-The Tribune The recent violence that consumed Delhi forces us to confront a horrific if familiar truth: media-constructed ‘enemies’ eventually turn into flesh-and-blood people. The pogrom against the Sikhs in 1984, as the work of academics like the Oxford-based Pritam Singh reminds us, was preceded by what Singh termed “deeply embedded institutional communalism” in the coverage of events like Operation Bluestar and Indira Gandhi’s funeral by government-run media All India Radio and...

-The Telegraph Experts slam Delhi police response New Delhi: Neutrality, prevention, prompt containment, confidence-building, protection of religious places, accountability of officials and prosecution of rioters — the Amit Shah-headed Union home ministry’s guidelines on tackling Communal Violence cover it all. But the Delhi police, who report directly to Shah, flouted most of these “Guidelines on Communal Harmony” during last week’s rioting that killed at least 48 people, according to eyewitnesses, security experts including...

As body count due to Delhi riots (some call it pogrom) rise above 45, it is essential to look at the official data related to communal incidents in the country. It is from the annual report of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), one gets information about the number of communal incidents in different years, apart from the number of persons injured and killed in those incidents. There is one...

-The Hindu This is a watershed moment for the judiciary not to falter and for judges to undo the wrongs of the past The recent enactment of the amendments to the Citizenship Act have left many, and certainly myself, very disturbed. The legislation itself is undoubtedly problematic and is compounded by the linkages with the National Register of Citizens (NRC). I was a part of a People’s Tribunal on the deployment of...

-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...