The controversy over a cartoon in an NCERT textbook sends a chill down the spine as it shows the extent to which the culture of intolerance has eaten into the vitals of our democratic polity. The cartoon in question shows B R Ambedkar sitting on a snail (Constitution) and flogging it while Jawaharlal Nehru too is brandishing a whip standing behind Ambedkar. It is clear that he is also aiming his...

The amendment to the Marriage Laws Bill needs to be redrafted to ensure, among other things, greater economic rights for divorced women. SINCE the 1950s, successive amendments to different personal laws on marriage and divorce have mainly focussed on enlarging the grounds for divorce. In the 1960s and 1970s, cruelty and desertion and thereafter mutual consent were added as grounds for divorce in the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA) and the...

Police investigation of Sanal Edamaraku for debunking a “miracle” at a church is a crime against the Constitution. Early in March, little drops of water began to drip from the feet of the statue of Jesus nailed to the cross on the church of Our Lady of Velankanni, down on to Mumbai's unlovely Irla Road. Hundreds began to flock to the church to collect the holy water in little plastic bottles,...

Dalits, OBCs in India’s colleges are using beef as a symbol of a resurgent identity     “Non-Brahmins have evidently undergone a revolution. From being beef-eaters to have become non-beef-eaters was indeed a revolution. But if non-Brahmins underwent one revolution, Brahmins had undergone two. They gave up beef-eating, which was one revolution. To have given up meat-eating altogether and become vegetarians was another revolution.”     —B.R. Ambedkar *** The Beef Menu     Available In Kerala,...

Organising a food festival can hardly be described as an act promoting hatred between students or communities. The controversy over the Beef Festival recently organised on the campus of Osmania University in Hyderabad and the threat of professors being investigated by the police for “instigating” the organisers needs to be understood in the context of the larger politics of food and policing of food practices. Across the country, different communities in different...