Balochistan: Return of the Great Game

In a move that would have stunned imperial hegemons such as Winston Churchill and Olaf Caroe, Conservative Party leader Bob Blackman, on 23 March 2017 tabled Early day motion 1107 condemning Pakistan’s annexation of Gilgit-Baltistan as its Fifth Frontier. On 25 March 2017, the British Parliament passed a motion condemning … Read More

Enter Muslim voter; Exit Muslim veto

  The Uttar Pradesh assembly election grabbed national and even international eyeballs because of the unprecedented victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which its opponents had hoped to deflate in the run up to the general elections of 2019. But its most spectacular outcome was the eclipse of the ‘Muslim … Read More

Bells toll for Dynasty, Upstarts, and Media

  UP verdict shows that media never got it so wrong, and dynastic successions are not a given any more Some elections become defining moments in history. The recent polls in five States, viz., Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur, were simply scheduled elections, but the Lutyens Secular Brigade … Read More

For them, treason is ‘new Indian order’

An ambitious pilot project to trigger student unrest in university campuses across the country is now fairly discernible. Behind it are acolytes of the defused ‘new world order’ that was to climax in the victory of Hillary Clinton in November 2016. The writing on the wall showed that the world’s … Read More

Hindraf ups ante against Zakir Naik

  In a further twist to the Zakir Naik saga, Hindraf, a non-governmental organisation working for the human rights of Malaysian Hindus of Indian origin, is all set to file the first-of-its-kind Public Interest Litigation in Malaysian courts next week to compel the government to expel the televangelist Islamic preacher … Read More

Demonetisation and the tax base

The suspicion of many salaried professionals that successive governments have extracted unduly high taxes from those considered sitting ducks (persons in the formal economy with no escape routes), was vindicated, but not ameliorated, in Union finance minister Arun Jaitley’s budget speech of February 1. A reconsideration of income tax slabs … Read More

Netaji: An intellectual warrior

Recent years have seen an increase in the biographies of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, but these have failed to examine his contribution as a military leader and strategist, and tacitly treat him as a failure because the Indian National Army’s fate was intricately linked with that of Japan which lost … Read More