-The Hindustan Times As news filtered in of extended life sentences for 31 persons for the brutal slaughter 10 years ago in Naroda Patiya, a working-class suburb of Ahmedabad, my eyes clouded over. I remembered my first meetings with the traumatised survivors of the massacre in the crowded relief camps in the city, a full decade earlier. I was heartsick and stunned by their stories of incredible cruelty. I wondered if...

-The Indian Express Firebrand leader who rose swiftly till downfall She rose swiftly through the ranks, having made her mark as a firebrand leader who had saffron politics as part of her legacy. Mayaben Surendrabhai Kodnani, convicted of murder, conspiracy and spreading communal hatred, is the daughter of a staunch RSS worker who had suffered the pains of Partition, moving from Tharparkar in Sind province to Deesa in Gujarat. Kodnani, the first sitting...

-The Hindu Stereotypical government policies and global approaches persist in family planning programmes. Urmila is a 40-year-old domestic worker in western Uttar Pradesh. The mother of six children, all girls, she is now pregnant again and is keen on carrying on with the pregnancy. Her husband is unemployed and is an alcoholic. His relatives have assured her that they will help her to bring up the child and have also hinted...

-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 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...