The recent Lok Sabha polls had shown that an election could be won “without Muslim support” and it was time the minority community learnt to respect Hindu sentiments, VHP chief patron and senior RSS leader Ashok Singhal has said. Narendra Modi — an “ideal swayamsevak” — would deliver on the Hindutva agenda unlike the first NDA government, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad supremo and one of the longest serving senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders told HT in an exclusive interview. The right-wing Hindu leader, who had a front-row seat at Modi’s swearing-in, said “tables had turned”.
"An ardent fan of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has became the treasury minister in the British government. Priti Patel, 42, Conservative MP from Witham, was promoted by Prime Minister David Cameron in the cabinet reshuffle. Patel is Cameron's 'India Diaspora Champion' and accompanied him in his India trips, according to Asian Lite, a newspaper that targets Asian in the UK. She is one of the "big winners" in the reshuffle, moving up from a Downing Street policy board to the middle-ranking ministerial position of exchequer secretary dealing with tax policies, the paper said..."
'...The problem with Hindutva, which has impeded its capture of the average Hindu’s political and cultural imagination, is that it is the outcome not so much of hatred for others, especially Muslims, but rather of Hindu self-hate. It’s a historic and possibly doomed attempt to change everything about Hinduism that makes it what it is — its ability to accommodate mind-boggling diversity, its avoidance of strict definitions and boundaries, its amorphous, heterogeneous, tolerant and fluid character...
The appointment of a historian whose work is unfamiliar to most historians shows scant regard for the impressive scholarship that now characterises the study of Indian History and this disregard may stultify future academic research. Given that the writing of history in India over the last half-century has produced some of the finest historians, recognised both nationally and internationally, one is surprised at the appointment of Professor Y. Sudershan Rao as chairperson of the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR).
"Just over a week ago, on July 4, the Uttar Pradesh police stopped the Bharatiya Janata Party’s attempt to hold a mahapanchayat at Kanth subdivision of Moradabad to protest against the removal of a loudspeaker from a local temple. In the pitched battle that ensued between BJP supporters and security forces, scores were injured and a large number of leaders and workers of the saffron party were taken into custody. Yet, even before Moradabad could regain normalcy, fresh attempts are being made to keep the communal pot boiling.
"Last week, Yellapragada Sudershan Rao was appointed head of the Indian Council of Historical Research. He is also president of the Sangh Parivar-affiliated Bharateeya Itihaasa Sankalana Samithi, an organisation that seeks to write history from an Indian nationalist perspective from “the beginning of kaliyuga onwards”. Rao, though, goes further back than the kaliyuga: one of his current projects involves affixing a definitive date to the Mahabharata war.
"Pramod Muthalik of the infamous Sri Ram Sene and Sudin Dhavalikar of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, Goa’s public works department minister, are not the first to be worried about skirt lengths in Goa. Goa’s parish priests have also had anxious moments, not just over skirts but also revealing wedding dresses... But even anxious parish priests would be startled to hear Dhavalikar argue that skirts were against Goan culture, given that for even the most demure and devout Catholic ladies, ranging in age anywhere between eight and 85, skirts that stop one inch above the knee or five inches below it are de rigueur...
The following is a report based on discussions with the All India Democratic Women’s Association activists and youth from different areas of Pune city. They were coordinated by the AIDWA state secretary Sonya Gill, vice presidents Kiran Moghe, Saraswati Bhandirge and Subhadra Khilare, state committee member Jaya Ghadge and photo-journalist Vidya Kulkarni. THIS is a brief account of the communal tension and violence witnessed from May 31 to June 2 in Pune city. The immediate provocation was the circulation of distorted and derogatory pictures of Chatrapati Shivaji, Bal Thackray and some Hindu deities on internet based social networking sites, particularly Facebook and the mobile message service WhatsApp...
'On June 2 Mohsin Shaikh, a 24-year-old IIT engineer working in Pune, was brutally beaten to death. The suspects in this wanton act of lynching were workers of Hindu Rashtra Sena, an extreme right-wing organisation. The leader of this group has already been arrested. Mohsin, who was returning home after evening prayers, was completely innocent and had nothing to do with the provocative material on Shivaji and Balasaheb Thackeray deliberately being circulated to incite communal violence.
1. Over the last three decades, a movement toward Hinduizing India—advancing the status of Hindus toward political and social primacy in India— has continued to gain ground in South Asia and diasporic communities. The Sangh Parivar (the Sangh “family”), the network of groups at the forefront of this Hindu nationalist movement, has an estimated membership numbering in the millions, making the Sangh one of the largest voluntary associations in India. The major organizations in the Sangh include the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal, and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)...
