India has long charged Pakistan with cultivating terrorism as an instrument of statecraft. These allegations were met with denials – until Pakistan’s Defence Minister, Khwaja Asif, delivered a blunt admission on Sky News: ‘We have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about three decades… and the West, including Britain.’ Institutionalised terror…
Has Pakistan set a trap for Indian commandos? In the wake of the horrific Pahalgam massacre, where Hindu tourists were cold-bloodedly targeted after their religion was ascertained – a savage act that reeked of premeditation and sectarian hate – it is time to ask hard questions. Not just of those who carried out the carnage,…
There’s an old joke doing the rounds – one of those that is so ridiculous you wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be true. A certain nawab’s prized horse, the story goes, once paused in a pasture to relieve itself. Now, a few generations and many legal fictions later, the land is claimed…
‘Political vendetta’ has become the go-to excuse for the politically cornered. So overused now, it might as well be part of every party’s standard template. Every knock is a conspiracy Every time the law takes a step in the direction of a Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader, K Chandrashekar Rao and K Taraka Rama Rao…
How a Jharkhand minister’s casual communalism mirrors a deeper and dangerous mindset When Jharkhand minister Hafizul Ansari declared with unsettling ease that for Muslims, ‘Shariat comes first, Constitution later’, he wasn’t merely expressing a personal belief. He was, in essence, renouncing the very oath he took when he assumed public office. A minister in a…
As Mamataland simmers again under the heat of street protests, stone-pelting, and spontaneous burning of state property, the question arises, almost with a sense of weary inevitability: Has the time come to impose President’s Rule? This week’s eruption in Murshidabad over the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, which left at least three dead and many more…
Vandemataram Ravindra seeks weightage for government school students in national entrance exams It’s a race, says Vandemataram Ravindra, and the odds are skewed. When a weak child competes with a healthy one, is the outcome ever in doubt? Such is the plight of students in government-run schools and colleges – often rural, poorly funded, and…
‘The Indian Constitution is thousands of years old,’ proclaimed Rahul Gandhi the other day, with the confidence of a man who once declared that potatoes can be turned into gold via a magic machine in Gujarat. One can only assume he was channelling the same visionary streak – part ancient wisdom, part WhatsApp forward. In…
One defends the Gandhis with near-religious zeal. The other champion, Modi, with smiling conviction. The Poonawalla brothers – once inseparable – now stand on opposite ends of India’s ideological spectrum and are rarely on speaking terms. Their paths have dramatically diverged, leading to a public and personal estrangement that mirrors the deep ideological divides within…
The Supreme Court’s order to halt tree felling in the Kancha-Gachibowli lands in Hyderabad could not have come at a more critical moment. The Telangana government has sanctioned a spree of deforestation in an area rich with flora and fauna – most notably the peacock, our National Bird. In a region that once thrived with…
