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Did Periyar call for a genocide of Brahmins ? KARTHICK RAM MANOHARAN  Mar 29, 2024 https://frontline.thehindu.com/politics/periyar-genocide-brahmins-tm-krishna-sangita-kalanidhi-music-academy-madras-carnatic/article67997754.ece
In hierarchical societies, reformers challenge the status quo with provocative and uncivil speech. Accusing them of hate speech is ill-intentioned.

Hate speech and offensive speech are ruptures in civility. But, importantly, both are not the same...

In an important chapter on hate speech in his book Offend, Shock, or Disturb (2018), Gautam Bhatia writes: “Hate speech legislation is constituted upon the understanding that words can have consequences, that words cannot be separated from broader practices of subordination and inequality in divided societies, and that words can actually impede equal enjoyment of rights, and equal access to social and physical infrastructure”

For example, statements like “white people are racists” and “Black people have criminal tendencies” both rely on generalisations. Both could be legitimately considered offensive. But in racially hierarchical societies where whites enjoy disproportionate social, political, and economic privileges, the first statement is extremely unlikely to cause actual grievous collective harm, while the latter can actually affect the progress of Black people. The latter can be said to constitute hate speech.

Civility has its advantages because often it is the right wing that makes optimal use of the collapse of civility. We can and must insist on civility, but this should not blind one to the difference between uncivil speech from dominant forces and those representing subaltern interests. The former instigates and sustains violence in society; the latter, as provocative as it may be, is a comment on inequalities in society. The use of offensive speech in social justice movements could be hurtful, but it compels a rethinking of society; hate speech, entrenched in dominance, stifles thought, including civil dialogues.

The totalitarian project behind the electoral bonds scheme https://frontline.thehindu.com/politics/bjp-modi-electoral-bond-scheme-truth-hindu-rashtra/article68001490.ece 
.  Mar 29, 2024 PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA,ABIR DASGUPTA Beyond trade-offs and extortion, the scheme goes to the very heart of the Sangh Parivar’s long-term goal of an ideological dictatorship

Transparency in political finance requires transparency on both sides—fund-raising and expenditure. These structural features are barriers to transparency at both ends. ..Transparency as a lens and a goal, however laudable, is not a political principle in itself. It cannot be disconnected from the ideological. This is where it is necessary to return to the larger political project within which the electoral bonds scheme was implemented...

when the government brought in the electoral bonds scheme, the BJP was already far outstripping the other parties in donations: so what was the need for the scheme? The answer to this question lies in the form of society and polity that the Sangh Parivar’s wider project seeks to create. That society features a totalitarian and authoritarian state, with a permanently mobilised para-state, primed to the over-riding priorities of its ideological project. This system oversees every individual’s life, in as granular detail as it is able to, and it relies on people to act as its enforcers, whether out of belief or fear. Virtually no personal choice remains in that society, every person’s life and mission is to serve the national project. That state brooks no form of independent motivation in any institution or individual in the public sphere (including anyone who might donate funds) that does not adhere to its political project and priorities. It is inconceivable for any committed individual, association, or company, to not contribute to the national project, whether monetarily or otherwise—it is everyone’s civic and national duty.

How did Future Gaming & Hotel Services pay for its electoral bonds  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiLt0Lgelyg Mar 29, 2024
Ever since news came out that Future Gaming & Hotel Services was the largest purchaser of electoral bonds, questions arose about how a company with such small profits could afford to buy large amounts of bonds. An investigation into its financials, and the working of the lottery business, lends a lot of insight, Deputy Editor TCA Sharad Raghavan finds.