It is rather strange (and sad) that a fortnight before the big meet of G7 nations in Canada, there is no invitation sent to Modi.

What the Sangh Parivar may not be aware is that the vast majority of Indians are proven non-vegetarians.

In today’s India, riots don’t happen because of hotheads, but with cool careful planning, funding, ruthlessness and an impunity that plural India could never dream of, just a few years ago.

Over the last ten years, frauds and corporate sharks frittered away at least Rs 12 lakh crore of the Rs 16.11 lakh crore our banking system has written off.

To understand PM Modi’s strategy of obliterating shameful facts of history, one has to appreciate his skill at overkill.

The educated, culturally-inclined bhadralok class has always been critical of her but it is furious now.

Mahabali’s tale is quite similar to the Greek one of Prosperine who is permitted to come once a year from the underworld to see her mother Ceres, the goddess of corn and harvest.

If the ED’s depredations had effectively got the INDIA parties to unite before the elections, it were the constant fulminations in the Rajya Sabha that acted as the Fevicol in holding the opposition even closer together.

The conclusion that emerges is that public enthusiasm and opposition unity are not enough to combat such an incorrigibly authoritarian ruler, who controls the levers of power once again.

He wrote some 70 books, mostly in English, on the history of Kolkata and the social life of the colonial masters – including their internecine quarrels – and their view of the colonised ‘native’.

If pushed to a corner, Modi is likely to inflict new elections on a tired and financially depleted opposition, mainly because he has unending resources and still controls many of the levers of the narrative.

Diehard religious rightist forces in India are capable of doing anything to ensure the prime minister is not dethroned.

His relentless quest to piggy-back on Hindi hegemony can sway and distract, but his limitations are what Modi cannot paper over.

While there are irregularities in the movement of cash across the political spectrum, India's investigating agencies are focussing only on those who oppose the regime.

It began with his programme of introducing Hindi film music over Radio Ceylon in August 1952. India had emerged as one nation from 14 British Indian provinces and 565 kingdoms or different princely states only five years earlier.

An opposition MP reflects on the chaos and repression in the House as the BJP government scrambles to prevent the Opposition from having its say.

The four prongs of Modi’s messaging and oratory are emotions, hyperbole, sarcasm and personal attacks on opponents. His modus operandi ensures that even emotional outbursts are planned, calibrated and targeted. But calls for a caste census are a huge challenge.

There is a cold, corporate sense of distancing in the new parliament building that even the imperial old parliament never conveyed. It carried an aura and a gravitas that this one can hardly acquire.

The prime minister’s fixation is with unflinching personal loyalty from bureaucrats – a trait that both the law and centuries of experience discourage.

On the eve of Independence, the RSS's mouthpiece, Organiser, had declared that the national flag would never be respected by the Hindus.