I am not Anna on August 25, 2011“I am Anna.” So proclaims the slogan on thousands of caps and T-shirts at rallies reportedly rocking New Delhi and other major cities of India for over a week now. This slogan of personal identification has replaced the earlier one of prostrate adoration: “Anna is India and India is Anna.” It is time for a […]
Swamys strategies on August 11, 2011Humanity as a whole may not have heard of Andreas Behring Breivik a month ago but was forced to take note of his ‘manifesto’ after the Norway massacre of July 23. Subramanian Swamy presents a parallel. The outside world may not have heard much of the Indian politician, but his own manifesto, released through a […]
From Norway to parivar nationalists on July 28, 2011The message from Norway’s mass killer to the ‘Hindu nationalists’ of India has already been reported. A couple of points made by Anders Behring Breivik in his manifesto, 2083: a European declaration of independence, however, deserve particular note. If accepted and acted upon, the twin recommendations from the Nordic admirer of a South Asian ultra-nationalism […]
Trains to disaster on July 14, 2011Way back in 1853, the outside world was talking of the newly laid railroads of India. On July 22 that year, then London-based Karl Marx wrote: “I know that the English millocracy intend to endow India with railways with the exclusive view of extracting at diminished expenses the cotton and other raw materials for their […]
Politics of gender and patriotism on June 30, 2011This may be far from the politics of gender as it figures in the pundits’ jargon. But we have been hearing a lot about women leaders in politics ever since the last round of state assembly elections in April-May. India now boasts three strong chief ministers of the ‘weaker’ sex — Mayawati Naina Kumari, Jayalalithaa […]
Too many games on June 2, 2011If Gordon Ramsay’s food magazine can be called F Word, so can the phenomenon to which India is witness these days, at least in two major fields. We are talking about fatigue — of crushing, collective proportions. It is cricket fatigue, of course, that commentators are talking about, with everyone concerned, including the players, the […]
The match that Mahatma lost on May 7, 2011Joseph Lelyveld’s Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India has yet to reach bookstores in India. From the flurry of reviews, however, cricket does not seem to figure at all in the volume, over which some people tried to whip up a familiar kind of controversy. They may have succeeded, if Mahendra Singh […]
Season of stars on March 24, 2011Soldiers and sportspersons have long been notoriously superstitious. To this duo of often chance-governed destiny, electoral democracy has added another group of dicey fortunes — politicians. Rationality does not exactly rule the current scene in India as its cricketers and politicos find themselves engaged in fierce frays with unpredictable outcomes. Quite predictably, on the contrary, […]
Do they count? on March 10, 2011“They kept flashing a torch at my face. I realised that the sooner I get it over with the quicker I can go back to sleep,” so said a pavement-dweller of Mumbai, talking to a newspaper reporter of a visit to his wayside ‘home’ from census enumerators. He is one of the about 175,000 people […]
In a sorry state on February 24, 2011There is nothing new about what may be named the politics of apology. Several politicians, in India as elsewhere, have said sorry to the public and even to their opponents as a matter of strategy. The expression of remorse, emanating from Lal Krishna Advani and exciting many a comment, however, falls in a category of […]