An Introduction of Sorts
Question: What’s common between Nicolas Sarkozy, Taslima Nasrin, free speech, and the Indian media?
Answer: The Burqa, the veil, the headscarf, the chador, the purdah, which is regarded by various people variously as “dignified,” “protective,” “secure,” and “comfortable.”
Those who hold any view that opposes these positive connotations are given a taste of what [...]

Writing about the recently-concluded Hampi festival, the SpIndian Express boldly asks:
Who’s the Charioteer?
The Hampi festival is an annual cultural extravaganza that began 15 years ago with the Hampi Ustav in 1995. This year’s festival holds a special significance because it marks the 500th year of Sri Krishnadevaraya’s coronation in 1509-10. But the festival per se [...]

It’s been about 10 years since I started this blog and this post is a personal stock-taking of sorts. This blog started as a space for personal rants/ruminations that made sense perhaps only to me. At a level, it still remains that way. But I’ll spare you those details. The point is it did take [...]

Today is Makara Sankranti, celebrated across India to both herald the beginning of longer days, and reap the harvest of months of backbreaking work in the fields. But the greater significance of Makara Sankranti like most Hindu festivals, is to highlight another living instance of the amazing cultural unity of India. People in Karnataka exchange [...]

A brief pictorial representation showing the links between the weapons and how they’re connected.
Legend: The ones in large font in Red show the biggest threats.
Click here to view the full size of the image.

For those who of you not in the Twitter world, here’s a great illustration of why serious bloggers give a huge margin of humor and chagrin to the media. A certain Mr. Jaideep Kulkarni asked NDTV’s news anchor, Vishnu Som the following question:

@VishnuNDTV why should we care if they ban Minaret or a mosque. Does [...]

Question: What happens when lunacy mates with charlatanism?
Answer: It produces Kancha Ilaiah.
By writing this post, I’m actually dignifying this freeloader and Nth rate “scholar”  who has built a glorious career on the edifice naked hatred of Hinduism. It is not so much to “respond” to his venomous fulminations than to observe how the media, yet [...]

Introduction
A pattern seems to have emerged over the past decade or so in the US. Each time any U.S-based Hindu organization(s) hosts a fairly well-attended event, alarm bells sound off from the expected quarters. These expected quarters wake up and emit a major stink about the–yawn–dreaded Hindu communalism/fascism/quest for revenge… The yarn is the same, [...]

Here’s one of the secular media templates on writing opinion pieces about the BJP:

As elections draw near, run a smear campaign. Insinuate that a BJP win looks bleak due to blah blah blah blah.

If it wins, yell murder and suddenly “discover” sstories of this or that lobby, defections, and how in large regions of the [...]

Thanks to a private message by a regular reader, I get to read this Slimes report. When I investigated a trifle more, I got to read this. According to the Slimes report dated 3 Jul 2009, Nitin Raut, Maharashtra Minister of state for home (rural) is supposed to have directed the CID to

…investigate love affairs [...]