A ceasefire in Ukraine and rapprochement between Russia and the West is in India’s best interests. Given border tensions with China and India's continued dependence on Russia for arms, policymakers in New Delhi must live up to the task of finding a new equilibrium in these disorderly times.
Freedom Gazette
For the first time since the days of the Russian empire, Central Asia is moving away from Moscow’s influence. Many Central Asian countries have opposed Russia on Ukraine, and China and Turkey are stepping up to fill the power vacuum. But India is still curiously absent and unable to compete.
Ancient China was a self-contained and inward-looking economy with mostly domestic-driven prosperity, and it saw the world as a hierarchy of states with China at the centre. But today, China’s prosperity is linked to the globalisation of its economy, making such a hierarchical order difficult.
Hip-hop artists are the voices of hundreds of thousands of people, transcend cultural barriers and bring different people together. The U.S. has done a great job of capitalising on hip-hop to tell the world that anybody could be anything they wanted, which is what the American Dream is all about.
All Opposition parties are trying to differentiate Hinduism from Hindutva in the hope of weaning Hindu voters away from Hindutva. But this narrative plays into the BJP's hands, demoralises Muslim voters and other suffering minorities, and limits space for new ideas that can counter Hindutva successfully.
Indians have often tried to convince themselves that India remains a largely tolerant and secular country. But several surveys and polls have proved that much of India remains conservative, undemocratic and intolerant. Liberal parties must build grassroots presence to change this reality.
Unlike dynastic politicians in the North, Jharkhand's Hemant Soren and Tamil Nadu's MK Stalin managed to win recent state elections. By doing so, they busted the myth that Indian politics is now turning against dynasty politics. And the reason they succeeded was ideological honesty and clarity.
The root of the India-Pakistan conundrum does not lie in the two countries’ inability to determine a permanent territorial boundary. Instead, the cause of perpetual conflict between India and Pakistan goes all the way back to the inception of the two countries as sovereign and independent states.
Despite widespread condemnation, caste continues to be a factor everywhere in India today, in our quotidian lives. Even our choices of abuse are casteist and we think it is harmless or innocuous as we have modernised as a society. Caste continues to persist through the lived experiences of people.
When European far-right parties won elections in 2017, they might have benefited from the refugee crises ravaging the continent. But since then, they have become far more savvy and intelligent and have used the media and the internet to popularise ideas that were previously considered unacceptable.