Are you honest, boy? Then be not spendthrift of your honesty, But keep it to yourself; in Padua Men think that honesty is ostentatious, so It is not of the fashion. – The Duchess of Padua, Oscar Wilde. Sedated by the ease with which power and effortless money is … Read More
We need a new grammar of ethics in journalism and governance to understand recent developments in both. When the Tehelka.com expose` broke out, one could not imagine it would hog headlines for so long, or that it would throw up as many questions about journalistic credibility as about the calibre … Read More
The most distasteful aspect of Taliban’s military offensive against the Bamiyan Buddhas and other pre-Islamic relics in Afghanistan is the ill-disguised glee of our predatory radical secularists who have worked overtime to subvert the significance of this civilizational assault and provide an alibi to its perpetrators. Delighted at this unexpected … Read More
It is truly ironical that Dr. Farooq Abdullah, variously berated as a playboy and non-resident politician, should have emerged as the principal proponent of India’s civilizational ethos. In a significant, though unfortunately largely ignored statement last week, the Chief Minister offered to abrogate the contentious Article 370 which confers special … Read More
It is a sad commentary on this country’s sense of public accountability and political morality that over two weeks after Gujarat’s apocalyptic earthquake, the effete and incompetent Keshubhai Patel continues as Chief Minister. National and international relief and rescue teams including ordinary citizens, the army, voluntary organizations, media and visiting … Read More
Two events compete compellingly for attention on the anniversary of the Republic: the lustrelessness of the political elite, and the sheer vibrancy of the millions celebrating the millennium’s first Kumbh with a dignity and fervour that invests the sannatan dharma with its eternal flavour and affirms the nation’s civilizational ethos. … Read More
Amartya Sen’s ill-conceived decision to lend the glamour of his Nobel Prize to bolster the vested interests of Leftist historians and politicians at the recent Indian History Congress in Calcutta, served only to underline the sheer vacuity, falsity, and inevitable collapse of the Red-tinted narrative. Nor could the presence of … Read More
It would be churlish to deny ISI credit for the speed and skill with which it has encircled India with hostile bases and virtually paralyzed it from within. The depth of ISI penetration, its stupendous network of allies and informers, and the sheer audacity with which it strikes in the … Read More
By a cruel irony, India’s greatest woman leader, the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, has become a yardstick for the denial of justice to women. Invoking the criteria of the “rarest of rare crimes,” the Supreme Court recently commuted the Delhi High Court’s death sentence on a man who had … Read More
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s current offer of a unilateral ceasefire in Kashmir has so drastically and qualitatively altered the ground reality against India that one cannot but fear that the countdown to the formal annexation of the state by Pakistan has begun. Unless discerning citizens, political scientists, strategic analysts, … Read More
