Terms of forgiveness
Amidst the clamour for retribution, we must listen carefully to the gentle voices that talk of forgiveness and compassion. These alone light the way to locate, deep within ourselves, our own capacities for goodness.
The dark side of humanity and legality: A glimpse inside Assam’s detention centres for ‘foreigners’
The people of Assam are sitting atop a smouldering volcano, one that threatens to erupt into catastrophic suffering and injustice.
Sonia, sadly
Muslims are today’s castaways, political orphans with no home, for virtually every political party. This despite India being home to a tenth of the world’s Muslims, around 180 million people, making it the largest Muslim country after Indonesia and Pakistan.
Returning to Hapur
This is what India has become: One more pitiless lynching. This time of two older men, a petty goat trader and a marginal farmer in a village in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh, a two-hour drive from the national capital.
Pehlu Khan, one year later
A full year has passed since dairy farmer and cattle trader Pehlu Khan was lynched on a busy Rajasthan highway in April. As this year elapsed, his family and other Muslim dairy farmers have tumbled into bleak times.
At Ankit Saxena’s birthday prayer meet, a glimpse of India as it should be
Photographs of the young man adorned several large posters. They showed him with gelled spiked hair, colourful shirts, dark glasses, ear studs, teasing laughter and loads of attitude. This collage of his pictures was surrounded by the symbols of various religions.
Our threatened humanity
I worry that perhaps we have so immersed ourselves in debates about the liberal imperative; that we have lost sight of the bigger questions of what is good, what is kind and what is just, writes Harsh Mander.
With his multi-faith Iftar in Delhi, Ankit Saxena’s father sets an example for these fraught times
The Mahatma would have approved! On Sunday, a humid midsummer evening in a claustrophobically narrow lane in the West Delhi suburb of Raghubir Nagar, I often felt his presence among us.
A crime of hate, A journey of love
We began this New Year with a journey of the Karwan e Mohabbat into Bengal. Few parts of India are untouched by the swirling tides of hate, therefore we had resolved to take our Karwan to at least one state every month, visiting the homes of families hit by acts of hate violence.
A champion of India’s poor: Sonia Gandhi’s most valuable, and least acknowledged, contribution
After Sonia Gandhi stepped down as president of the Indian National Congress this month after an often turbulent 19 years, many have commented on her mixed and bitterly contested political legacy.