Invisible Elephant in the Court Room

If you live long enough, you come to realize that today’s outrageous is next week’s new normal. Like 18 hour power outages, people can get used to almost anything. Eleven years ago, Praveen Babi, the iconic Bollywood heroine of my generation died leaving much of what she owned to charity.…

Voting For God’s Sake

Between chacha-bhatija battles within the Samajwadi Party and an election budget allegedly decimated by demonetisation within the BSP, it seems the Gods may well be on the side of Hindutva in the upcoming UP elections. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled on January 5 that candidates can’t ask people to vote…

Voting For God’s Sake

Between chacha-bhatija battles within the Samajwadi Party and an election budget allegedly decimated by demonetisation within the BSP, it seems the Gods may well be on the side of Hindutva in the upcoming UP elections. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled on January 5 that candidates can’t ask people to vote…

Sanctimonious Surrogacy

It’s not just death and taxes that are certain: it’s also the law’s voyeuristic interest in the bedrooms of citizens! We have long struggled with the manner in which the law minds our private business. 2015 saw a bitter battle to determine if the law should decide which human orifices…

My Human and other Animal Rights

Is this just the dawn of acche din or are Indians beginning to have too much of a sense of entitlement? Why do we think we deserve highways like America, public behaviour like Japan or politicians like Scandinavia? Indeed, why is it our birth right to have a house, a…

Why deny an individual’s right to die?

India is currently witnessing a great battle seeking to redefine the idea of ‘being Indian’. How we regard life itself is a very good example. Thus, suicide, euthanasia and Santhara — the very heart of any society’s ideological construct — are being debated as never before. Trying to find a…

Freedom To Offend

Getting rid of 66A doesn’t allow citizens to assume that we’ve lost our criminal laws on defamation or obscenity. This free speech one is unlikely to go much further. The valedictory flag marches around the Supreme Court’s striking down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act greatly exaggerates the immediate…

India’s Silenced Daughters

We may not have noticed but India seems to be having a Charlie Hebdo moment. Given the rioting in Rajpath in December 2012 following the horrific Nirbhaya Rape case, the Government has moved to pre-empt public outrage over Leslee Udwin’s documentary “India’s Daughter” by banning it. I dislike bans, be…