The writer is a Middle East based columnist.
When the history of these extraordinary times is written, the BJP may go down as a ‘great leveller.’ It has succeeded in razing to the ground...
The writer is an independent writer and former editor.Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages, said Spiro Agnew. I wonder what...
Amid this deepening darkness of all-round doom and gloom, there is a ray of hope at last. The raging global pandemic of the coronavirus has killed...
A Hindu friend of mine refers to India’s ruling party as the Bharat Jalao Party . Every time he says it, he says it with greater conviction....
The sale of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, has reportedly surged 10,000 times since a New York property developer...
So the aam aadmi’s ‘jharu’ has swept away the toxic garbage that the BJP had flooded the national capital of Delhi with.The credit for the...
Justice Markandey Katju is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India. Long before he retired in 2011, he had been known for both his outspoken...
Narendra Modi is in a league of his own. He swept back into power in May 2019, defying disasters like demonetisation, GST, unemployment and agrarian...
I have never felt so proud of my country in a long, long time. Led mostly by students and the youth, Indians are marching in their millions across...
“Where do we go from here?” asked a US-based Indian Muslim friend the morning after India lurched further to the right with the smooth passage...
Can a leopard change its spots? Can the saffron clan led by the RSS and BJP ever give up its core philosophy and agenda that is founded on a...
If the bizarre Ayodhya verdict of India’s Supreme Court is a classic case of adding insult to injury, on the one hand, it marks the final and...
Thanks to my solitary existence, I end up spending hours watching television. I keep telling myself to do something useful and worthwhile like read...
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a young and upcoming American writer and author of the bestselling novel, ‘The Sympathizer’. He landed in the ‘land of...
Whatever you may think of the BJP and its extended Parivar, they have a sordid sense of humour. At a time when India and the world are celebrating...
Indian Muslims fell out of love with the Congress Party, long before Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in his infinite wisdom decided to unlock the doors...
Salman Khurshid is a man of few words. On rare occasions when he speaks his mind, he weighs his words carefully like the seasoned and successful...
Nothing is so prized in politics as a short public memory. As India and the world mark the 150th birth anniversary of Gandhi, and world leaders ply...
The Indian judiciary, once known for its independence and integrity, had been the last hope of the dispossessed. Where do they turn for justice if...
The ghosts of Ayodhya just refuse to go away. They have been kept around, and busy, with great effort and ingenuity. The tragedy has remained as...
Recalling the stellar role of the Indian media during the infamous internal emergency imposed by the late Indira Gandhi, Lal Krishna Advani, the BJP...
Kudos to Narendra Modi and his hefty henchman, Amit Shah. They have managed to transform India’s image overnight from that of being the world’s...
Who would have thought that five decades after Jawaharlal Nehru’s death, the architect of modern India would not only find himself in the dock and...
No wonder the Kashmiris are so outraged and feel outright cheated. In the words of Shah Faesal, a young and bright Kashmiri who topped India’s...
Last year, and at the beginning of this year, when I exchanged Christmas and New Year greetings on Facebook, some fellow travellers were upset....
Without a Gandhi at the top, India’s Congress Party is increasingly looking and acting like a headless chicken. Since its debacle in the recent...
If Donald Trump’s shock election for the world’s most powerful office had been seen as an accident and as a recipe for disaster by many, he has...
How many Indians today would know that Allama Iqbal, Pakistan’s national poet, not just has a whole poem dedicated to Lord Ram, he also hails him...
History repeats itself first as a tragedy, then as a farce, argued Marx. This is what has been happening in the Middle East over the past few weeks...
It is amazing how little it takes for the emperor to restitute himself after all that happened in the just-concluded campaign for the most...
Doubtless, the credit for this overwhelming and landslide victory goes to Prime Minister Modi and his doppelganger Amit Shah, the BJP chief and...
Some years ago, in response to a piece critiquing the endless US shenanigans in the Middle East, an American reader wrote back: “Why do you hate...
Growing up in small-town India, my earliest introduction to English language and fiction were ‘cowboy’ novels of authors like Oliver Strange....
The Indian media boasts an illustrious history. Born during the freedom struggle against the British colonial rule, it quickly mastered the rules of...
‘Frontline’ newsmagazine, from the stable of the ‘Hindu’ newspaper, is known for its serious, in-depth reporting as well as incisive...
The times, as Bob Dylan would sing, they are a-changin’. That the Middle East is looking East is old news. Pundits have been obsessing about the...
In great Greek tragedies, heroes often suffer from a tragic flaw or fatal flaw of character leading to their eventual downfall. This trait could be...
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. You do not have to be a psephologist to predict the outcome of the critical General...
It had been, as she put it, New Zealand’s darkest day and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern shined bright like the ray of hope and sanity that she...
If Narendra Modi’s BJP romps home to victory in the just announced Indian general elections in the face of all-pervasive public anger against the...
Mulayam Singh Yadav is old school. Craftiest of the lot, not for nothing does he enjoy the distinction of having ruled India’s largest state for...
You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time, counselled Einstein. But this is what India and Pakistan are doing right now. As I write...
Pulwama couldn’t have come at a worse time for all those who believe in peace, humanity and a shared destiny for South Asia.I am shocked and...
It is springtime in the Middle East once again. It would be fair to say that I haven’t witnessed such glorious, reinvigorating weather in my long...
The more things change in India, the more they seem to remain the same. How else would one explain the decision to slap the draconian National...
Barely two months are left before India goes to the polls in what is doubtless the greatest democratic spectacle on the planet. And this may be the...
With Priyanka Gandhi’s entry into active politics, the Congress Party has set the cat among the pigeons. The eternal question of ‘will she or...
In his 1905 essay celebrating the joys of reading, Marcel Proust wrote: “With books, there is no forced sociability. If we pass the evening with...
Commenting on US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria and withdraw half of the 14,000 US troops in Afghanistan, veteran American...
The storm of abuse and sheer vitriol that greeted Naseeruddin Shah’s lament over the alarming state of the nation only proves his point. The actor...
