Hindutva is a menace of Indian society, and to confront it head on, liberals need to stop celebrating the supposedly tolerant Hinduism of yesteryear, historian Partha Pratim Shil argues.
Tag: india
-Analysis- CHENNAI — “What is this?,” my curious seven year old asked, picking up a pack of sanitary napkins, as I found just the right position to take a picture to accompany an article on a menstrual hygiene movement in Chennai. I paused for a minute, and replied, “These are like thin diapers that girls wear for around one week every month.” I was caught off guard, and mentally kicked myself for the diaper reference. He looked suitably impressed with the design on the package and inspected the pads as well. We don’t have cable TV so he hasn’t been […]
When Pakistani fisherman Abdul Karim Bhatti, who had been a prisoner in India for seven months, was flown home to Karachi, Pakistan, at the end of July, his family didn’t rejoice. They were receiving his dead body. The only information they received was that he died on July 1 at the B.K. Hospital, Bhuj. Or so stated the death certificate, a bilingual document in English and Gujrati, issued on July 9 by the government of the state of Gujrat. No postmortem was carried out. The Indian maritime security forces had arrested Bhatti, along with other fishermen, on January 8 and […]
The Narendra Modi government has largely ignored the Tibetan leader, who lives in exile in India, but the country’s military leaders now say support for the iconic monk could be the perfect way to push back on China.
The coronavirus outbreak has changed our relationship with work, health and… cash. The fear of contamination while handling coins and banknotes has accelerated a trend that had already been growing for years: contactless payments. Both consumers and businesses that may have been previously reluctant to go digital are changing their preferred payment methods. Does this […]
Social distancing, disinfecting common areas and accessing health care: All three key tactics for curbing the spread of coronavirus are particularly complicated inside jails and prisons. While it might seem like an already self-isolating bubble, life inside prisons has changed dramatically since COVID-19 arrived. In an effort to keep healthy, many have lost their rights […]
Unless we question the socio-economic structures associated with the production of waste and waste management, we’ll never dig out of the waste crisis.
PARIS — Last week’s explosion at a port warehouse in Beirut, which killed at least 200 and caused a minimum of $5 billion in damage, should serve as a sobering wake-up call for countries that have equally (or more) dangerous chemical reserves. Beyond the human toll and material consequences, the catastrophic event has also triggered […]
Artist Balvir Singh and his murals of revolutionaries like Che Guevara and Lenin have helped rekindle socialist ideas in his home state of Punjab.
From salary cuts to protective equipment shortages, frontline workers are having to protest and plead just to get their basic dues.
Even if researchers’ quest for the coronavirus vaccine concludes quickly — and that’s a big if — the solution would still need to me manufactured, packaged, paid for and distributed.
How is the pandemic panning out in the world’s second most populous country? Science editor for The Wire, Vasudevan Mukunth, offers some statistical insight.
So far there’s been little obvious effort to hold authorities accountable for the rising number of people — especially Muslims, Dalits and other minorities — who die while in police custody.
-Analysis- NEW DELHI — In a discussion on NDTV about the contents of the third tranche of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”s stimulus package for the economy, Yogendra Yadav, one of India’s most respected psephologists, called it “entertainment.” Yadav is a gentle human being who goes out of his way to avoid giving offense, above all on TV. So “entertainment” was the most civilized word he could think of. I will be a little more blunt. Not just the third tranche, but the entire “stimulus package” advertised by Modi on May 12 is a gigantic confidence trick being played upon a […]
Anti-Muslim attitudes are ‘eating away at the idea of India’ and finding expression even among the country’s cosmopolitan elite.
For some, anti-Chinese rhetoric following the killing of 20 Indian soldiers is conjuring up memories of a dark and mostly forgotten chapter in India’s history.
The coronavirus crisis could reshape how the country’s leadership goes about its business.
Zooming in on the territory in question and the shifting history between Asia’s (and the world’s) two biggest nations.
