Dheeraj Kalgutkar

    As per the Indian government, India is teeming with infiltrators (ghuspaithi). These illegal people have entered across India in Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal, Kerala and so on. And they are in large numbers. They, as per the Home Minister, the Prime Minister and other important people in the Indian government, come from Bangladesh, Pakistan and elsewhere. They are, according to the Indian government again, a threat to India. Most of the problems that India faces today are because of them. I’m using the Indian government here to refer to statements or information shared by Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and other important people part of the Indian Government. After all, if the Prime Minister and Home Minister’s word isn’t a word from the nation itself, then whose word would be said as a word from the nation?   Infiltrators to become majority in Jharkhand in 25–30 years if unchecked: Amit Shah He also criticised the state government for “vote bank” politics a...

It is six months since the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was published by Chinese scientists and was available to the world. What has India done since that January should find no excuse in the otherwise legitimate accusation that China did not inform about the novel virus to the world in time or it kept WHO in dark. It is true that China erred and it is also true that there are reasons to scrutinize WHO. But what have we done since it indeed released the information about the virus? For instance, while some countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Japan had cases of probable infection long before China released the vital information, India registered its first case only in late January, long after China had published genome sequence of the virus and WHO had informed the world about such an outbreak. So unlike those countries, and they have it under control now and cases are breaking new records in India, we cannot blame the outbreak on Chinese malfeasance. Whatever situation we are in to...

The plant that we so diligently watered and cared for has grown into a big banyan; full of flowers and fruits. Own it now. 53 people have lost their lives in the Delhi riots. You have heard this already. But do you see the problem here? Riot? Was it really a riot? Is it a riot if the state machinery and police take sides; forget keeping silent while mobs went on a rampage but Delhi police took stones in their own hands and threw them at the other side, they directed and aided one side of the mob (as if there was another side anyway), they climbed and destroyed CCTV cameras . Yes, police did all this. It’s all on record. There are videos after videos that prove all this. How then can we call it a riot? It was a pogrom. As Rana Ayyub called, state-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom. Let’s call it what it was. Now that we have settled on the calling business, let’s get on to our language. The 53 dead bodies, actually in some cases, there were no bodies, only a limb which police...

Yesterday, Indian Parliament headed by BJP which enjoys brute majority declared Article 370 which gave Kashmir special status in Indian union revoked, it bifurcated the Jammu and Kashmir state into two parts, and it also declared both the parts as Union Territories. The reason why they did this is one part of a debatable story; the manner in which they executed this is another. Kashmir was never a federal state like others. It was and continuous to be a military occupation (with increased troops now, one gunman to 10 civilians). But now it has lost even the facade of being an independent state. And we are told Kashmiris are real people. If they are real people like mainland Indians, why does military occupy civilian spaces there? When are we scrapping AFSPA? You have numbers now. You can do anything. Democracy, those who have read would know isn’t about numbers but doing what is right even when what you want to achieve is wrong in the eyes of the majority. It i...

Rana Ayyub says, the book is not just about Gujarat riots and fake encounters but also about Haren Pandya murder. It is a fact well known that not all drafts gets published and turn into books, and how publishers choose what they will print and what they won't. Most of the times their decisions are legit and have something to do with literary value of the draft at hand but not all the time. Stories may have been already said, might be similar to what is already published, readers don't find this interesting anymore, so on and so forth. But that is for fiction, what about non-fiction? Non-fiction is not about spilling your imaginative beans but telling a compelling story about what has occurred in fact, it is about what you have seen or heard, essentially it is about retelling a story or predicting the future on the basis of past events. Now, why would that be devoid of its right to get printed? Again, there are scores of reasons from the quality of content to impo...

R K Laxman would have been happy to see his Common Man take centre-stage and not stay somewhere in corner The creator of Common Man, late RK Laxman sir would have been triumphant to see his common man script history on political mindscape of India. His common man is no more the silent spectator but have grown to be wise enough now to exercise his power which our system bestows him once in five years. He not just watches the drama unfolding before him but takes note of who is saying what and who is doing what, and then punches the vote so hard that even the man on whose sole shoulders a party rode to power with astounding majority fails to manage to save its face. Single digit for a party who stormed national and state elections few months ago is just sham and nothing! Did Aam Aadmi Party use any intelligent strategy, master-stroke in now-just-over-historic Delhi elections? They didn’t. The AAP precisely used the open nature of Indian Democracy where nothing is written...