Weekend Reads

  1. “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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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
  4. Eliza Griswold writes about the rise of violent Hindu fundamentalism in India, in the New Yorker.
  5. “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.
  6. Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta explains in the Hindu how India’s anganwadi system is getting some things very right despite its many flaws.
  7. “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.
  8. Sabrina Toppa explains for Vice how Pakistani women are using International Women’s Day to push for peace with India .
  9. “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.
  10. Sukhada Tatke offers a portrait of South Asian beauticians in Houston on Adda.