Saturday, April 6th, 2019
The idea of India is at stake in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, argues a commentary
As India prepared for the world’s largest democratic exercise, a commentary by Indrajit Roy, a lecturer in global development politics at the University of York, argued that the 2019 Lok Sabha election would decide much more than who governs: the very idea of India, he wrote, was at stake. The scale of the election About 900m registered voters were to cast their ballots between April 11 and May 19 at around 1m polling stations across 543 constituencies. Voting was split into seven phases to ensure adequate security, and results wereRead More
How Advani’s Rath Yatra rescued the BJP from the Mandal dilemma
In 1990, BJP president Lal Krishna Advani set out on a Rath Yatra from Somnath in Gujarat towards Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. The campaign, launched as the country was convulsed by the Mandal Commission decision, changed the course of the party and of Indian politics. The yatra and its symbolism The 10,000-km journey, made in an air-conditioned Toyota vehicle turned into a chariot, was the idea of Pramod Mahajan, then a rising BJP leader. Its aim was mass contact to build support for a grand temple at Ayodhya, which someRead More