2017

by Ram Puniyani
After a long wait, the Supreme Court Chief Justice J.S. Khehar opined that the long pending dispute of Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid should be settled out of court. (March 2017) He even offered to mediate himself in the matter. Uniformly most of the spokespersons from the RSS combine welcomed the move, while a large number of Muslims and other elements have been surprised as the Court was approached for justice and not for any compromise formula.
This is in the backdrop of (…)

Part I
Mahatma’s ‘Mother cow’
Perhaps the loudest and most sonorous euphoria over the cow was penned 95 years ago: “The cow is a poem of pity. One reads pity in the gentle animal. She is the mother to millions of Indian mankind.”1 Four years later the same ecstatic writer went to a higher plane: “I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world.”2 At his 70th year, his devotion knew no bounds for the bovine creature: “Mother cow is in many ways better than the (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
This week marks the completion of six months after the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya on December 6. As one looks back on these six troubled months, one has to concede that December 6 has emerged as a distinct watershed in Indian politics. The period that has opened up since that date is qualitatively different from the period preceding it.
Whoever was responsible for the disappea-rance of the Babri Masjid—the act of violent demolition on the part of the (…)

by Nilofar Suhrawardy
Peace in Kashmir is likely to remain a mirage till greater importance is not given to hard realities responsible for the Kashmiri Muslims being provoked to the stage of unrest and incidents of militancy troubling the area. It is time that some attempt is made to view the situation from the angle of residents living in the disturbed area. The issue should not be studied simply as that of a region that is Kashmir. The area is bound to remain disturbed till the life of (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Neither Narendra Modi nor the RSS would be credited with creating a Congress-Mukt India; instead the honour should go to the Congress leadership for fashioning such a situation. The Congress leadership ought to have realised that the BJP was making a tactical shift from its earlier political line. While strictly adhering to its Hindutva ideological line, it has been consistently striving to project a Left-of-Centre economic shift. It had identified the middle class as (…)

Yevgeny Yeutushenko, 84, was one of the most famous names among the generation of Soviet Russian poets who came to the fore in the early sixties.

EDITORIAL
The Kashmir situation continues to deteriorate and has lately assumed serious proportions with unprecedented demonstrations of students, including women students, protesting against the security clampdown on students in south Kashmir. This has come in the wake of several video clips, widely circulated on social media, showing armed forces resorting to alleged human rights violations.
Against that backdrop one finds even women students are now engaging in stone-pelting. (…)

The news of recurrence of violence, student protests and the video war on social media in Kashmir ought to disturb every right thinking Indian. Both the government and the Kashmiri protestors need to recognise that in democracies the world over, peace in disturbed areas has never been achieved through more violence or by retributive measures.
Whether it is the death of eight protestors on April 9 during the Srinagar by-poll, the 200 including troops injured in the accompanying violence and (…)

Some call it Naureh Others Nauroz New year has come Holding the hand of Spring
Almond blossoms blush pink While white narcissus shyly smile Yellow daffodils dance in bright glee And purple hyacinths exude A heady perfume
But not for long For it has already begun The dance of death Pinks, whites, yellows and purples Are readying to wear the henna of red Dark clouds are gathering It will now rain blood
Lurking behind the new spring Is the ghost of last summer No Nauroz, no Naureh Only (…)

Maoists (or Naxals, according to some) ambushed a 100-strong CRPF road-opening patrol (ROP) on April 24 in Chintagufa Police Station limits of Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, killing 25 CRPF personnel and wounding six. The Maoists were reportedly around 200 in strength, and they ruthlessly continued engaging the pinned-down CRPF patrol for about one hour. The killing and wounding of CRPF personnel, causing irreparable loss not merely to their families but to the CRPF as well, is both (…)