Tushar A. Gandhi, the great-grandson of the Mahatma, is the author of the nearly 1000-page volume titled Let’s Kill Gandhi! A Chronicle of His Last Days, The Conspiracy, Murder Investigation and Trial. It is a product of years of exhaustive research into the previous attempts on Gandhi’s life starting from 1934 by Hindu fanatics and his assassination on January … Continue reading ‘Savarkar escaped because nobody probed how Godse got an Italian revolver from a Gwalior dealer’
PAWAN KUMAR BANSAL is dapper, sharp and warm. As I walk into his home in the sweltering heat of Chandigarh, soft drinks are served immediately, but the Congress veteran and former Union minister must leave for a function and a party meeting soon thereafter. Yet, he doesn’t sound one bit like a man in a … Continue reading Civic issues dominate the national poll debate in Chandigarh
Fazal Gafoor is a ‘cosmopolitan’, if you apply the great thinker Benedict Anderson’s definition of the term. He speaks multiple languages, having been to primary school in Edinburgh where his mother and he had accompanied his father who had moved to the Scottish capital from Kerala to pursue studies in the 1950s. While Gafoor was … Continue reading Banning burqas in MES isn’t just tough, it is dangerous for its president Dr Fazal Gafoor
KHALEED RASHEED FARANGI MAHLI, one of Lucknow’s prominent clerics, has a message for the people of his community this election: go out and vote in large numbers. Self-confessedly averse to interfering in politics, Farangi Mahli, a religious scholar of Farangi Mahal, an area near Chowk in Uttar Pradesh’s capital city that had in the past … Continue reading Inside the Mind of the Indian Muslim Voter
Gordon Weiss, a former senior United Nations official and chronicler of the last phase of the war between the Sinhalese-dominated government forces and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, says he is deeply shocked by the enormity of deaths and the extent of planning that went behind multiple terror blasts that ripped through the island … Continue reading Sri Lankan blasts unprecedented in scale, coordination: Ex-UN official and author
Dr Suelette Dreyfus is an author who co-wrote a best-selling book with Julian Assange, titled Underground, a 500-page volume on the lives of young hackers of the 1980s and the 1990s (which includes Assange himself). She has been closely associated with Assange since then. She tells Open in an interview that Assange’s contribution to journalism has been enormous. Dreyfus … Continue reading Defend Assange to Save Journalism
ON APRIL 2ND, JUST BEFORE noon at 24 Akbar Road, headquarters of the Congress party in Delhi, Rahul Gandhi looked like a well-rested runner ready for an ultra-marathon. Except, he was not in sports gear, but a set of white, spotless kurta-pyjamas. But then, two years ago on a poll trail in Chotila, a temple-town … Continue reading Rahul Gandhi: The Angry Debunker
DAILY-WAGE LABOURER Kinker Chandra Das from Kaikala village of Hooghly district in West Bengal is tight-lipped about his political affinities. The middle-aged man treats the question of whom he would vote for in the 2019 election as though it is a brutal assault on his privacy. He raises his eyebrows in disbelief. He isn’t ready … Continue reading Will its Hindu revivalist past haunt West Bengal’s future?
Gilles Verniers, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashoka University and co-director at its Trivedi Centre for Political Data, spoke to Open's Executive Editor Ullekh NP on dominant ideas in India's 2019 election campaign. How attractive do you think is national security as a slogan (like corruption, dictatorial tendencies, etc) in an Indian election? National … Continue reading ‘Pulwama Attack and India’s Response Not Indefinite Substitute for All Other Issues Voters Care About’
ON JANUARY 1ST, 2014, when Arvind Kejriwal took oath of office as Chief Minister of Delhi from a bursting-at-the-seams Ramlila Maidan instead of Raj Bhavan with all his typical dramatic flourish, it was a historic moment for Indian democracy. We had a chief minister who used public transport to work and even to his swearing-in, … Continue reading Why Congress Wants to Fight the Lok Sabha Polls Alone from Delhi Sans AAP
