On this 77th Republic Day, I choose to salute the nation through something deeply personal – my experience of growing up with Indian cinema, and watching it evolve from myth-making to meaning. For many in my generation, cinema was not merely entertainment. It was an informal classroom. Long before we learnt to read history critically,…

When the UAE President flies in, is received at the airport by India’s Prime Minister, shares a car ride into the capital, and then leaves after barely two hours of talks, the temptation is to describe the visit as symbolic. That would be a mistake. Symbols, after all, are often shorthand for decisions already taken…

India has many success stories. This is not one of them. It is the story of illegal migrants from Bangladesh who appear to have achieved what many Indian citizens cannot – securing official identity papers with ease. A video from Karnataka lays it bare. Bangladeshi illegals live openly in a crowded dwelling. They are not…

Maria Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader and full-time bearer of hope, walked into the White House and walked out lighter by exactly one Nobel Peace Prize medal. Donald Trump, President of the United States and part-time redeemer of civilisation, accepted it with the solemnity usually reserved for golf trophies and election recounts. Trump, never one…

The killings of Hindus in Bangladesh have been reduced to arithmetic. Numbers circulate where names should be spoken. Incidents are counted, not mourned. Lives are lost, families erased, entire neighbourhoods emptied – and the response is a careful. Since the political upheaval in Dhaka in August 2024, violence against Hindus and other minorities has surged….

When Washington says it has captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, it does so with the confidence of a landlord repossessing a flat rather than a superpower violating sovereignty. No UN vote, no international mandate and no awkward questions about legality – just raw force, cloaked in the usual comforting vocabulary…

In the volatile politics of the Telugu States, lineage often opens doors but does not guarantee longevity. Kalvakuntla Kavita in Telangana and Y.S. Sharmila in Andhra Pradesh are learning this the hard way. Born into powerful political families, both women once operated comfortably within the established party structures. Today, each is attempting to chart an…

Earlier, the Telangana Assembly was noisy, argumentative, and partisan, but it still remembered that it was a legislature, not a street corner. Members shouted and interrupted often. But they stopped short of dragging the vocabulary of the gutter into the sanctum that was once called the temple of democracy. That fragile line has now been…

Haq arrives on Netflix quietly, without the chest-thumping marketing that usually accompanies films dealing with faith, gender and law. That perhaps works to its advantage. Directed by Suparn Verma (The Family Man), the film takes inspiration from the landmark Shah Bano case of 1985 and Jigna Vora’s book Bano: Bharat Ki Beti, but chooses to…

For years, Arnab Goswami was accused of asking questions selectively – loudly interrogating the opposition, softly stepping around power. That caricature, fair or otherwise, has now developed a crack. And that crack is unsettling many who once found comfort in predictability. In recent weeks, Arnab has raised a set of issues that do not sit…