Sunday View: The Best Weekend Opinion Reads, Curated Just for You

We sifted through the papers to find the best opinion reads, so you won't have to.

Fault Lines in Imphal

As violence and unrest spread in Manipur, Kham Khan Suan Hausing writes about the "making of" the riots, the role social media and civil society organisations played in "the institutional ecosystem of hate," and the urgency of restoring law and order in The Indian Express.

There are no visible signs of immediate closure. The seeming leeway given to ragtag mobs in the valley to violently target and indulge in extensive arson of tribal houses and churches in various localities is galling. That no Kuki-Zomi is longer safe becomes evident as the houses of high-ranking tribal leaders — including Letpao Haokip, Tribal Affairs Minister and V Hangkhanlian, a former minister — have been torched.

Kham Khan Suan Hausing for Indian Express

Karnataka Results Could Pave the Road to 2024

Narendar Pani writes about the Bharatiya Janata Party's and the Congress' campaign strategy in the Karnataka elections for Hindustan Times. He opines that the results of the upcoming state assembly elections might determine whether both parties will continue the same campaign approach for the Lok Sabha elections next year – the BJP focusing on PM Modi and the Hindutva agenda, and the Congress focusing on economic and local issues.

The long view taken by both parties may indicate that they are looking beyond the current round in Karnataka to the national elections next year. The BJP has left little room for doubt that it will fight the next parliamentary elections on a version of Hindutva symbolised by the person of PM Modi and his welfare push. And by sidelining the old guard of leaders during a state election, it has reiterated its overwhelming confidence in the image of PM Modi. The Congress, in contrast, is using the Karnataka election to present itself as a national party sensitive to local concerns. 

Narendar Pani for HT

History for Chauvinists

A "Hindutva distortion of history" and a rewriting of the past to "serve a nakedly majoritarian and chauvinist agenda" is something that historians are grappling with today, writes Ramachandra Guha in The Telegraph.

Hindutva history is ridden with inconsistency and factual errors. One cannot claim India to be the ‘mother of democracy’ and, at the same time, glorify medieval or ancient States that upheld the divine right of kings. One cannot celebrate dynasties that “ruled for over 150 years anywhere in the country” and, at the same time, attack the Congress for practising dynastic politics today. Likewise, to portray Bose and Gandhi as implacable rivals is to deny that, for long periods, they worked together and that even after they parted ways politically, Bose continued to enormously admire Gandhi, hailing him as the ‘Father of the Nation’ and leading an army with brigades named after his Congress comrades — Gandhi, Nehru, and Maulana Azad.

Ramachandra Guha for The Telegraph

Chronicle of a Tragedy Foretold

In his column for The Indian Express, Shobhit Mahajan writes about the death by suicide of Delhi University professor Samarveer and how it lays bare the "deep malaise that pervades our institutions of higher education." He writes about the state of ad-hoc professors across government colleges and how their fate (for permanent appointment) has been left to “recommendations by certain social and cultural organisations” rather than concrete academic merit.

Just a day after this tragedy, I noticed a serpentine line of students waiting to enter the very college where Samarveer had taught for over five years. It turned out that the college was having its annual cultural festival. The irony of this temporal juxtaposition was presumably lost on the college authorities. Or maybe it is a sign of times when if you cannot provide a good education, at least provide a good circus.

Shobhit Mahajan for IE

Silence Is Spurious Golden

Commenting on the BJP's campaign in the Karnataka elections, P Chidambaram writes for The Financial Express,

The top two leaders of the ruling party — PM and HM — made no attempt to defend the record of the state government. They were silent on the real issues that concerned the people; the silence was certainly not golden. Their speeches became shriller by the day and the campaign was entirely about the ‘abuses’ suffered by the prime minister; about Lord Shiva; about Lord Hanuman; about Bajrang Balis. The scene looked like a battleground from the pages of history going back to the era of the Mahabharata where an entrenched ruling class was challenged by the former rulers. Will history repeat itself?

P Chidambaram for Financial Express

Decoding Pawar Politics and Power Optics

On the political saga that unfurled in Maharashtra this week with Sharad Pawar resigning as the chief of the Nationalist Congress Party, and then withdrawing his resignation, Shankkar Aiyar writes in The New Indian Express,

The tantalizing nature of Sharad Pawar’s political moves is that both the theories, of enabling and disabling Ajit Pawar, are plausible and both could be baseless. Even the Croatian genius who could beat the Russian roulette would have trouble decoding Pawar politics.

Shankkar Aiyar for The New Indian Express

Divided by Loyalties, United by Dhoni

In his column for The Financial Express, Tushar Bhaduri writes about the sustained charm of Mahendra Singh Dhoni and how this year's IPL is one for the fans to cherish for it could possibly be Dhoni's last.

There are players with more impressive career statistics, more runs, or longer career spans. But though his career achievements as a player and captain are significant enough, that hardly explains the unrestrained love shown to the icon, and the sea of yellow at every venue he goes to runs counter to the home-and-away format of the league and the city-based rivalries on which it’s supposed to be based. In fact, love and admiration for him could be the great unifier as it unites fans of all teams. It has reached a level where even if two CSK batsmen are going hammer and tongs, the crowd – at all centres- wishes for a wicket to fall so that Dhoni could come out.

Tushar Bhaduri for Financial Express

Cure, Don't Criminalise

For The Indian Express, Upma Gautam, Priya Das, and Deeksha B Tewari delve into why it might do India good to decriminalise drug usage. They make the argument that penalising "recreational use" of drugs increases the burden on our courts since cases under this category constitute 60 percent of the total Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances cases reported in India. But more importantly, they point that the current laws ascribe anyone using drugs as a "culprit" rather than the "victim" that they might be.

The over-criminalisation of drug users undermines their social well-being, and results in the wastage of precious time of the criminal justice machinery by clogging already burdened courts and adding to the workload of the overworked investigating agencies. Public resources that could have been deployed to set up a robust rehabilitation network are squandered away in the process. 

Upma Gautam, Priya Das, and Deeksha B Tewari for IE

The Unwitting Spectators of Our Times

In his column for The New Indian Express, Sudhir Srinivasan writes about The Kerala Story and questions whether it's necessary to provoke or vilify another community to simply feel pride in your own culture.

He asks,

In such polarising times, you can be forgiven for being confused about a fundamental question: Who must we feel sorry for? The Hindus who are apparently naïve, trusting victims, as suggested by films like The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story? Or the Muslims who seem like targets of a well-orchestrated cinema campaign that aims to destabilise and sow seeds of mistrust?

Sudhir Srinivasan for The New Indian Express

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