It is the final frontier for India’s most powerful leader in decades. Narendra Modi, over his 10 years as prime minister, has made it his mission to turn a complex and diverse country of 1.4 billion people into something approaching a monolith dominated by his sweeping Hindu nationalist vision. The news media, the national legislature, […]
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Modi’s Party Doesn’t Control All of India. But He’s Working on It.
It is the final frontier for India’s most powerful leader in decades. Narendra Modi, over his 10 years as prime minister, has made it his mission to turn a complex and diverse country of 1.4 billion people into something approaching a monolith dominated by his sweeping Hindu nationalist vision. The news media, the national legislature, […]
Read MoreIndia’s 2024 Multiphase Election: What to Know
Why does this election matter? India is holding its multiphase general elections from April 19 to June 1, in a vote that will determine the political direction of the world’s most populous nation for the next five years. The usually high-turnout affair, which was formally set on Saturday, is a mammoth undertaking described as the […]
Read MoreThe Ambani Wedding Event Signifies the Rise of the Oligarch in Modi’s India
Rihanna, Mark Zuckerberg, bejeweled elephants and 5,500 drones. Those were some of the highlights of what is likely the most ostentatious “pre-wedding” ceremony the modern world has ever seen. On a long weekend in early March, members of the global elite gathered to celebrate the impending nuptials of the billionaire business titan Mukesh Ambani’s youngest […]
Read MoreData Dump Exposes Links Between Money and Politics in India
Politics in India is an expensive business, and sometimes lucrative, too. In this year’s election, parties are expected to spend more than $14 billion — as much as in the United States. But there has been little in the way of transparency for the huge sums sloshing around. On Thursday night, a rare and chaotic […]
Read MoreThe Maldives Is a Tiny Paradise. Why Are China and India Fighting Over It?
Between a few flecks of coral in the Indian Ocean, a ribbon of highway more than a mile long swoops up from the blue. Since 2018, the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge has connected this archipelago’s hyper-dense capital, Malé, and the international airport — expanded by Chinese companies — one island to the east. But China is […]
Read More‘It Is Suffocating’: A Top Liberal University Is Under Attack in India
Jawaharlal Nehru University, named for India’s first prime minister, is one of the country’s premier liberal institutions, a hothouse of strong opinions and left-leaning values whose graduates populate the upper echelons of academia and government. But to the Hindu nationalists who hold power in India, the university and others like it are dangerous dens of […]
Read MoreLights! Camera! Modi! It’s a One-Man Show on Indian Television.
The people streaming into the holy town came on an intimate quest: to be among the first to seek the blessings of a beloved god they said was returning home after 500 years. These Hindu devotees took leaves of absence from work. They ate with fellow pilgrims, slept in the cold and sipped tea at […]
Read MoreWhy India’s New Ram Temple Is So Important
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate a gigantic new temple in the Indian city of Ayodhya on Monday, the conclusion of a mostly 20th-century odyssey in which Hindu nationalists eventually tore down a centuries-old mosque that has now been replaced with a structure devoted to the Hindu deity Ram. Leading up to the temple’s consecration, […]
Read MoreModi Opens a Giant Temple, a Triumph Toward a Hindu-First India
They fanned out across the vast country, knocking on doors in the name of a cause that would redefine India. These foot soldiers and organizers, including a young Narendra Modi, collected millions of dollars to be socked away for a long fight to build a grand Hindu temple in Ayodhya, in northern India. Across 200,000 […]
Read MoreHit Men Are Easy to Find in the Movies. Real Life Is Another Story.
It’s a scene as old as celluloid: a shadowy figure named Luca Brasi or John Wick or Barry Berkman lurking in the darkness, outfitted with sinister intent and nifty weapons, effortlessly committing a murder for cash, animus or cold political calculations. Whether they’re called hit men, contract killers or assassins, figures who kill for a […]
Read MoreIndia and Maldives Trade Barbs After Modi’s Beach Visit
It started with a postcard-perfect snapshot. An image of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, lounging in a chair on a secluded white-sand beach, provoked heated words from officials in the Maldives, a tiny archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean. Indians on social media reacted with a ferocious wave of indignation, causing ripples all the way […]
Read MoreIndian Stocks Are Booming. Why Is Long-Term Investment Lagging?
India’s economy is booming. Stock prices are through the roof, among the best performing in the world. The government’s investment in airports, bridges and roads, and clean-energy infrastructure is visible almost everywhere. India’s total output, or gross domestic product, is expected to increase 6 percent this year — faster than the United States or China. […]
Read MoreIn India’s embattled news media, women are fighting to be heard
Not many outsiders come to Belarhi, a remote agricultural village in northern India. Yet during reporting trips there for the recently published series India’s Daughters, New York Times journalists were always shown great hospitality. On our first trip to the village in March 2022, my colleague Shalini Venugopal Bhagat and I arrived to find Arti […]
Read MoreSikh Americans Take Precautions After Alleged Assassination Plot
In California and New Jersey, some Sikh temples are rushing to add security cameras and hire night patrols. Bobbie Singh-Allen, the outspoken mayor of Elk Grove, Calif., said she had begun tempering her posts on social media that might be seen as critical of India. And Dr. Pritpal Singh, a Sikh American activist in California, […]
Read MoreWith Big State Victories, Modi Expands His Dominance in India
The ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tightened its grip over India’s populous northern belt, results of state elections showed Sunday, expanding its dominance of a key region ahead of general elections in which Mr. Modi is seeking a third term. The results of voting for the governments of four states, with a […]
Read MoreAlleged Plot to Kill Sikh Separatist Highlights Thorn in India’s Side
The federal indictment this week of an Indian national in an alleged murder-for-hire scheme targeting a Sikh separatist in New York threatens to damage ties between the United States and India just as the Biden administration has been courting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The charges are rooted in a decades-old dispute: the demand by […]
Read MoreA Timeline of Plots Against Sikh Activists, According to Canada and the U.S.
