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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have never known the disdain of my teachers who believe I am undeserving of a future because I was born to be without merit. To be beaten because I aspire to worship in a temple that people say will be defiled by my step or touch or veneration.
Every third malnourished child in the world is Indian. Every third child in India is malnourished. They deserve much better from their governments than escape paths to the central duty of a caring state to ensure adequate nutritious food in their bellies.