Dheeraj Kalgutkar

India’s highest court has ruled out that firecrackers be banned in Delhi NCR. And not very surprisingly it has ruffled the feathers of the old Hindutva crown. Some have welcomed it, as always and some have not, again, as always. But twitter has turned into the new battleground. Battles are no more fought in Kurukshetra or Kargil, new age warriors no more wield swords and battle hammers, they use their clickety-clickety keyboards now. But there is one thing that everyone seems to miss in all this hullabaloo. Ramayana. Yes, the old Hindu mythological text that tells the story of Ram, his wife Sita, his brothers, monkey-god Hanuman and other ensembles of the cast. If you are familiar with Indian Twitter scene, you must already be aware of certain patterns. Like for example, the Hindu right wing, especially certain hardliners, always take back their argument to ancient texts. They talk about how wonderful, scenic and peaceful life was in age-old times. But this time, they are caught...

An Indian court has sentenced Bollywood star Salman Khan to five years in jail for killing a homeless man in a 2002 hit-and-run driving incident in Mumbai. The actor is one of Bollywood’s biggest stars, appearing in more than 80 Hindi-language films. Several of his films, including Dabangg, Ready, Bodyguard, Ek Tha Tiger, Maine Pyar Kiya and Hum Aap Ke Hain Kaun, have been huge commercial hits. That’s short of his bio to make one grasp the magnanimity of a hit-and-run case which took life of one poor homeless and injured the others who were sleeping on pavements. The case could have got over in few months or a year had it been the poor responsible for killing of the elite but because it is the other way around it took 13 years to call it an end! But that’s not all — the elite are now in open revealing their dark inside, the shameless callousness of shaming the victim and playing innocent of a criminal. You know what is shamelessness? We understand when...