, the meat exporter raided by the IT department, appears to be a hawala operator linked to top politicians and bureaucrats
Sadiq Naqvi Delhi
A strong showing by the BJP-led alliance in Tamil Nadu could upset many a calculation
Sanjay Kapoor Coimbatore
Communal polarization looms thickly over the Varanasi election, owing to Modi’s candidature
Pradeep Kapoor Varanasi
The SC ruling that recognizes transgenders as a third gender category is historic — if not a little late in the day — but the long struggle for equal rights for all has only just begun
Souzeina S Mushtaq Delhi
What started as mere documentation became a serious project to engage with politics at the ground that gave birth to the Aam Aadmi Party
Souzeina S Mushtaq Delhi
Another one of Chetan Bhagat’s unreadable works of fiction gets an infusion of life by the commercial geniuses of Indian cinema
Sonali Ghosh Sen Delhi
More Stories from this Issue
Months after they fled their homes because of the communal flare-up, many of the displaced victims of the Muzaffarnagar riots returned to their villages to cast their votes. With transport being taken care of by the administration, the refugees told the waiting crew of journalists —who wanted to know how it felt to be returning to their old homes — that they cast their votes and immediately returned to the camps.
Images of the Bharatiya Janata Party leader Rajnath Singh wearing a skull cap and Narendra Modi rejecting it inspired many a heated debate on secularism at a time when Hinduism is used for political gain and its plural and tolerant nature is threatened by fanatics in ironic imitation of monotheistic religions.
Some describe secularism as a critique of religion, others imagine it as a strict separation of politics from religion. The modern believe that politics is public while religion is private.
Taking a tip from some very, very senior and highly respected journalists and some very, very senior but not as highly respected news anchors, I have decided to write nice things about NarendraModi from now onwards — just in case he does become Prime Minister of India (gulp). I still have Amitbhai Shah’s Muzaffarnagar speech about revenge being the only answer ringing in my ears — I can’t ever forget that Amitbhai is Modi’s hatchet-wielding right-hand man.
The Pakistani media has seen bad times in the past, and been punished heavily for its stand for democracy. Military dictator Zia-ul-Haq censored newspapers and had journalists imprisoned and flogged. The next military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, took all the private television channels off air for weeks, causing losses of millions of rupees. The largest and most influential, Geo TV, was kept off-air for months after the others were restored.
A definitive guide to the rock musicscape of India in the 1960s and ’70s, Sidharth Bhatia’s India Psychedelic is an essential read for any music junkie
Shone Satheesh Babu Delhi