South India continues to elude the BJP despite the relentless onslaught of Hindutva. Will this Lok Sabha election prove any different?

In this issue

23-02-202432 STORIES

IscS and SUF-mediated iron-sulphur cluster biogenesis controls persistence of Mtb.

Tuberculosis has a gene link

In this edition of Science Notebook, we also see how an international team of scientists has detected the most powerful cosmic ray in more than three

R. Ramachandran

India’s women athletes: Running for their lives

The athletes Sohini Chattopadhyay profiles have all led challenging lives, but shoddy editing weakens the grace of the author’s tribute.

Playing our lives, on a loop

Raj Kamal Jha’s Patient in Bed Number 12 is as much about the COVID-19 pandemic as about other plagues seeded by us that continue to rage.

Latha Anantharaman

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‘There’s blood on my knuckles’

Srilata’s poems in Three Women in a Single Room House are intimate, personal, and deeply touching.

Why are we not reading the likes of Jussawalla and Mehrotra?

Despite critical acclaim, Adil Jussawalla and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s later works remain overlooked. It is time to rediscover these poetry pioneers.

Vivek Narayanan

Sidharth Malhotra in 'Indian Police Force'.jpg

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim

What exactly do we mean when we call something Islamophobic?

Prathyush Parasuraman

An intoxicating history of opium

In Smoke and Ashes, Amitav Ghosh exposes colonialism’s true legacy and its echoes in today’s crises—all through the lens of the poppy.

Amitangshu Acharya

New books on the shelves

This first ever anthology of Sri Lankan and diasporic poetry, the memoir of a communist leader, and much more.

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Letters

Readers respond.

Indian workers submitting registration forms for jobs in Israel at the Industrial Training Institute in Lucknow on January 25.

Desperate workers lining up for jobs in war-hit Israel exposes India’s unemployment crisis

Recruitment drives, backed by the Centre, in Lucknow and Rohtak capitalise on opportunities created by a state accused of ethnic cleansing.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

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How a women’s movement in the 1970s shaped India’s battle against inflation, gender inequality, and caste bias

Meet latnis—women whose rolling pins fought corruption and hunger. Their story offers insights into women’s relationship with money and the economy.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: A force to reckon with

Loyal to the Supreme Leader at home, IRGC functions as an expeditionary force abroad through proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis.

Bashir Ali Abbas

Debate intensifies over scrapping of Free Movement Regime on India-Myanmar border

While the Centre wants to scrap it to curb crime and refugee movement, the people of Mizoram and Nagaland cite years of trade and socio-cultural ties.

YSRCP president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy at Narsipatnam in Visakhapatnam district as part of his “Praja Sankalpa Yatra” in 2018.

When Jagan marched to power in Andhra Pradesh

How Jagan Mohan Reddy walked to victory, taking a leaf out of his father Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s book.

Ayesha Minhaz,Siddarth Muralidharan

Rahul Gandhi, Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, and the power of walking

While yatras have propelled parties to power in the past, will Rahul’s second attempt overcome internal divisions and translate steps into votes?

Nitish Kumar’s opportunistic alliance with BJP could hurt INDIA bloc’s OBC strategy in Bihar

But the BJP’s swift embrace of JD(U) lays bare its all-too-real anxieties heading into the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

How Dravidian politics offers a bulwark against the exclusionary politics of Hindutva

Rooted in the principles of non-Brahminism, equality, social justice, Tamil assertion, and federalism, it provides a powerful model of inclusivity.

Karthick Ram Manoharan

BJP courts Kerala Christians after ‘subaltern Hindutva’ fizzles

The party seeks new allies in its quest for power, but can it overcome its minority hurdle? The 2024 Lok Sabha election will have some answers.

M.G. Radhakrishnan

In Karnataka, BJP’s long game reveals a blend of faith, culture, and social issues

Religion topped by ingredients drawn from the cultural and social sphere fuel the party’s long-term ambitions in the Southern outlier State.

Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed

Will the slow saffronisation of Telangana help BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha election?

Unlikely. But it is a fact that State’s history of communal harmony faces new challenges with the rise of Hindutva.

RSS workers at the Visakha Mahanagar meeting at Andhra University in Visakhapatnam in February, 2023.

Sangh Parivar expands reach in Andhra Pradesh, but faces resistance

Hindutva groups push their agenda in a State with complex religious demographics, but social movements and competing political agendas pose challenges

Puducherry: BJP’s port of entry to the South

Only the popularity of the devout Chief Minister N. Rangasamy has kept the saffron party and its Hindutva plank at bay in the Union Territory.

R.K. Radhakrishnan

How fake news, propaganda, and big money power BJP’s Tamil Nadu strategy

The saffron party’s immediate objective is to unseat the AIADMK and emerge as the main rival to the ruling DMK in the State.

R.K. Radhakrishnan

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Editor’s Note: Why the South infuriates the Hindu Right

Southern States hold the firm conviction that self-confidence, jobs, GDP, and welfare do not require the violent, intolerant espousal of religion.

MPs from opposition parties at the joint sitting of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha addressed by the President in the new Parliament on the first day of the interim Budget session, on January 31.

Is 2024 really a done deal for Modi and BJP?

Themes such as federalism, delimitation, unemployment, and misuse of central agencies can still fuel an opposition fightback in the general election.

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Modi government’s crackdown on FCRA cripples civil society organisations

As prominent NGOs face suspension and cancellation of foreign funding licences, activists see worrying trend of government silencing critical voices.

T.K. Rajalakshmi

AAP faces existential crisis as liquor scam clouds its anti-corruption image

It’s fight or perish for Kejriwal’s party as it navigates legal battles, governance clashes, and accusations of betrayal in its national ambitions.

Ashutosh Sharma

How would Vivekananda view the Ramjanmabhoomi movement and Ram Mandir?

Vivekananda would not only have vehemently opposed building a temple where the Babri Masjid stood, he would have seen the triumphalism around the temp

Govind Krishnan V.

Dystopian Times..jpg

‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen

Show us your workings, Finance Minister Sitharaman

Rising unemployment, high inflation, widening inequality threaten to jeopardise India’s economic trajectory.

Mitali Mukherjee

Mamata Banerjee’s INDIA split may be aimed at securing Trinamool’s future in West Bengal

Despite apparent animosity, Mamata leaves door ajar for post-election ties, reiterating her objective to “do whatever is needed to defeat the BJP”.

Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

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For Kashmiri women, drugs offer an escape route from anxiety, depression

Socio-economic, psychological, and geopolitical factors are causing the rise in female drug addiction in the region.

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