2011

New Delhi will soon take a final call on the issue of the setting up of a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). The idea of setting up an Indian SWF has been going around since 2007 when the China established its major sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation (CIC), with an initial capital fund of $ 200 billion. However, this time the proposal has received strong support from India’s corporate leaders who recently suggested the establishment of a state-owned SWF primarily to secure (…)

REVIEW ARTICLE
The Quality of Government—Corruption, Social Trust and Inequality in International Perspective by Bo Rothstein, Professor in Political Science, University of Gothenburg; University of Chicago Press; p. 285.
The UN Millennium Declaration identifies good governance as a requirement to foster economic development to reduce poverty. The quality of government is closely related to economic progress and social trust in any country. If the government is characterised by a (…)

[Both the following appeared in Mainstream (December 19, 1992).]
Cry, My India
LAMENT OF AN INDIAN ABROAD
The hammers and axes wielded by the mob in Ayodhya not only broke the bricks in a centuries-old structure but dealt painful blows to Hinduism and Mother India.
Those of us Indians who live abroad can no more walk with our heads high—as Indians or Hindus—and can no more speak to our neighbours of the virtues of our nation and our religion.
The land of the Vedas with their (…)

The way in which the winter session of Parliament has started it appears that this session too would meet the fate of earlier sessions. Last year the winter session was washed out as a consequence of the Opposition’s incessant protests; the last monsoon session was also marred by disruptions caused on the Lokpal issue. The first three days of this winter session have witnessed continuous disruption of the proceedings of both Houses on account of complete divergence of opinion between the (…)

Indian interests in Afghanistan and the region as a whole do not find importance in the US strategy in this part of the world. As a matter of fact the strategy not only ignores but also does not conform to those interests. For all its pronouncements to the contrary, the essential objective of the Obama Administration in Washington is to strike a deal with the ISI and its strategic assets, the Taliban and Haqqani network.
The New Silk Route concept disclosed by the US Secretary of State in (…)

TRIBUTE
I would like to believe in something, Something beyond the death that undid you. I would like to describe the intensity With which, already overwhelmed, We longed in those days to be able To walk together once again Free beneath the sun.
—Primo Levi, Collected Poems
At the roof-top, open air auditorium of the Delhi Union of Journalists, on November 19, 2011, while a gentle breeze blew, an inner circle of friends—writers, publishers, reporters, press workers, peace activists, (…)

The arbitrary deletion of A.K. Ramanujan’s ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation’ from the syllabus of a concurrent course taught by the History Department by the Academic Council of the University of Delhi has understandably sparked off a major debate. The prehistory of this step is to be traced to early 2008 when ABVP activists attacked and vandalised the office of the History Department in the presence of (invited) media- persons. An independent panel (…)

by R. MAHALAKSHMI
A.K. Ramanujan, while referring to the diversity and apparently contradictory element of unity in the Indian traditions, refers to an Irish joke about whether to classify trousers as singular or plural: singular from the top, plural from the bottom.1 A Concurrent Discipline Course in the University of Delhi for Second Year Honours students not doing History was introduced in 2005 on ‘Culture in India—Ancient’, and had sought to very sensitively juggle the singular/ plural (…)

COMMUNICATION
This in response to Mr Rawal’s letter to the editor (Mainstream, October 29, 2011) regarding my article ‘Pakistan Failed Jinnah’ in Mainstream (September 10, 2011). In this context I would like to draw his attention to the following facts:
1. It is a proven fact that before changing track in 1940 Jinnah was secular and nationalist. He had joined a secular organisation, Bombay Presidency Association, in 1900, the Indian National Congress in 1904, was the President of the (…)

by NASIM YOUSAF
(The following article has been sent by the Administrator, http://www.allamamashriqi.com for publication in Mainstream.)
“… you have no evidence at all that this man [Jinnah’s assailant] is a member of that movement [Khaksar Tehrik]…you have no evidence that he [the culprit] is a member of the movement, still less that he holds any particular position in it.”
—Justice Blagden Bombay High Court, 1943
On July 26, 1943, at approximately 1:30 pm, Rafiq Sabir Mazangavi (…)