Dilip Simeon's blog

Madhya Pradesh, a state that almost always figures at the bottom of the country's Human Development Index table, used lakhs of rupees out of the taxpayers' pockets to provide 'royal' hospitality to the Supreme Court judges – including the Chief Justice of India (CJI) – in an event in April; by hosting a gala dinner in fine silver, and by bestowing expensive gifts upon the judges and their spouses.  That's rather rich for a state already bearing  the stigma of the Vyapam scam  – a professional examination board scam in which impersonators were caught appearing on behalf of students for a hefty fee, all with the collusion of the officials of the examination board. A response to a RTI query revealed that expenses worth more than a whopping Rs 8 lakh were incurred in just one evening to host a 'royal' (officially traditional) dinner of 240 VVIP guests — mostly judges and their families, including CJI TS Thakur, on 14 April in Bhopa...

Venkat Dhulipala’s book,  Creating A New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest forPakistan in Late Colonial North India demolishes the existing scholarship on Muhammad Ali Jinnah that his demand for Pakistan was a mere bargaining chip, that it was the reason why he deliberately kept the idea of Pakistan vague, and that Pakistan was merely an obsession of the Muslim political elite. Associate Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and Visiting Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, Dhulipala revisits the debate on Partition from a new perspective.  Excerpts from the interview: You have demolished existing theories about Partition. Were these theories constructed because historians wanted to portray Jinnah as modern and secular? You need to look at the context of the historians who focused on elite politics and portrayed Jinnah as wanting to create a modern secular Republic. This context included the creation of Bangladesh, ...

  ‘With mainstream opposition, separatist leaders holding seminars, calling hartals and dictating terms for return, there is very little hope that anyone will or can return’   ‘Perceived safety is paramount for returning KPs perhaps more than real safety’   ‘Civil society has ignored plight of Pandits who stayed back in Kashmir’   ‘I wonder if civil society is following written narrative on return of KPs’   As per KPSS survey, 674 Kashmiri Pandits were killed in Valley The return of Kashmiri Pandits to their homeland has been one of the most debated issues in the recent past. The Pandit families, which stayed put in Kashmir amid the mass migration of their community, have been following the developments closely under the banner of Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti (KPSS). In an interview with  Rising Kashmir  Editor-in-Chief,  Shujaat Bukhari , KPSS president,  Sanjay Tickoo  shares the concerns and challenges regarding t...

Why I will be leaving Brexit Britain - Oliver Imhof Britons have voted against their political establishment by rejecting the only thing protecting them from it.. The polls mostly were fairly promising, the vast majority of the political establishment supported Bremain and – most importantly – it just seemed too irrational to leave a union that you only got the best bits of, without having to face the more negative sides. Now the unthinkable  has happened . Britons voted against their political establishment by saying no to the only thing that is protecting them from it.  Illustration: Ellie Foreman-Peck In the piece I wrote back then I barely focused on what would make this country a place that I would be afraid to live in. Now that David Cameron has resigned and  Boris Johnson could be his successor , the image in my head has become a bit clearer.  No matter who ultimately becomes prime minister, the Tories have a clear mandate to turn the country away fr...