Indian Currents

Former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, in an article published in The Indian Express (June 28, 2026), wrote, "Five trends will determine the future of India." Reading his article prompts an important question: Is India drifting towards a regressive society? India's freedom fighters, especially Jawaharlal Nehru, envisioned building a modern, progressive, democratic, and self-reliant nation.

Modiji has Re-interpreted Democracy Narendra Modi waxed eloquent recently when condemning the Emergency, calling it a direct assault on the Indian Constitution and a dark chapter in Indian history. Emergency is already in class IX textbooks! The sad fact is that Emergency continues unquestioned, not like the one of Indira Gandhi, which lasted 21 months, but one that has been going on for 12 years, like the Nazi rule in Germany.

"Walking is man's best medicine. If you are in a bad mood, go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood, go for another walk." — Hippocrates. Walking is humanity's oldest and most natural mode of movement. Long before wheels transformed travel, human beings walked—to work, worship, protest, and dream. The Supreme Court, in Maniyar Iliyaz @ Shaik Riyaz v. P.

Whoever thought of coming out with the statement that the Indian passport is only a mere document for travel and is not proof of Indian citizenship is a great genius! It has led the whole nation to discuss the criteria for acquiring Indian citizenship. It has also compelled me, a veteran journalist aged 78, to wonder whether I am an Indian citizen, even though, using the Indian passport, which boldly declares that I am a Citizen of India, I have travelled to many countries.

Exactly five years ago, on July 5, 2021, Jesuit Father Stan Swamy was murdered. He was killed because he refused to kow-tow to a brutal, fascist regime.

If the affluent northern state of Punjab was infamously branded as 'Udta Punjab' due to its severe struggle with substance abuse, the southern and western corridors of the country have rapidly become hotbeds for an equally severe, albeit structurally different, synthetic narcotics emergency.

"If an untouchable caste intentionally touches a high-caste person, then he or she is to be put to death" (Vishnu Smriti 5.104 and Angiras Samhita 1.39) O Hindu, They did not fall like accidents. They were arranged: Dalit bodies laid out In the neat geometry of hate. Keezhvenmani, Karamchedu, Tsundur, Bathani Tola, Laxmanpur Bathe, Khairlanji: Names that are not taught As "history," Only whispered as warnings, In our Dalit ghettos.

International airlines have perfected the art of fooling passengers, and we happily cooperate. The first thing they do after take-off is ask you to pull down your window shades. Outside, the sun is blazing away. Inside, they create midnight. Hundreds of passengers obediently shut out broad daylight without the slightest protest. The meals, however, continue according to the time at which the flight departed.

My first published work was a poem written by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) that I translated into Malayalam for the monthly magazine Naveenam. A group of friends, led by the late Nellickal Muralidharan Nair, then a budding poet, Thomas Abraham, and TK Shajahan, brought it out in 1970. My translation was not great, but when Nair polished it, the Malayalam version was as good as the original. I am sure Emerson, in his grave, would have been flattered by the enthusiasm to publish him in Malayalam.

On July 4, the United States celebrated its semiquincentennial, 250 years of its independence. America today appears more politically polarised than at any time in recent decades. Its big brother authority has diminished, its politics have become deeply divisive, and even the citizens don't believe its public institutions. And yet, after two and a half centuries, the American Republic endures. India, by contrast, is a much younger republic.