On a wall on Station Road, among posters of Khoonkar Darinde and The Dirty Picture, Amitabh Bachchan looks out of a row of yellow-and-red posters and says, “Do boond har baar.” Here in Moradabad, the town in western Uttar Pradesh that till recently exported, besides its intricate brassware, strains of the deadly polio virus, the posters have been around for long. The writing on the wall was clear: this was...

The Supreme Court on Monday told the Army to not “play with the courts” and stop taking recourse to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to stall prosecution in the 2000 Pathribal encounter case in Jammu and Kashmir. The apex court asked the Army to come clean on whether they want to start court martial proceedings of eight officers accused of killing five persons in the encounter or let...

Muslims, SCs, STs reflect better social indices, closer to national averages Early in the morning, Mohammad Nadeem, a 25-year-old ‘pakka adati’, big wholesaler, at one of Muzaffarnagar’s fruit and vegetable mandis, briskly sets about selling carrots and oranges. As he expertly sifts through sacks of fresh produce, it’s difficult to picture him hawking peanuts by the roadside. But for five years in this bustling western Uttar Pradesh mandi, Nadeem’s store...

-The Hindustan Times   The Darul-Uloom Deoband’s demand to ban the entry of writer Salman Rushdie into the country took a political turn in Uttar Pradesh on Monday. With an eye on the 17% Muslim electorate in the state, leaders of most parties quickly took poll position. But leaders of the ruling BSP were unavailable for comment. Rushdie, who earned the wrath of Muslims worldwide for his book The Satanic Verses, is scheduled to...

-IANS   Breaking the stereotypes associated with madrassas, a 50-year-old Islamic seminary here teaches subjects like personality development and home science, runs an elaborate teacher training programme, has a higher girl enrolment ratio and has students who are no less active on social networking websites than their counterparts in the metros. Welcome to Jamiatul Falah, a madrassa in Bilariyaganj town of Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh's district that has kept pace with modern education. The...