Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir will inevitably comprise the subterranean subtext of Barack Obama’s visit to this country; hence our gratitude that American voters have rendered his a lame duck Presidency just prior to his arrival. New Delhi has little reason to pander to Washington’s strategic thinking regarding our sensitive northern … Read More
With five months of vicious violence by rent-a-teenage-stone-pelters in Srinagar Valley and loads of venom-spewing ‘azadi’ activists working overtime to delegitimise the Indian Nation in the State of Jammu & Kashmir serving as a grim prelude to the visit of the American President, New Delhi must be keen to probe … Read More
The Hindu struggle to recover the Sri Rama Janmabhumi is still some battles and skirmishes away, as all parties plan to approach the Supreme Court to rectify – to the satisfaction of each contending litigant – the fractured verdict delivered by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on … Read More
Even as the government probes the multiple scams associated with the recent Commonwealth Games, New Delhi would do well to reconsider our continued participation in this colonial relic. International power dynamics are rapidly changing and at least three organisations have simply lost their raison d’etre, viz., the Commonwealth, the European … Read More
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon reflected the growing Anglo-American itch to interfere in Kashmir with his recent comments about the need to end the unrest in the Valley; hints about expansion of the Security Council; and pious hope that India and Pakistan would furnish an ‘official request’ for a UN … Read More
On 29 Sept. 2010, an NGO called the Women’s Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA), organised a dialogue titled, Sisters for Peace: Voices from Kashmir, at the UN Conference Hall at Lodi Road, in collaboration with the National Foundation for India and UN Information Centre. When some nationalists arrived … Read More
If there is a clear winner in the vexatious dispute over the Ram Janmabhoomi, it is Truth (satya), which has triumphed in the face of formidable obstacles placed by cussed political actors nurturing communal votebanks, aided and abetted by an army of rapidly secular (read viciously anti-Hindu) fellow travellers in … Read More
Two potentially momentous events occurred almost simultaneously in the previous fortnight – the Kashmir talks and the Ayodhya verdict. Sadly, both ended on a flat note, thanks to the lack of courage and imagination on the part of the Congress party which dominates the UPA coalition at the Centre. The … Read More
Catching a somnolent Indian political and security establishment unawares, the Chinese dragon has taken virtual charge of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan in the northwest corner of the undivided kingdom of Kashmir. This – like the 38,000 sq. km. in Ladakh connecting Tibet and Xinjiang, and 5000 sq. km. in Shaksgam Valley … Read More
Bismarck understood that the meaning of the concept of separation of Church and State was not that the State should have no religion, nor even that it should not discriminate between citizens on the basis of religion. It was that the Church – hitherto the dominant religio-political entity of European … Read More
