On 17 February, the Mahayuti government issued a fresh government resolution formally cancelling all earlier decisions & circulars linked to the 2014 Muslim quota framework.
After 4 yrs of silence, the distinguished address will be home for Ritu Tawde. Before this, Mumbai's 1st citizen lived in Shivaji Park bungalow, now being turned into Thackeray memorial.
Minus Ajit Pawar, NCP has to devise survival strategy. Should it merge with Sharad Pawar faction? Analysts say second rung leaders like Praful and Tatkare don't have what it takes to lead party.
With several corporations throwing up fractured mandates & an intense tug-of-war for power, especially among Mahayuti allies, hectic parleys are on to stake claim to urban local bodies.
Mumbai: After dominating the municipal council polls across the state, the Mahayuti and, especially, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) further strengthened its presence in urban...
In a city without elected corporators since 2022, all competing parties have attempted to solidify their core bases through their manifestos, with infra promises & unmistakable signals.
Alliance also promises interest-free loans to women along with a 50 percent concession on bus fares, slum redevelopment & AI-aided deportation of illegal immigrants.
NCP leaders say BJP’s constant poaching of leaders from allied parties has also not gone down well with them. Polls to 29 municipal corporations will be held on 15 January.
The selection of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan is curious. Especially when Pakistanis currently constitute one of the largest groups claiming asylum in the UK.
In a first during his tenure as High Commissioner to India, Riaz Hamidullah addressed JOCAP consisting of tri-forces officers, as New Delhi & Dhaka step up normalisation efforts.
Trump has ushered in the age of humiliation. His method is to push around America’s friends rudely and publicly. He knows none of them can afford to fight back.
Reservations in India were created for one specific reason and were purely based on Hindu social structure. It was never about economic poverty. A poor Brahmin never qualified, and that was by design. So let’s not pretend reservations were ever a general social welfare tool. They were surgical and specific.
Even within that specific purpose, reservations have been badly misused. People who have genuinely progressed and moved up in life still cling to them instead of stepping aside for others who are still genuinely struggling. That selfishness has created real social friction that nobody wants to honestly admit.
Now, extending this framework to Muslims is a categorical error. Islam’s entire selling point — especially to lower caste Hindu converts — was equality. No hierarchy, no discrimination, brotherhood of all believers. That was the promise. But what do we actually see? Ashraf Muslims looking down upon Pasmanda Muslims. A hierarchy based on lineage and origin that exists across the entire Muslim world, not just India. This is not a Hindu construct. Manusmriti has nothing to do with Ashraf or Pasmanda. These are entirely different social structures with different origins.
So the argument collapses on itself. You cannot claim Islam gave you equality and simultaneously demand reservations designed for Hindu caste oppression victims. And ironically, by making this demand, the author is actually admitting something her community rarely acknowledges openly — that Islam in practice is not the egalitarian religion it claims to be. The discrimination just comes from a different direction now.
Framing this as “Muslim reservation” to make it palatable is intellectually dishonest. There are genuinely poor and struggling people across all communities including upper caste Hindus who get nothing. If deprivation is the real concern, argue for universal economic criteria. But that is not what this is really about.
Reservations in India were created for one specific reason and were purely based on Hindu social structure. It was never about economic poverty. A poor Brahmin never qualified, and that was by design. So let’s not pretend reservations were ever a general social welfare tool. They were surgical and specific.
Even within that specific purpose, reservations have been badly misused. People who have genuinely progressed and moved up in life still cling to them instead of stepping aside for others who are still genuinely struggling. That selfishness has created real social friction that nobody wants to honestly admit.
Now, extending this framework to Muslims is a categorical error. Islam’s entire selling point — especially to lower caste Hindu converts — was equality. No hierarchy, no discrimination, brotherhood of all believers. That was the promise. But what do we actually see? Ashraf Muslims looking down upon Pasmanda Muslims. A hierarchy based on lineage and origin that exists across the entire Muslim world, not just India. This is not a Hindu construct. Manusmriti has nothing to do with Ashraf or Pasmanda. These are entirely different social structures with different origins.
So the argument collapses on itself. You cannot claim Islam gave you equality and simultaneously demand reservations designed for Hindu caste oppression victims. And ironically, by making this demand, the author is actually admitting something her community rarely acknowledges openly — that Islam in practice is not the egalitarian religion it claims to be. The discrimination just comes from a different direction now.
Framing this as “Muslim reservation” to make it palatable is intellectually dishonest. There are genuinely poor and struggling people across all communities including upper caste Hindus who get nothing. If deprivation is the real concern, argue for universal economic criteria. But that is not what this is really about.