Biswajit Roy

The communal provocations by the ruling Sangh Parivar forces and retaliatory Muslim violence faced different responses from ruling parties in states in tune with the political preferences of the regimes. In BJP-ruled Karnataka, on 11...

With the advent of religious right wing BJP at the central power in 2014 as well as many states, communal violence in India now follows a familiar pattern. On-street provocations and rampages by Hindutva forces as happened in East Delhi early this year notwithstanding, smart-phones and online social media platforms like Facebook and Whatsapp have become the major instruments for sustained hate campaigns against Islam and its followers as well as for street mobilizations of lynch-mobs and rioters, often remotely controlled as it was evident in countless incidents from UP to Jharkhand. Muslim violence in response to digital incitement, though still sporadic, also uses the cyber communication for counter-mobilization as incidents of recent mob frenzy in Bengaluru as well as earlier mayhem in Bengal’s Baduria-Basirhat have underlined. The first of the two-parts article exposes the murderous political game that has turned a section of our tech-savvy but culturally ignorant youth into the digital force multiplier as well as foot soldiers for these merchants of death. The virtual collaboration of the Facebook authority with the Hindutva regime has made the  design more sinister.

Rama, the mythological god-king will continue to be the savior for ruling Hindu nationalist BJP in forthcoming Indian Elections in 2020-24, at least its realpolitik mascot and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes so. To...

The recent reconversion of Hagia Sophia, the UNESCO world Heritage Site in Turkey’s Istanbul into a mosque is the shocking reminder of the vicious cycle of bigoted nationalist politics, now sweeping through the postcolonial world....

The historic Hagia Sophia in Turkey’s Istanbul has been reconverted from a museum to mosque by the country’s Islamist-nationalist president and ruling AKP leader Recep Tiyyip Erdogan early this month. It has hit the headlines...

I had begun the overview of the history of Indo-China conflict with the question: Can a student of history afford a sense of sadness over the missed historical opportunities for making another world possible? I...

Mao’s conquest of Tibet and Xinjiang happened during the high days of Sino-Soviet camaraderie. But the relation between communist giants nosedived after the Indo-China border war in 1962 as Soviets blamed Chinese leadership for it....

More romantic than Mao Zedong but much less strong-willed, Jawaharlal Nehru was a democratic socialist. He was inspired by egalitarian ideas of Marx- Lenin since his youth and Soviet brand of socialism, particularly its role...

The world’s longest territorial dispute on the Himalayas could have been nipped in the bud if Mao Zedong and Jawaharlal Nehru, the helmsmen of post-independence China and India had managed to swallow their national and...