The Madhya Pradesh government beefs up its saffron agenda with a “draconian” law. “IT is a contest between the two. The holy by-lanes of old Bhopal, which houses two of the largest mosques in Asia, the Taj-ul-Masjid and the Jama Masjid, were under attack from the holy cow,” said an activist of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), in a tone which he thought was in good humour, when asked about...

Interview with D.N. Jha, historian of ancient India and the author of ‘The Myth of the Holy Cow'. IN his career spanning more than 25 years, Dwijendra Narayan Jha, an eminent historian of ancient India, has dispelled many Hindutva myths. He has used ancient Indian literary and archaeological sources to show that much of the Hindutva propaganda is based on false premises. His book The Myth of the Holy Cow shows...

In the summer of 2009, farmer Ramesh Dhumale was excited when he got to plant about a kilo of seeds of what was pitched as the country’s first indigenously developed genetically modified (GM) cotton. At Rs 200 a kg, the seeds were far cheaper than the Rs 1,500-2,000 that the other GM cotton seeds cost. But the biggest plus was that the farmers could use and reuse the seeds from successive...

India has the worst air pollution in the entire world, beating China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, according to a study released during this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. Of 132 countries whose environments were surveyed, India ranks dead last in the ‘Air (effects on human health)’ ranking. The annual study, the Environmental Performance Index, is conducted and written by environmental research centers at Yale and Columbia universities with assistance from...

Valley’s youth say peaceful political protests are the most effective means for achieving political aspirations. Estrangement from India is matched by the lack of interest in Pakistan In 2010 the Ministry of Home Affairs had commissioned a focussed survey on the priorities and aspirations of Kashmir’s new generation, which had spearheaded the long spell of unrest, and found that 54 per cent of them identified “Azadi” as their preferred “final status...