Is Amit Shah Seeking to Push NRC Across India?
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Is Amit Shah Seeking to Push NRC Across India?

Throughout the 2019 election campaign, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah made it a point to announce that if his party is re-elected, it will ensure passage of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill. The Bill allows refugees belonging to virtually all religions except Islam to acquire citizenship in India. At the same time, he coupled…

Official Language Vs Social Justice
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Official Language Vs Social Justice

(This paper was first presented at a five-day conference on ‘Indian Constitution and Social Justice’ held in Mysore in 1995, under the joint auspices of Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and Dhwanyalok Center for Indian Studies, Mysore. It generated considerable controversy then, as the author had written and presented it in Hindi, even though…

Basavanna: India’s First Free Thinker

Basavanna: India’s First Free Thinker

Today, on May 9, Basava Jayanthi is being celebrated across the state. The tragedy is that most Lingayats, who say they admire Basavanna, neither follow his religious teachings nor live according to the credo propagated by Basavanna and other Sharanas. Let’s take B.S. Yeddyurappa, who is considered as the strongman of Lingayats in the state,…

Searching for Glimpses of Nehru in a Parochial, Post-Nehruvian India
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Searching for Glimpses of Nehru in a Parochial, Post-Nehruvian India

[May 27 is the death anniversay of Jawaharlal Nehru. This article is being published courtesy The Wire.]   India was in my blood and there was much in her that instinctively thrilled me. And yet I approached her almost as an alien critic, full of dislike for the present as well as for many of…

Debate: Beware Glib Explanations for Modi’s Election Victory
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Debate: Beware Glib Explanations for Modi’s Election Victory

Indian elections are preceded by predictions such as either X will win with a majority, or Y will win with a majority. If neither gets a majority they will team up with other parties. It is also possible that X or Y may get less votes than they thought. This mindless psephology finds its counterpart…

How the BJP’s Political Narrative Filled the Holes in the NDA’s Actual Performance
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How the BJP’s Political Narrative Filled the Holes in the NDA’s Actual Performance

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—and more than that, Narendra Modi—has come back with a larger mandate than what it was given by India’s voters in 2014.   At one level, this is remarkable given the economic distress all around, which should have led to a strong anti-incumbency and a decline in the saffron party’s votes….

Is This My Vote?
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Is This My Vote?

Electronic voting machines (EVMs) are magic machines that convert candidates into representatives. This magic depends on the number of votes counted on the EVM as having been cast in favour of a candidate. Candidates and people accepting the EVM count as a representation of the people’s mandate depends on their trust in EVMs.   The…