Vibhanand Giri is heard exhorting Hindu men to "rape and impregnate Muslim women if Muslim men cast even a glance at Hindu girls" at the December the Dharma Sansad in Raipur.

Treating this as just another crime amounts to reducing the gravity of the sinister machinations. Tomorrow the hatemongers will easily find another way of harassing Muslim women online.

Narsinghanand has claimed that the Dharma Sansads were being organised once every six months. Why, then, were three such events planned in the space of a little over a month, with two of them in poll-bound UP?

A number of the utterances at the so-called 'Dharam Sansad' clearly attract criminal charges. Here's how.

A ‘macho’ culture in the police forces that valorises those who indulge in violence ensures that no one ever challenges the system.

The Indian media has a tendency to dub any new military acquisition by the country as something with the power to steamroll the enemy – a claim which is untrue and can create a false sense of confidence.

Hate-mongers in the country would very much like to drive Muslims away from the mainstream into their own bubble.

The biggest tormentor of the people in India is paradoxically the Indian state itself.

Sections that give the police the power to disperse a crowd with force have been abused, resulting in hundreds of deaths.

That the modern Indian state has persisted with archaic laws is not a testimony to any intrinsic merit therein, but because they continue to give it strong policing and persecution powers.

The modern Indian state has kept on brutal colonial laws and has even hardened them to exercise control over its citizens.

The terrorists are aware that taking on the might of the Indian security forces ‘militarily’ is no longer possible for them. Hence, they are on the search for soft targets, with the added aim of triggering a communal backlash elsewhere in India.

Scholars have shown that there is no evidence that Islam has ever preached the use of terror, yet this narrative doesn’t stop.

From serious violations of procedures to state arrogance, a former senior police officer explains what was so palpably wrong about the Assam police’s approach in this case.

The reason for making officials prone to such high-handed behaviour is the unnaturally excessive, feudal-type social prestige associated with government jobs, particularly in the law enforcement: police, magistracy, IAS/IPS, etc.

While the legality of such ban orders was upheld by the Supreme Court, the motive warrants a serious debate because the sale of meat and liquor is intimately linked to the rights and livelihoods of a large number of people. 

It stretches credulity to believe that the US, which spent over $1000 billion on intelligence from 2001-20, was so utterly inept that it had no idea of Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban for over two decades.

Speculation regarding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban must be dismissed as alarmist fiction. 

There is a grand design behind falsification of history. It serves the purpose of deepening communal divide and achieving the desired degree of communal polarisation for electoral benefits.

The hate-filled and menacing messages on some WhatsApp groups are frightening in their implications.