'Garm Hava understands that the scorching, hate-filled, doubt-filled affair between Hindus and Muslims is our national love affair.' Sreehari Nair revisits M S Sathyu's classic film, featuring the incomparable Balraj Sahni at his finest in his final role.
They were all fielded by the Samajwadi Party and its alliance partners.
Piqued by the Congress' sustained tirade against the Bharatiya Janata Party's election campaign committee chief Narendra Modi following his multi-pronged attack on the ruling party, BJP on Wednesday replied by dubbing Congress as the "most communal" party suffering from "Modi-phobia".
Aijaz Ilmi is chairman of the Executive Board of Siyasat Jadid, a popular Urdu newspaper brought out from Kanpur and Lucknow. He is a senior political analyst with the television channel News X, and writes on Muslim, national and international issues in various newspapers. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand, he reflects on the present Indian Muslim leadership.
Jagran Prakashan, the publisher of Hindi daily Dainik Jagran, on Wednesday said it will acquire the publication business of Mid-Day Multimedia through a share swap deal.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha on Tuesday rejected the apology tendered by Aziz Burney, the editor of an Urdu newspaper, for hinting in a book that the organisation was behind the 26/11 conspiracy and said that the criminal case against him would not be withdrawn.
Director Kamal Amrohi's daughter has filed a defamation suit against lyricist Nida Fazli. She had written an article in a leading Urdu newspaper a month ago, portraying Amrohi as a "womaniser, a selfish and an ungrateful man."
Pakistan's disgraced atomic scientist A Q Khan, under house arrest for the past four years after admitting to proliferating nuclear technology, has said that he is under 'illegal detention' and hopes that the new government will soon lift restrictions on his movement.
The mercy petition was rejected by the President after 'thorough consideration' as the allegations against him 'were proved and he was awarded capital punishment by court', official sources said. Sarabjit was sentenced to death for his alleged involvement in bomb blasts in Lahore and Multan that killed about 14 people. His family denies he was a spy as claimed by Pakistan and insists he accidentally strayed into Pakistani territory.
From the many large communal riots across decades to the six-hour mass cull of Muslims in Nellie, 1983; Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere, 1984; Kashmiri Pandits, 1990; selective massacres of Hindus in Punjab, 1983-93; and Gujarat, 2002, we have failed to bring perpetrators of our biggest tragedies to account, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
The home minister speaking in the Lower House when asked about the detention of leaders in Jammu-Kashmir said that curfew has been withdrawn from all police station limits in Jammu and Kashmir and not a single person died due to police firing.
'...I have not read newspapers for quite some time,' a psychologist tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf, 'and I am perfectly normal.'
'Illegal aggression of India on East Pakistan... Why Pakistan is avoiding advocating for Kashmiri people' written by "Professor Hafiz Mohammad Saeed" appeared in Daily Dunya (an Urdu publication of Dunya media group of Mian Amer Mahmood) on Sunday.
Here are the latest updates from the Valley.
The foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan "failed" to break the stalemate and did not produce any significant measure of forward movement, the Pakistan media said.
Mohammad Sajjad profiles Professor Riazur Rahman Sherwani, 94, versatile mind, intrepid intellectual.
Imam said it was his right to use the red beacon.
Pakistani media reacted positively to the brief meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in Paris, describing it as "ice-breaker" which will lead towards easing of tension.
'Were they two yaars of yesteryears brought together again by fate?' 'Were they two crafty spies hoodwinking each other?' wonders B S Prakash.
Neelabh Mishra had earlier been editor of Outlook Hindi and has done extensive work in areas of research and documentation including for the Right to Information movement.
In the absence of any medium to send the news reports across the country or outside, some journalists would send their reports on pen drives through flyers at the airport.
The perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attack, who shot dead 166 people, had confessed to details that should have been enough to hang him, but Pakistan enjoyed his anti-India rhetoric and let him spread his tentacles. A revealing excerpt from Khaled Ahmed's Pakistan's Terror Conundrum.
'The blasts destroyed my family. Two of my sons are in jail and one is absconding.'
Has New Delhi internalised the truth that it does not matter, asks Saeed Naqvi. Such deafening silence from the government, principal opposition, even the pundits!
The Bombay high court restrained the Maharashtra government and the police from taking any coercive steps against the editor of the Urdu daily.
There are no two views on which way the 'hawa' is blowing. It's Akhilesh Yadav -- with or without his father. Akhilesh, with or without the Congress Party.
'The mobilisation is nothing but a political ploy -- a sort of a fixed match between Hindu and Muslim communal forces, towards polarisation, in a run-up to the next election,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
For generations to come it will be difficult for any other Urdu poet to attain such high standards as Nida Fazli, who passed into the ages on Monday, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com.
'Every Muslim is painted with the same brush. We are one day linked to SIMI, the next day to Al Qaeda, to Pakistan-based terrorists and now ISIS.'
Maharashtra's beef ban has led to heated arguments on social media, but when a protest against the ban was held in Mumbai, only a few thousands turned up. Perhaps it is easier to outrage online than join an actual protest, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'The dirt in the Indian Ocean must be less than the abuses Narendra Modi got from secular forces.' 'If you are going to put the blame on the central government and the RSS for every wrongdoing, then it is not going to serve any purpose, rather it will complicate the issue instead of resolving it.' 'There are fringe elements in every society, but for an ideal State it is important to finish off the fringe elements.'
'This is an emotional issue and cannot be resolved by law alone.' 'This can be resolved only by creating trust again.' 'So much bloodletting has taken place, there is no point in going on and on.' 'Let us sit together and negotiate'
The various theories and statements about the culpability/innocence of 1993 blasts accused Yakub Memon present him with a Rashomon act, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'If Muslims who are 20 percent of UP's population feel the SP has no future they will go with the BSP. Even if 10 percent Muslim vote goes to the BSP every equation will change.'
Salman Khan's latest, Jai Ho, didn't set the cash registers ringing, and one reason could be that his diehard Muslim fans were put off by his support for Narendra Modi, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'ISI mouthpieces in the media have been quick to blame India for the attack. Clearly, the intellect and worldview of these characters (which includes fairly senior retired military officers) is based on Bollywood movies like Ek Tha Tiger and Agent Vinod... More seriously, the fact that ISI touts have been using this opportunity to train their guns on India raises serious questions about all the talk of the army being on the same page as the civilian government on the issue of improving relations with India,' says Sushant Sareen.
'Manto is the only writer to grasp what the project of Pakistan would eventually mean,' says Aakar Patel, who has translated a collection of Saadat Hasan Manto's essays in a just-released book Why I Write.
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