When he directed "Dharmaputra", his first film, in 1961, little did Yash Chopra know what he was getting himself into. The film, about Hindu-Muslim relations, touched on the raw history pertaining to events that were just over a dozen years old. The re-construction in "Dharamputra" of the carnage during the post-Partition riots opened up...
Even as Narendra Modi was waxing eloquent on India as a "humanising and harmonising force" in Davos, none of these laudable attributes was on display in the country as rabid outfits with ideological links with the Prime Minister's party were vandalising cinema halls and malls and attacking a school bus with children crying inside....
They represent journalism at its most exciting, influential but also lethal. Top journalists who have covered a wide spectrum of issues from the repressive life in North Korea, to brutal Islamist terrorism, to the plight of the Rohingya refugees admit that "frontline" reporting is now undergoing a paradigm shift due to various f...
A Hindu by birth, as far back as I recall, I have always had friends of other religions and nationalities. I have had Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian friends from India, Pakistan, Iran and Ethiopia. My work for peace has been recognized by organizations in India, Pakistan, and the United States. Below I have attempted to...
The Indian cricket team has lived through it, the BJP has experienced it for over a decade, the Shiromani Akali Dal was for long a target and even the AAP got a taste of it. Now, it is Punjab's Congress party which is bearing the brunt of his idiosyncrasies....
Veteran American actress Lin Shaye, who has earned the epithet "scream queen", feels women are taught to suppress their voices since childhood with the initial life lessons being "say please, thank you, do what you are asked to and stay out of trouble" when, on the contrary, they need to be vocal about their views and concerns...
As per data of the last 43 months acquired by RTI activist Anil Galgali, 1,687 people voluntarily converted to different faiths across the state, said the figures of all religious conversions provided by the Directorate of Government Printing & Stationery (DGPS)....
New Yorker Sujatha Gidla’s book, Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India, has got much attention in America and India. (Read the first chapter below) ...
When people in this country ask me what it means to be an untouchable, I explain that caste is like racism against blacks here. But then they ask, “How does anyone know what your caste is?†They know caste isn’t visible, like skin color. I explain it like this. In Indian villages and towns, everyone know...
Yes, one is free as long as one prefers not to be and willfully gets enslaved. In the current context, the freedom is lost to human gods or the so-called godmen or godwomen. India has a plethora of fake gurus who rape, kill and defraud their devotees while they themselves flourish....
