Mohammad Sarfaraz stood in front of his burned-down store on Sunday, almost reduced to tears as he spoke of the communal violence that tore apart his town on Friday, claiming four lives and destroying hundreds, including his own. “I had invested my life in this shop, which was turned into ashes,” the scrap dealer said. “I do not have a single penny to start my life again.” The store in front...

Ara, Patna: To any old-timer, the earliest image of the Bihar caste wars is from 1977. Belchhi in Patna had seen 14 Scheduled Caste workers killed, and the enduring image is of a visit by Indira Gandhi, otherwise lying low since the post-Emergency defeat. She had to ride an elephant to the small hamlet of Dalits, the monsoon having waterlogged the approach road. The caste wars Belchhi triggered would not stop...

Friday's murder of Brahmeshwar Singh, chief of the outlawed Ranvir Sena (a private army owing allegiance to the powerful upper caste Bhumihars) in Bhojpur, 71 km from Patna, could become a major test for the seven-year-old Nitish Kumar government's continued ability to maintain social harmony in Bihar. Within hours of the killing in the early hours, Singh's supporters went on the rampage, upsetting the delicate caste equilibrium in south Bihar,...

School texts that teach young minds that politics is a contentious and critical but reasonable activity, that it is not merely a set of demands and commands, and that politicians have to be responsive and accountable are naturally disliked by the political class. This is the tone of all the Political Science textbooks of Standards IX-XI brought out after 2006. The nurturing of a culture of critical public opinion seems...

The textbook controversy is an opportunity for us to explore some of our core constitutional principles, especially the relationship between Parliament and freedom of expression. Parliament is certainly the space to discuss complaints of “offensive material” but should exercise its option of withdrawal of the textbooks in the “last instance” not in the “first instance” as has been done in this case. Peter Ronald deSouza (peter@csds.in) is the director of the...