2014

TRIBUTE
Retired Foreign Secretary A.P. Ventakesh-waran’s passing a few days ago attracted widespread attention. The main reason was that it recalled Rajiv Gandhi’s arrogant way of belittling others. His public scolding of Andhra’s Congress Chief Minister T. Anjiah offended all Telugu people. His public denigration of Karnataka’s respected Congress Chief Minister Veerendra Patil annoyed all Kannadigas. His seemingly casual announcement of Venkateshwaran’s removal provoked the Indian Foreign (…)

The United States President, Barack Obama, unveiled in a major speech on September 10 his strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The strategy has no timeline and, quintessentially, the US will pit Muslims against Muslims in a grim war through the deployment of ‘smart power’, which would ensure that American casualties are avoided. From all appearance, it will also be a self-financing war funded by the petrodollar Gulf Arab states of the Middle East. (…)

Kashmiri Pandits, like Punjabi Hindus, have no homeland to return. Both want to go back. But the militancy that ousted them is still strong. On the top it is the local population which has been contaminated by the fundamentalists.
Some Pandits who have returned are unhappy. They find that the atmosphere of secularism is, by and large, a memory of the past. They have the feeling of being strangers at places where they and their forefathers lived happily.
Religious bias has built walls (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
While the national and international focus is naturally rivetted upon the uncertain future of the Charan Singh Government, the significant point is that every one of the major political groupings is also faced today with the prospect of serious instability and is not sure about the way it would go by the time Parliament reopens. This by itself is a measure of the dimension of the present political crisis.
The Janata Party has been trying hard to put on a brave face (…)

Where is India, now that the BJP has been in power in Delhi for a period? Bharat Bhushan, writing in the Business Standard, uses the excellent expression “ambient intolerance” to describe our present situation. The Hindutva agenda—together with all that underlies it—is rapidly permeating the very air we breathe. (http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/bharat-bhushan-ambient-intolerance-goes-up-114072901247_ 1.html)
He writes elsewhere that the PM, N.D. Modi, made a gift to the (…)

by Baisali Mohanty
“Hindustan is a Hindu nation... Hindutva is the identity of our nation and it (Hinduism) incorporates others (religions) in itself,” words of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, Mohan Bhagwat, in a congregation in the country.
He further identifies every true ‘Hindu’ as the rightful owner of the land of ‘Hindustan’. His immensely pugnacious speech has stood the test of time, been heavily applauded in the public constituency, the RSS community (Sangh Parivar) in (…)

These are difficult times for social activists in India. These are also times when an honest appraisal of previous work—achievements as well as limitations—is needed, as also fresh thinking about the challenges ahead.
India has a rich and diverse heritage of social activism which continues today despite many adversities and setbacks. There are many senior activists who have spent their entire adult life in this work. They have many achievements to their credit but despite this, today they (…)

by Shivangi Jaiswal
The decades spanning the early 20th century in India were marked by competing claims on ideas, identities and symbols characterising reformist campaigns of the time. In this context, delivering lectures by the educated elite was one of the means through which claims of nation-making were made. This paper is an attempt towards exploring how a well-known Ayurvedic practitioner, Mahamahopadhyaya Gananath Sen Saraswati, in his lectures, employed a version of Ayurvedic past (…)

by Kamal Kumar and Alisha Dhingra
Student politics is seen as one of the interesting and lively aspects of the student’s campus-life, something which leverage and shape her/his future personality as well as political under-standing. The model of student politics in India has been encouraged to spread the ethos of democracy among the youth and to stimulate them to actively partake in national politics. From India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the former Indian President and (…)

reproduced also is an Interview with Saifuddin Choudhury from 2000