Ballots could indeed be spoilt by the main force, and ballot boxes pilfered, but none of that had the power to leave us in doubt that such shenanigans did take place when they did, so that a re-poll could be arranged.

The whole idea has been to drive one engine forward to 2047, yielding mind-boggling technological modernity, and the second engine backward to 1947 to yield a cultural nationhood in collaborative and uncritical sync with such modernity.

It would be a fearless prophet who would say we know how Ajit Pawar's revelation may pan out both in Maharashtra's political arrangements and the forthcoming elections.

In cautioning us at the threshold of the making of our constitution, when he stressed that were the goals of equality, and fraternity not achieved, the whole democratic experiment could be in jeopardy, was Ambedkar declaring himself a potential ‘urban Naxal’?

We can hug the constitution as much as we want, the powers-that-be have already and with gusto changed it without actually changing it.

Had the Delhi Police listened to Prime Minister Modi's address in 2022, the Gandhian and Buddhist, Sonam Wangchuk of Ladakh may have fared better in the nation's capital.

Here’s why it is important to emphasise Kashmiri Muslim identity as an informing principle of India's republican democracy.

Only months into the new NDA arrangement, friction between the two main components of the Bihar government have surfaced on prime time television.

Will Sitharaman's self-esteem and honourable profile permit her to filibuster this one through unbecoming sophistry?

Let the matter  be put frontally: given a choice between governmental efficiency and governmental answerability, "we the people" vote for the latter, every day of every week. If an incessant democratic process is irritating to the establishment, so be it.

It is not said without reason that a good communist must first be a good human being. Sita exemplified that dictum to the tee.

I see the mangled faces and limbs of toddlers in Gaza in my dreams and all my education falls away from me like old paint from a crumbling edifice, writes the author.

In characterising 'personal liberty' as indispensable to any understanding of democracy, the Supreme Court has elevated the principle of 'liberty'.

The one factor that may cause some meaningful curiosity will pertain to how a revived and assertive Congress might play its federal cards.

It would thus seem that Jews, Hindus, and Muslims fall into two categories – those who believe that true religious faith must remain uncontaminated by the pursuit of state formation, and those who hold that it is their religion that must govern their political existence.

The Union Territory will have an assembly and a cabinet with little to do but feel good to be in office.

The Modi dispensation may do well to take a page from that lost Nehruvian vision which understood and absorbed the complications of identity politics with acuity and humanist broadmindedness.

How else but through leaks may we see beyond the fallen world of anti-Hindutva secularists?

The sentiment behind both the 'double engine ki sarkar' slogan and what Bengal BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari has said is plainly subversive of the constitutional order, to wit, that the 60% of citizens who regularly do not vote for the BJP remain unworthy of even-handed governance.

Once a Delhi-style statehood is planted on Jammu and Kashmir, it may never come to be lifted.