2013

by Ravinder Kumar
A number of very distinguished individuals, drawn from different walks of life, have paid tribute to Jawaharlal Nehru on his birth centenary. Some of them have touched upon his unrivalled popularity with the common people of India; others have assessed his role in national and international politics; others, yet again, have focused upon his political and social ideas; finally, some, who knew him personally, have written about the warmth of his presence and the devastating (…)

Jawaharlal Nehru while in power, it must be conceded, could not implement many of his ideas which he so passionately advocated when fighting against the British during our freedom struggle. He himself admitted: “Some years earlier I would not have been so hesitant. There was a definiteness about my thinking and objectives then, which has faded away since and events of the past few years in India, China, Europe and all over the world have been confusing, upsetting and distressing, and the (…)

The Maldives is putting Indian pundits to shame. Not only there is no democracy deficit in the archipelago of 2.4 lakh voters but the twists and turns of politics there in the run-up to the September 7 presidential elections are becoming intricate and highly competitive.
Indeed, the islanders have taken to coalition politics with a gusto that will give Mulayam Singh Yadav or M. Karunanidhi one or two bright ideas for the future.
So, after all, President Mohamed Waheed is not only not, in (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Emphatic drubbing in the Karnataka elections has not made the BJP to revise its tactics of seeking the resignation of Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, on the plea of being corrupt, protecting his corrupt Ministers and misusing his office. In a different situation the prudent BJP leadership, particularly its President, Rajnath Singh, should have refrained from asking Mamohan Singh to resign. But a Modi(fied) Rajnath kept up the tempo conveniently forgetting that the (…)

Om Prakash Sabherwal, eminent journalist and author of the much publicised India’s Tyrust with the Atom, passed away on May 16 following a brief illness. He was 90. OP, as he was popularly known in the media world, is survived by his wife, son and daughter.
Regarded as an authority on India’s nuclear programme and global nuclear issues, Sabherwal was born in a wealthy business family at Ludhiana on April 13, 1923. After his graduation from the Punjab University, Sabherwal moved to Calcutta (…)

This month marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Pokhran II nuclear explosions. On this occasion we are carrying the following excerpts from the play that appeared in Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi’s Bi-monthly Journal), September-October 2011. These are being published with due acknowledgement and the playwright’s permission.
Synopsis of the First Act of The Gift
The play is set in a capital city. The Minister of Defence announces, ‘The Buddha is Smiling’ at a press conference. In (…)

The May 11 elections in Pakistan have produced a decisive verdict. Belying the anticipation of a hung parliament or a coalition government, former PM Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N has won a handsome victory. According to latest figures, the PML-N has won 123 seats, followed by the PPP 32, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) 27, Independents 26, MQM 18, Jamiat Ulama-e-Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rahman 10, PML-F 4, Jamaat-e-Islami 3, Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party 2, PML-Q of former military ruler (…)

MUSINGS
To mark or start new beginnings, Dr Manmohan Singh and Nawaz Sharif should not send mangoes to each other, but exchange imprisoned men. Yes, Indian prisoners held captive in Pakistani jails ought to be sent back, to be tried and imprisoned here. And Pakistani prisoners languishing in our jails here, ought to be sent back, with a footnote that they’d serve those remaining years of their sentence in the jails of their home country.
The killings of Sarabjit and Sanaullah inside the (…)

On Tuesday, May 14, 2013, passed away in Mumbai Asghar Ali Engineer, 74, after a brief illness. He leaves behind his son and daughter.
He was the Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies in the city and ran the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS) there. He was also the patron of the All India Secular Forum set up in 2002 when the Gujarat pogrom in particular and the communal forces in general were threatening the secular fabric of society. This Forum had rejected the (…)

Believe it or not, the Supreme Court gave the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) an opportunity to be independent in one of the matters before it, asking the agency why it was not independent. Yet the CBI failed to grab the chance with both hands. It had a foolproof case against Law Minister Ashwani Kumar when he amended the report on the coal blocks allotment scandal. The government’s blatant interference resulted in a “corrected draft”, exactly the way the Law Minister wanted the report (…)