Veteran Indian diplomat Talmiz Ahmad, who is an authority on the Middle East, says Turkey has been bringing up Kashmir for a long time but relations were slowly warming up.

“But it helped Pakistan during its conflict with India” and that was too much for India, he said in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.

“Turkey is on a high and wants to expand its footprint to South Asia,” he said. “Pakistan brings geopolitical value to Turkey and if they get together, they will form a formidable alliance.”

Even so, Ahmad said, he is a strong believer in diplomacy and he felt that India should continue on the diplomatic path. “Its important also to talk to those who disagree with you,” he said.

Discussing India’s growing ties in the Gulf countries, Ahmad, who was Ambassador to UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia, (twice), said that “our ties go back over a millennia” and “India should be seen to be “as a role player in the security scenario in the region.” “We should be an influencer in the Gulf region.”

With the election of a new prime minister in Canada, there are hopes that relations between India and Canada will improve. Under Justin Trudeau, the previous one, ties had plummeted after he made allegations that India had a role in the killing of a Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

“Trudeau had five Sikhs in his cabinet and was responding to diaspora politics,” says veteran journalist Daniel Lak in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia. Lak was with Al Jazeera as the US and Canada correspondent and earlier had served in India, Pakistan and Nepal as a BBC correspondent.

He says Sikhs have been coming to Canada for over a century and most of them are here to make a life for themselves rather than get involved in what he calls ‘diaspora politics’. “They are two percent of the Canadian population and have established themselves in several sectors including transportation."

“I get India’s anger,” he says, at the Indian insistence that supporters of Khalistan be restrained.

The new prime minister will also at some stage have to manage this part of the relationship, but “he is a technocrat” and Canada will want to increase trading links across the world, including with countries like India, especially after the US President Donald Trump threatening to make Canada the 51st state.

The discussion includes issues like the loss of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and immigration and from India.

The killing of 26 tourists in Pahalgam on April 23 came as a ‘shock’, because never before had terrorists targeted tourists, says Anuradha Bhasin, an astute observer of events in the Union Territory.

It's not that terrorism had disappeared after the removal of Article 370 in 2019, as the Modi government constantly claimed, Bhasin said in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.

The reaction among ordinary Kashmiris was one of grief, she said. “They came out to help, as they have on every occasion earlier – that is Kashmiriyat.”

But, she said, the constant pushing of the “tourism narrative” to show things were normal was creating “alienation” among the locals. It hid the “ugliness of the Kashmiris being economically disempowered—new land laws, allowing outsiders to bid for contracts” were causing resentment, she said. “There was a complete erasure of what is happening in Kashmiris.”

Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar went “much beyond his Constitutional Role as the Presiding Officer of the Rajya Sabha” when he spoke against the Supreme Court. “His language was intemperate,” says Supreme Court Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.

“The conjecture is that he is auditioning for a higher role,” Hegde said.

Pointing to the unseemly comments of BJP MP Nishikant Dubey against the Chief Justice of India, and also the social media campaign attacking the CJI, Hegde said it all seemed like a “concentrated attack”.

“Indian democracy is not in a healthy position,” he said, and the situation was more like an “elected autocracy”. There were occasions in the 1970s when the judges were criticised by the executive but “the language was never so crass” as now.

Journalist and author Kunal Purohit began monitoring Hindutva WhatsApp groups several years ago and saw how they disseminated propaganda. “The things people were then scared to speak openly are now all around us,” he says to Sidharth Bhatia in a podcast discussion.

Purohit, who wrote the book H-Pop about songs spreading hate, says he finds those songs being played all over the place. He followed Ram Navami processions in Mumbai recently where marchers hurled the most obscene messages openly towards Muslims. The police stood by mutely. The songs of hate were being played openly and loudly.

His social media posts forced the police to file FIRs against the organisers of the march, but he says “the genie is out of the bottle”. Such demonstrations rarely took place in Mumbai even a few years ago.

“Basically what was happening in Uttar Pradesh has now come to Mumbai,” he feels.

The Waqf (Amendment) Bill that has now come into force will effectively take control of any Waqf (Charity) property from the Muslim community wherever there is a dispute.

“For example, Sambal mosque will be affected and will now come under the control of the Archeological society of India,” explains Shadan Farasat, senior advocate in the Supreme Court in this podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia. “It could be very problematic going forward” because in any dispute arising with a government agency, the community is bound to lose control of the Waqf property, he says.

“From the community’s perspective, it is important to use the existing Waqf properties well.” At the same time, it should be challenged in the courts. “Some provisions are unconstitutional.”

He says the passing of the bill will have political implications—“certainly there will be an impact in Bihar, where elections are due later this year.” The Janata Dal (United) of Nitish Kumar, a part of the coalition with the BJP, had voted in the Bill’s support.

Academic and commentator Dr Ashok Swain of Uppsala University in Sweden is in the unique position of having his Overseas Citizen of India status cancelled twice by the Indian government. The government did not give any public reason for doing so but said it had “sensitive information” which it submitted to the courts when Swain challenged the decision. On both occasions the courts overturned it. “I have great faith in the Indian judiciary,” Swain told Sidharth Bhatia in a podcast decision.

Swain’s writings and tweets have been sharply critical of the Modi government. Now his X account is ‘withheld' in India and he says all his tweets before December 2024 have vanished.

“I got a lot of threats of a serious nature” and petitions to the university, but his colleagues have been very supportive. “OCIs of many academics have been targeted.” However, he insisted he did not want to indulge in “victimhood”.

Plans to develop the Great Nicobar island, initiated by the Niti Aayog, have alarmed scientists and activists alike. A massive project, involving a transhipment terminal, port, a township, an airport and more, has been made. It is estimated to cost over Rs 70,000 crore.

Pankaj Sekhsaria, who has been associated with the islands for over three decades says on every front – environmental, geological and social – the project will ruin the islands. “The township is for accommodating 3.5 lakhs people: residents, tourists, etc.,” he tells Sidharth Bhatia in this podcast.

“A reserved forest has been denotified – its not easy to cut down a forest,” he says. He lists the damage to the local flora and fauna. “The beaches there are the nesting place for the great leatherback turtle – that will be finished."