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1 week ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vivek Katju |Vaishna Roy
“You did not even care that I am from the same town…” “You are not from our town. You are from the Paratheru, the street where Dalits live.” “The two are not the same. They are different.” “I think she is from the colony....” This conversation among a few women in a small town in Tamil Nadu is from a short story titled “Vazhga Vazhga” by the celebrated Tamil writer Imayam. The women have been paid Rs.500 each to attend a political rally; this exchange conveys how caste plays out in Tamil society.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vaishna Roy |Deepanshu Mohan
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced on April 30, 2025, that the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs had approved the inclusion of caste enumeration in the next population census. The announcement marks a reversal of the current administration’s position since the BJP has never shown any interest in conducting a caste census. The opposition, on the other hand, especially Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, has been demanding a caste census for some time now.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vaishna Roy |Meera Rao
“But you don’t look autistic.” That is the boilerplate response whenever someone learns I am on the autism spectrum. To which I simply deadpan: “Thanks. I’m trying really, really hard not to.”You see, that is precisely the point of being a high-functioning autistic person; we don’t want to be identified by you lot, a society that pathologises autism as an identifiable disability. Far from being disabled, we rely on our sophisticated skill sets to fly under the radar and “fit in”.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Kalpish Ratna |Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vaishna Roy
Last year marked the centenary of A Passage to India. Have we really been reading this novel for a hundred years? Andto think I have been reading it for 50! What has it done to me? I silently recalled Louise Glück’s poem “Nostos”, lingering on the last lines: “We look at the world once, in childhood. / The rest is memory.” We read a book once, then wander its microcosm for the rest of our lives.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Anand Teltumbde |Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vaishna Roy
After the Pahalgam terrorist attack of April 22, 2025, the mitti me mila denge threat from Narendra Modi seemed to imply that he would launch a big-bang, post-Pulwama-style surgical strike on Pakistan. But what came on April 30, 2025, after a week of quiet, was the declaration of a caste census. In view of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s historical opposition to a caste census, the political volte-face surprised the nation.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Oishik Sircar |Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vaishna Roy |Sukumar Muralidharan
Cinema as a popular art form may have a relationship with the law that is not obvious. Like justice is the ostensible aim of the law, cinema as an aesthetic form has a bias towards seeing the triumph of right over wrong. When contemporary events are the subject matter of cinema, the aesthetics of realism may be superseded by the craving of the human mind for a narrative that bends towards justice.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vaishna Roy |Sanjay Kumar
Kabir (floruit ca. 1398-1518 CE) died almost 500 years ago, but his words live on. He is hugely popular not just in the Hindi heartland but across India because he speaks to us intimately and with immediacy across centuries. In many ways, he seems closer to us in sensibility. Interestingly,people’s familiarity with Kabir comes not through their reading of Kabir but mostly from having heard his dohas (couplets).
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Meena Menon |Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vaishna Roy
On a blistering Sunday afternoon in Delhi, Rohit Rajput, a former CEO, found himself in a room for a meeting he had read about on social media. There were glasses of water and little chits where you had to write your name and bring them back the next time, if you cared to return. “We were encouraged to use public transport, and from the moment I walked into that room, I realised this is not just another climate conference,” said Rohit.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Sudhakar Singh |Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vaishna Roy |Sarish Tripathi
Article 1 of the Indian Constitution clearly states: “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.” This foundational statement embodies the essence of federalism, extending beyond mere political governance to encompass economic equity and developmental parity among States. Genuine federalism demands equitable economic support, particularly through centrally funded projects, to ensure balanced regional growth and sustainable national development.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ilangovan Rajasekaran |Vaishna Roy
If I knew the answer to that question, I would not even be asking it. Faced with the terrible fact of 26 innocent, precious lives lost, I shudder in horror. Can I continue to unfurl my maverick flag on which is written, “DIALOGUE—UNINTERRUPTED AND UNINTERRUPTIBLE”? Or has the time come to lower that flag, roll it up, and put it away?
