Tag Archives: Indian elections

The recent voting pattern in India has unfolded the revulsion people had long held for dynastic politics, but were unable to manifest, because of the lack of alternative leadership. With ubiquitous media, this has been taken care of. 

Major world powers as well as leading Muslim countries have often overlooked the plight of the Indian Muslims in view of the economic weight of India which has been ranked among the world’s fastest-growing large economies.

  Something very subtle but extraordinary happened during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s farewell function in Delhi on the evening of May 14. Mr. Singh was standing next to his wife when Sonia Gandhi walked in and greeted him. He returned it and then left her there to meet his ministers and other Congress leaders. His wife followed him.   Later, …

On the eve of the 2004 general election, held against the backdrop of the Gujarat riots, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies widely predicted to win, a group of leading South Asian scholars discussed the alarming resurgence of the Hindu Right and its implications in a book somewhat rhetorically titled Will Secular India Survive?   The authors made …

As India goes to the ballot boxes, it seems clear that the ruling Indian National Congress (INC) and its United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition will be decimated by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The suspense centers entirely on how close the NDA will get to the 272 seats required for a parliamentary majority. The …

US Ambassador Nancy Powell recently resigned from her job as envoy to New Delhi. There is speculation and denial that her departure, scheduled for next month, is linked to the rise of Narendra Modi as the country’s prospective prime minister.   Mr Modi, who inspires hysterical adulation and serious apprehension among opposite sets of Indians, has so far been denied …

To the People of India, India’s elections have begun and you are exercising your right to vote to choose your new political representatives. Whoever you end up electing will be momentously placed to exercise real leadership and take difficult decisions that are needed to shape a better course for the future of India and for peace in South Asia.   …

At election time in India, the mainstream media likes to predict that Muslims will turn out in overwhelmingly high numbers to vote, driven by their passion for the politics of identity. No empirical evidence is ever furnished to sustain this narrative. This has acquired the aura of truth in the last two decades as the Hindu ‘upper’ castes and middle …

India’s Congress Party appears to have outlived its use as Mahatma Gandhi once said. It was formed largely to end the British colonialism and for swaraj or self-government. Established in 1885, it was the pivot of the Indian Independence Movement before it became the premier political party that has ruled India for more than five decades since Independence in 1947. …

In a TV interview last week, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley admitted that the BJP had a Muslim “problem.” “Yes, we have it,” he said, pointing out that there was a “problem both ways.”   “Part of the problem is that they (Muslims) have to understand us and part of the problem is we have to accept it…But …