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If the bizarre Ayodhya verdict of India’s Supreme Court is a classic case of adding insult to injury, on the one hand, it marks the final and total surrender of the country’s democratic institutions to Hindutva, on the other. But this had long been coming and should have been apparent to all those watching the meltdown of the republic under[Read More…]
During the month and year of Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary, the BJP has the audacity to celebrate Savarkar, the plotter of Mahatma’s assassination Whatever you may think of the BJP and its extended Parivar, they have a sordid sense of humour. At a time when India and the world are celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Gandhi, the governing party[Read More…]
“Congress party’s biggest problem is our leader Rahul Gandhi has walked away,” Khurshid told the Associated Press. “We need to know why we are in the state in which we are. Unfortunately despite our earnest pleading Rahul Gandhi decided to step down and resign from the president post. We wanted him to continue but it was his decision and we[Read More…]
Nothing is so prized in politics as a short public memory. As India and the world mark the 150thbirth anniversary of Gandhi and world leaders ply us with the usual platitudes about the greatness of the Mahatma and his teachings, it’s extraordinary how anachronistic the man deified as the ‘Father of the nation’ has become in today’s India. And those[Read More…]
Indian judiciary, once known for its independence and integrity, had been the last hope of the dispossessed. Where do they turn for justice if this last resort is snatched from them? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards themselves, as Roman poet Juvenal would ask. Following the stunning UK Supreme Court ruling this week, rebuking Prime Minister Boris[Read More…]
IT has been nearly 27 years since the destruction of the 16th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. And it still feels like yesterday that the tragedy that changed India forever struck. Most of us remember where we were or what we were doing that fateful day. It is as if time has stood still all these years. It indeed has[Read More…]
You can look away now The Vale of tears has dried up And a deathly silence stalks the Dal Deserted towns, burnt orchards and shadows everywhere. Paradise will ne’er be the same again Nothing will ever be the same again We, the invisible and the damned, the rejected and the reviled, have long ceased to exist for a world gone[Read More…]
Recalling the stellar role of the Indian media during the infamous internal Emergency imposed by the late Indira Gandhi, Lal Krishna Advani, the BJP patriarch now forcibly retired, famously noted: “You were asked to bend but you began to crawl.” Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, well known for his love of the fourth estate right from his Gujarat days, the[Read More…]
Kudos to Narendra Modi and his hefty henchman, Amit Shah. They have managed to transform India’s image overnight from that of being the world’s largest democracy into a highhanded occupation power. Something that Pakistan couldn’t quite accomplish over the past 73 years despite its best efforts. The much feted democracy is today being compared to the Apartheid states of Israel[Read More…]
“Maine aisa Hindustan kabhi nahin dekha!” In six words, Farooq Abdullah may have captured the trauma and acute sense of betrayal of his people. The three-time chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir broke down like a child during a media interaction at his Srinagar residence. The National Conference leader and son of the late Sheikh Abdullah, the Lion of Kashmir,[Read More…]
If Donald Trump’s shock election for the world’s most powerful office had been seen as an accident and as a recipe for disaster by many, he has done everything to justify those fears over the past three and half years. Not a day passes without the President casually throwing away all the love and respect that the United States has[Read More…]
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. You do not have to be a psephologist to predict the outcome of the critical General Election that India will hold two weeks from now if the opposition does not get its act together. On the one hand, you have the ruling BJP and Narendra Modi, ably aided[Read More…]
It’s about time Rahul Gandhi impressed upon his flock, including his chief ministers, that the Congress cannot return to power by trying to be the ‘B’ team of the BJP The more things change in India, the more they seem to remain the same. How else would one explain the slapping of draconian National Security Act against three Muslims in[Read More…]
The storm of abuse and sheer vitriol that greeted Naseeruddin Shah’s lament over the alarming state of the nation only proves his point. The actor wasn’t even referring to the routine attacks and abuse that India’s Muslims have been facing on a daily basis since the country ushered in the good times under the current order. His comment that[Read More…]
The spring of hope has arrived at last. The Bharatiya Janata Party and its powerful propaganda machine had pitched this as a contest between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi — Namdar versus Kamdar (the entitled one vs someone who has worked his way up). And the voters have spoken what they think of the performance of Kamdar! The Indians have[Read More…]
Hindutva has emerged as the clear and present danger to Hinduism and silence is not an option for the sane majority Aijaz Zaka Syed So this is how the cookie crumbles. Who would have thought India would find itself at this dangerous crossroads so early in its democratic journey after all those historic sacrifices offered by the founding fathers for[Read More…]
Can you change the past by changing the present? Would Hinduising Faizabad, Allahabad, Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Hyderabad and so many other great Indian cities help wipe out the country’s rich Islamic past? After all, every inch of the land carries the unmistakable imprint of the rich Muslim contribution to the great Indian civilization. Ironically, this ire against India’s former rulers pointedly[Read More…]
There are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends, theorised William Clay, only permanent interests. The principle perhaps best applies to the current geopolitical situation of the Middle East. Having lived in the region for so long, one has seen one’s fair share of upheavals — coups and revolutions and wars and conflicts. One has had a ringside view of[Read More…]
What’s with this obsession of powerful men with grand monuments? The biggest, largest and tallest…the more insecure a leader, the more grandiloquent is his vision of his legacy. Perhaps Freud could explain the psychological causes behind these magnificent obsessions and preoccupation with size. So Egypt’s pyramids had been more than mere last abodes of pharaohs and other members of the[Read More…]
Unlike their Western neighbour, Indians have managed to keep the Army strictly away from politics — and vice versa. Indeed, if the country has been a vibrant, multicultural democracy, the credit goes to the nation’s early leadership as well as the Army and the stability it has provided all these years by remain strictly apolitical and neutral. That seems to[Read More…]
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Right and Left 
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I am writing from Bolivia just days after witnessing the November 19 military massacre at the Senkata gas plant in the indigenous city of El Alto, and the tear-gassing of a peaceful funeral procession on November 21 to commemorate the dead. These are examples, unfortunately, of the modus operandi of the de facto government that seized control in a coup[Read More…]
