There are moments when politics must give way to humanity. This is one such moment for Pakistan. The appeal by 21 former international cricket captains, including India’s Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Dilip Vengsarkar, urging Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to ensure proper medical care for Imran Khan is not a political intervention. It is…
Perhaps Abhijit Dipke might have thought twice before christening his so-called Gen Z movement against the Modi Government’s education policies as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)—if only he had remembered Amitabh Bachchan’s unforgettable cockroach lesson from Hum. Released in the early 1990s, the film had a famously irreverent dialogue about two varieties of cockroaches: those…
For decades, Bharatiyas have been fed a remarkably convenient version of the freedom struggle: the Congress fought the British, Mahatma Gandhi led the nation, Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister and, almost as a natural consequence, the British packed their bags and left. Now, the time has come to call that bluff—particularly in the…
Bangladesh’s reported openness to joining the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement involving Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan deserves attention in Bharat—but certainly not panic. Dhaka has, at this stage, not formally joined the arrangement, and that distinction matters. The Makkah pact itself is still a relatively new security framework whose practical military architecture remains to be…
There was something almost comical about a recent viral video from Ladakh in which a middle-aged woman, reportedly 40, was seen allegedly misbehaving with personnel of the Indian armed forces guarding the nation’s borders—and apparently presenting herself as Gen Z. If this is where the “Gen Z” label has reached, perhaps the Election Commission should…
The United States Ambassador to Bharat, Sergio Gor, calling Jammu and Kashmir an “important part of Bharat” during his first visit to the Union Territory is certainly welcome. But should Bharat chest-thump over an American diplomat acknowledging what is an established constitutional and national position? Certainly not. Gor’s statement is diplomatically significant, particularly because Washington…
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren may have hoped that cancelling the disputed JSSC-CGL examination and other recruitment tests would bring the student agitation to an end. Instead, the decision exposes a much deeper malaise: a recruitment system in which allegations of irregularities, questionable examinations and administrative failures have steadily eroded the trust of the very…
Former Union Home Minister and senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram’s response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reference to “dimagi naxals” is being projected as a political retort. But it could well become something more significant—a revealing window into the mindset of a political generation that presided over the long and bloody battle against Left-Wing Extremism….
I have listened to several Independence Day speeches from the ramparts of the Red Fort over the years. Some were ceremonial, some political, some predictable, and a few genuinely memorable. But, having heard Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address this year, I came away with a distinct feeling: this was not merely a speech to mark…
The reported refusal by students of Hyderabad’s NALSAR University of Law to have the Chief Justice of India as chief guest at their convocation is more than a campus controversy. It forces a disturbing question: has freedom of speech and expression, guaranteed by the Constitution, begun crossing the line from legitimate dissent into institutional defiance?…
