2015

As a law-abiding citizen, I have faith in the Court to rectify the wrong done to me. I have never been cheated except when the Emergency was declared and I was detained without any rhyme or reason.
The two-judge Bench accepted my wife’s habeas corpus petition and released me. The reason for my release was that since I did not belong to any political party and pursued my journalistic work professionally, there was no ground to detain me. Both the judges were, however, punished. The senior (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
It is surprising how intelligent people in politics sometimes take up positions which should logically belong to their adversaries.
The Muslim League in 1940 picked up the so-called ‘two-nation theory’ which a bunch of extremist intellectuals had first coined to back up their demand for Pakistan. Other parties in India rejected it. The Congress made it clear that it did not accept the theory itself though it agreed to the partitioning of the country on the basis of (…)

by Murzban Jal
Humanity is the immediate object of natural science. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
For apart from inquiry, apart from praxis, humanity cannot be truly human. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Three Ideas of Science
The crisis afflicting the domain of politics in India, besides being inexorably linked to the crisis of global capital accumulation and the legitimation crisis of the political elites, is also bound to a larger crisis of the (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Rushda Siddiqui
Denied by Allah by Noor Zaheer; Vitasta Publishing House, New Delhi; pages 162; Price: Rs 250. ISBN 978-93-82711-58-2
The Muslims in India are a minority community. They have been socially, politically and economically marginalised and over a period of time stigmatised for belonging to a particular religion. In most parts of the country, the terror of communal violence has forced them to live in ghettos. As the country rolls into the sixth decade of (…)

The PM has supported the FM’s idea that Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) needs a change if the government’s decision-making is to be speeded up. Last month the PM apparently assured the top bureaucrats of such a change at a meeting with them when they complained that decision-making is hampered by the fear of prosecution even if they take a decision in the ‘public interest’. Policy paralysis has characterised the government since at least 2010 when scam after scam (…)

EDITORIAL
PM Narendra Modi began his first official visit to China yesterday and held talks with the Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, in Xian, the Chinese head of state’s home town, today. Apart from visiting pagodas, temples and the famous terracota museum in Xian, the PM’s discussions with his hosts are learnt to have been held in a cordial atmosphere and were marked by candour with even the boundary issue figuring in the talks besides such subjects as Chinese investments (…)

According to one well-regarded international newspaper, it was just one of those things that naïve Chinese commanders had directed their men to cross into Indian territory during Xi Jinping’s visit to India in September 2014, to the annoyance of the Indian public in general and the Prime Minister in particular. Serious strategists tend to discount minor aberrations in their ordered paradigms and the thought of China’s most powerful President since Deng Xiaoping either having his position (…)

I have returned from the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) disappointed and disturbed. I am disappointed because the students did not seem to have merged into the mainstream yet and disturbed because they were still talking in terms of religious identity.
Perhaps, it would give a vicarious satisfaction to the Muslims of having an identity of their own if the AMU is officially declared as a Muslim university. After having lost the battle in all fields, including Urdu, the Muslims do feel (…)

The presence of the Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 9 signifies a significant step forward in the strategic partnership between the two big powers. The Chinese media underscored this in no small measure. The following quotes from the dispatches by Xinhua news agency bring out the flavour of what unfolded in Moscow over the last weekend:
Xi’s presence in Moscow “demonstrates China’s determination to safeguard the post-WWII world order”.
“Xi’s (…)

by L.K. Sharma
A rare political earthquake shook the United Kingdom and demolished traditional loyalties and beliefs but completely bypassed 10 Downing Street. A visitor to London will see the same old Prime Minister coming out of his official residence and conclude that nothing has changed. Paradoxically, the tectonic shift, far from sweeping away David Cameron, cleared the way for his becoming the Prime Minister for a second term. The 2015 election results made the use of words such as (…)