News Archive

In 2017, India’s national song Vande Mataram was mired in debate once again. Following the Madras High Court’s order to make Vande Mataram compulsory in schools and government and private offices, a loathsome politics was triggered over the national song in Maharashtra.

As India’s freedom struggle was approaching its culmination, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi made his intentions clear that Indian National Congress (INC) should be dissolved. He felt the objective of the INC was to liberate India from British rule; once that goal was accomplished, the organization had no existential purpose. Gandhi proposed that all leaders who desired public service via electoral politics should form their own political party and contest elections. This actually would have been democracy in the real sense.

A Parliamentary committee on education has called for a review of how Indian freedom fighters are depicted in school history textbooks and recommended that “ancient wisdom and knowledge” from the Vedas be incorporated into the school curriculum, stating that educational content for students should be “free of biases.”

For the past few weeks, conscientious locals and residents have been resolutely protesting against the public offering of namaz by Muslims. The opposition to namaz at public places reached a crescendo this week as the demonstrators organised a protest to rail against the Gurugram administration for allowing Muslims to continue using public places for their religious activities. 

Repetition, it is said, is the most important ingredient of propaganda. Hitler once said, “All propaganda must be confined to a few bare necessities and then must be expressed in a few stereotyped formulas. Only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea upon the memory of a crowd”. Hitler essentially advocated that the propaganda message must be simple with only a few ingredients and it should be repeated ad-nauseam so the masses effortlessly remember the message.

On the 31st of October, 37 years ago, the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by members of her own security. As a Prime Minister of India, her accomplishments and failures are quite well known. However, there are certain aspects of her regime that have not garnered much attention. There are some other startling revelations that were made in Wikileaks cables.

The Syed Modi International Badminton Championships, held annually in India in memory of Commonwealth Games medalist Syed Modi, assembles the best shuttlers from around the country and the globe as they fight for top honours in the BWF Grand Prix Gold tournament. Since its inception in 1991, the event has been held at the Babu Banarasi Das Indoor Stadium, Lucknow, although it was shifted to Hyderabad for a year in 2010.

The year 2002 is etched into public memory due to the riots that occurred in Gujarat following the Godhra Train massacre which laid the foundations for the rise of Narendra Modi in national politics. But the year was significant for other reasons as well. It was in early 2002 that allegations of misconduct against the Vadra family surfaced and Robert Vadra denounced his own family in public.

‘Comedian’ Munawar Faruqui on Sunday took to Twitter to say that this was his time as comedian and thanked the audience and hinted that this may be the end of his ‘comedy’ career.