The crisis in Shiv Sena shows the dilemma in Indian politics today — go the Hindutva way to compete with BJP or keep it Hindutva Lite like AAP or Hindutva Zero like TMC.
BJP’s dominance has crushed political skills and imagination of its rivals into rubble. It’s made them Islamophobic in that they’d rather not identify with Muslims in any visible way.
In ‘Yogi Adityanath’, Sharat Pradhan and Atul Chandra write about the UP chief minister’s essay where he called 18 May 2006 — the day Nepal became a secular state — a ‘Black Day’.
The biggest difference between the French and Karnataka versions of 'laicite' is that in France, the public display of all religious symbols is not allowed.
Author-politicians Shashi Tharoor, Pavan K Varma and now Salman Khurshid are taking refuge in this Hinduism-Hindutva debate. But Modi used ‘Hindutva’ just once since 2014.
While an open tender has been issued for procurement of the optical instruments, Bengaluru-based firm Tonbo Imaging, whose services the Army has previously used, is a frontrunner.
What is Shiv Sena’s ideology? We might say it’s been a convenient mix of extreme ethnic chauvinism & unforgiving Hindutva. Within the second, the party retained space to manoeuvre.