Days before Saturday’s protest, the Cockroach Janta Party’s online ecosystem was predicting nothing short of a political earthquake. Thousands of self-described ‘cockroaches’ were expected to descend upon Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and shake the foundations of the Modi government. Some enthusiasts spoke of crowds in the thousands. Others hinted at lakhs. Delhi is prepared for a…
Politics occasionally writes poetry. More often, it writes farce. Mamata Banerjee’s political career has managed to produce both. In 1998, she stormed out of Congress, accusing the Grand Old Party of ignoring grassroots workers and becoming the private estate of a select few. She named her new outfit the Trinamool Congress – literally, the Congress…
If a man wears a raincoat in the middle of May and walks around under a blazing sun expecting a downpour, people would call him insane. If another guy steps out wearing a helmet despite not riding a motorcycle, not playing cricket, and not working at a construction site, the diagnosis would be equally obvious….
Forget the old English proverb, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ That may work for Romans. It certainly does not work for Indians. We are perhaps the only people on earth who carry our culture in hand baggage, check-in luggage and, if necessary, excess baggage. Whether it is Europe, America, Australia, Africa or…
The chilling slogan ‘Raliv, Galiv, Chaliv’ still haunts the collective memory of Kashmiri Pandits. Roughly translated from Kashmiri, it meant: ‘Convert, Leave, or Die.’ In the winter of 1990, these words echoed from mosque loudspeakers across the Kashmir Valley, accompanied by threats and intimidation that forced an entire community into exile. Thousands of Kashmiri Hindus…
Donald Trump has once again done what he does best – charm, flatter, praise, and leave everyone wondering whether to believe a word of it. At a glittering event in New Delhi marking the 250th anniversary of American Independence, Trump virtually wrapped Bharat and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a warm embrace. ‘I love India…
Indian politics has entered a new phase. We have had lotus politics, hand politics, broom politics, cycle politics, lantern politics and enough defections to start a furniture showroom. Now comes the newest entrant – the CJP. Not one, but two. First came the US-based Abhijeet Dipke’s Cockroach Janta Party – a movement that appears to…
Twenty-two seconds. One packet of Melody. And social media did the rest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s gift of a packet of the humble Indian toffee to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome was not exactly earth-shaking diplomacy. No agreements were signed over caramel and chocolate. No strategic pact emerged from the packet. Yet the…
There was a time when a five-paise increase could trigger a public uprising. That, of course, was a few decades ago. Students and youth would pour onto the streets if bus fares were raised by five or ten paise. A one-rupee hike in the monthly bus pass was enough to spark protests. Buses were stopped,…
Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar franchise has achieved what political commentators and cultural critics often fail to understand — audiences eventually decide for themselves. The films were attacked in Pakistan and by sections within India as BJP propaganda, accused of pushing a nationalist narrative, distorting history and reducing geopolitics to cinematic spectacle. YouTuber Dhruv Rathee called the…
