-The Hindu Newspaper establishments in insurgency-afflicted Manipur resemble war offices, with heavily armed police guarding them. In addition to the State forces, the managements have engaged on a permanent basis private security men to guard the main gates and the offices. Editors and high profile journalists are avoiding public appearances and almost all of them have changed their mobile numbers clandestinely. They talk over telephone only when the caller’s identity is...

-The Times of India The prime minister will personally see every government decision to refuse permission for probe against an officer of the rank of joint secretary and above. The decision to involve the PM to oversee a veto of CBI request for probe against top officers appears an attempt to neutralize allegations that the cover of government sanction was being misused. Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act makes it...

-The Hindu Houses belonging to weavers’ community were torched on June 23 A row of kuccha and pucca houses lie in a rubble of mud, stone and bricks. Those that stand have blackened walls, dismantled roofs and half-doors. Some have no doors. Ashes of hay and grains are strewn outside the granaries. The local mosque looks desolate; its gate is oddly locked. An eerie sense of calm surrounds the place. This is the...

-The Hindu A retelling of Rabindranath Tagore’s celebrated play Muktadhaara, often interpreted as Tagore’s nationalist critique of colonial exploitation, came under fire from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s culture police on Saturday evening here. Tamasha Naa Hua, directed by noted director Bhanu Bharti, was staged at the city’s famous Bharat Bhawan cultural centre as part of the Rangmandal theatre festival on Saturday evening. Muktadhaara considered one of Tagore’s finest plays is about the...

-The Hindustan Times The country is once again dangerously adrift in a stormy sea of competitive hate politics. The signs are both ominous and familiar — the systematic creation of hatred against people because of their ethnicity or religion; rumours and hate propaganda choking the internet; the public moral justification of violence against targeted communities on grounds of ‘larger’ alleged wrongs; and weak-kneed State action against people and organisations which preach...