Cover Stories

Shiv Sena’s Last Stand

Madhavankutty Pillai

Uddhav Thackeray turned the party genteel but in the process deprived it of the aggression that fuelled its growth. The price of his chief ministership is being hostage to old family friend Sharad Pawar

Faith Lines

Saurabh Singh

The return of Ram

The Epic Epiphany

Keerthik Sasidharan

The abiding attraction of the Ramayana to Indian society, and to the Indian mind, lies in the innumerable idealised social relations that abound in the epic. Its importance as a template for social bonds is what is often missed in the textual discussions that preoccupy scholars

Where Did the Temples Go?

Abhinav Prakash Singh

Justice has been meted out for a historical wrong. Hindus waited for this moment for five centuries and have taken it with dignified restraint. A majority of Muslims too have understood that they were misled by vested interests and it was wrong to destroy and appropriate the places of worship of others

The Future Is Safe

Siddharth Singh

Handing over of the 2.77 acres in Ayodhya will not spell doom for Indian Muslims

Ram’s Ghar Wapsi

Makarand R Paranjape

Go to any museum or temple in India. Not one murti or figure from premodern India survives without disfiguration. If there is one, then the only explanation will be that it somehow escaped Muslim marauders

‘Left Historians Misled Indian Muslims on Ayodhya’

Rahul Pandita

“Hindu-Muslim relations over Ayodhya would not have deteriorated to this point if the left historians had not misled and misguided the Muslim group,” says historian Meenakshi Jain

For God’s Sake

MJ Akbar

Pilgrimage to the birthplace of the Lord is an elemental journey in every relevant religion. The Supreme Court, by adjudicating on the legality of the deity and granting an unfettered right to the deity’s birthplace, has created space for India to move on

A Chariot in History

Kanchan Gupta

At a brainstorming session Pramod Mahajan came up with the idea of a nationwide grand yatra, Narendra Modi concurred and that was the beginning of the Ram Rath Yatra, catapulting the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute on the national scene with LK Advani emerging as the face of Hindu aspirations