A state of moral welfare
The government of Karnataka, we are informed has “taken a decision to introduce a scheme to conduct pilgrimage tours for poor people.” People below the poverty line (BPL) qualify. (But the last time the Karnataka government tried to compile a list of BPL families 91% of them applied.) According to the [...]
Permitting beards, regulating lengths
Other than tradition, there is no good reason for a the Indian Air Force to impose a blanket ban on beards. Sikh officers in all three armed services and the police force are allowed to wear beards and turbans. Beard-keeping is a tradition in the Indian Navy, and naval officers are allowed [...]
Indian Christians are Indians.
Italy’s Foreign Ministry, the Indian Express reports, “will summon India’s ambassador to demand ‘incisive action’ to prevent further attacks against Christians that have left 11 people dead in India so far, the government said on Thursday.” They even want the European Union to take up the matter.
Italy has no right to [...]
They didn’t do too well
No, not quite laughing matter, but amusing nevertheless. Here are some excerpts from Harry Gelber’s readable account of China’s relations with the (western) World, from 1100 BC to the present:
One Christian embassy was entrusted to the Franciscan, John de Plano Carpini, a provincial of his order at Cologne. He set out [...]
The local manifestation of a global pattern
It is hard to say, but it may well be that the Indian media prevented the Indian Mujahideen from setting off their tenth bomb. The earliest reports of the contents of their email made them appear merely dangerously confused. But as we learn more about what exactly they said [...]
For calling himself the ‘Prince’ of Arcot
A personality, styling himself the “Prince of Arcot” was recently in the news for launching the latest salvo in the game of competitive intolerance. He played a role in getting the police to shut down an exhibition showing the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s intolerant policies against his subjects.
It was [...]
Pratap Bhanu Mehta on Kosovo
Mr Mehta’s op-ed in the Indian Express is brilliant. (Not only because it echoes most of the points made on this blog. Well, that too!)
As Michael Mann, in an important article on the “Dark Side of Democracy” had noted, modern European history has built in an irrevocable drive towards ethnic homogenisation [...]
S V Raju responds to Vir Sanghvi’s allegations
In this article in Hindustan Times, among other things, Vir Sanghvi clubs Jan Sangh and Swantantra Party together and claims that they “made the point that there was no harm in declaring that Hinduism was India’s state religion”. We asked S V Raju, an office-bearer of the erstwhile [...]
Why doesn’t Karan Thapar dare to call anti-Hindutva by its name?
In an op-ed that wishes for Narendra Modi’s ’sudden removal’, (via Offstumped) Karan Thapar writes:
Where does this leave the regional parties and the Left? They may retain their identity, even their present base, but they will have to line-up behind Modi or Sonia, in the [...]
Arvind Sharma, a professor of comparative religion at McGill University, “pinpointed asymmetrical secularism practised in India as a reason for Hindutva and went on to suggest that it is a structural problem with the Indian Constitution” and that “the asymmetry was not merely in discourse, but structured in the Indian Constitution that favours some religion over the other.”
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