The party cynically appropriated the language and symbols of Hindutva, instead of forging a secular, democratic political strategy. A cutout of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi amid empty chairs after his speech at a rally held during the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Panipat in January 2023. | Reuters When the Indian National Congress rallied its forces…
Zwigato, Trial by Fire, Dahaad and Afwaah were some of the films that reflected the travails of ordinary folk. The year that we leave behind was a sombre, troubled one both for India and for much of the world. The politics of hate engulfed more and more people. Bombs pitilessly pounded children and hospitals…
The new border between the Meitei valley and Kuki hills is unyielding and pitiless. A Kuki woman prays inside a church at Kangvai village in Churachandpur district in Manipur, in this photograph from July. | Reuters Manipur has fallen off the national conscience. But as I travel through dusty potholed roads in the picturesque countryside…
Attacked and left to die when ethnic violence broke out on May 3 in Manipur, Thangboi Singset has had a long journey to find peace – but the pain remains. Imaad ul Hasan/Karwan e Mohabbat It was a muggy mid-monsoon evening in July. More than two and a half months had passed since Manipur was…
By any measure, the journalist and activist has lived a remarkable life. But his own recounting of it is characteristically low-key. Prabir Purkayastha. Illustration: The Wire The memoir of Prabir Purkayastha, political and science activist and founder of the digital news portal NewsClick, includes a vivid and stirring account of his incarceration during the Emergency of…
Extremist organisations project the hill state as the ‘holy land’ of Hindus and Muslims a ‘polluting presence’ unleashing a battery of ‘jihads’. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami with the Adi Kailash mountain behind him, Pithoragarh district on October 12. | Pushkar Singh Dhami @pushkardhami/Twitter India’s most populous hill state Uttarakhand is in unprecedented turmoil. It…
The prime minister has not visited Manipur even five months into the conflict, and, until the no-confidence motion against his government in Parliament, did not make any public appeal for peace in Manipur. Representative image of security forces in Manipur. Photo: X/@manipur_police Manipur, literally the ‘jewelled land’, today is the theatre of a full-blown…
The Meo Muslims of Nuh shared tight bonds and socio-cultural life with Hindus for centuries. But lynchings and hate killings since 2017 have torn them apart. Bajrang Dal members shout slogans in Nuh on August 2. | Reuters A week after Nuh was badly singed with its first major communal clash in three decades, we…
PM Narendra Modi in a ‘Mann ki Baat’ promotional released by BJP. In the background is a radio station. Photos: Twitter/@BJP4India and Flickr/Sergio Enciso (CC BY-SA 2.0) “As the Prime Minister of this great nation, I wish today to convey to the Indian people my unbounded anguish and outrage that a uniformed railway police constable…
Even after the second wave, vendors in Delhi’s Majnu ka Tilla earned sometimes one, sometimes two hundred rupees a day. Sometimes not even that. Migrant workers at the Anand Vihar Bus Terminal during the COVID-19 lockdown. Photo: Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta It was early one rainy morning in the beginning of August 2021, when the…