What a sorry state we have come to that people like Uddhav Thackeray and Narendra Modi, who are blatantly communal, are members of the National Integration Council, which is meant to combat communalism!

ISLAMIC SEMINARIES issue fatwas by the dozen, day in and day out. It is only on few occasions that these get media publicity, and the quantum of media publicity is also not uniform. Some fatwas hog all the lime light while others are hidden on the back pages in small column centimetres while few others are never taken note of. Which are the e ones that garner maximum media interest and curiosity? This is the question which media pundits can introspect and debate, but few observations are in order.

THIS MAY 2010, the UPA completed one year in the seat of power for the second term. Now it is being christened as UPA II and political pundits are evaluating its performance on various scales of performance, foreign policy, economic performance, farmers’ suicides, foreign affairs, etc. One point which does not find much mention while evaluating its performance is the plight of minorities during this year. The ground reality is that after the Gujarat carnage and Kandhamal violence, the minorities are feeling a great amount of intimidation and fear over the curtailment of their democratic right to equality.

THE AJMER bomb blasts took place inside the holy shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti on October 11, 2007, killing two people. In the wake of this, the Union Home Minister — in his standard statement — said that it was the handiwork of HUJI and Lashkar-e-Toiba type groups who indulge in these activities aimed at disrupting communal harmony in the country. Three years down the line, an RSS functionary, Devendra Gupta, and his associates have been accused of triggering this blast and have been arrested.

MANY SEX scandals related to ‘holy men’ have come to the surface during the last few weeks. It’s not that these are the first to have been brought to social attention; such incidents have been coming to social notice time and again. The present ones’ about Swami Nityanand and Ichhchadhari Baba (Bhimanand) have highlighted this issue in a very intense fashion as these scandals are blatant.

THE RSS is one of the major organisations in the country which influences and controls different political and semi political organisations, calling themselves the Sangh Parivar. It does claim to be a cultural organisation, but it is implementing its political agenda of achieving a Hindu nation by creating organisations which implement its ideology and political agenda at different layers, by different means. While its progenies claim that they are autonomous, their autonomy is a ‘controlled autonomy’. The boundaries of their autonomy are decided by the RSS, which directly or indirectly controls them.

JASWANT Singh, in his recent book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah, has praised the secular nature of Jinnah and has held Nehru-Patel responsible for the partition of India. Many people from Pakistan are praising Jaswant Singh’s book to the sky, while here in India there is a mixed reaction. The strongest reaction, of course, came from the BJP president,

THE HUMILIATING defeat in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year continues to dog the BJP. In quick succession, many things are happening: old pillars are crumbling, earlier cracks are on display with greater clarity and those who joined the party in the hope of basking in the glory of power are deserting it.

ELEVEN SUSPECTS of the Malegaon blast on September 9, 2008 got a breather (on August 1, 2009) when the special court hearing the case dropped the charges under Maharashtra Control Of Organised Crime Act 1999 (MCOCA). The Prosecution failed to show that all accused were members of a single organised crime syndicate.

RESERVATION HAS been a big bone of contention in Indian society. Over the last two decades, opinions on the issue have been expressed in subtle, direct and indirect forms. In the popular psyche, while some reservations are desirable, others are regarded as obstacles to social progress and still others are regarded as obstacles to national integration. Currently, the reservations related to women are considered highly desirable, while those concerning Dalits-OBCs are regarded as the cause of stagnation and roadblocks to progress. Many also feel that caste-based reservation deprives more meritorious upper castes from the portals of opportunity, while the mere talk of reservation for minorities is presented as dividing the nation.