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UP’s syncretic warrior cults facing Hindutva challenge

Be it the attack on the Gogamedi shrine in the Hanumangarh district of northern Rajasthan or the Neja Mela in the Sambhal district of western Uttar Pradesh, Hindutva’s systemic attack on India’s syncretic traditions, past and present, reveals its rigid and Brahmanical ideological orientation: imposition of a strictly hierarchical, exclusionary and structured notion of faith and practice

Is AMU, a Vatican of India’s reactionary Muslim elite?

Continuing an active debate around the dominant politics at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) this former student questions the latent arcane exclusivism that is affecting both quality, representation and diversity within

Knives in schoolbags, hatred in classrooms: The dark lessons of Ahmedabad’s Maninagar

The recent ghastly incident in Ahmedabad's sprawling Maninagar (East)...

Power, Patronage, and Protest: The Making of AMUSU’s Opportunism

Every Saint has a Past and Every Sinner has a Future

The Solipsism of Faith: A Response to Talha Mannan

The author, himself a student of AMU explores the complex dynamic between culture, civilization and political identity, arguing that when religion becomes the rallying cry for the latter, a tendency towards theocratic authoritarianism (communalism) emerges, that also, inevitably impacts gender sensitivity and equity; Iqbal also poses sharp questions to organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islaami Hind (JIH) on state, gender relations etc.

Muslim Education in Uttar Pradesh: Pathways to Inclusion and Reform

A limited community imagination and an absence of political will together have pushed a community, UP’s Muslims, once a leader in social, political and cultural life of the region, to marginalisation; the author examines solutions

NCERT’s ‘Partition Horrors’: A brazen exercise in white-washing the ‘crimes’ of the Hindu Mahasabha & RSS

In this detailed essay, exposing the five falsehoods behind the NCERT’s recent module on Partition, the author, a historian and writer in fact exposes the axis of the far right, Hindu and Muslim, Hindu Mahasabha, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Jinnah, and the collusion with the British that got India Partitioned

Journalists’ bodies strongly condemn sedition charges against Siddharth Varadarajan, Karan Thapar of The Wire

Both the Press Club of India and the Indian Women Press Corps alleged that the Assam Police unleashed vindictive actions against the journalists through the Crime Branch

Rewriting NCERT school textbooks: ‘Muslim Raj’ is a mere excuse, the project is to conceal historical facts

The majoritarian Hindutva (not Hindu) project is to conceal the truth, Muslim bashing merely comes in handy

Distortions in the syllabus of history books, an uncomfortable perspective

The normalisation of an everyday majoritarianism, Neo-Hindutva, has been facilitated by the silence of the Muslim liberal; an urgent challenge is being able to move out of the confines to reaffirm wider processes of secularization as a counter

The true story behind a ‘real’ photograph of Rani Lakshmibai

A seven-year-long forensic search that went from India to...

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UP’s syncretic warrior cults facing Hindutva challenge

Be it the attack on the Gogamedi shrine in the Hanumangarh district of northern Rajasthan or the Neja Mela in the Sambhal district of western Uttar Pradesh, Hindutva’s systemic attack on India’s syncretic traditions, past and present, reveals its rigid and Brahmanical ideological orientation: imposition of a strictly hierarchical, exclusionary and structured notion of faith and practice

No Hearing, No Notice, Just Deletion: How Bengal’s SIR Erased a Decorated IAF Officer

The removal of Wing Commander Md Shamim Akhtar, who served the nation for 17 years, during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) highlights a systemic lack of due process that threatens the voting rights of even the most distinguished citizens

An Adivasi woman once in bonded labour now serves her village as a Sarpanch

As India marks 50 years of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, cases of bonded labour still surface in states like Telangana where many workers in sectors such as agriculture, brick kilns, fishing and construction remain trapped in debt and coercion; here the author reflects on a transformative journey of an Adivasi woman who serves as a Sarpanch.

Abdul Sheikh Citizenship Case: Deportation stayed as Gauhati High Court Hears challenge to ex parte foreigner declaration, state to raise maintainability issue

Court allows preliminary objection while continuing stay on deportation; petitioner explains delay to challenge FT order through prolonged detention, lack of access to the detenue, financial constraints, and absence of legal aid

Bhagat Singh sent to gallows once again!

Repeated attempts by present day academics to whittle down the tradition followed and forged by young revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh are bound to fail; as history endures with the traditions laid by these very men

A Law of Identity, Passed Without Listening: Inside the Transgender Amendment Bill, 2026 and the crisis it has triggered

Framed as a measure of protection, the amendment shifts identity from self-determination to State approval, raising fears of exclusion, bureaucratic control, and the erosion of dignity recognised in constitutional jurisprudence

Intrusive and Unconstitutional: CJP’s dissent note on Maharashtra’s Anti-Conversion Law

Through this detailed critique and legal analysis of the hastily enacted Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill, 2026 (Maharashtra Dharma Swatantrya Adhiniyam 2026), CJP shows how it is both a serious intrusion on personal liberty, autonomous choice and religious freedoms but also gives a weapon to state agencies like the police to, along with other actors, become vigilantes into personal lives and behaviour