Editorial

The first meeting between Trump and Modi, after their respective electoral victories, is now over. While the Modi government and Godi media are busy celebrating the 'chemistry' between two 'great friends', the rest of the world is reading the real signals emanating from the Trump Administration's sundry announcements and the joint press conference and communique following the Trump-Modi meeting.

After winning thumping majorities in successive elections in 2015 and 2020, the AAP has now suffered a major defeat in 2025. A loss of nearly ten percentage points in vote share, from 53 to 43, has brought the AAP seat tally down to 22. The BJP's vote share has increased by seven percentage points from 38 to 45, causing its seat tally to jump sixfold from 8 to 48.

The periodic congregation of sadhus and ordinary believers and practitioners of various schools of Hinduism on the bank of the confluence of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna in Allahabad, now renamed Prayagraj, or in other centres like Haridwar and Ujjain, has been an age-old Hindu pilgrimage practice. While early references to the Kumbh describe it more as a philosophical event dominated by scriptural discourse and debates, over the years it metamorphosed into a riverside religious fair.

Ten years of corporate appeasement and economic mismanagement by the Modi government have pushed India into a deep economic crisis. From falling economic growth rate and relentlessly declining value of the rupee in relation to the US dollar to India's ever burgeoning import bill and soaring prices of everyday necessities, every indicator points to India's worsening economic conditions.

Mohan Bhagwat's statement describing the state-sponsored consecration of a Ram temple in the place of the demolished Babri Masjid as the defining moment of India's 'true independence' once again reminds us that the RSS view of nationalism and independence remains absolutely antithetical to the actual history and aspiration of India's freedom movement. Given the history and ideology of the RSS, such a statement by the chief of the organisation is perhaps only to be expected.

The dramatic shift in the Haryana and Maharashtra election results between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections held just six months apart  has raised a whole set of urgent questions about the transparency and credibility of the election process. The questions have since assumed more compelling proportions in view of the government's response and disturbing revelations about the process of electoral roll finalisation in Delhi where elections are to take place on the 5th of February.

Over the last three decades Indian foreign policy has increasingly converged with American priorities in what is commonly characterised as Indo-US strategic partnership. The collapse of the Soviet Union had signalled the end of the Nehruvian era of non-alignment and heralded a new phase of alliance between India and the United States of America.

2024 became a year of change of the guard for several countries, even as the genocide of Palestinians by Israel continued unabated in Gaza. In our region, Sri Lanka ushered in a left-leaning regime for the first time in the island's history. A popular upheaval in Bangladesh compelled former PM Sheikh Hasina to flee the country and seek refuge in India, but the prospect of restoration of democracy remains rather uncertain in the face of the consolidation of reactionary Jamaat-aligned forces.

The Sangh brigade always wanted India to become a Hindu Rashtra with Manusmriti as India's Constitution. Ambedkar not only chaired the drafting committee which gave India a Constitution that declared India as a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic with the resolve to secure for all its citizens justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, but two decades before finalising the Constitution, he had publicly denounced the Manusmriti as India's code of social slavery and burned it.

On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of India, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy to remove the words secular and socialist from the Preamble which had been inserted through an amendment in 1976. On the face of it, this categorical clarification from the apex court should have put an end to the relentless campaign against the Constitution, but within a few days we heard a most virulently majoritarian statement by a sitting judge of the Allahabad High Court.