The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.
Essential HuffPost
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday ripped into the Opposition for not allowing Parliament to function, but he failed to address the burning questions around the suicide of Rohith Vemula and the Jawaharlal Nehru University row.
An ex-ABVP leader who quit following the JNU row has brutally criticised his ex-party and its parent party, the BJP. He addressed a gathering in JNU, saying he didn't want BJP's brand of "nationalism".
The claims of an 18-year-old girl from West Bengal to have been offered a fellowship in NASA are now in a cloud of doubt after NASA told HuffPost India that no such scholarship offer has been extended to her.
A group of Hindus in America are fighting hard to ensure Trump becomes the next President to 'make America great again'.
Ekta Kapoor has explained why Hindi television will not stop airing regressive nonsense — she has apparently "tried" to make progressive shows and now has come to terms with the "fact" that it won't work.
Main News
Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar gave an electrifying speech after being released on bail on Thursday night, claiming that the attack on JNU was "planned". "It is not azadi (freedom) from India, it is azadi in India [we want]... from the corrupt practices that are going on inside the country," he said. Watch the full speech here.
Historian Sheldon Pollock will continue to be at the board of the Murty Classical library, Rohan Murty, the son of Infosys founder Narayana Murthy, has said. He gave a scathing response to silence detractors who had petitioned for Pollock's removal.
A 22-year-old man has died In Madhya Pradesh after police allegedly stayed busy arranging for chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's convoy, even as the man lay writhing in pain after an accident near the state assembly.
With an eye on easy mobility in the highly convoluted Bengaluru traffic, Uber and Ola both launched bike taxis, although the latter's services are cheaper by a rupee.
Off The Front Page
A 77-year-old man from Rajasthan is appearing for the class 10 board exams for the 47th time — and hopes to finally pass it this time. He first appeared for the exam in 1968 but has failed some subjects every time.
Five tourists fell off a cliff in Goa after their attempt to click selfies went horribly wrong. The women tourists, who are in their late 20s, are recuperating.
Mamata Banerjee's rebranding of a street in Kolkata to honour Satyajit Ray did not go as planned — despite her best intentions, she seems to have goofed up naming the street.
Perhaps it's the season of mix-ups by state governments. A Gujarat government website has described celebrated military leader Sam Manekshaw as a sportsman, and Lord Krishna as a literature specialist.
Opinion
The secularist discourse on the RSS suffers from an infantile disorder, writes Rakesh Sinha in The Indian Express. This is "because of the empirically wrong premise that the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha constituted a monolithic Hindutva movement during the colonial period ...The discourse on the RSS needs a serious empirical correction."
Smriti Irani may need to consider a course correction, writes Rajdeep Sardesai in The Hindustan Times: "The HRD ministry should facilitate open dialogue, not become a space for 'culture wars' or for settling scores with ideological 'enemies'. Public speaking is Irani’s great asset, but governance can also be done in prose, not always in high-decibel poetry."
Are there limits to academic freedom, asks Partha Chatterjee in The Telegraph: "The absurdity of bringing sedition charges for speech uttered inside a university is so egregious that it defies comprehension. Are we to accept that the present boundaries of the Indian nation state cannot be critically examined in the classroom or seminar?"
US is changing, and it can’t be taken for granted, writes C. Raja Mohan in The Indian Express: "Those of us outside America must ignore the elite condescension towards Trump and appreciate that his advance reflects an unprecedented churn in American politics... emerging powers like India must prepare for larger regional and international responsibilities in the economic and security domains."
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