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Did this site seriously hijack my browser's back button, so that after trying to read the article, it made me go "back" to their front page?

That's some really shady BS.

I'm angrier at whoever made your browser (for allowing sites to do it) than I am at this particular site.
It is perfectly within the bounds of what JavaScript can (and indeed should be able to) do these days, to support e.g. single page applications and smart navigation within them. Therefore, I don't fault Firefox for this, at all.
That is the dominant opinion among web developers, yes, in spite of copious evidence that it was a big mistake 20 years ago or so to mix static documents and applications-served-over-HTTPS into a single namespace (namely, the space of HTTPS URLs) and failing to give the average user any practical way to distinguish between the 2 types of "pages".

Web devs are strongly in favor of changes to web browsers that give web devs greater control over the sites that they work on even when those changes (combined with the fact that any psychopath and any irresponsible person can create a web site) worsen the experience of the average user of the web.

Hijacking of the back button is a crisp example of this trend or phenomenon, which is why I jumped into this thread.

That is normal for many Indian sites. Which is why I don't click on links that lead to any of the times group websites in my country.