-The Hindu Wasn’t it? Yesterday I mean. Spring announced itself in Delhi. The sun was out, and the Law took its Course. Just before breakfast, Afzal Guru, prime accused in the 2001 Parliament Attack was secretly hanged, and his body was interred in Tihar Jail. Was he buried next to Maqbool Butt? (The other Kashmiri who was hanged in Tihar in 1984. Kashmiris will mark that anniversary tomorrow.) Afzal’s wife and...

-Kafila.org In a speech delivered at the Reuters memorial lecture in November 2012 at Oxford University discussing the Indian news industry, Prannoy Roy candidly said that ”Indian news is currently in a race to the bottom”. He further added that upon comparing the average TV viewership in India (1 hour) to that in the US (5 hours), one is led to the utterly dismal conclusion that this race is far from...

-Counterpunch.org     “The rearing and guiding of a civilization must depend upon its intellectual class.”     BR Ambedkar, Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah, 1943, Delhi. I. Arrest. States are clumsy with their enormous power. When it suits the modern state, it uses it immense apparatus to constraint those who make claims upon it or who say things that denigrate this or that section of society. A college professor in West Bengal draws a cartoon of...

-The Hindu With the exception of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, hardly anyone of consequence has supported Pragaash, the Valley’s first all-girl rock band, the members of which have gone into hiding after receiving a threat of ‘social boycott’ from the Dukhataarn-e-Millat, a radical women’s outfit. Three fresh Facebook pages have come up with nearly 1,000 supportive posts in the past four days but most...

-The Hindu Contrary to what Nandy’s defenders would have us believe, his corruption remark reinforces negative stereotypes about Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes The controversy around Ashis Nandy’s casual remarks at the Jaipur Literature Festival did not address a number of important questions of public concern. The frenzied ‘Save Nandy’ campaign that followed has actually foreclosed any productive discussion. His supporters have been trying to explain and contextualise Professor Nandy’s flippant remarks...