When Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani famously said of the media during the Emergency that “when asked to bend, they crawled”, he received widespread praise from the intelligentsia and even from people opposed to the BJP’s ideology—because he spoke the truth about the loss of independence and professional integrity on the part of the Fourth Estate and other institutions. Today, not just the media, but leaders from the fields of education, culture, healthcare and law, are crawling before the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh without even being asked to bend
Successful professionals or rank mercenaries?
I’m glad to be an Indian, but I’m not a chest-thumping nationalist. I can understand and appreciate why many Indians (or for that matter, other nationals) emigrate and become naturalised citizens of other, typically developed, states. What I find it hard to understand is why some of them choose to represent their adopted homelands’ governments as officials, even ambassadors, to the countries of their origin.
An Emerging New Social Coalition?: The BJP’s latest victories
With its impressive performance in the Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party has clearly reconfirmed its status, established by the Lok Sabha elections, as the principal pole or central point of reference in Indian politics. Behind its latest success, and not least its marginalisation of established regional parties in the two states, lie medium- and long-term factors which are likely to influence Indian politics for some time to come.
Hype over the Mars mission: India Neglects Real S&T Priorities
The contrast between India's two recent science and technology (S&T) projects couldn't have been starker. One, by delivering accurate early warnings about Cyclone Hudhud, saved thousands of human lives, and prevented destruction of property on a monstrous scale. The other put India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) Mangalyaan spacecraft successfully into a distant orbit around the planet-a technological achievement, but without much scientific, leave alone social, consequence.
Satyarthi's Nobel is a cheer - and a warning for India
The award of the Nobel Peace prize to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai has been widely welcomed in India. This is doubtless positive for the cause of children's rights. But it's also a comment on how the world looks at the social reality of an India that struts about as an "emerging power" but tolerates large-scale abuse and merciless exploitation of children. Satyarthi got the prize partly for the same reason why Slumdog Millionaire was a hit in the West.
Modi and the Americans
the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (the RSS’s overseas affiliate) mobilised 19,000 people, each of whom paid $5000 to $10,000 to attend. Most were non-resident Indians (NRIs), who are culturally insecure and divided over their identity. They long for the country they have left behind and try to manufacture its images through arcane rituals and obscurantist practices, which resident middle class Indians discarded long ago.
Spreading Fear Through Stereotypes: The politics of ‘love jihad’
How does Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lofty slogan Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikaas (inclusion and development for all) square up with India’s social-political reality as vulnerable groups such as the religious minorities experience it? The honest answer is that these groups had the most to fear from a Bharatiya Janata Party election victory, and some of their fears are coming true. The BJP’s leaders, Mr Modi included, have done very little to allay them although it’s their duty to do so.
Modi’s BJP Is Not Invincible: Message from bypolls
Within weeks of winning the Lok Sabha elections with a surprisingly large margin, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance has suffered major setbacks in Assembly byelections in four states. Of the 18 seats for which elections were held—10 seats in Bihar, three each in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, and two in Punjab—the NDA won only 8, down from its victory in 14 Assembly segments earlier. A majority, 10 seats, went to the Congress and its allies.
Modi's two big mistakes
If the Narendra Modi government wanted to dismay and embarrass many of its supporters even before completing a hundred days in office, it could not have done so more effectively than by announcing two major decisions: Cancelling the foreign secretary-level meeting with Pakistan scheduled for August 25, and abolishing the Planning Commission at home.
Israel’s Barbarism Against Gaza’s Civilians: Winning the battle, losing the war?
More than a month after Israel launched a murderous onslaught on the Gaza Strip, with over 2,000 casualties, there’s still no clarity about when “Operation Protective Edge” might end—despite the recent extension of a ceasefire. Israel has destroyed 10,000 homes, turned a quarter of Gaza’s population into refugees, and repeatedly targeted civilian installations, including schools, hospitals and United Nations-designated shelters—in flagrant violation of international law.
