Weekend Reads

  1. In all the analysis of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second massive election victory, one aspect has not been properly examined, writes Krishna Prasad in the Hindu: “The insidious role some in the media played in conditioning minds, building myths, deflecting attention, normalising the abnormal, and poisoning the pool”.
  2. “[Girish] Karnad belonged to a generation who grew up in a time when India’sliterary and cultural traditions showed significantly more fluidity across linguistic lines, with its exponents showing a familiarity with cultural expressions across languages,” writes Karthik Malli, in Newslaundry.
  3. Srinivas Kodali in the Wire recounts how the private sector, after being kept out of the Aadhaar ecosystem by the Supreme Court verdict last year, has slowly regained access – a situation that seemed to be pre-determined, no matter what the court would decide.
  4. TikTok, the social media network that has made stars out of ordinary folks, is the connective tissue between two murders that shook Delhi, finds Snigdha Poonam in the Hindustan Times.
  5. Osman Samiuddin in Cricinfo tells us what it’s like to watch both Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, two of the best batsmen in men’s cricket: “Rohit a rougher, more organic presence, a man who accepts mornings aren’t always great; Kohli more manicured, born ready and waiting, to own the day, morning, afternoon or evening. Kohli’s cheeks and jaw are a sculptor’s dream; Rohit’s cheeks are like my ten-month-old’s.”
  6. “To all of us alive in this moment – with the awareness, or in denial, of what feels like an apocalypse unfolding in slow motion –Ghosh’s book is just such a precious gift, a call for a new awakening,” writes Somak Ghoshal in Mint about Amitav Ghosh’s new book, Gun Island.
  7. Meera Srinivasan in the Hindu tells us of young people in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, who have “chosen social media platforms to offer a new lens to look at the city, providing a view that goes beyond the scars of the war”.
  8. Gandhara brings us the disturbing news that “Pakistani political discussions are reverberating with talk of hanging 5,000 people to cleanse the country of opposition”.
  9. Catherine Byaruhanga of the BBC reports on witnesses saying that a unit of Sudan’s security forces raped women as they dispersed pro-democracy protestors outside the military headquarters.
  10. An investigation by Reveal’s Will Carless and Michael Corey found that hundreds of active-duty and retired law enforcement officials from across the US are “members of Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government militia groups on Facebook”.