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Ajaz Ashraf

Ajaz Ashraf

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Golwalkar’s shadow over ONOE

BJP’s One Nation, One Election proposal echoes the deep distrust the second RSS chief had of the federal system, which India’s regional parties do...

23.12.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

When judges shame themselves

Members of the judiciary face no consequences for egregious misconduct as they are neither exposed to moral pressure mounted by the public nor stand a...

16.12.2024 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Why Hindus don’t tire of Hindutva

Since Muslims have been projected as those who cannot be truly Indian and, therefore, loyal to India, the majority community feels it is a national...

09.12.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

India’s mosques under siege: how history is being weaponised

None of the petitions pleading for surveying the mosques should have been entertained by the judiciary, for the Places of Worship Act, 1991, freezes...

02.12.2024 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Take cash, forget social change

Direct cash transfer has legitimised and mainstreamed the purchasing of votes, but by doing so, governments implicitly confess to their disinterest in...

25.11.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Sacco’s Palestine, Our Palestine

The enduring appeal of a graphic novel on the horrors of life under Israeli occupation among young Indians signifies their rejection of the Zionist...

18.11.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

How hate politics unites US and India

Both the Republican Party and BJP raise the bogey of the illegal immigrant to tap into voters’ tribalistic fears of being demographically...

11.11.2024 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

BJP’s bogus theory of infiltration

To spawn fear among Adivasis, the party has been busy falsely projecting disputes involving Muslims as evidence of Bangladeshi presence, and...

04.11.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

1984, the year that changed India

Forty years after Punjab was gripped by militancy, the idea of Khalistan still haunts the State and the Hindu votebank the Congress cynically created...

28.10.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Dynastic battles of November polls

The Pawars, Thackerays and Sorens, whose parties have undergone the process of fission, will have to demonstrate they still enjoy the loyalty of...

21.10.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Congress can’t give up on EVM battle now

The grand old party’s legitimacy will be threatened unless it apologises for eroding faith in the electronic voting system or goes to the public to...

14.10.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

How memory oppresses Kashmir

While it would seem to an outsider that normalcy has returned to the Valley, its silent denizens are tormented by recollections of repression and...

07.10.2024 50

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Hindu-Muslim love in Gandhi’s time

Unions that dare to transcend community boundaries, a relatively more common phenomenon nowadays compared to a century ago, are at risk of being...

30.09.2024 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

The killings of Chhattisgarh

Animosity between adivasis and security forces in the militarised Bastar district is escalating as the former are being gunned down in search...

23.09.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Mohan Bhagwat’s barbs no cause for glee

Tensions between the BJP and RSS leaderships symbolise the latter’s attempts to establish supremacy over a democratically elected government, a...

16.09.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Hindu CM in J&K no more a fantasy?

Changes made to electoral architecture and map of the poll-bound Union Territory could make long-held dream of Hindutva a reality, but for Kashmiri...

09.09.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

When president must also speak

If the head of state were to condemn alleged improprieties in states ruled by her former party, her recent article decrying Kolkata rape and murder...

02.09.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Lib-Left dilemma over Mamata

Progressive Kolkatans know the ongoing movement for justice could prove advantageous for the BJP but they feel morally compelled to participate in the...

27.08.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Partition: Killer and the shadow

A thoughtless murder carried out during the bloodiest chapter in the subcontinent’s history refused to stay in the past, compelling the perpetrator...

20.08.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Bangladesh’s lessons for BJP

The consequences of the State abandoning secularism both as a principle of policy and in practice can be witnessed in the violence being unleashed...

13.08.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Bullet, ballot and silence of Jammu and Kashmir

Five years since the abrogation of Article 370, a manufactured normalcy prevails in the Valley while militancy menaces Jammu and Ladakh is gripped by...

06.08.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Kanwar Yatra as Hindutva’s tool

What used to be an expression of folk religiosity has morphed into a carnival under the auspices of the State, which seeks to reduce chances of a...

29.07.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Myth of the Urban Naxal

A Bill introduced in state Assembly has sparked fears that democratic organisations expressing social discontent through nonviolent protests could be...

22.07.2024 40

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Liberalisation’s killing machines

More than three decades since the opening of the economy, reckless displays of individualism by the few who possess the wealth to purchase luxury cars...

15.07.2024 60

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

The paradox of Congress’s rise

Despite witnessing a resurgence in the Lok Sabha polls, the Grand Old Party’s leftward shift will compel it to downscale its ambitions in certain...

