2017

Whenever a State language wants to spread itself to the national sphere, it naturally meets with some resistance. The limits of both are delineated. One is confined to the State while the other has the entire country for its spread.
The chauvinists in States have not understood it or at least not in the manner it should be. There is no competition. One is regional and the other is national. That Hindi is the national language was decided by the Constituent Assembly. The Parliamentary (…)

by M.A. Sofi
Witness the pall of gloom that has enveloped the vale of Kashmir over a long period of time and which of late has assumed staggering proportions as a result of unprecedented violence having been unleashed there following innumerable cases of state brutalities being visited upon young and old Kashmiris alike, regardless of their involvement in acts of revolt against aggression. Notwithstanding that, there are unmistakable signs writ large all over the place that tell us that (…)

by Arup Kumar Sen
Very recently, I chanced upon a book, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, written by Edwin Black (Crown Books, New York, 2001). The book “tells the story of IBM’s conscious involvement...in the Holocaust, as well as its involvement in the Nazi war machine that murdered millions of others throughout Europe”. The book was born out of a moral quest. The author’s parents were Holocaust survivors, uprooted (…)

DOCUMENT
The following is a statement issued by the Convener of the People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (PADS), Battini Rao.
Fiftyfive Dalit houses were burnt down during the afternoon of May 5 in Shabbirpur village of Saharanpur in northern UP. The attackers belonged to the dominant Rajput community of the area. They were armed with swords, spears, and lathis, and numbered about three thousand. Several other houses were looted, and fifteen motorcycles were burnt. Twelve (…)

The following is a recent editorial that appeared in China’s official organ, Global Times (July 25, 2017), bringing out its no-holds-barred attack on India over the Doklam standoff.
India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval is to visit China for the annual BRICS National Security Advisers’ meeting this week. As Doval is believed to be one of the main schemers behind the current border standoff between Chinese and Indian troops, the Indian media is pinning high hopes on the trip to (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Anguish, not Anger
The countdown for a national crisis of fearsome dimension has begun. The build-up of a nationwide communal conflict could be discerned, as one finds that the feverish activity for the building of the Ram temple at Ayodhya is having its repercussions in distant Thiruva-nanthapuram where the army has had to undertake flag march.
The onset of the crisis was evident on July 18 when at the stroke of midnight, the marathon session of the National (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Two remarks by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, are yet to make any significant sense: First, the marriage between Israel and India was made in heaven. Benjamin did not elaborate the nature of the marriage, which is the male partner, and whether it could be consummated. His second remark was more hilarious but important. Exhilarated to have Narendra Modi amidst his people, Netanyahu said; “We’ve waited for you 70 years.”
Undoubtedly Modi has been the (…)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel from July 4 to 6. Modi is the first ever Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel. Indo-Israeli relations have witnessed a sharp upswing since the present government came to power and there has been an unprecedented level of bilateral visits by senior Ministers from India to Israel and vice-versa.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is an unresolved issue of international politics dating from the end of the First World War. Palestine was a part of the (…)

by Ahmad Zaboor
Introduction
Following the death of Eqbal Ahmad in 1999, Palestine lost a sincere friend. His insightful analysis, revolutionary writings, ideas “woke up the Americans’ conscience” as the New York Times put it. But his ideas still remain unexplored. He was neither a Palestinian nor an Arab, but his humanism propelled him to be the champion of the rights of the Palestinian people which at times earned him academic isolation. His biographer, Stewart Schaar, captures Ahmad (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by JAYANTA DEBNATH
Right to Information: Empowerment and Good Governance by Rajeev Kumar Singh; New Delhi: Mewar University Press; 2016; pp. xx + 284; Rs 550.
We are living in a post-industrialist society. Daniel Bell argued that post-industrialism would be information-led and service-oriented. When we talk about services, then two different parts regarding service delivery system comes to our attention, namely, the service provider and the one at the receiving end. Here, (…)