- It is hard to shake off the feeling that liberal democracy in America will continue to come under more stress, riven by its own internal conflicts and confusion of values, writes Pratap Bhanu Mehta in The Indian Express on the siege of Capitol Hill by Trump supporters.
- WhatsApp has tweaked its usage terms in a way that is scarcely noticeable but would let it make more expansive use of our data. But then, we never had much control of it anyway, says this editorial in Mint.
- In The New York Times, David W Blight explains how Trumpism may endure.
- Far-right attempts to storm parliaments and government offices have happened in Germany and the Netherlands in recent years. The world has reached this level through a long process of cowardice, failures, and shortsighted opportunism of the mainstream right, writes Cas Mudde in The Guardian.
- Farmers are a highly valued segment of society. The government knows it cannot deal with farmers like it dealt with anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protesters, says Julio Riberio in the Tribune.
- This wilful act of forgetting – compounded by the myth of American innocence – has shown itself to be dangerous on a variety of counts. The foremost was the humouring of Donald Trump when he questioned the election outcome, argues Brent Staples in The New York Times.
- Even though Hindutva’s modus operandi in Kerala has not been significantly different from other places in India, the strategies it evolved in the state have certain interesting characteristics, writes PK Yaseer Arafath in Economic and Political Weekly on Hindutva in South India.
- In Fifty Two, Alok Sarin and Sanjeev Jain trace the history of the Tezpur asylum through Partition, wars and epidemics.
- A humble Scotsman saw something strange in the water – and daringly set out to catch it – only to have lecherous out-of-towners steal his fame and upend his quest, reports Paul Brown in Narratively on the death of the fisherman who discovered the Loch Ness monster.
- The Delhi Police violate client-attorney privacy and threaten India’s rule of law by exceeding the brief of a search warrant and taking away documents from a lawyer defending riot accused – in a case where the police are themselves implicated, notes Talha Abdul Rahman in Article 14.
Reading
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1
A Hindu festival called Christmas: Encounters between a non-practising Hindu and Roman Catholicism
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2
‘Baby John’ review: What a way to end the year
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3
An 83-year-old short story by Jorge Luis Borges portends a bleak future for the internet
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4
In Bangladesh, a concert shows how creative freedom could transform the beleaguered nation
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5
The best films we watched in 2024
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6
‘Fear, fear and only fear’: Muslims in Sambhal are on edge as government turns against them
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7
‘Bride in the Hills’: Kannada writer Kuvempu’s novel depicts life under the ruthless regime of caste
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8
Bapsi Sidhwa, one of Pakistan’s most acclaimed writers, dies at 86
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9
‘Our shadows drag us back’: Poems by 2024 Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar winner Ramesh Karthik Nayak
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10
Backstory 2024: When a guru of a little-known religion told my fortune