BY KANCHAN SRIVASTAVA
The Congress party's successful soft approach to Hindutva and its focus on core issues has rung alarm bells for the BJP
by Habib Malik via The Caravan
It may be somewhat inconvenient for the secular Western mind to acknowledge the fact that ultimate identity on both the personal and group levels in a place like the Middle East remains conceived primarily in religious terms. If this is indeed a given, then it should hardly be surprising that religion and politics become intricately intertwined within and across both communities and states in the region.
Democracy, Populism, And Polytheism: Islam In India
by Aishwary Kumar via The Caravan
Extreme fascination with idols, statues, and names is widespread across South Asia and the ritualistic violence that accompanies such practices is neither modern nor singular to India, the region’s most doggedly democratic and unequivocally polytheistic country. In fact, until this past November, when the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled India’s colossal 182-meter high Statue of Unity, which now stands as the world’s highest monument to a revisionist history of nationalism, the record for height belonged to a more modest Buddhist statue in China, shorter than Modi’s populist gift to India by more than 100 feet.
BY RAJENDRA PRASAD SHARMA
Increased cow vigilantism-related violence and widening caste polarization costs Bharatiya Janata Party Rajasthan elections