India’s Festival of Lights — is celebrated by Hindus worldwide, and often by Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, too. The holiday is increasingly popular in the United States, where the traditional diya (clay lamp) symbolizing the triumph of good over evil is seen from coast to coast.

Billed as “portraying a positive image of Pakistan”, the conference in Lahore leaned on the side of propaganda — to drum beat the need of promoting the soft image of the country. In the past many years, since the full-blown terrorist activity started in the country, there has been a parallel drive launched especially from the government or the establishment for stressing upon a softer image of the country.

Mr Modi is projecting India to the world as a civilisational entity with accumulated wisdom of millennia that is the solution to today’s global crises. Mr Modi showcases an India that is a microcosm of the world, a broad multicultural platform and a moral force.

Shahzia Sikander and Jim Shaw are two artists who keep accounts of the visual tropes that faith-based systems employ to disseminate, legislate and perpetuate the cultural codes prescribing and proscribing human behavior, yet react to these systems by breaking up the prescribed regiments that religious imagery imposes.

The outcome of India's national election — a resounding triumph for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party — has put the United States in an awkward position. The BJP's Narendra Modi will soon be India's prime minister. In 2005, Washington revoked his U.S. visa, citing a law banning visits by foreign officials responsible for egregious violations of religious freedom. 

Mohammad Amin Pandith, a smallholder and father-of-three from Indian-controlled Kashmir, was lured from his home at night by a man in army uniform, dragged along a potholed lane and shot in the back of the head.

Despite offering a live demonstration of Bollywood’s reach and soft power, Senecal is not the typical Haitian when it comes to knowledge about India. Here’s another story that illustrates just how distant and unknowable India is for Haiti even as New Delhi tries to help it recover from a massive earthquake that practically flattened Port-au-Prince three years ago.