Dhokha and Being a Muslim in India

Mukesh Bhatt’s Muzammil Ibrahim starred ‘Dhokha’ or ‘Betrayal’ is the Bollywood’s latest offering that raises several questions about Muslims and their identity in India.

Delayed Justice

Centre’s decision to award a compensation package totaling Rs 330 crores to the victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots can at best be described as a pre-election effort at applying a healing touch.

Targeted Taxi Drivers

Day passes and night creeps up over the city,
Suddenly the TV chatters “taxi drivers targeted in Mumbai”

6th December 1992

A turning point in Hindu Muslim relations in the post independence Indian history. It was a moment when all truths about religious coexistence suddenly proved false.

Indian Exceptionalism: Colonial Stereotypes and Postcolonial Realities

Indian exceptionalism manifests itself as nationalist, chauvinist, and fundamentalist sentiment, often mingling unhealthily with other kinds of closed-minded imperatives.

Fake Killings: People as Trophies

The manner in which the fake killing(s) have snowballed into a major embarassment for the ’invincible looking’ Modi regime is for everyone to see.

Quit India: Hindutva Goons!

Bombay, the city that never sleeps, can be said to be a new barometer of the mood of the broad masses of the Indian people.

The State of the World and other ruminations

See RSS, Think Al Queda!

Within a span of a few months this is the third time in a row that the Parivar and its men have received rebukes either at the hands of the US establishment itself or through those institutions/peoples who are working closely with it.

Ayodhya: The Aftermath of the Terrorist Attack

Tired of emotive issues which affect their own lives and feeling cheated at the hands of these self-proclaimed upholders of Hindutva, people just did not care when the saffron brigade gave a call for agitation over insult to ‘Hindu identity.’

A Moses on his Harley Davidson

In an act of symbolic irony, in September, precisely three months before communal riots erupted on December 6th 1992 in Bombay, the Dawood gang or D company as it was called, had accomplished its last secular killing.

Dance of the wolves

No part of the temple has been damaged. But the red alert has been sounded. To protect temples and other religious places. Not human beings.

Do riot children smell fear in parent’s sweat?

And yet, they go back to their insular neighbourhoods. Will the school triumph over the whispered prejudices of their neighbourhoods?

Frameless Heads on Nameless Walls

In a communal riot, people are often shot by the mere mention of their name. Point blank. Your biggest asset turns into your biggest disadvantage.

Ride Across the River

For one long instant, I have the feeling that I’ve been transported back to that day. That any second now, as we drive past, the bicycle will explode and send sharp bits of metal slicing into my flesh. As it once did to 38-year-old Major Abhimanyu S

’Dangerous like my English teacher’

Surekha’s home, which was half arborium. Three years ago that house was an unkempt one. She managed to keep it exactly like that three years thence.The house had a personality, a confident casual rakishness that hated grooming. A reflection of its o

’Our Shiv Sena’

Is it a case of the Stockholm syndrome working late? As a young wife and mother she was a victim, ever fearful, of the terror of the Shiv Sena in Bombay. And the real fear of physical attacks. Thirty years later, she called the Sena “ours.”

Sense and Sensibility

At Delhi's Pragati Maidan, a lady asked me whether I could depict Krishna and Radha in forms and actions other than what I had ever done. I said yes. And she said to depict Krishna bowling to Radha, while Radha was batting. Bhaskar was blushing...

An Iranian Exile in Sambhalpur

The VHP issue had taken a more serious turn, filling Sister Miriam Morris, the Christian nun who headed St Joseph, with panic.What had happened was really macabre. One of the children attending the medical camp was given a tonic, which was past its expiry

Manto Strikes

The smoke had reached an alarming proportion, and the whole chawl would be up in a minute, since chawls have a habit of being burnt down before one can say “damn your blouse.”

If Godhra did not happen…

Has the possibility of the kar sevaks being a suicide squad not occurred to anyone? Could they not have been terrorists out to create trouble?

Bhatti’s “Behzti (Dishonor)” hurts Sikh Sensitivities

But then the play wouldn’t have created a (publicity) storm; it would probably not have attracted much attention. One of the facts of modern

Would 30 January Elections Make or Break Iraq?

Like Pakistani military did not allow a Bengali to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Iraq’s Sunni leadership, with enough funds and experienced and trained men at its command is not going to give up its long established right of being the rulin

“Final” solution?

Review of Rakesh Sharma’s documentary, Final Solution: It is a study of the politics of hate in India, examining the Hindu Extremist movement, a look at their ideology and methodology, and the genocide they conducted in Gujarat.

The Doll’s House

How can Hindus dare to point fingers at Muslim regressiveness when they have not been able to improve the lot of their own people?How can they talk disparagingly about Muslim ghettos when India is divided along regional, culinary, caste, status lines?

A Visit to My Hometown Kakori in Lucknow

Situated barely fifteen kilometers from Lucknow, the town is as much known for its fine variety of mangoes and kebabs as for the anciently grand mosques and havelis that dot it and the hordes of litterateurs and writers it has produced.

Dev - The Anatomy of A Communal Carnage

... if Gujarat is not to be repeated, it must never be forgotten!

Living in Fear

I remember, a few years back, after a majlis, one of my relatives took out a white dupatta from her bag and wore it before leaving. “They can tell you’re Shia if you wear black in Muharram”

Broken Stones

I had forgotten that my mother was a Hindu. They had changed her name from Savita Damle to Salma Khan. To me it did not matter…Yet, I wondered whether that stone was for me or them.

Orissa: A Gujarat in the making

With little resistance to its aggressive onslaught, the sangh parivar looks well set to meet its 2006 deadline for reshaping Orissa into the next ’laboratory for Hindutva’.

Carnage and Casuality

Mustering up my most objective, nonjudgmental demeanour, I asked him what difference it made, since those who lost their lives were innocents. He said that they may not have been criminals but they were kafirs.

Hey Ram, What Have You Done to My Religion?

The way I saw it, it all started with Ram. Back in the 1980s, when the official Doordarshan TV channel was the only game in town, it telecast an immensely popular serial on Ramayan. The serial was so popular that all businesses and social visits came to a

Terrorism, Sectarianism and the Military

It is idiotic to expect respect for the law from ordinary mortals when the Messiahs are at the helm only due to their firepower.

Loitering with Intent in Ayodhya

My basic contention is that Indian Muslims never had a claim to the Babri mosque...

The Hindu Right

Advani’s yathra in an air-conditioned Toyota left a trail of blood in its wake

The Passion of The Pacifist

An interview with Asgharali Engineer

Save India

A martial law administration has to take over the country