Weekend Reads

  • In the Times of India, Sadanand Dhume points out the trouble with Union minister Sushma Swaraj: To be a world power that’s taken seriously India needs a superior foreign minister.
  • Appealing to the court of public opinion is a dangerous precedent, not to be resorted to easily, warns Sanjay R Hegde in the Indian Express. Yet, by coming out in public, what the four dissenting Supreme Court judges have done is destroyed the illusion that the judiciary decided cases in an objective manner only on the law. It is now clear that the personal opinions of the judge presiding over the case plays a significant part.
  • Four individual judges spoke out in the cause of institutional integrity on Friday. We are all in their debt, writes Mukul Kesavan in the Telegraph.
  • Data protection legislation should be about protecting people, not innovation, writes Apar Gupta in the Hindu.
  • United States president Donald Trump’s eruptions against Pakistan acknowledge a longstanding historical reality, argues Husain Haqqani in the American Interest: for all practical purposes, Pakistan and the United States are not allies.
  • Writing in the Economic and Political Weekly, Anagha Ingole explains what Bhima Koregaon means in the times of Hindutva.
  • The combined force of Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan has shifted Tamil politics from the ideological to the personal, writes Vaasanthi in Open.
  • The United State’s nuclear policy review loosens constraints on the use of nuclear weapons. We should all be worried, argue Robert Anderson and Martin J Sherwin in the Guardian.
  • UK prime minister during World War II Winston Churchill was no hero – he was a vile racist fanatical about violence and fiercely supportive of imperialism, writes Richard Seymour in the Jacobin.
  • Clothes can be forms of thought as articulate as a poem or equation. Why then does philosophy like to dress them down, asks Shahidha Bari in Aeon.
  • In Futurism, Kristin Houser explains how scientists are rethinking the very nature of space and time.

Giggle

Subscribe to “The Daily Fix” by either downloading Scroll’s Android app or opting for it to be delivered to your mailbox. For the rest of the day’s headlines do click here.

If you have any concerns about our coverage of particular issues, please write to the Readers’ Editor at readerseditor@scroll.in