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“Pappu Can’t Dance Saala” was a hit song from the 2008 Bollywood movie “Jaane Tu ya Jaane Naa”, a cute romantic comedy featuring the fresh faced Genelia D’Souza and the boy next door Imran Khan. It was also the title of another movie with the same name made in 2011. While penning these thoughts I…

It was a cold winter Beijing night. Joseph Xi and Mary Li were expecting their first baby. The ultrasound test showed that it was to be a boy, a wonder boy. So they had decided to call him Ren-Zi (pronounced Zuh), Mandarin for “Son of Man”, a title that another “wonder boy” had used 82…

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) and the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) jointly organized a Dalit Christian (DC) solidarity Sunday on 11th November. I’m not sure if the event was limited to Delhi, because it was certainly not held in my parish on that day. Nevertheless the occasion has spawned some…

The “Me Too” moment seems to have arrived in India, with long suppressed secrets of sexual harassment tumbling out of the dark recesses of memory, to shame and shock the mighty – be they journalists, actors, sportspersons or politicians. Some would have us believe that the Catholic Church in India has also experienced its Me…

In response to my earlier article “Frightening Franco Fiasco” I received a query from a major city in the south. I am reproducing it below: “The view that many priests and seminarians believe that celibacy does not require abstinence from sexual acts, but from marriage, seems quite common. Interviewing an ex-seminarian for a job not…

It is with a heavy heart that I am writing this piece. God chose St Francis of Assisi in the 13th Century, saying to him, “Go and repair my church”. Those were the Dark Ages of the Catholic Church, where power, corruption and hedonism were rampant; right up to the highest echelons, the popes themselves….

Blitz, the weekly brought out by R.K. Karanjia, had three Fs on its masthead – Free, Frank, Fearless. The blitzkrieg that has hit the Catholic Church in India over the last couple of months could verily use another set of three Fs – the Frightening Franco Fiasco. It is frightening because of the incalculable harm,…

Gay activists are ecstatic that the Supreme Court has finally struck down Sec 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), as being ultra vires of the Constitution, basic human rights, privacy and equal treatment. Why this ecstasy? Gay activists (which include homosexuals, lesbians and transgenders) had filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court,…

(A response to the article “The Shrinking of St Stephen’s” Hindustan Times 12th August 2018) Prof Ramachandra Guha is a historian and Gandhian of great standing, and I have often written to him expressing my appreciation of his writings. I also share some of my writings with him. However, I was deeply dismayed by his…

The kanwarias are in the news, for all the wrong reasons – for smashing vehicles, including a police van, disrupting traffic and causing mayhem on the roads. The police in U.P., where the vast majority of kanwarias are to be found, are hapless spectators, with senior officials showering rose petals from helicopters on the “pilgrims”….