'Dog' days

Amid the controversy over the Centre's crackdown on students of Jawaharlal Nehru University and the arrest of its student union president Kanhaiya Kumar over allegations of sedition last week, bestselling author Chetan Bhagat tweeted on Monday, "Every dog that barks need not be arrested. What they did was wrong, but sedition charges (are a) bit too much #JNU." Last year, Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh had said the government couldn't be blamed "if somebody throws a stone at a dog" as he sought to dismiss the killing of two Dalit children in a Haryana village as an isolated incident. In an interview to Reuters in 2013, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister, used the analogy of a puppy to describe his pain, when asked about the deaths during the 2002 Godhra riots.