2011

The State of Uttar Pradesh—at the bottom in the club of India’s sick States, BIMARU1—seems to stand at a crossroad. The UP Assembly has adopted a resolution on November 21, 2011 for a fourfold division of the State, which, according to the latest census, boasts of 19,95,81,477 persons. This size makes it the nation’s most populous State. Since the mid-eighties, an acronym BIMARU resembling a Hindi word “Bimar”, meaning sick, has come to signify a group of north and north-western States, that (…)

by ALI AHMED
It is often said that India does not have a strategic culture, implying that it is unable to think strategically. In other words, it cannot match ‘means’ with ‘ends’, or perhaps it is incapable of arriving at aims in the first place. The counter-argument usually heard is that if that were the case, then India would by now have been—as Churchill once famously but mistakenly put it—merely a ‘geographical expression’. The controversy surrounding the Armed Forces Special Powers (…)

The twin terrorist strikes on Tuesday (December 6, 2011) on Shi’ite worshipers in the Afghan capital Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Shairf, killing 58 people, are an extraordinary event. Even in the darkest days of violence during the past decade, Afghanistan never descended to sectarian violence.
The easy thing to do is to blame the Taliban. But Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid quickly condemned the “wild and inhuman attack by our enemies, who are trying to blame us and are (…)

by ATHER FAROUQUI
The state of the Urdu language and its literature in India, which, in its existing form, cannot play any positive role in Indo-Pak relations, forms the theme of this paper. By analysing contemporary socio-political conditions, I will argue that any expectation from Urdu, particularly its literature in India, in the context of Indo-Pak relations would not be very sagacious. At the most it can only serve the purpose of socialites and frivolous academics who get grants from (…)

Dr S. Radhakrishanan has a place of eminence amongst the most important thinkers of the contemporary world of philosophy and creative ideas. A man of very rare intellectual endowments, his fame rests securely on his creative interpreter of the comprehensive religious and philosophical traditions of India and of the West. What distinguishes him here is the distinctiveness and depth of interpretive power and his clear, resonant style of exposition, which together form a very important aspect (…)

by BIJOY KAR
The Durban Climate Conference’s show of consensus has a bigger reason. Despite the world media’s tendency, the din over Durban could not match the “going, going, gone” screams from Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Co over the failing Euro-zone, and the snowballing crisis over the West going bust pretty fast. Surprisingly, the countries that once championed globalisation appear to be the victims of globalisation as a new power house emerges. The BRICS have arrived, despite (…)

This piece of writing is inspired by a long telephone conversation with Harsh Kapoor (South Asia Citizens’ Wire, Communalism Watch, etc.) which followed a public meeting of Champa—the Amiya and B.G. Rao Foundation — at which the speakers were Manisha Sethi and Kumar Ketkar. I shall focus on the implications of what I see as the main issues discussed.
Sethi, who is perhaps best known for her work related to the Batla House “encounter” of 2008, spoke of what has become the established (…)

FREE SPEECH TO HATE SPEECH
I
Mr Subramaniam Swamy must not have imagined in his wildest dreams that his alma mater would decide to ‘dump him’
The Harvard University faculty recently delivered its own ‘slap’ for one of its ex-students who also happened to be its visiting faculty. In its recent meeting for the approval of the 2012 summer school course catalogue, it was decided to exclude Mr Swamy’s Economics S-110 and Economics 1316 from the catalogue thus effectively removing him from (…)

WOMEN’S WORLD
There is a worldwide concern at the falling proportion of the girl child in developing countries, especially in China and India, which are countries making news as rising economies. The recent census figures present an alarming anti-woman trend. In the case of China, the proportion of the male population stood at 110 per every hundred females in 2000 which increased to 118 in 2010 showing an increasing gender gap. India may show a slightly better situation but she too (…)

COMMUNICATION
With reference to the rejoinder of Dr Ajeet Jawed published in your esteemed journal dated November 26, 2011, I want to accept that M.A. Jinnah was a secular nationalist and joined the Muslim League on the advice of Gokhale to rescue it from the fanatics. But why did the saint become a sinner?
Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day on August 14 every year. Why? Because it was born one day before India became independent. They did not want to live even for a day under (…)