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2 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | M.K. Raghavendra |Vaishna Roy |A.K. Ramakrishnan |Vivek Katju
The standard approach among film critics to classical Hindi cinema of the 1940s and 1950s is to treat these films as aesthetic objects shaped by auteurs who also gave expression to social concerns. However, Hindi films made after 1947 may be more valuable as documents of their times—even if they are not as transparent or straightforward as historical records. As we move from pre-Independence cinema to cinema after 1947, one of the first noticeable shifts is the emergence of a new kind of hero.
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Mar 21, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Prathyush Parasuraman |M.K. Raghavendra |T.K. Rajalakshmi |Vaishna Roy
When shifting through the Sundarbans, collecting notes for what would sediment slowly and become his novel The Hungry Tide, the writer Amitav Ghosh looking at the mangrove-rich lands, at the dynamic, dextrous, and resilient landscape, made a note in his diary: “I do believe it to be true that the land here is demonstrably alive; that it does not exist solely, or even incidentally, as a stage for the enactment of human history; that it is [itself] a protagonist.
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Mar 21, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | M.K. Raghavendra |T.K. Rajalakshmi |Vaishna Roy |Ashutosh Sharma
Vaishna Roy’s editorial forces us in the middle class to look at what we are doing and becoming, thanks to the tropes of “success” and “failure” that have taken the place of constitutional values (Editor’s Note, March 22). The ingratitude for the crucial role of those who till the ground to give us food is something that takes the breath away. Ram Rajya indeed!Vasantha SuryaBengaluruI am a 90-year-old reader of Frontline.
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Mar 21, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | M.K. Raghavendra |T.K. Rajalakshmi |Vaishna Roy |Ashutosh Sharma
A fundamental goal of basic biology is understanding how diverse cell types work in concert to form tissues, organs, and organ systems. While recent efforts to catalogue the different cell types in every tissue in human bodies are a step in the right direction, they address only one piece of the puzzle. The big mystery of how those cells communicate with one another remains unaddressed and unsolved.
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Mar 21, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | M.K. Raghavendra |T.K. Rajalakshmi |Vaishna Roy |Ashutosh Sharma
Its delicate teeth shone in the sun like shards of glass. Its cold body wriggled in my hands. I was 9 years old, at the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Centre for Herpetology, and it mattered nothing to me that I was holding a baby mugger crocodile: Romulus Whitaker, the Crocodile Bank’s founder, had prepped me.
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Mar 21, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | T.K. Rajalakshmi |M.K. Raghavendra |Vaishna Roy |Ashutosh Sharma
An atmosphere of intrigue and uncertainty surrounds the election to the four Lok Sabha seats in Himachal Pradesh. The Congress, which came to power with a comfortable majority in 2022, seems to have lost some of its credibility following a recent rebellion in its ranks. Since late February 2024, the party has been weathering one crisis after the other. At present, three of the Lok Sabha seats, Hamirpur, Kangra, and Shimla, lie with the BJP while the Congress has the seat of Mandi.
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Mar 21, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vaishna Roy |M.K. Raghavendra |T.K. Rajalakshmi |Ashutosh Sharma
“In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable.”Walter LippmannWriting in the 1980s, in post-Emergency India, the American scholar of South Asian studies Ainslie Embree wrote that despite India’s political democracy, its free press, and loud opposition, “an authoritarian regime would not go against India’s historical experience or social values”. He showed astonishing prescience.
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Mar 21, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | T.K. Rajalakshmi |M.K. Raghavendra |Vaishna Roy |Ashutosh Sharma
Are you bothered by the cross-voting and the open defiance of some of your legislators? I have been in politics for 35-36 years and have dealt with tough situations. I don’t get rattled easily. Also Read | ‘We got nothing from the Centre’: Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh SukhuThere were calls for your resignation following the Rajya Sabha election debacle. Despite the cross-voting, we are still in majority. The BJP has 25 MLAs and we have 34.
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Mar 16, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Saba Naqvi |M.K. Raghavendra |Ayesha Minhaz |Ashutosh Sharma
The Ram Mandir inauguration in Ayodhya on January 22 was seen as the pinnacle of Hindutva mobilisation, the moment when religion and state merged and the Prime Minister performed an elaborate ceremony that blurred boundaries between being a high priest and holding high office. It was then presumed that the BJP’s work on the Hindutva identity front—which can loosely translate to a vision that sees the nation for Hindus first—was done for the 2024 campaign.
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Mar 6, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | M.K. Raghavendra |Anando Bhakto |Vaishna Roy
With the passing away of Kumar Shahani, Indian cinema has perhaps lost the last of its self-consciously avant-garde filmmakers. The term “avant-garde” is used too loosely in India but such work does not merely try to do something imagined to be experimental or new. Underlying it is the sense that the “true” purpose of art cannot be known and it is hence entirely for each artist or filmmaker to stretch its boundaries.
