Even after 72 years, the echoes of India’s division into two independent states continue to reverberate.
Tag: india
Economist Abhijit Banerjee’s win is a non-cricketing triumph on the global stage. So why aren’t Indians more excited?
The BJP wants to turn back to clock by imposing Hindi on south and northeastern India and eliminating English.
The Mahatma’s universalism is far from Modi sectarian-nationalist approach. But it’s more than just a matter of international branding for the Prime Minister.
The government recently gave foreigners the go-ahead to visit 137 peaks in four states, paving the way for a potential flood of visitors to the world’s tallest mountain range.
As the showdown deepens over the contested region with Pakistan, India is now weighing whether to water down its nuclear no-first-strike policy.
It’s taken the powerful prime minister just 100 days into his second term to compromise the federation’s basic foundation.
Indian wartime experience not only contributed to making the country and her institutions what they are today but offers lessons that still have significant validity.
Compared to measures being taken in the Kashmir Valley, China’s handling of the Hong Kong protests seems remarkably permissive.
How economic actors, communities and developing countries fare in the digital economy will depend in large part on how much control they have over the data they produce.
NEW DELHI — Mangesh and Aarti loved each other. Both belonged to the same village, professed the same religion, had the same cultural heritage. Their class and status in society did not differ much either. Yet, their families objected to their marriage. The two were from two separate castes. Marriage would mean going against the set conventions of society. The two, who had hitherto been loved and admired by their respective families, suddenly became the target of their own families’ hatred and disgust. The village panchayat (council) swung into action. It censured both and levied penalties on the girl’s family. […]
The country’s landscape is ravaged by plastics and environmental collapse seems imminent. And yet religion appears to often be on the wrong side of the issue.
There are millions of people who travel every year. But for some, exotic cultural exploration can lead to psychological trouble.
Indian Prime Minister Modi’s decision is both unsurprising, and a shock.
Nothing’s wrong with praying for an illness to go away. Just don’t count on it…
ISRO is forced to compete with U.S. tech giants for India’s engineering talent. And with its breakthrough moon mission, India shows the success of its working model.
India knows about the power of Facebook. And a single ‘board’ will likely be insufficient to incorporate more diverse opinions and contexts into the company’s content moderation practices.
Growing up in the 1970s in the hectic but more innocent India, the magazine offered a young man the right dose of irreverence to shape his world view for a lifetime.
There has been an obvious and unnerving crackdown on dissenting voices in the weeks since Narendra Modi began his new term as prime minister.
In the face of the stigma associated with menstruation, growing efforts are underway to help girls understand menstrual hygiene management as a health concept.
-Essay- NEW DELHI — I’m convinced Prime Minister Narendra Modi and I have one thing in common: We both practice our version of yoga regularly and desperately want to be yogis. Sure, the prime minister encouraged the United Nations to declare June 21 as International Yoga Day and millions of Indians watch videos of Modi’s animated self perfectly executing various asanas, while I haven’t even managed to convince my husband to join me in a surya namaskar (sun salutation). Still, I believe Modi and I are kindred yoga spirits. After perusing many videos and images of the prime minister doing […]
NEW DELHI — While growing up we were subjected, like most school-going children in this country, to rather boring texts in class. The texts were taught by teachers who were even less interested in the excruciatingly painful narratives than we were. The results of such exchanges were obvious: we remember little of what we were taught. Amid all our vagrant behavior, when we were trying our level best to – in the words of Mark Twain – not allow school to interfere with our education, there were things that were somehow imbibed and some of them have remained embedded in […]
As India votes in national elections, manual scavengers are trying to overcome caste stigma and prejudice.
NEW DELHI — The great Indian electoral war of 2019 ended with Narendra Modi securing a historic mandate to rule India for another five years. The divided opposition should not have expected anything better as it had no national narrative, no credible agenda and no alternative leadership to contain a colossal opponent like Modi. It is ironic that in a parliamentary democracy like India, people have voted for the “leader” Modi, rather than members of parliament. No doubt, the president of his BJP party, Amit Shah displayed a shrewd strategy that helped secure this victory. Yet he still has a […]
With his untruths, bad choice of friends and unwillingness to apologize, India’s prime minister is everything our parents taught us not to be.
The self/other theory of immunology rests on the xenophobic assumption that ‘others’ are always dangerous and need to be removed.
The question ‘If not Modi, then who?” points to a worrying lack of understanding of how a parliamentary democracy works.
India’s politicians have to understand that people are earning something to survive, but a survival strategy does not count as employment.
Married at the age of five and speaking neither English nor Hindi, 68-year-old Pramila Bisoi has seen the hardships of life up close.
A growing number of Indians — including some lawmakers — have taken to social media to incite violence, particularly against Muslims.
A recent attack on a Muslim family in Gurgaon shows how cricket has become yet another — and dangerous — metaphor of internal partitions.
The news that a patient in London was recently cured of HIV is remarkable. But the media buzz is also quite misleading because the treatment isn’t easily replicable. Still, there’s reason for hope.
Current nationalism in post-Partition India and Pakistan can’t kill the spirit of the independent businesses that embody memory and history.
-Analysis- NEW DELHI — U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to end preferential trade treatment for India, will end benefits under a nearly 50-year-old program for up to $5.6 billion worth of New Delhi’s exports to America. The move comes after more than a year of back-and-forth between the two countries, and pressure exerted upon the Trump administration by the American dairy export and medical devices lobbies. “I am taking this step because, after intensive engagement between the United States and the government of India, I have determined that India has not assured the United States that it will provide equitable […]
-Analysis- NEW DELHI — The Kashmir Valley has been gripped by fear and confusion created by a slew of unexplained government orders, which in turn have led to speculation that something major is afoot. From the sudden induction of 100 paramilitary companies (over 10,000 men) into the region, to midnight raids on Jamaat-e-Islami cadre, to cancellation of doctors’ leaves and instructions to hospitals to store medicines and food, these moves have sent people stockpiling supplies. A journalist from Srinagar called me to say that people were talking about army movement to the border. He connected this information with the recent […]
NEW DELHI — Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s visits to India and Pakistan in the immediate aftermath of a deadly suicide attack on Indian security personnel in Kashmir have been a test of Riyadh’s policy to keep its relations with the two neighbors in strictly separate silos. As Mohammed bin Salman“s statements in Pakistan gained wide coverage, his comments on terrorism in the Indian capital were minutely parsed. His travel itinerary for Asia had been decided months ahead but finally took place under the shadow of the car bomb attack on a Central Reserve Police Force convoy which left […]
Two centuries ago, widows were sometimes strapped to the funeral pyres of their husbands and burned alive, historian Tanika Sarkar explains.
Despite episodes of hatred and nationalism, Gandhi’s ideas are still alive and well in India.
MUMBAI — On December 14, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) abruptly terminated its contract with the Indo-Malaysian consortium L&T-Scomi Engineering Bhd to manage the city’s monorail. The authority said that there had been issues such as poor maintenance of the monorail fleet, as many rakes were found unfit for use. This ended another chapter in the sorry saga of a transportation experiment that was doomed from its very inception. India’s first monorail was flagged off on February 1, 2014, with the hope that it would resolve Mumbai’s transport woes — or some of them, at least. The MMRDA […]
The full plunge of Priyanka Gandhi into Indian politics, alongside brother Rahul, is a whole new challenge for President Narendra Modi ahead of this spring’s general elections.