09.07.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Why Census is now a hot potato

Conflicting interests of regions, political alliances and social groups have had the crucial survey acquire a thick layer of political moss as it is...

02.07.2024 40

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Orwellian tone in NCERT book

Political Science textbook revisions betray a desire to fabricate a new past for the Indian teenager and notch victories over the memories of those...

24.06.2024 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Why Kerala’s Christians love, fear BJP

It is the followers of the Syro-Malabar Church, the community’s elite in state, who believe an alliance with Hindutva can check Muslims from...

18.06.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion

Below is an excerpt from the recent book of Ajaz Ashraf titled Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Publisher: AuthorsUpFront.  The story you are...

15.06.2024 30

The Wire

Ajaz Ashraf

Will fear of the State now ebb?

It is unrealistic to think BJP’s coalition partners will strive to reverse the democratic slide witnessed over the last decade. Will the judiciary...

10.06.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Why Muslims feel besieged

After being othered for the first time for ostensibly benefiting from reservation at the expense of Hindu subaltern groups, the community is worried...

03.06.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Insane art of poll predictions

We have become nervous wrecks trying to predict the outcome of the ongoing elections. It must be remembered that every election is understood after...

27.05.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s politics of intimacy

By publicly articulating emotions usually voiced behind closed doors among kith and kin, the outspoken leader is adept at forging a familial bond with...

20.05.2024 60

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Spider-Man Arvind Kejriwal

The Delhi CM remains the quintessential outsider despite playing by the insider’s electoral rulebook. Possessing a keen understanding of the power...

13.05.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Who was and is Hindu Left

We speak of the Hindu Right, but not its opposite, which flourishes even though the mainstream discourse dismisses them as casteist or simply ignores...

07.05.2024 40

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

The India of Congress manifesto

The party envisions a country where power is distributed more equitably among social groups than today, and the domination of the upper castes reduced...

29.04.2024 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Points judges don’t get about EVM

Concerns about opacity, discrepancies in polling data that tend to go unexplained and vulnerability of machines to manipulation give us reason to be...

22.04.2024 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Why our democracy is a charade

Only the wealthy can dream of contesting elections, an exercise that can be viewed as a means to control the masses and legitimise State policies...

15.04.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

The old man and democratic reforms

Jagdeep Singh Chhokar, 80, has been working tirelessly for 25 years to make Indian politics transparent. His patience bore fruit recently with the...

08.04.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Imagining Modi out of power

Such a scenario, unlikely as it would seem, would pose an existential threat to the PM. To avoid any such surprises, he is producing nightmares for...

01.04.2024 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Electoral bond betrays BJP’s Ram Rajya

Data disclosure reinforces suspicion that State coercion fuelled donations from businesses in what is arguably the biggest scam in the history of...

18.03.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

No community like the Sikhs

The roots of the farmer movement lie in the Sikh cultural tradition, where acting politically and justly, even in the face of certain death, is an...

12.03.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Is there a jinni in the EVM?

The answer: No. But the deep suspicion about electronic voting can be quelled by only allowing voters to personally drop VVPAT slips into a box and...

04.03.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Time for caste quota in private sector

Public sector is shrinking rapidly, and the upper-caste leadership of companies that aren’t State-controlled is disinclined to voluntarily undertake...

26.02.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Revolution in Sakina’s Kiss

Subtle and profound, author Vivek Shanbhag’s book explores, through fiction, the meaning that the idea of revolution holds for those whose faith in...

19.02.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Emperor complex in Modi era

By seeking to heap humiliation on a community for political ends and ruthlessly clamping down on regional powers, the BJP seems to be modelling itself...

12.02.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Nitish Kumar: Potato of politics

Like the root vegetable, Bihar’s CM—who hasn’t been able to expand his base to come to power on his own—mixes well with any dish but is far...

05.02.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

After Ayodhya, battle for AMU

The BJP is seeking to usher in yet another moment of Hindutva triumphalism by arguing in the Supreme Court against the varsity’s minority status, in...

30.01.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Roop Rekha Verma on our abnormality

Feisty octogenarian fighter of unpopular causes explains how the rising tide of violence is a consequence of callousness on the part of a populace...

15.01.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Sorrow’s shadow on Ram Temple gaiety

Amid celebrations of a grave injustice, many will be reminded of nights spent in terror and haunted by the knowledge that Ayodhya won’t be the last...

08.01.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

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