All posts by Ranbir Singh

Back in 2013 India was involved in a heated verbal exchange with America over the treatment meted out to Devyani Khobragade, Deputy Consul General in the Consulate General of India in New York. Khobragade hired Sangeeta Richard, an Indian national, in November 2012 as a nanny and domestic servant. She was charged on 11 December [...]

The outburst by India’s leading rationalists back in 2013 over K Radhakrishnan’s visit to the famous Lord Venkateswara temple in southern India needs to be examined. Radhakrishnan is chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisationand the head of India’s space agency, in fact the man responsible for launching that nation’s mission to the planet Mars. [...]

In the classic children’s story Goldilocks went into someone else’s house to eat and sleep uninvited. To her horror she was confronted by the owners, which happened to be three bears. Discovered she fled.  At no point were negotiations on the agenda. It was after all pretty indefensible. This is a bit like the manner [...]

When Nina Davuluri of New York won Miss America 2013, she said in her first press conference after the victory:  “I’m so happy this organization has embraced diversity. I’m thankful there are children watching at home who can finally relate to a new Miss America.” However  this crowning of the first Miss America of Asian [...]

Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, was already a controversial figure before the BJP nominated him as party candidate for post of prime minister. But ‘controversial’ to whom? And for what? The constant attacks on Modi have actually had the reverse effect of increasing the popularity of what otherwise would have been one of many [...]

Hinduism is the religion where women are honoured as sacred. Lakshmi bestows wealth. Durga vanquishes evil. Yet since the brutal rape of Jyoti Singh in December 2012 there has been a sustained campaign by various organisations to lay the blame of this and other manifestations of sexual violence at the door of Hinduism itself. The [...]

Barry Gardiner, Labour MP for Brent North and founder of the Labour Friends of India, has defended the invitation to the politician to address MPs on “the future of modern India”. But why would he have to ‘defend’ a respected politician and someone who one day may lead the world’s largest democracy? Adam Pasternicki of [...]

The terms left and right have been appropriated, especially in India but also western universities, by Marxist academics as progressive and regressive, respectively. Hence they are not explanatory, but laudatory and condemnatory. They are also problematic in the real world. If fascism never existed, Marxists would invent it as they have done with “Hindu fascism” [...]

This is the richest and most powerful nation on earth, arguably the most successful society ever. Yet as Panorama revealed children go to school, hungry as their parents are forced to rely on free food handouts or eat rats. People live in drains literally beneath the glitzy glamour of Las Vegas . An operation for [...]

Both Hindu Forum and Hindu Council claim to be representative by virtue of the fact that they have so many Hindu temples supporting them. The number of 400 is usually touted. But how can the same temples belong to both groups? And since when was this even representative of Hindus as a whole? Does this [...]