Federal prosecutors in the United States announced this week that they had charged an Indian national in a murder-for-hire scheme that targeted a Sikh activist in New York. The plot was foiled, they said, but it further complicated the delicate diplomatic relations between the United States, Canada and India. President Biden has sought to strengthen […]
Read MoreA Foiled Plot’s Burning Question: Why Would India Take the Risk?
In page after page of fly-on-the-wall detail, the indictment unsealed in New York this week describes a chilling plot: A criminal operative, on orders from a government official in India, tried to arrange the killing of a Sikh American on U.S. soil. As the scheme unfolded, court documents said, it grew only more brazen. When […]
Read MoreIndia Ignored Repeated Warnings Before Tunnel Trapped 41 Men
As the trapped workers came out of the under-construction road tunnel after 17 days, the happy end to a rescue effort that had riveted India set off celebrations across the country. Gone for the moment were questions about why the 41 men had been put at risk of being entombed in the tunnel in the […]
Read MoreA Big Year for India on the Global Stage Ends in Cricket Heartbreak
The stage was amply set: an acrobatic air show by Indian military planes, performances by star Bollywood singers, a light display, lots of fireworks and — talked about as the highlight — an appearance by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the vast stadium that bears his name. All India’s national cricket team, undefeated and heavily […]
Read MoreA Big Year for India on the Global Stage Ends in Cricket Heartbreak
The stage was amply set: an acrobatic air show by Indian military planes, performances by star Bollywood singers, a light display, lots of fireworks and — talked about as the highlight — an appearance by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the vast stadium that bears his name. All India’s national cricket team, undefeated and heavily […]
Read MoreIndia Is Splurging on Planes and Airports. Here’s Why.
No nation in the world is buying as many airplanes as India. Its largest airlines have ordered nearly 1,000 jets this year, committing tens of billions of dollars to a spending spree that is unparalleled in aviation. In New Delhi, Indira Gandhi International Airport will be ready for 109 million passengers next year, as it […]
Read MoreIn Modi’s India, Truth Tellers Are Now Enemies of the State
It is worth noting that in September, before the charges were filed, Ms. Roy accepted the prestigious European Essay Prize for, as the prize jury put it, her use of “the essay as a form of combat, analyzing fascism and the way it is being structured.” It is not the first time that the word […]
Read MoreA $96 Million Hindu Temple Opens Amid Accusations of Forced Labor
Hindu pilgrims walked barefoot on the marble floors of the enormous temple, examining intricate stone carvings of deities etched into the ceilings and images of musical instruments and elephants along the white walls. As they approached a large gold shrine, many gasped in wonder, having arrived at the place where they believe God resides in […]
Read MoreThe Pathways to Peace Are Getting Darker
I am fighting the feeling that there are few paths left to try. Last week, as war broke out in my home, I was in Armenia, spending hours talking to people whose own lives have been wrecked by war. In September, thousands of people from Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated enclave inside Azerbaijan, were driven out by […]
Read MoreModi’s Hindu Nationalism Stokes Tension in Indian Diaspora
Lecture halls at Canadian and American universities have become battlegrounds for critics and defenders of Hindu nationalism, punctuated by threats of violence and even death. Temples of Sikhs and Hindus in Canada and Australia have been defaced with slogans harking back to India’s timeless divisions. Parades in two North American cities have featured displays celebrating […]
Read MoreSikh Separatism Is a Nonissue in India, Except as a Political Boogeyman
During his first trip to India as Canada’s prime minister in 2018, Justin Trudeau made a visit to the northern state of Punjab, where he got a photo op in full Punjabi dress at the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion. He also got, courtesy of the Indian government, an earful of […]
Read MoreThe Murder of a Sikh Leader Could Be a Wake-Up Call
On Father’s Day this year, two heavyset men were loitering near a Sikh temple in British Columbia. Then the president of the temple, a Canadian citizen and an activist named Hardeep Singh Nijjar, stepped out and climbed into his pickup truck to drive home for dinner with his family. The two waiting men, wearing masks, […]
Read MoreBiden Is Caught Between Allies as Canada Accuses India of Assassination
A day after promising to “defend democracy,” President Biden brought up India and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday during a round of meetings at the United Nations — not to raise concerns about repression by either, but to hail them for helping establish a new economic corridor. “I think it’s a big deal,” he said. Perhaps […]
Read MoreWhat We Know About Canada’s Murder Claim Against India
On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada made the shocking accusation that government agents from India had been involved in the killing of a Sikh community leader in British Columbia in June. The allegations have widened a growing rift between Canada and India and set off a political dispute between the two already apprehensive […]
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