2015

by Vikash Sharma and Ananya Pathak
The modern civilisation has brought with it the expansion of urban centres, the growth of specialised occupations, the ever growing anxiety for basic resources and a perpetual threat upon one’s need to make an identity in an increasingly competitive, ruthless cultural ethos.
Our lives are today extremely preoccupied with professional demands leaving us with little or no time to reflect upon matters that are not utilitarian but existential in their (…)

BOOK REVIEW
Rendezvous with Rebels, Journey to Meet India’s Most Wanted Men by Rajeev Bhattacharyya; 2014; Harper Collins; pp. 311; price: Rs 399.
This is an extraordinary book which provides an integrated account of the author’s risky, exciting and adventurous 800 km journey (much of it on foot) in late 2011 from the State of Assam to eastern Nagaland in Myanmar (lasting three months and twenty days) and an un-blinkered analysis, based on interviews with the leading actors, of the main (…)

by Purusottam Bhattacharya
I
In the late medieval and early modern era, ties between the government and the Church were strong in Europe. The Church was the predominat force and the government was considered to be almost a department of the Church. For many years religion guided the nations of Europe. While Catholicism predominated in France, Spain, Italy and Ireland; England, Germany and the Netherlands were Protestant and Greece was Orthodox. As the Treaty of Westphalia paved the way (…)

by M.C. Pindwal
Looking at the impasse in both Houses of the Indian Parliament in the monsoon session of 2015, it is desirable that we evolve a system to overcome such situations which are increasing over the last few years. Hence this idea of referendum, that is, to go back to the electorate on certain key issues of public and national importance. Following are some such issues of public importance. It may be a continued deadlock in Parliament as seen these days. Or if an ordinance is (…)

IMPRESSIONS
Wednesday, August 12, was a miracle day in Indian history. People were thrilled by a rarest-of-rare spectacle—a debate in Parliament. It lasted barely five hours and ended in an anticlimax, but that brief interlude was sheer
excitement for citizens who had seen several thousand hours being wiped out in the last dozen or so years by parliamentarians uninterested in anything but shouting. August 12 was a tonic.
It was also a reminder of the presence in our Parliament of some (…)

“If I am asked who is the greatest man? I answer the best; And if I am required to say who is the best? I reply he that has deserved most of his fellow creatures.” —Sir William Jones
India is fortunate to have two great men as its Presidents—one is Plato’s philosopher king ideal, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a great philosopher from Oxford in the 20th century (our second President), and the other Archimedes personifi-cation Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a defence scientist in the 21st century, as (…)

The US is seeking to persuade the Government of India to support its initiative to pass the West’s draft Code of Behaviour in Outer Space. This document militates against India’s national interests.
If this document, proposed by the Americans and European Union, is passed in the UN General Assembly, it will completely ruin the idea of a comprehensive binding agreement in this important sphere and replace it with a Code. The draft includes references to the American and Europeen defence and (…)

Editorial
As we approach our sixtyninth Independence Day, to be observed in five days time, the situation in the domestic sphere has turned from bad to worse.
The last fifteen months have been witness to the manner in which the Narendra Modi dispensation has upheld the banner of majoritarian communalism thereby seeking to irreparably damage the ideal of secular democracy that constitutes the foundation of independent India’s nationhood as exemplified by the country’s Constitution. The (…)

More than the menace of a Monsoon Cloud now stalks the land. Unrelenting stabs of imbecile assertion Maul the body politic as newborn Titans roll their sleeves and Bare their fangs against A republic whose slovenly habits Of accomodation rebuke The loud muscle of oppressive swagger. The command is out: let every Flower in the realm henceforth Take on but one shape, size, and Colour, or be deemed a trojan horse, Rather than a rose or a carnation, Asking to be decapitated root And branch, (…)

The following piece was written against the backdrop of Yakub Memon’s execution.
The question is often asked if we have a right to take life when we cannot give it. The right question to be asked in this connection is whether the death penalty is a rational sentence. Will not life imprisonment instead of life extinguishment serve the purpose? The intent of both punishments is to remove the man from the society, since on account of the heinous and inhuman act he committed he does not (…)