‘Non-locals must not own businesses’: the Sunday headlines in one of Imphal’s prominent newspapers aren’t a pretty sight. Much like the Kashmir valley, the Imphal valley is also best described as ‘tortured beauty’: surrounded by verdant hills and a rich history, but wrestling with dark demons within. It’s a land which has produced great writers, artists, sportspersons, film-makers, but one where an entire generation is being pushed into an abyss of hopelessness.
‘So, what do you know about missiles!’ It was a question asked with a directness that disarmed me completely. We were travelling with President Kalam to Bihar and I was attempting to profile India’s new president. As a student of economics and law, I knew very little about missiles, a fact which I readily confessed to the president. ‘Don’t worry, I will teach you!’ he said with typical enthusiasm.
Long before 2002 Gujarat there was Mumbai 1992-93. In the histiography of riots, we sometimes…
It was a picture that perhaps best captured the angularities of Indian secularism: AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien in a topi even as Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung and vice-president Hamid Ansari preferred to be bare-headed. The occasion was an iftaar party organised by the Delhi chief minister. Perhaps Kejriwal and O’Brien (an Anglo-Indian from Kolkata) had taken their cue from Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who once said, “To run the country, you have to take everyone along … at times, you will have to wear a topi, at times a tilak.”
