Blog - Sagarika Ghose

April 14, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Cow politics: Mahatma’s India vs Bhagwat’s Hindu Rashtra

There are many joys of living in Goa, but its gastronomic pluralism is easily one of the tiny state’s biggest attractions. On the day that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat...

April 10, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

TV news is in a crisis: Chapalgaonkar memorial lecture

Dear friends, members of the Chapalgaonkar family and fellow journalists of Pune, It is a great honour for me to be speaking at the Venkatesh Chapalgaonkar Memorial Lecture here...

March 30, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

When ‘fringe’ becomes Mainstream: Hindu vote bank has arrived

One of the more intriguing narratives being spun after the appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the new Uttar Pradesh chief minister is to liken his rise to Narendra Modi....

March 28, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Blog

Thank god for cricket

There must be a world beyond Yogi Adityanath I keep telling myself. For the last week, television has been in a trance with a politician who we once consciously...

March 19, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Blog

The Rise of the Yogi: the Mask is Off

The first time I met Yogi Adityanath was in his bastion of Gorakhpur ahead of the 1999 general elections. It was only the youthful Yogi’s second parliament election and...

March 17, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Can opposition take on Modi in 2019?

In the aftermath of the 2014 general election debacle, I asked a senior Congressman how his party would now battle the Narendra Modi juggernaut. “Not to worry, we have...

March 13, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Blog

Goa Gone with ‘Money-pur’

So, the BJP is set to form the government in Manipur and Goa, adding two more states to its kitty. In both states the pattern is disturbingly similar: a...

March 12, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Modi 24 X 7, 365 days

In the final leg of the 2014 general elections, Narendra Modi dramatically announced in a rally, “Yeh dil maange more”. It was a quintessential Modi soundbite: the BJP’s internal...

March 2, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Lotus could bloom in UP

Predicting the outcome of an Uttar Pradesh election can be injurious to health. In 1993, extensively covering a UP election for the first time, when my editor asked me...

February 28, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Blog

Oh, to be 21 again

A young woman spoke out against the politics of hate, on friendship with Pakistan, on seeking peace not war. Within minutes she was attacked by the soldiers of nationalism....