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The BJP needs a new Southern strategy, and Annamalai could be the starting point

The rise of the Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), a political party set up by actor Joseph Vijay in Tamil Nadu, implies the slow uprooting of Dravidianism in the state. With a 35 percent vote share, TVK is still lower than the combined share of the DMK and AIADMK, with 45 percent, but a far cry from the above 70+ percent combined share that the latter held in 2021. The Dravidian identity, artificially created during colonial rule, is about racially dividing Indians between the Aryan north and the Dravidian south. It also has a caste component of virulent anti-Brahminism. Tamil politicians raise the idea of the Dravidian identity to ridiculous levels of differentiation, where the Hindi north is pitted against the south, where even the supposed Hindu religious connections between north and south, as evidenced by the existence of thousands of temples in southern India, is deemed to be different from the the north. It is less so outside Tamil Nadu, but the undercurrent is there. There are c...
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For India to meets its challenges, Muslim politics has to change and embrace reform

If India is to meet its main economic, social and geopolitical challenges, Muslim politics has to change. The post-1947 approach of the “secular” parties - which has been about making symbolic concessions to appease Muslims and then dividing the Hindu vote using various means - is now past its sell-by date. Both Muslims and Hindus have seen past this strategy. Muslims are no longer buying the “secular” argument, though not in sufficient numbers yet to make a difference. They still vote en bloc to keep the “communal” BJP out. Hindus are also beginning to see the negative impact of divisive caste and Muslim appeasement politics, and sometimes choosing to vote in a tactical way - as they did in West Bengal and Assam in the recent assembly elections.  In West Bengal, the widely expected Muslim polarisation in favour of Mamata Banerjee did not happen on a scale where she could have won. According to an analysis by The Times of India (5 May 2026), in the 142 seats where Muslim numbers w...
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The Protestant idea of religious freedom is not religious freedom at all

India regularly gets listed as a country a country of “particular concern” by the US Council for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). This institution is highly irrelevant and also has no business commenting on other countries’ religious freedoms, especially when it can’t do so in its own home country, the USA. We must ignore all USCIRF reports as motivated, but we must discuss the core definition of what religious freedom should really mean, and what it has become. The current idea of religious freedom comes from the European experience with religious persecution – where Catholics and Protestants fought bloody battles in the past – and, more recently, from the American Protestant idea of religious freedom, which is largely about the right to proselytise. America, which was initially colonised by Protestant groups fleeing the increasing secularisation of Europe, is a particular believer in the innate evil of pagan groups, and that their liberation from their beliefs is part of...
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The case for a gold amnesty scheme where the RBI buys gold held by households and businesses

India’s governments have always fretted about the average citizen’s love for gold, a love that has to be paid for in dollars. They have done everything and more to douse this costly passion, but they have always failed. In the past, customs duties on gold were raised to extortionate levels to prevent such imports, but they only drove the imports underground. A Kotak Securities report estimates that private gold holdings may be valued at over $ 5 trillion – which is a quarter more than the country’s GDP of around $4 trillion. In the Modi years, another idea was devised to wean Indians away from the lure of physical gold: the sovereign gold bonds scheme (SGBs). People were asked to invest in these bonds and were guaranteed zero capital gains tax on redemptions at the then prevailing market prices, and also given an annual interest rate of 2.5 percent (earlier 2.75 percent when the scheme was first announced). That’s sone pe suhaga . The scheme was wildly successful – but the governm...
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No matter who wins West Bengal, the Winner's Curse will be difficult to avoid

The high voting percentage (92.6 percent) in the first phase of the West Bengal elections could be the result of two factors: first, the clean-up of the electoral rolls with the removal of dead, duplicate and migrated voters, with several lakh voters still to be reinstated after hearings at the appellate tribunals; and second, the extraordinary nature of the challenge being mounted by the BJP this time and the very high level of security being provided to voters to vote without fear. High voter turnouts have traditionally meant a desire for change, but this time that would be too simplistic an assessment: it could also have driven a high turnout of Trinamool voters and its support base which may fear retribution in case the other side comes to power. After all, this is what they did in 2021, when it was the BJP that lost. Why should they expect any different if the BJP comes to power? The first phase is where the BJP recorded its best performance in 2021, and the second phase is wh...
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Survey of US Indians shows that belief in conversion after marriage is strong among Christians and Muslims

The issue of Love Jihad is controversial for three reasons: one, it seems like a pejorative label; two, it erases the line separating genuine inter-faith marriages from those where one of the purposes of marriage is to achieve conversion of the spouse to one’s own religion; three, it reeks of a patriarchal view of love and marriage. Let us thus deal with all three objections. Instead of Love Jihad can we call this Conversion Pressure in Marriage, or Conversion Pressure in Marriage and Love. But that would be hated by the Left, since the abbreviation would end up as CPIM or CPIML. So, let’s prefix an R, which would make it RCPIM – Religious Conversion Pressure in Marriage. A 2026 survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ( Indian Americans in a Time of Turbulence ) tells us that RCPIM is to be expected if one partner is Christian or Muslim. It is less likely with Hindus and those with no religious affiliation. While the survey asked a lot of questions about Indian Am...
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Sabarimala review: Why 9-judge bench should look at all anti-Hindu clauses of articles 25-30

It is interesting that even as a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant is examining the scope of two fundamental rights under articles 25 and 26, we are witnessing repeated Hindu anger against conversions and the targeting of Hindu religious symbols (two cases in point are Tata Consultancy Services and Lenskart ), all of which article 25 directly or indirectly protects. From a Hindu or Dharmic perspective (the term Dharmic is being used here to include all India-origin religions, including Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism among others), the question that really needs to be examined is whether articles 25 and 26 unfairly target only Hindu practices. And also whether the freedoms conferred under these two articles, and also articles 27, 28, 29 and 30, deny Hindus equal rights. This is what article 25 has to say: “(1) Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of ...
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