Article 14 came to embody the public demand for freedom, dignity and "bread". It commits the state through the instrument of development planning to work towards social justice, solidarity, equitable distribution, consumer rights and workers' rights. Moreover, it promises to "divide development costs between capital and labour" as well as equal sharing of revenue.

He is one of the best scientists Pakistan has produced. Apart from being a scientist and an academician, Hoodbhoy is an environmentalist and social activist and regularly writes on social, cultural and environmental issues. He is seen in Pakistan as a crusader for the cause of scientific rationality in a society beleaguered by religious obscurantism, fundamentalism and orthodox religious thought.

If Dr Qadri’s long march materialises, the chances are that a crisis will be precipitated to draw the military into the fray. The government’s reaction could be one cause. Terrorist attacks on the procession could draw blood and create a law and order problem. Imran Khan and other oppositionists including pro- military religious groups and organisations could join hands with Dr Qadri to exploit the occasion to destabilise the government and engineer its ouster.

Kerry’s weakness is that, like Hillary Clinton, he lacks a close personal relationship with Obama. To understand the benefits of being a presidential confidante, think about the George W. Bush administration. Colin Powell was a distinguished, experienced soldier, but he couldn’t represent the president with the same authority as his successor, Condoleezza Rice, who had Bush’s ear.

Why are so many Muslims willing to kill themselves and others? It is an expression of cultural despair. Muslim civilization is disintegrating under the onset of modernity, as I argued in my 2011 book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too). The encroaching sense of social death motivates the most horrific sort of acts.

Where do we go from here? Bearing in mind Modi's plans for 2014, we must alert Muslims of other states, in particular Bihar, UP, West Bengal and Assam. These four states have Muslim populations of between 20 % to 30 %. The BJP is weak in these states. The communal polarisation will not be so easy as it is in Gujarat, especially as there are powerful third parties that seek Muslim votes. These four states send about 200 Lok Sabha members, as against 26 from Gujarat.

Another day, another tragic massacre in the United States. As parents of the 20 children killed in Newton, Connecticut, struggle to come to terms with their agonising loss, voices are being raised for tighter gun controls. But as we all know, this is a recurring theme: each time some nut goes on a shooting spree, newspaper editorials call for tightening up gun laws.

“No set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.” So said President Obama in words of comfort in Newtown. The president was right to speak of evil, but mistaken when he called the massacre “senseless.” For this was a premeditated and purposeful act of mass murder, and the devil that did it knew exactly what he was doing and why.

“We want schools, hospitals, factories and mills so that the unemployed people get jobs,” said Mohammad Aminullah Khan, 22 years old, who drives a small van for a living. “We want a peaceful resolution to this dispute.” As they have for centuries, bearded Sadhus wander in small groups through town. So do pilgrims, who arrive in throngs for festivals. At the bus depot, sheets of saffron – a colour considered holy in Hinduism — hang from buses packed with the aged. Women in saris visit street-side stalls full of the paraphernalia of devotion: small food for offering and sacred threads, bells, and lamps. Cows lope and monkeys scamper through the crowds....

In its judgment, the Supreme Court couldn’t resist a commentary on what happened on the day of the Babri Masjid’s demolition. The Hindu community must, it said, “bear the cross on its chest for the misdeed of the miscreants reasonably suspected to belong to their religious fold.” In early 1995, the frontlines of the dispute shifted back to the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. The suits claiming title to the site were bundled together to be part of the same case. On the Muslim side, there was the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Board of Waqfs, which was responsible for maintaining Muslim holy sites, and six individual co-plaintiffs from Ayodhya and neighbouring areas....

A fresh government was installed in November 1990 with a new prime minister, Chandra Shekhar Singh. He was a blunt-spoken socialist. This time, the government was supported by the Congress party, led by Rajiv Gandhi. The new prime minister tried, again, to find a solution to the Ayodhya dispute. He asked Subodh Kant Sahai, then minister of state in the home ministry, to lead discussions with Hindu and Muslim representatives, eight from each side. Three chief ministers – of Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh – participated to smooth tensions....

Our story begins in 1949; two years after India became an independent nation following centuries of rule by Mughal emperors and then the British. What happened back then in the dead of night in a mosque in a northern Indian town came to define the new nation, and continues to shape the world’s largest democracy today. The legal and political drama that ensued, spanning six decades, has loomed large in the terms of five prime ministers. It has made and broken political careers, exposed the limits of the law in grappling with matters of faith, and led to violence that killed thousands. And, 20 years ago this week, Ayodhya was the scene of one of the worst incidents of inter-religious brutality in India’s history....

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s prime minister, was greatly perturbed by an idol of Lord Ram being placed in a mosque. Polished, intellectual and sceptical of religion, Nehru was trying to propel the nation into an era of modern socialism and scientific thinking. But the events in Ayodhya forced him to grapple anew with the centuries-long friction between Hindus and Muslims – and to try to counter the spreading belief that a deity had materialized in the dead of night. “I am disturbed at developments at Ayodhya,” Nehru said in a telegram on Dec. 26, 1949, to Govind Ballabh Pant, chief minister of United Provinces, which roughly included what is now the state of Uttar Pradesh....

It started in 1981 in Meenakshipuram, an unremarkable village deep in the countryside of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, more than 2,000 kilometres from Ayodhya. The village hit the national news when its low-caste Hindus – about 400 families, villagers say — converted, en masse, to Islam. “We became Muslims to become equal,” said 65-year-old N. Hidayathullah, one of the converts, in an interview on the porch of his modest home, as a herd of goats wandered by. The families had felt ill-treated by local upper-caste Hindus, he said. “Nobody told us to convert; it was our desire to be treated with respect,” he added.....

From illegal detentions to wrong convictions, India’s terror prosecution is in dire need of attitudinal overhaul. Only those condemned to await their own deaths will know what it is to be suddenly blessed with the elixir of life. On November 22, two Kashmiri men found themselves lifted out of the darkness of their death row cells into light, life and liberty after the Delhi High Court set aside their convictions....