The Wire Talks

“The youth movement consisted of many who were supporters of this government and that is significant”, says Tariq Ali, the icon of protest movements in the 1960s and after.

“This is not a movement orchestrated by China, or Pakistan, or internal opposition parties. This is a movement that has risen from below,” he said in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.

Ali, apart from being a campaigner and activist...

The sudden takedown of the film Satluj from an OTT platform within 48 hours of release sparked a lot of discussion. The film was made four years ago and the censors had asked for 127 cuts which the director Honey Trehan refused. Once it was pulled down, it was distributed all over Punjab for free for audiences to watch.

“I'm quite surprised at the way the government has behaved in the whole thing”, veteran journalist Ka...

Actor and activist Shabana Azmi was among those who joined the protestors at Jantar Mantar and says she saw “hope and anger” among them. “I and Javed saab (Javed Akhtar) wrote a letter directly to the prime minister appealing initiate a dialogue with the students. We got an acknowledgement” but nothing else, so she joined the protests.

In a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia, Azmi said the students had i...

Congress leader Salman Khurshid, was among those who attended the funeral of Ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran in early July. He was invited personally and was also representing the Congress party.

“I saw a lot of resilience and confidence in Iran. There was no sense of victimhood,” he said to Sidharth Bhatia in a discussion.

“There weren’t policemen everywhere. It looked like very relaxed, but an extremely disci...

A new book, Indian Caliphate: Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Princes floats the tantalising possibility that the Nizam of Hyderabad’s dynasty came close to becoming the Caliphs in the 20th century.

“With the wealth of the Asaf Jahi dynasty, Mukarram Jha, the son, the grandson of the last Ottoman caliph, and the grandson of the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad, when he became the Nizam, he could then have claimed the title...

The new report by the UN appointed Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has revealed shocking details about Israeli attacks on Gaza and specifically the torture and killings of Palestinian children.

Several instances of children being shot, tortured and sexually abused have been recorded in the report. “This includes a girl who was stripped. So, you know, this public shaming, we call it public nudity. ...

When three Indian nations on neutral merchant ships were killed in attacks by the US forces at the Strait of Hormuz, it created an uproar in India. The Indian government called the US Charge d’Affaire, and PM Modi mentioned it to US President Trump. But was it enough? Admiral Arun Prakash, former Naval chief of staff and now a commentator, does not think so. “Mr Trump is not just an unpredictable person. He can be quite...

The definition of obesity has changed. Even those who look slim, without a big belly, may be obese. And this leads to many other health problems. The definition now includes a waist circumference of “about 80 cms for females and 90 centimetres for males, and this correlates with the amount of fat in your vital organs,” said Dr Aabha Nagral, who is, Director of Gastroenterology at Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai and also runs ...

Joe Sacco is An internationally known cartoonist journalist famous for his books on Palestine and Gaza. His first book on India — The Once and Future Riot — was published last year, about the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 between Jats and Muslims that ended in the death of 60 people and the displacement of 60000, mainly Muslims. The book was set to be sold from August onwards, but last week, the distributors Penguin Rando...

India is extremely hot right now. Recently, it was reported that 50 of the world’s hottest cities in the world were in India. The media calls it a “heat wave.” This is only going to continue and get worse, says Amita Baviskar, Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University.

“We're going to see many, many more deaths of workers on building sites… We're talking a...

Crucial elections will take place in West Bengal in two phases on April 23 and 29. Mamata Bannerjee’s Trinamool Congress has to fight anti-incumbency, because it has been in power since 2011, and the main challenger the Bharatiya Janata Party sees its best opportunity to win the state. This time, the Special Intensive Revision ordered by the Election Commission has also complicated matters since over 90 lakh voters have been ...

The recent proposed amendments to IT rules inviting public comments has been explained by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as just procedural but this is not the case. Activists say that if passed, the new rules will further tighten censorship of online content. Rules were already there and takedown orders were being issued in large numbers, but now it will further expand to censor not just publications but al...

With the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) picking up immigrants especially brown looking people, and even deporting them, a climate of fear has built up among the Indian community, says Sravya Tadepalli. “Indians are the third most undocumented community in America,” says Tadepalli, deputy executive director of Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR). “Among Indians there is a perception that we are all here legal...

Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam have been in prison for the last five years. Their bail has been denied repeatedly. Last week their five colleagues, also arrested in the Delhi riot case of 2020, were granted bail. Why haven’t they?

Lawyer Sarim Naved, who fights both civil and criminal cases, analyses this in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia. While bail not jail is a general principle, “the courts have a lot of ...

The strong statements by President Trump against India are echoed by the growing anti-Indian sentiment in parts of the country. No longer are Indians viewed as the model minority — well educated, successful, tax-paying members of the US. Instead, they are rousing the anger of local communities. Some of the traits which are not very well liked, says journalist and author Salil Tripathi who lives in the US, “such as noisy...

In Seema Says, this week, The Wire’s Editor, Seema Chishti discusses the reasons behind the United States’ attack on Venezuela and India’s muted response to the flagrant violation of international law. She also discusses how the strained ties between Bangladesh and India following India not allowing Bangladesh cricketer, Mustafizur Rehman for KKR in the IPL have got more strained. In a discussion with Elisha Verma...

Mumbai’s cuisine has been shaped by its migrants, not just from other parts of India but also from different countries.

“Irani food, for example, is not available in such abundance in other cities,” says Pronoti Datta, in this podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia. Datta’s new book In the Beginning There was Bombay Duck, a Food History of Mumbai, details the various cuisines brought by the city’s ...

Thirty years ago, Saeed Akhtar Mirza made his final feature film, Naseem, about an aging Urdu poet, played by Kaifi Azmi, and set in the days preceding the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The film opened with a title card which said, “That one act of demolition wrote the epitaph of an age that has passed, perhaps never to return!”

“The Babri Masjid epitomised the final collapse, you know, of an idea of India, of a...

India’s left parties are no longer as influential as they used to be. In her new book, Comrades and Comebacks: The Battle of the Left to Win the Indian Mind, Saira Shah Halim, CPI(M) candidate in the 2024 elections, analyses the reasons for this and suggests the way forward.

“There have been strategic decisions that went wrong, but morally the Left has never made a mistake,” she said in a podcast conversation wit...