The AIADMK under Edappadi Palaniswami should have disappeared by now and gotten swallowed by the BJP. But the AIADMK is just not going away. The AIADMK voter base is refusing to switch to the BJP, by and large. 2024 was a parliamentary election in which the issues were grand and sweeping...
So the BJP and Modi were indeed afraid of India Shining redux and determined to not let history repeat itself. In the normal course, this election would have resulted in a defeat of the BJP and regime change. But the shenanigans the government unleashed ensured the BJP can still come back to...
What if the brahmins of Mylapore and Triplicane suddenly start a party that goes around terrorizing Telugus, Malayalis and north Indian labourers of Chennai? And an iyer or iyengar, for that matter, who has been working in a newspaper puts together a group of rowdies that beats up communist...
India Shining, the nation may be, but the BJP's election campaigns still take no prisoners. Anything goes is their style and substance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's attacks on the opposition may seem stretched but they are deliberate. From saying Muslims, who have been shown to be among the...
I hope T M Krishna does get to give his Sangita Kalanidhi oration. These speeches have not been momentous, barring a few times. One can recall Balasaraswati’s 1973 speech that, in and of itself, seemed typical. But, just by recounting her formative years and her influences, she subtly drove...
The Badri Seshadri arrest has to be seen in a broader context. Leftists and liberals stand for free speech, the right to criticize. They uphold equality, dignity for all, and so on. They are all for change. Rightwingers venerate what is timeworn and sacred in society. They stand for strong...
The sengol (royal sceptre) is yet another masterstroke by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reassert the idea of an Indian nation in which Tamil Nadu is an integral but unique part of it. By having the non-brahmin adheenams participating in the ritual, it dents any Dravidianist critique that the...