To mitigate the high economic costs of the pandemic, it’s time to demand greater contributions from those who can afford to pay.
As countries around the world scramble to conduct sufficient COVID-19 testing, there is now an urgent need for the design of rapid diagnostics of early symptoms to identify potential carriers to test, and eventually, isolate them. Researchers and the so-called “health tech” and “wearables’ sector are racing to release new devices, and adapt existing ones, […]
The pandemic and the response to it threaten to exacerbate entrenched economic and social disparities.
On the list of the most urgent COVID-19 priorities, right after saving the lives of those infected comes feeding the rest of us. A mix of logistics, impromptu trade barriers and economics make these efforts a major challenge. And the longer the crisis continues, and the farther it spreads, the stakes of the food supply […]
A “pause sanitaire” is the phrase El Watan, the French-language Algerian daily, used. Such “health pauses’ have been happening among popular protest groups in a number of countries, either imposed by the government or self-imposed by the demonstrators in the face of the threat of spreading coronavirus in the close proximity of street protests. For […]
A view from India on the prospects of major upheaval in the short-term and the possibility of a lasting economic depression.
The facility’s peculiar focus may seem a bit funny at first. But as visitors are quick to discover, having access to hygienic toilets is no laughing matter, especially in India.
As the ‘center’ continues to shift rightward — in India and elsewhere — people need to do more than just push back against the powers that be.
The government had said that ‘rural Indian men’ would not take orders from a woman commander. It’s just a cover for the sexism of the ruling class.
By now, many across Delhi, and Sikhs across the world, are retriggered by memories the pogroms of 1984.
While there are significant supply chain concerns across sectors in the short-term, others see this as yet another distant opportunity to take some business away from China.
India’s space program will use a female android named Vyommitra to test the crew module ahead of its first crewed flight. Why did the robot have to be female? And where are the real women astronauts?
Welcome to Monday, where South Africa halts AstraZeneca vaccine after poor results on local variant, 180 are feared dead in India glacier collapse, and Tom Brady makes Super Bowl history. We also look at the unlikely feud involving Indian farmers, top cricket stars — and Rihanna. • COVID-19 latest: South Africa halts use of AstraZeneca […]
CHENNAI — Twenty-six-year-old Arivu’s small room, on the fourth-floor terrace of an apartment in suburban Chennai, is as lively as his music. It is in this room that Arivu shot his now iconic rap song “Sanda seivom”, which effortlessly rips the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens apart. Pictures of Ambedkar and Buddha are looking over him and an ektara (the instrument) standing tall. “It was a gift from the Tata Institute for Social Sciences when I recently visited them,” Arivu says. “I intend to learn to play it and even use it in my rap.” A single […]
With automated electronic surveillance systems, suspicion does not precede data collection but is generated by the analysis of the data itself.
India’s cutting digital access for political reasons also costs livelihood for small businesses, women’s safety, access to transport, food, education and almost every other aspect of a modern life.
Is this a movement of women from India’s liberal campuses against a new citizenship law targeting the country’s Muslim minority? Or does it run much deeper?
The country’s leadership is opening a Pandora’s box by normalizing brutality and impunity.
Trump’s biggest problem, it’s safe to say, are all those pesky checks and balances. *Luckily, those limitations don’t apply in ‘the world’s largest democracy.’
Darwin may have poked a hole in the Christian creation myth. But historically speaking, the relationship between science and religion has been far more nuanced than most people imagine.
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India’s Most Photogenic Temple
Sure, there’s the Taj Mahal. But at this moment in the Jain temple of Ranakpur, in northwestern India, everything an amateur photographer like myself could ask for fell into place: the whiteness of the marble contrasting with the visitors’ colorful garments, the rays of sunlight gently filtering in, the symmetry of the architecture, the depth […]
Facebook, Google and other platforms are not doing enough to make political ads more transparent.