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Ajaz Ashraf

Ajaz Ashraf

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Justice easier for dogs than activists

Justice easier for dogs than activists

The alacrity with which the SC reviewed petitions on the stray dog issue is in stark contrast to bail applications of nine of the 18 accused in the...

previous day 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Domestic causes, foreign effects

Domestic causes, foreign effects

India’s international woes spring from its failure to address the disquiet in Kashmir and attempts at establishing Hindutva’s supremacy at home...

09.09.2025 6

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

How SIR can mar SC’s honour

How SIR can mar SC’s honour

By failing to terminate the revision of Bihar’s electoral roll, which brazenly seeks to strip lakhs of voters of the right to exercise their...

02.09.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

‘Does India have Alzheimer’s?’

‘Does India have Alzheimer’s?’

In this imagined story, a mother forgetting Jawaharlal Nehru becomes a metaphor for an India seeking to erase its first prime minister from popular...

26.08.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Trump-like bullying in India

While the American President’s intimidation evokes outrage, we seem surprisingly accepting of the dystopian vision that our own leaders’ both...

18.08.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Doubt about ECI grows and grows

The presence of thousands of bogus voters on Mahadevapura’s electoral rolls points to, at best, gross negligence on part of the poll body whose lack...

12.08.2025 20

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Ajaz Ashraf

Myth of Bangladeshis in India

The population of Bangladeshi Muslims residing here is most likely nowhere near the figure cited by government, as evidenced by the low number of...

04.08.2025 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

What Jagdeep Dhankhar’s silence means for us

The medical reason Dhankhar cited in his resignation letter is universally disbelieved, suggesting the nation reflexively knows a wide spectrum of...

29.07.2025 5

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Ajaz Ashraf

ECI complicates Indo-Nepal ties

The decision to link citizenship with voter enrolment introduces an irritant in the two countries’ unique relationship, chiefly because they have...

21.07.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

State policy of shock and harass

The revision of electoral rolls in Bihar is but a recent example of the cruel surprises sprung on the toiling masses by the powers that be, who deeply...

14.07.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

ECI versus subalterns in Bihar

While a recently issued ad states that citizenship documents need not be submitted to be considered eligible to vote, the spectre of mass...

07.07.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Citizenship on trial in Bihar

The procedure for revising the state’s electoral rolls resembles that laid out for preparing the National Register of Citizens, sparking fears of...

30.06.2025 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Endless tension rooted in a harsh founding ideology

The West Asian country seems fated to exist in a state of perpetual paranoia, as its foundational vision calls for interminable violence, until its...

23.06.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Who would say ‘no caste’ in Census

The number of citizens indicating they have transcended community identities, such as those committed to egalitarian ideals or Hindutva, will likely...

16.06.2025 10

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Ajaz Ashraf

Have you read Zahid Rafiq?

The Srinagar native’s short story collection, The World With Its Mouth Open, stirs readers’ conscience while vividly depicting the lives of...

09.06.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Three Muslim writers and a colonel

The heterogeneity of India’s largest minority appears unfathomable to those who laud Col Sofiya Qureshi but have stayed mum on the recent...

02.06.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Channel to solution in Kashmir

An India-Pakistan draft agreement on J&K, ready to be signed in 2013-14 but eventually wasn’t, seemed largely acceptable to Prime Minister Modi....

26.05.2025 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Questions on Indo-Pak clashes

Here are some: Has the perception of Pakistan’s military capabilities changed? Has Modi lost or gained? Will Hindutva be diluted? Does our foreign...

19.05.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Media in the time of war

The crackdown on independent journalists trying to uncover the truth, while mainstream outlets unabatedly peddle fake news, has created the perception...

13.05.2025 30

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Ajaz Ashraf

Normalcy can’t be Kashmir’s fate

History teaches us there will be peace in the Valley only when Kashmiris’ political rights and aspirations are recognised, the prospect of which...

05.05.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Kashmir: A graveyard of clichés

Kashmiris’ disapproval of the Baisaran massacre could have been used to forge a new reality in the Valley, but their commiserations were lost in the...

28.04.2025 20

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Ajaz Ashraf

The false depiction of Waqf

A quick glance at cases where Section 40 of the 1995 law—which paves the way for a property to be declared an endowment—was invoked lays bare how...

21.04.2025 9

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Hypocrisy over Jyotirao Phule

It makes little sense to complain about the upcoming biopic’s depiction of the 19th century anti-caste crusader’s vehement opposition to...

15.04.2025 10

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Ajaz Ashraf

Waqf law’s tyranny over Muslims

By denying community members an assured majority on endowment boards, which are now to be packed with government nominees, the new legislation seeks...

