Al Jazeera: How the BJP has come to dominate lower-caste politics

In 2014, the BJP won a landslide electoral victory, bringing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power. In March this year, the party swept to victory again in local elections across India, including in the country's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP won over three quarters of the seats on offer.

The new chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, has attributed the party's success to the prime minister's strongman image and popularity. Supporters of Modi point to his focus on economic development and growth to explain his popularity. India was the fastest-growing major economy last year, posting a GDP growth of 7 percent, compared to 6.8 percent for China. Critics, on the other hand, claim the so-called "Modi-wave" is based on an appeal to divisive Hindu majoritarian politics.  [...]

Many leading thinkers primarily view the growing power of Hindu nationalism through its encouragement of Hindu and Muslim intra-communal conflict. Yet, this ignores the much-contested place of lower-caste groups within Hindu nationalism. [...]

Tracing India's difficult and momentous turn towards Hindu nationalist politics allows us to consider an increasingly powerful paradigm at work in the world: one which twists the kaleidoscope to reveal not the messy entanglements of human history and belonging, but instead sharp divisions and monopolised spaces. 

read the article 

Haaretz: The Israeli novel about Jewish-Arab love that had author fearing for her life

Twenty years before “Geder Haya” (“Borderlife”), Israeli author Dorit Rabinyan’s novel about a romance between an Israeli Jewish woman and a Palestinian man — which was denounced by the Education Ministry, became a best-seller in Israel and will be released in English on April 25 (as “All the Rivers”) — there was “Inta Omri.” Published in 1994, it is based on a relationship that its author, the Israeli poet and writer Smadar Herzfeld, had with a Palestinian man, and it is immeasurably more powerful and revealing than Rabinyan’s pleasant, adroit, apologetic and overly literary novel. [...]

It’s likely that “Inta Omri”’s attackers didn’t read the book. While it is set in the waning days of the first intifada, the narrative soon pivots from politics to the stormy emotional tie between its two stubborn, lost, educated main characters, both of them outsiders in their respective communities. It is precisely the nonjudgmental quality of the story that makes a possible allegory for life here. In any event, the novel’s sex scenes disqualify it for study in high school, so Education Minister Naftali Bennett is free to ignore it, unlike “Borderlife.”[...]

A superficial glance at the book can be misleading. It begins with some mutual violence between the couple, which externalizes the suspicion and nationalist hostility, for example the following insulting sentences said by the woman at a café: “’What did you do?’ I shouted at the Arab, wiping my lips with my sleeve, wiping his skin from my lips. ... ‘Do you always touch Jewish girls?’ I was right on the mark. I know that I had hit him in the heart.” However, these nationalist sadomasochistic scenes fade away quickly, and the couple’s love for each other turns personal and deep, devoid of any racism and certainly of pornography, too — unless by the word “pornography” one means simply sexual relations (which are in this case very creative). And perhaps the somewhat pessimistic end also arouses objection among those who hoped for a speedy peace in those days at the start of the Oslo Accords era.

read the article 

Land of Maps: Distribution of light eye colors in Europe

see the map

Vintage Everyday: Britain in an Innocent Age: 46 Extraordinary Snapshots Document Everyday Life of Post-WWII England

The memories may have faded, but these extraordinary found photos from Martin Snelling of bygone Britain are so clear, they look as though they could have been taken yesterday.

Old-fashioned shops line streets dotted with classic 1950s and 1960s cars, couples wear their finest clothes as they enjoy an al fresco meal on their patio and children flock in their masses to church for Sunday schools...

see the photos 

Deutsche Welle: Russia drops Eurovision after Kyiv bans singer

Ukraine, the last year's Eurovision winner, is set to host the competition next month. However, the Ukrainian security services have decided to deny entry to the contestant from Russia, the 27-year-old, wheelchair-bound Yulia Samoylova. The reason, according to Kyiv, is that Samoylova toured Crimea after it was annexed by Russia in 2014.

Last week, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko reaffirmed the ban, saying his country acted consistently towards all who entered Crimea without asking Ukraine's permission. [...]

The rules of the Eurovision Song Contest ban political gestures, and the organizers said they were "deeply disappointed" by the ban. Ukraine might find itself excluded from future Eurovision events if the ban stays in power, the EBU warned.

read the article