2012

Victory in the Delhi municipal elections has filled the BJP with ecstasy. Actually the significance of this election lies not in the BJP’s success but in the Congress’ rout. The once-great party has been reminded yet again that it is in a nosedive with no one, on present reckoning, capable of pulling it up.
To understand how serious is the comatose condition of the Congress, we must look beyond Delhi and UP to the South. This was the citadel of the Congress. Indira Gandhi herself needed (…)

Start Point
It was recently reported that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (PSCD) has summoned the three defence service Chiefs “to seek their views on the state of defence preparedness pointed out by Army Chief General V. K. Singh in his leaked letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh” as they “needed to examine the whole spectrum of defence preparedness”. [Ref. 1] This is a very heartening news, even though the concern was triggered by the leaked contents of General V.K. (…)

by SALEEM KIDWAI
The wave of pro-democracy protests witnessed recently has fundamentally transformed the political dynamics of the Arab world. The push for representative democracy is irreversible and it would be unwise to try and impede it. The current political scenario in West Asia is prima-rily driven by internal realities, but it is also a reflection of past US policy choices not to support democratic reforms. Throughout the region, the US actively supported autocratic regimes and (…)

by VIVEK KUMAR SRIVASTAVA
The origins of the nuclear security summit can be traced to the Prague speech delivered by Barrack Obama in April 2009. The Prague speech of the US President can be treated as the preliminary roadmap of Obama’s global nuclear security policy. This was a clear policy statement of the US Administration to deal with the most vital challenge to its national interest, checking the transfer of nuclear technology in the hands of terrorists and bringing the non-NPT (…)

by HARGOPAL SINGH
May 1 is the International Workers Day. It is popularly known as May Day or Labour Day. Incidentally, May Day is also associated with some other events which have nothing to do with the labourers and workers. It has been regularly observed as a yearly feature by the trade unions since 1904 in most of the countries of the world although it was recognised as such in 1891 by the different organisations of the industrial workers. It was started so as to commemorate the (…)

WHEN an Australian editor posed a question to the Indian press why it never had a Dalit, the untouchable, at a top position in journalism, I felt embarrassed. I considered it an omission which should have been rectified long ago and felt confident that it would happen before long.
But after noticing that no attention was paid a few days ago to the 121st anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, a Gandhi for the Dalits, I have come to believe that the discrimination against the Dalits is a (…)

COMMUNICATION
I wholeheartedly congratulate Mainstream on the publication of Ather Farouqui’s remarkable article on Urdu in its annual issue and the overwhelming response it has received, generating an unpre-cedented debate on the pathetic inactivity of the literary organisations of Left-wing parties, particularly the Progressive Writers Association. The issue of shoddy functioning of Urdu organisations in general has also remained unaddressed for years. The situation is, indeed, pathetic (…)

by H. ABDUR RAQEEB
The following is a response to Dr Ather Farouqui’s article “Islamic Banking in India at the Service of Pan-Islamists” in Mainstream (Vol L, No 11, March 3, 2012). “Islamic Banking in India at the Service of Pan-Islamists”, an article by Dr Ather Farouqui, is timely. It has evoked interest in the community as well as the country as a whole and a serious debate on the gaps and gains of Islamic finance and banking has started. Thus it has indeed turned to be a great (…)

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS
The week, that marked the twentyfifth anniversary of the passing away of Jawaharlal Nehru —on May 22, 1989, India projected a political image of its strength and determination before the world which no amount of borrowed arsenal could have achieved. The firing of the intermediate range missile, Agni, hitting a target a thousand kilometres away, was not just an engineering feat, its importance lies in the fact that it was designed and manufactured in India by our (…)

by HEM BORKER
That a news report in The Hindu titled “In Delhi’s nursery classes, Muslim children are a rarity” (March 19, 2012), found mention in the Rajya Sabha the same day, leading to “heated arguments” and a “verbal duel” in the Upper House, is symptomatic of the polarisation of public discourse on the education of Muslims. Almost any discussion on the subject slides into binaries: religious versus secular, exclusion versus appeasement, rights versus politics, reality versus rhetoric, (…)