Weekend Reads

  1. The governing elites are in no mood to see a functioning ombudsman that will curb the power of the political executive. In the Indian Express, Abdul Khaliq bids goodbye to the Lokpal.
  2. Patriotism is a noble idea, that needs to be rescued from the vindictive bigots of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the sarkari apologists of Prasar Bharati, writes Ramachandra Guha in the Telegraph.
  3. The presidential order on public speeches in Hindi could be only to impress cow-belt voters while the real business of living is conducted in English beyond their reach, writes Sunanda K Datta-Ray in Open.
  4. The Naga Accord signed in 2015 between the Indian government and National Socialist Council of Nagaland could give Nagas more power than any other state in India. The Week’s Namrata Biji Ahuja heads to Hebron, the capital of the Naga insurgent government, to write about what the accord means.
  5. The ruling classes in neighbouring countries, like Nepal and Bangladesh, have to take enlightened decisions on optimal relations with India. The burden is not on New Delhi alone, writes Kanwal Sibal in the Hindustan Times.
  6. China’s rising naval power means trouble for India, writes Harsh V Pant on the Observer Research Foundation website.
  7. Mashal Khan’s lynching is the culmination of a decades-old state project to neutralise the potential of student politics for resistance and dissent in Pakistan, writes Ammar Rashid in Dawn.
  8. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury talks to the Telegraph’s Sankarshan Thakur about the decline in India’s Left politics.
  9. Lyndal Roper’s Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet shows us the dark side of the man responsible for the Reformation. Michael Dirda reviews the book in the Washington Post.
  10. Given the failure of Chhattisgarh to contain Maoist rebels, Snigdhendu Bhattacharya of the Hindustan Times looks at what Mamata Banerjee did right to contain the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in West Bengal.
  11. The Guardian looks at the rise of sex robots in this video report.
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