2016

by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is not only the first Prime Minister of India but also the main gardener who sowed and flowered the spirit of democracy in a highly diverse country. His ideas of democracy were liberal but classical. He was a man of inclusive nature who lived a life absolutely devoted to India and for him this devotion rested on the edifice of democratic ideals. He conceptualised democracy in the Western liberal framework where the elections were to be (…)

The protest organised by the satyagraha against GM Mustard at Jantar Mantar on October 25 was much more than an ordinary dharna. On the one hand representatives of the Opposition parties like the Congress, CPI-M, CPI and AAP lashed out at the support extended by the Modi Government to GM crops whose serious hazards are well-established. On the other hand there were also representatives of organisations like the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM) which are a part of the Sangh Parivar and yet have (…)

by Kamalakanta Roul
The recent Kandhamal encounter killing has been surrounded by multiple controversies and engulfs a national level political debate. Any sensible human being would lend sympathetic support to the six innocent Adivasi/Dalit civilians who were killed in broad daylight by Special Police Officers (SPO) on July 8, 2016 in the Malapanga forest of Tumudibandh block. The heart-rending incident was accentuated by the fact that one of the victims was an eighteen- month infant, (…)

Another school has been burnt down in the Valley. This is the 25th in the last two months. What it conveys is that those who are fighting for separation from India are not interested in education. They want the boys to turn into stone-pelters. How does this help the youth?
I was recently in Srinagar and talked to some of the stone-pelters. They said they wanted an independent Islamic state and that India should recognise this. I told them that we were already exasperated with one Islamic (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Vinay K. Srivastava
Old History, New Geography by Jairam Ramesh; Rupa Publications, India; First Edition, 2016; ISBN:9788129139634, 8129139634; pages: 264; Price:Rs 536.
A noted economist, seasoned writer, senior leader and former Union Minister with an impressive academic track record, Jairam Ramesh, the chief architect of the Andhra Pradesh Reorgani-sation Act 2014, has come out with his new book, Old History, New Geography, that provides a ringside view of the process (…)

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK
The mysterious escape of eight undertrial SIMI activists from the high-security Bhopal Central Jail and their subsequent and no less mysterious ‘encounter-deaths’ have raised a number of questions to which no convincing answers have come from either the police or the government. Rather, serious doubts have surfaced due to the contradictory statements by different spokespersons of the government and the video footage telecast by a number of TV channels.
How could so (…)

The Radiance is a weekly journal of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a fundamentalist organisation. It carries on its front page an article which says: First, you give us the account. Apparently, it means the Hindus. The article is on the triple talaaq. The Hindu Personal Law came into being after our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s intervention. Marriages used to be a sacrament for life and the sick or the disabled had to go through the rigours of marriage with no relief.
It was Nehru who (…)

DIVERSITIES
This piece has been written in the backdrop of Prem Chand’s 80th death anniversary on October 8, 2016.
The late Prof Raghupati Sahai ’Firaq’ Gorakhpuri, one of the greatest Urdu poets of the last century, winner of the first Jnanpith Award, and an interpreter of the agonies, yearnings and struggles of the people latent in his romantic couplets, had a very strong ego. Except for some masters of a distant era like the English poet Wardsworth or Urdu poets like Meer Taqui Meer, (…)

This piece was written some days ago. It is being belatedly published as its contents retain their validity.
Dhaka is throbbing with excitement as the day draws close for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Bangladesh on Friday (October 14). Not only because this is the first visit by a Chinese head of state in 30 years—Li Xiannian visited it in 1986—and Xi himself is making a second visit in the past six years, but legend says Xi unfailingly carries gifts—and big ones at that. The (…)

by Ashok B. Sharma
This article was written before the BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach programme but is still relevant.
Leaders of the group of emerging economies, BRICS, are meeting in Goa and India being the host country has rightly planned an Outreach programme with the leaders of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral and Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). The initiative of inviting regional leaders for the Outreach programme began with South Africa at the 5th BRICS (…)