TheJaggi

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

Hopefully, this can be my last post on the women’s reservation constitutional amendment bill (and delimitation), which was defeated on Friday, 17 April, in the Lok Sabha by a united opposition. The elephant in the room is the D word, delimitation. Delimitation is a constitutional requirement in all democracies. It is periodically undertaken usually after every major census. A statutorily appointed Delimitation Commission looks at the census population figures and tries to equalise the total population in each constituency so that each vote has roughly the same value. This implies that states where populations grow more slowly than the rest will lose seats, while those which see growth will gain. This is in keeping with the most basic democratic principle that each person’s vote must have the same (or roughly equivalent) value. If a populous state’s vote value is worth only 0.75 percent that of someone in a less populous state, it is a violation of the one-person-one-vote. The D wor...

There is much talk of federalism and how the move to increase seats in parliament to give women 33 percent of the seats is somehow a threat to federalism. Federalism is primarily about how powers are distributed (largely) between three levels of government, Central, state and local bodies. They actually have nothing to do with which state gets to sent how many MPs to parliament. Yes, one can agree that relative changes in the number of seats between states will increase or reduce the voting powers of those states on central legislation. But this does not in any way reduce the already devolved powers of states. Let us note a few cases where federal powers were actually impacted severely, but very few states protested. The goods and services tax (GST) impacted the ability of states to raise or lower indirect taxes, but most of them agreed to let go on the assumption that their revenues would go up. But no one spoke up for local bodies, who now have to depend on grants from state gove...

A political fight is brewing over the Modi government’s move to raise the Lok Sabha’s strength to 850 from the current 550 (actual strength: 543) in order to give space for women’s reservation in parliament and state assemblies. There are two problems with this rushed decision, though directionally it is correct. I have always argued that trying to accommodate a 33 percent women’s quota in the existing 543 seats would be too unsettling, since these seats would also be rotated in different elections. It means no MP can expect to contest the same constituency he has nurtured after one or two elections – as it happens in the case of seats reserved for SCs and STs. The two things wrong with this initiative, which I broadly support, are, one, the unnecessary rush in the middle of a major set of assembly elections. And, two, not giving people with real objections to state their case in an open forum and argue for a compromise that respects two principles: making most constituency sizes m...

Over millennia, men, social groups, and countries have fought over land, resources, women, even honour, but the arrival of Abrahamic monotheism brought in a new edge to these usual causes of conflict. When God becomes the primary or additional cause of conflict, there are no easy off-ramps available. The ongoing war in West Asia, where three Abrahamic nations (Israel, US and Iran) are in conflict, and several other Abrahamic ones face collateral damage, should force us to examine the nature of monotheistic animosity. The problem is not monotheism itself, for many people accept that there is a higher order or universal God who oversees the world that was created. The advent of science has not modified this belief in any way, except to the extent of acknowledging that both science and God can coexist, for the latter’s existence cannot be disproved. Belief in God is an unfalsifiable proposition. So, regardless whether your belief system is polytheistic, henotheistic, pantheistic or mo...

Two recent wars, the one going on between Ukraine and Russia, and the other between Israel-US and Iran, will force all defence doctrines and military strategies to be re-examined everywhere. In both war, two defenders, Iran and Ukraine, were dwarfed by the firepower of the adversary, but neither has caved in, much less been defeated. What has differentiated these two wars from the ones that happened before them are the following: One , low-tech and low-cost defence and offence equipment like drones and missiles are able to counter much stronger air and sea power of the adversary. Air and sea power, in which the US and Israel have had an overwhelming advantage, has not been able to quell the resistance from Iran. Far from it, the latter has been able to take the war – at least in terms of drones and missiles unleashed – to its opponents’ (even bystanders’) territory, causing economic damage to energy and other infrastructure. Ukrainian drones have caused enough damage to Russian ref...

There has been a verbal war going on between two groups, one broadly supporting the Modi government and the other not, about whether or not our arch enemy Pakistan gained some global diplomatic recognition for its go-between role in the US-Iran ceasefire. We should just chill. There is no need for India to envy Pakistan’s day in the sun, just as it not necessary to gloat over its various failures. What we should always be doing is to be on guard, and do what is in our best interests. Pakistan has not suddenly become the world’s peacenik, and will revert to its true colours again a bit later. A leopard does not change its spots. But let us examine the question anyway: did Pakistan truly mediate a truce between US and Iran, or was it just a messenger boy? Just as the US may have played the role of go-between in ending the four-day Operation Sindoor conflict – a role which was never tantamount to actual mediation - this is exactly what Pakistan has been doing in the US-Iran conflict. ...

There are several lessons to be learnt from the recent Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in several states, with West Bengal giving us more headaches than the earlier ones in Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Before we assess what went right, what wrong, and who should share the blame, let us first give ourselves a synopsis of the completed SIR process in West Bengal, which, of course, excludes those deletions that are yet to be decided by the appellate process. Some of the restorations may, regrettably happen well after the election process gets concluded. It is clearly problematic if so many voters cannot exercise their franchise, but it is possible to exaggerate this denial of rights. I have seen no election in which many voters failed to find their names in the voter lists, but what is different this time is the scale of deletions. The numbers put out in the case of West Bengal, which votes in two phases on 23 and 29 April, suggest that over 90 lakh names have b...

Over the last few elections, India has seen the steady decline of “secular” parties and the gradual rise of Muslim parties. The latter are not yet a significant part of the Indian political process, but they mirror the rise of Jinnah-style Muslim League politics in pre-partition India.  In the forthcoming West Bengal elections, where the Muslim vote will significantly impact outcomes in more than 80 constituencies, a new Muslim party called Aam Janata Unnayan Party has been formed by Humayun Kabir , a former Trinamool Congress politician, to fight on 182 seats, with Asaduddin Owaisi of the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen backing him. In Assam, the largely Muslim-dominated All India United Democratic Front headed by Badruddin Ajmal is again backed by Owaisi . In the recent Maharashtra local body elections, Owaisi’s party scored big wins , in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Malegaon and Mumbai at the cost of traditional “secular” parties like the Samajwadi Party. In the Bihar asse...