2013

IMPRESSIONS
It was pop culture at its defiant best when the Nirvana band sang in 1993: “Rape me, Rape me again/ Hate me, Do it and do it again/ Waste me, Rape me, my friend.” Kurt Cobain who wrote the lines described it as “a life-affirming song... like she is saying: ‘Go ahead, rape me, beat me. You’ll never kill me. I’ll survive this and I’m going to **ing rape you one of these days and you won’t even know it’.”
For the pop stars of America, it was one more jab of fashionable (…)

Yesterday a sessions court in Delhi set aside the order of a magisterial court in April 2010, that is, precisely three years ago, accepting the closure report of the CBI on the charges against Congress leader Jagdish Tytler in an anti-Sikh riots case. Tytler, a former Union Minister, was accused of instigating a mob on November 1, 1984 that led to three persons, who had taken shelter in a gurdwara, losing their lives. The Additional Sessions Judge, who set aside the 2010 magesterial order, (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Confusion is a weapon in politics. When you are confused about what to do, do something to make others even more confused. Say things that are at once sensational and contradictory until your opponents start scurrying around to find the meaning of what you are saying. That is battle half won.
The Congress is an old hand at this game. But this time it deserves our sympathy. It is tasked with the responsibility to sell a product that many markets have already rejected. But (…)

Control of the nuclear fission process is the use of science and technology for political power. Electric power generated from controlled fission can be for social benefit and is thus a source of political power. Controlling the delivery of explosive power from nuclear fission is an even greater source of political power. Fortunately its use has so far been limited to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but serious threats remain. Control of nuclear fission was first developed in order to manufacture (…)

It is boisterous, even maverick. Pakistan thy name is uncertainty. Yet, it is strange that whenever it is faced with pressing problems before elections, the country has always surprisingly found solutions to them. This time it has chosen an interim Prime Minister in the former justice Hazar Khan Khoso, who will be conducting free and fair elections.
There were pulls from several parties and it seemed impossible at one time that some name would emerge as a unanimous choice for the interim (…)

Pakistan as a country was born with the seeds of its eventual dismemberment lying embedded in the very process of its birth and subsequent evolution. The third paragraph of the momentous Pakistan Resolution of the Muslim League, adopted at Lahore on March 23, 1940, said:
“Resolved that it is the considered view of this Session of the All India Muslim League that no constitutional plan would be workable in this country or acceptable to the Muslims unless it is designed on the following (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
April 14 this year marks the 122nd birth anniversary of Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. On this occasion we are reproducing the following piece by N.C. and a few relevant articles to offer our sincere homage to the abiding memory of that towering personality.
The award of the Bharat Ratna posthumously on B.R. Ambedkar raises mixed feelings. No doubt Ambedkar was one of the stalwarts of modern India; the high-water mark of his career was that he contributed most (…)

by R. Akhileshwari
As Dalit assertion is taking shape and Dalit power is being manifested, the relationship between Dalits and their icon, B.R. Ambedkar, is being discussed publicly for the first time. And for the first time ever, he is being acknowledged by the mainstream society in India as the second greatest Indian, which is really amazing considering the fact that this section of society had mostly a negative assessment of Ambedkar, as someone who was responsible for tearing up the (…)

REVIEW ARTICLE
Itibritte Chandal Jeevan, Vol. I by Manoranjan Byapari; Priya Sipla Prakashan, Kolkata; Rs 250.
Part-I
Uncommon Memoirs
He is no pedigree, nor has any pillar of support. He does not rest on the laurels of ancestral tradition of letters. Nonetheless he is a unique phenomenon with no parallel in Bengali literature, if not in Indian literature. His arrival at the centre of the glittering world of creative Bengali literature and adulation in train has left his readers and (…)

by R.G. Gidadhubli
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has complex relations with the Russian oligarchs, the ‘New Class of Billionaires’. Being an experienced wrestler, he has displayed his total control over those who have confronted and challenged him. For instance, Boris Berezovsky, who committed suicide in March 2013 in England, was once acclaimed as the ‘Godfather of the Kremlin’ and ‘King Maker’ in Russia during Boris Yeltsin’s era since he could pull down regional governments at (…)