May 2009

Abhinav Bharat, the Hindu extremist group involved in the Malegaon blasts, may also be the hidden hand behind the Ajmer blasts. The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Rajasthan Police says investigations into the blasts that shook the Ajmer Dargah in 2007, have led them to members of the Abhinav Bharat.
In an exclusive interview to NDTV, the ATS Chief in Rajasthan, Kapil Garg, has admitted that Abhinav Bharat is now actively under their scanner. And a special team of the Rajasthan Police (…)

The ground-swell in the Lok Sabha election has been a phenomenon that nobody could even remotedly foresee. Not only the political commentators, including the present one, are made to eat crow—as a famous American newspaper said about its mistaken forecast about Truman’s presidential triumph—but even the widely-patronised astrologers and godmen could do no better: for them too, it is crow and not oyster.
While any conscientious observer would have to honestly concede the failure to (…)

Pakistan’s Permanent Representative Abdullah Haroon made a link in the UN between Darul Uloom Deoband in India and terrorism in Pakistan’s NWFP and FATA areas where the Al-Qaeda and Taliban ideology flourishes. The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind protested to the MEA, Pak High Commission and UN Secretary-General against Pakistan opening this new front. (Ref: ‘Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind Protests Pak Link’ The Times of India, Kanpur, New Delhi, December 19, 2008) In the aftermath of the Mumbai 26/11 terrorist (…)

Pakistan had started out with five provinces in 1947: Punjab (its west part), North-West Frontier Province or NWFP, Sind, Baluchistan and East Bengal (or East Pakistan). Of these East Bengal seceded from the parent body after a bloody war of liberation in 1971. Among the remaining four, the North-West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, has come into prominence of late because of the resurgence of the Taliban who were defeated by the Americans in 2001. The NWFP consists of six settled (…)

History, at times, is a cruel reminder. Twenty years ago, 1989 signalled the impending collapse of the Soviet Union, as the Berlin wall crashed. Two years thereafter, the year 1991, watched how the USSR, together with the regimes in Eastern Europe, crumbled. Are we going to witness a repeat of this scenario, 2009 marking the beginning and 2011, the year of the Assembly elections in West Bengal, being the probable year of the erasure of the Left from Indian politics? If this catastrophe is to (…)

The elaborate poll exercise in the world’s largest democracy is over. With 62 per cent of the electorate turning out in the last, that is, fifth, phase of the polling for the 15th Lok Sabha, the average voting percentage of this year’s parliamentary elections happens to be around 57 which is slightly lower than the 58 per cent touched in the previous (2004) Lok Sabha polls. However, the fifth phase polling figure being provisional it is expected to be revised upwards in course of time, and (…)

The following is a letter by V.R. Krishna Iyer, the distinguished retired judge of the Supreme Court, to Sonia Gandhi on the current developments in Sri Lanka. Krishna Iyer has sent the letter to us for publication in this journal. We are carrying it for the benefit of our readers.
Respected Madam Sonia Gandhi,
I address this letter to you both in your capacity as the President of the most powerful party in the country with the longest national tradition and also as having a (…)

The walkout of European diplomats following the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the United Nations conference in Geneva disparaging Israel was a puerile act. The United States, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada, Israel and Australia had announced months earlier to boycott the gathering anticipating Iranian malevolence towards Israel. The high-level delegates’ decision to boycott the conference while the Iranian leader was delivering his speech is (…)

Three phases of the five-phase election are over. This extended period of suspense in ushering in a new government is a commentary on the deteriorating standard in political conduct. Barring areas seriously affected by extremism and cross-border terrorism there should hardly have been any need for large police deployment or deployment of Central observers. Political parties, their workers and even candidates have learnt to display conduct that has made elections an expensive exercise. (…)

After the instability of the 1990s at the Central level, the present decade has brought about stability. However, the era of coalition politics has continued undisturbed since 1996. The two processes of kamandalisation, that is Hindutva, and Mandalisation or social justice, assert themselves off and on. While social justice has come theoretically to be accepted by all political parties, one of its prominent parts, that is, gender justice, has not been achieved at the level of Union and State (…)