Meera Nanda, in her forthcoming book, God Market: How Globalization is Making India More Hindu, is developing an interesting thesis. It is that the BJP is creating a huge Hindu vote bank. In itself, it …
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Tag: Indian Secularism
Free Speech News
1. Regulation of the Media: Interesting, and dare I say, worrying developments on the broadcasting media regulation front, but first the background: Some time ago, the government proposed a regulatory mechanism in the Broadcasting Services …
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Beards, Burqas, and Bias: Search for clarity
Shamnad’s and my posts have elicited quite a few comments, which explain (and also fail to explain) some facets of Indian secularism. Here, I wish to confine myself to some of the seemingly intractable issues, …
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Beards, Burqas and Bias: Response To Shamnad
Shamnad’s post has raised some interesting issues. I would broadly endorse his concern over Justice Katju’s unfortunate reported remarks. But we must understand that these remarks are reported, and are not part of the Court’s …
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Supreme Court on Mohammad Salim’s right to grow beard
Supreme Court’s summary dismissal of a Muslim student’s petition against his school’s decision to remove him from the school raises disturbing questions about the court’s attitude to secularism. Apart from Justice Katju’s inappropriate observations equating …
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Shame of a Name and The Great House Hunt
This blog has discussed the issue of housing discrimination several times in previous posts (I, II, III and IV), so it may not be very interesting to go through the legal arguments once again (for …
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Bipartisan and non-partisan appointments for democratic institutions
Whatever might be the implications for the individuals involved in the current controversy over the Election Commission, the CEC’s second letter to the President raises a very important point. Under the current scheme of things …
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House for Mr Ali
Tales of link between terrorism and discrimination against Muslims abound, but few show this link to be so direct, so shameless. In the aftermath of the Bombay attacks, some 300 real estate agents in Surat …
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How should liberals respond to terrorism?
Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and now Delhi. There seems to be no let up in terrorist violence this year. How should liberals react to the deplorable violence perpetrated by terrorists, in the midst of a clamour …
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A critical analysis of recent anti-conversion legislation: Focus on the SAHRDC
Before getting to the substance of this post, I want to join Vikram and V. Venkatesan in welcoming our new contributors. The success of this blog depends on regular contributors and commentators (and a healthy …
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