By chhotebhai THE CONTEXT: This has been open season for clean chits, especially from the Election Commission of India to Namo and Amit Shah. Opposition parties have got their hackles up, claiming that the Model Code of Conduct has been reduced to the Modi Code of Conduct. Other than cleanContinue Reading
By Mathew Schmalz More than 200 people, including several foreign nationals, were killed in several coordinated bomb attacks on churches on hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter. Several Christian communities spread across the island nation were targeted in the attack: Suicide bombers detonated one set of bombs at churches inContinue Reading
By chhotebhai Kanpur, April 3, 2019: April 1 is a fun day. With the advent of electronic communication I can now fool people across the world. I get fiendish delight in fooling the “powerful”, and have often incurred their wrath. This April Fool’s Day would have been no different, untilContinue Reading
By Jacob Peenikaparambil The New Indian Express on March 30 reported that the Punjab Police claimed to have recovered 96.6 million rupees of hawala money from six persons, including a priest belonging to Jalandhar diocese. It is a huge amount of cash. Those who were caught by the police andContinue Reading
By Anushree Bernard The United Nations in 1975 declared March 8 as the International Women’s Day (IWD) to celebrate the social, cultural, political and economic achievements of women across the world. The day gained prominence over the years as it grew from strength to strength giving a spectacle to allContinue Reading
Gail DeGeorge Galvanized by the #MeToo movement and the sex abuse crisis commanding the attention of the Vatican, women religious are now openly discussing a subject that was once taboo — sexual harassment, abuse and rape of sisters by clergy — in congregational motherhouses and national conference offices. Slowly, anContinue Reading
By Gordon Pennycook and David Rand What makes people susceptible to fake news and other forms of strategic misinformation? And what, if anything, can be done about it? These questions have become more urgent in recent years, not least because of revelations about the Russian campaign to influence the 2016Continue Reading
Chhotebhai “The child is father of the man” is the seventh of the nine lines of the poem “My Heart Leaps Up” by William Wordsworth, written in 1802, when the poet was 32 years old. It is a line that has intrigued poets, philosophers and psychologists. I had never botheredContinue Reading
By Varghese Alengaden Indore, Jan. 7, 2019: Whenever I speak about Father Augustine Vattoly, a vast majority of nuns and priests react very negatively. They say that he is a rebel priest who made a group of young nuns to come out of the convent walls to protest in theContinue Reading
George Abraham Another eventful year has quickly passed on. We are once again on the threshold of a new year, a time to introspect and make new resolutions. I have been living in the U.S. for the last 50 years. To be specific, I have arrived on these shores inContinue Reading