The Yamuna Expressway, a 165-km, six-lane glistening north Indian motorway, which a newspaper aptly described as the Yamunabahn, has cut by half the travel time between Delhi and Agra, the Taj Mahal city. Read more

Salman Khurshid, the law minister, was until recently a good Muslim to have in government. Read more

Going by official socio-economic indices, the average Muslim voter is a school drop-out, earns meagre wages, supports a mid-sized family, is self-employed, resides mostly among his ilk, would have not travelled far beyond his birthplace, is remarkably ‘clued in’, unlikely to vote any one party or candidate, but is generally cagey about Hindutva-based politics. Read more

Harvard University, the US’s oldest higher-learning institution, has defended Hindutva advocate Subramanian Swamy’s “right to free speech” in response to a petition to oust him as summer instructor for his recent article considered hateful towards Muslims. Read more

Gandhi – who India still reveres deeply – floated up in public memory recently when the contemporary Indian press and some middle-class Indians had hallucinating glimpses of him in rural activist Anna Hazare, who launched a Gandhi-style protest against high-level corruption. Read more

Now that the decks have been cleared for the Ayodhya verdict, we have to ensure a fresh tsunami isn’t heading for the shore. Read more

A brand of terror is rapidly unfolding, giving rise to a highly dangerous label: “Hindu terrorism”. It is being attributed to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, a powerful right-wing organization that espouses fierce cultural nationalism built around Hindu values. Read more

By no measure, do I wish to risk comparison with the revolutionary Virginian, Patrick Henry, but truthfully, my angst is no less now than his, when he rose to speak against Britain’s tyranny at the Virginia Convention in 1775. Read more

Today I convert, though momentarily but happily, willingly. For all my faith, I am determined to consider the Babri Masjid issue without my skullcap on. I tried being a Hindu for a while, not quite the practising way, but hopefully sincerely enough to reflect on what the dust of the Babri mosque should give rise to. Read more