In spite of the Gods

With liberalism in retreat, India is beginning to seem more a country marching resolutely backwards

Is it anti-national to bring disrepute to a country? The phrase is so overused that I have misgivings about typing it. Despite believing that countries as large as India and with as liberal a post-colonial Constitution as ours should only treat acts of violence against a state as seditious, the cow vigilantes in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and the lawmakers who seek to rationalise their actions have certainly gone a long way to blackening the image of the country. As recently as a week ago, Rajasthan’s Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria explained the murder of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan near