This thought had struck me more than a year ago, when I saw this particular television advertisement. Then the ad slowly disappeared from TV screens. However, I saw it again during the recent India-England cricket series. So hitting a mauke pe chauka, I thought to pen my thoughts finally.
First, take a look at the ad: Continue reading
Last week, the government took a stand in the Supreme Court against triple talaq, arguing that such practices were regressive and needed reconsideration. Around the same time, the Law Commission of India issued an appeal (pdf link) seeking public consultation on the issue of Uniform Civil Code (UCC). Continue reading
Barkha Dutt, the celeb journalist from NDTV, has written a book and it’s getting negative reviews (one star) on Amazon, by scores of people who have most probably not even read a sentence of it. It’s silly, but it’s not unprecedented.
Barkha is blaming it on “bhakts” – a term she and other “liberal” commentators use very liberally to describe people who support Narendra Modi. And the truth is, most of those giving one star and negative reviews to her books are indeed Modi supporters.
So this is all about Barkha vs Bhakts? Or rather just about Bhakts, who last month, angered by Aamir Khan’s comments on “rising intolerance”, raced to uninstall the Snapdeal app and give it a bad review on app stores?
Can we simply close the case because these Bhakts appear as an organized gang of online goons? Gundays harassing a “liberal” law abiding citizen Barkha?
Yeah, gundays, rather Gunday. There lies another story.
Continue reading
Much has been written and spoken about “Love Jihad” in the political and media circus, I mean, circles, so I thought one more by me won’t be such a bad idea.
Out of dozens of articles there, including a ridiculous “data backed” NDTV report, I would start with pointing out two articles to which I largely agree with. These are by R Jagannathan and were published on Firstpost.
The first one argues that the theory that Muslim groups, in an organized way, are targeting Hindu girls to hurt or convert them is logically not sound, for it will be fraught with risks of failure when compared with other means of organized attempts at religious conversions.
The second one concedes that there could be small and isolated attempts, but Hindus first need to worry about their own failings – such as patriarchy, casteism, and lack of efforts to propagate Hinduism – and put their own house in order before losing sleep over something called “Love Jihad”.
As I said earlier, while I largely agree with these points, these still don’t show the complete picture. Continue reading