The poverty of republican imagination

The divisive 2015 constitution has almost foreclosed any chance of further reforming society and polity.

Controversial but defiant , author Salman Rushdie is a gritty survivor. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sued him for libel; her son and successor Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi banned his book, and so did the Pakistani military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq with his other work ; the Iranian Ayatollah issued a fatwa calling Muslims to kill him, and he was grievously stabbed on the stage of a public programme in New York in August last year.