Weekend Reads
- “We have a rah-rah ‘nationalist’ media that has taken it upon itself to shame, punish and deter the ‘deviants’ among its own community. When the two – government and media – feed off each other, as is happening now, the result is a lynch mob that operates with official sanction,” writes Vidya Subrahmaniam for the Hindu Centre.
- Samarth Bansal and Kiran Garimella writing in the Hindustan Times take a look at what exactly is happening across hundreds of political WhatsApp groups with elections around the corner.
- National security issues tends to benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party in straight fights against the Congress, but not in other states, writes Aditya Menon in the Quint
- Eliza Griswold writes about the rise of violent Hindu fundamentalism in India, in the New Yorker.
- “If the Indian Air Force’s strike at Balakot drew a new red line for Pakistan, Islamabad’s retaliation underscored that air deterrence is key in any escalation ladder,” writes Sushant Singh in the Indian Express.
- Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta explains in the Hindu how India’s anganwadi system is getting some things very right despite its many flaws.
- “Historians, when practising their craft, must not be vulnerable to the chauvinism of their discipline, or of method, identity and ideology,” writes Ramachandra Guha on the India Forum.
- Sabrina Toppa explains for Vice how Pakistani women are using International Women’s Day to push for peace with India .
- “If, by general consent, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has regained lost ground since the Bharatiya Janata Party’s poor showing in the state elections of November-December, one reason has to be the failure of the opposition to say what they stand for,” writes TN Ninan in the Business Standard.
- Sukhada Tatke offers a portrait of South Asian beauticians in Houston on Adda.