Natwar Singh’s Hollow ‘Disclosures’: But Congress’s crisis is grim
Mr Singh sheds very little light on a tumultuous period in history which saw the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a newly aggressive United States, and a drastic re-alignment of India’s foreign policy towards it, in which he himself played a part. He presents himself as a staunch defender of India’s independent foreign policy and Non-Alignment, when the recent record shows the opposite.
Natwar’s disclosures and Congress’ crisis
India’s former foreign minister Natwar Singh is no ordinary diplomat-turned-politician. A part of the Establishment for half-a-century, he is well educated, widely travelled, a close witness to major events, and capable of reflection. So when he published his memoirs One Life is Not Enough, readers expected more from him than from the recent book on Manmohan Singh by his former media adviser, Sanjaya Baru.
A Nightmare Materialises In India: Hindutva-capitalism takes power
The Lok Sabha election has produced what was easily the worst conceivable outcome by giving an outright majority to the Bharatiya Janata Party under a man who is widely believed to have been complicit in mass killings of Indian citizens belonging to one faith, and who even 12 years on has not been fully exonerated by the country’s legal system despite its compromised, semi-functional nature, and vulnerability to diabolical manipulation. Make no mistake. Despite a limited (31 percent) national vote, Narendra Modi’s victory is the result of a Rightward shift in society, and the triumph of Hindutva combined with neoliberal capitalism.
Capitalism = Rising Inequalities : Democracy under threat
It’s a sign of the pathology of much of India’s mainstream media that it displays the rise of the speculative-trader-industrialist Hinduja brothers to the top of Britain’s (not India’s) billionaire list on the front page, as many papers did on May 12, while blacking out the shamefully persistent phenomena of grinding poverty and rapidly growing income inequalities in this country.
Fusing Hindutva With Corporate Power: The menace that’s Modi
As the momentum of India’s nine-phase Lok Sabha election shifts in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s opponents, a new bunch of writers and social scientists have risen to defend its Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. Some of them see virtue and talent, indeed even poetic genius, in a man who presided over the mass butchery of Muslims in Gujarat. (One of them compares Mr Modi’s ghastly poetry with Kabir’s!)
Polls Driven By Bigotry & Big Money: Is the EC failing the public?
Two weeks ago, many public-spirited Indians complimented the Election Commission for banning public speeches and rallies by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Uttar Pradesh chief campaign manager Amit Shah, and the Samajwadi Party’s fiery Azam Khan, both of whom had made provocative speeches for or against religious groups. This action was seen as in keeping with the Commission’s mandate, legally well-founded, even-handed, exemplary in punishing/deterring the use of communal means during canvassing, and encouraging the conduct of elections in a free and fair manner, as befits a democracy.
Bigotry, big money and India
Two weeks ago, many public-spirited Indians complimented the country’s Election Commission for banning public campaigning by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Uttar Pradesh chief election manager Amit Shah, and the Samajwadi Party’s fiery Azam Khan, both of whom spoke provocatively for or against specific religious groups.
Not fielding Priyanka against Modi is a blunder
Narendra Modi files his nomination in Varanasi, Praful Bidwai believes 'a straight contest against Priyanka would have put Modi on the defensive and forced him to concentrate on Varanasi.'
Baru’s book: too much hype, too little real disclosure
The Accidental Prime Minister, the book by Sanjaya Baru, media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2004-08, has become a sensational best-seller primarily because its release was timed to coincide with the election campaign. Unsurprisingly, the BJP seized upon it to repeat its pet charge about Singh being India’s “weakest-ever” PM, and otherwise malign the Congress.
How The Media Whitewashes Modi: BJP’s true colours
When Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency in 1975, the vast majority of Indian academics, intellectuals and media commentators protested. Barring a few publications like India Today, most newspapers carried sharply critical comments and truthful, horrifying accounts of the excesses perpetrated in the name of defending India against contrived “threats”—until censorship was imposed, and sometimes defying it.
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