08.04.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Kunal Kamra’s lessons for media

By unleashing the weapon of humour to singe the powerful, the courageous comedian is helping dispel the people’s fear of losing their ‘freedom...

31.03.2025 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

The plot against Aurangzeb

The involvement of Brahmins in the betrayal of Chhatrapati Sambhaji is papered over by those who demonise the Mughal emperor, hoping new villains from...

24.03.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Orwell’s Animal Farm revisited

A 21st-century reimagining of the classic novel reveals that in this era, where brutal Capitalism and AI threaten labour redundancy, humans are equal,...

18.03.2025 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Inter-faith couples as rebels

By continuing to stay together against all odds, some men and women are preventing militant groups and State functionaries sympathetic to their cause...

10.03.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

New reasons to hate America

The televised bullying of the Ukrainian president, hostility towards allies and Donald Trump’s video of Gaza makeover show the United States under...

03.03.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Shourie’s takedown of Savarkar

Veteran journalist’s analysis of right-wing icon’s writings and speeches establishes the primacy of hate in his worldview, making a strong case...

24.02.2025 20

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Ajaz Ashraf

The Hitler in Donald Trump

From seeking to upend the global order to espousing the belief that might is right, to expressing expansionist aspirations and racist rhetoric, the US...

17.02.2025 20

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Ajaz Ashraf

Delhi rewards authoritarianism

AAP’s election defeat highlights the indifference of middle-class voters towards the Centre’s bids to snatch powers belonging to a state or Union...

11.02.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

India as bad as Trump on immigrants

The exaggerated numbers of illegal Bangladeshi nationals bandied about by our politicians have been weaponised against Indian Bengali Muslims. This...

03.02.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Delhi must save democracy

Delhiites will have to decide whether a party that has been accused of subverting the popular will through the appropriation of administrative...

20.01.2025 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Horror stories of the MMS era

History will remember that on the former Prime Minister’s watch, the rights of activists and protesters were imperilled using methods that have been...

14.01.2025 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Cry for Bangladeshi teachers

The hounding of intellectuals as mobocracy reigns supreme under the interim government of Muhammad Yunus serves as a stark warning for India on the...

06.01.2025 5

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Ambedkar’s pact with a Hindutvadi

The architect of the Constitution railing against Hindu Raj while also being conflicted about Dalits adopting Christianity or Islam as this would ‘...

31.12.2024 4

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Golwalkar’s shadow over ONOE

BJP’s One Nation, One Election proposal echoes the deep distrust the second RSS chief had of the federal system, which India’s regional parties do...

23.12.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

When judges shame themselves

Members of the judiciary face no consequences for egregious misconduct as they are neither exposed to moral pressure mounted by the public nor stand...

16.12.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Why Hindus don’t tire of Hindutva

Since Muslims have been projected as those who cannot be truly Indian and, therefore, loyal to India, the majority community feels it is a national...

09.12.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

India’s mosques under siege: how history is being weaponised

None of the petitions pleading for surveying the mosques should have been entertained by the judiciary, for the Places of Worship Act, 1991,...

02.12.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Take cash, forget social change

Direct cash transfer has legitimised and mainstreamed the purchasing of votes, but by doing so, governments implicitly confess to their disinterest...

25.11.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Sacco’s Palestine, Our Palestine

The enduring appeal of a graphic novel on the horrors of life under Israeli occupation among young Indians signifies their rejection of the Zionist...

18.11.2024 7

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

How hate politics unites US and India

Both the Republican Party and BJP raise the bogey of the illegal immigrant to tap into voters’ tribalistic fears of being demographically...

11.11.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

BJP’s bogus theory of infiltration

To spawn fear among Adivasis, the party has been busy falsely projecting disputes involving Muslims as evidence of Bangladeshi presence, and...

04.11.2024 10

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

1984, the year that changed India

Forty years after Punjab was gripped by militancy, the idea of Khalistan still haunts the State and the Hindu votebank the Congress cynically...

28.10.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Dynastic battles of November polls

The Pawars, Thackerays and Sorens, whose parties have undergone the process of fission, will have to demonstrate they still enjoy the loyalty of...

21.10.2024 6

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Congress can’t give up on EVM battle now

The grand old party’s legitimacy will be threatened unless it apologises for eroding faith in the electronic voting system or goes to the public to...

14.10.2024 30

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

How memory oppresses Kashmir

While it would seem to an outsider that normalcy has returned to the Valley, its silent denizens are tormented by recollections of repression and...

07.10.2024 60

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf

Hindu-Muslim love in Gandhi’s time

Unions that dare to transcend community boundaries, a relatively more common phenomenon nowadays compared to a century ago, are at risk of being...

30.09.2024 20

Midday

Ajaz Ashraf