2017

by M.A. Sofi
As should be gleaned from the (sub)title of this write-up, it is intended to contend that howsoever randomly events may be seen to unfold at different levels of their occurrence in the society at a given point of time, there is an underlying unity (or commonality) of the causes which inform the coming about of these disparate events. To illustrate this point, let us look around and note that right now we are witnessing the unedifying spectacle involving a universal trend in (…)

TRIBUTE
by Kumar Ketkar
Culturally and socially, Govind Talwalkar was a quintessential middle class Brahmin, who grew up in Dombivali, then a small town in the Thane district, close to Mumbai. In the 1920s and even till 1950s, it was an extended village, or a potential urban centre. Proximity to Mumbai was a kind of association of Dombivali to modernity. The town had some well-known Marathi writers and poets and playwrights, like P.B. Bhave, S.N. Navre and others. Against the backdrop of (…)

BOOK REVIEW
ndia’s Foreign Policy: Selected Writings by Prof Manohar Lal Sondhi; Editor: Harsh V. Pant; Har-Anand Publications Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi; 2017; pages 224; Price: 695.
As the space for counter-thought in India is being sought to be constricted under virtual state sponsorship, re-reading Prof M.L. Sondhi’s writings on India’s foreign policy in 2017, nearly five decades since their first publication, one is immediately struck by his ‘audacious and dangerous’ thinking on subjects (…)

TRIBUTE
Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada, who passed away at the Medical Center in Johannesburg on March 28, 2017 at the age of 87, was one of the best known freedom fighters of South Africa who waged a steadfast struggle against the aparthied regime and had to suffer long years of imprisonment in the Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison alongwith Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Andrew Mlangeni, Billy Nair, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mhlaba and Denis Goldberg, all of whom were sentenced to (…)

EDITORIAL
With the Supreme Court today asking BJP patriarch L.K. Advani and his colleagues, notably Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti, to stand trial for criminal conspiracy in the demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, that is, more than 26 years and four months ago, newspapers here are full of reports that this spells the end of his political career. [This may be true for Joshi and Bharti as well but Bharti seems unperturbed and at least for the moment has (…)

by Purusottam Bhattacharya
The much hyped state visit of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, concluded on April 10, 2017 with feelings of satisfaction on both sides barring the much anticipated missing accord on sharing of the waters of the river Teesta between the two countries. This was the first state visit of the Bangladesh Prime Minister to New Delhi since the NDA Government of Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014 and the second one since she assumed power in (…)

MUSINGS
This entire week during my interactive talks with persons from Uttar Pradesh, there has been focus on three prime aspects: Their doubts about the very ‘proper authentic’ functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines! Those doubts coming up soon after the UP election results were announced and are getting strengthened after the EVMs did throw up some ugly truths in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind district. And why should it be presumed that only few EVMs were faulty—that is, those found (…)

The government will need to go beyond self-righteous displays of ‘muscular diplomacy’ to save the brave officer.
The death sentence handed down to former Indian Navy Commander Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav through Field General Court Martial in Pakistan seems to have taken the Indian establishment by surprise.
The Ministry of External Affairs has been making demarches to the Pakistani authorities repeatedly, seeking consular access to Jadhav. As of end-March, we reportedly approached the (…)

On April 13 India has observed the 97th anniversary of British India’s darkest episode, the massacre of innocents at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. That unspeakable act happened in 1919. A year later British India bared its imperial fangs again in another episode that remains largely unknown in India.
The Connaught Rangers of the British Army was entirely manned by Irish soldiers, recruited from Ireland, imperial Britain’s first colony where all the atrocities committed in Asian and African (…)

Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minister, had only his Special Assistant, M.O. Mathai, to assist him in his work. Mathai had the rank and salary of a Joint Secretary to the Government of India. However, Nehru was, for much of his seventeen years (1947-1964) as the PM, also the Minister of External Affairs. So, he drew on the Ministry’s four Secretaries to assist him not only on foreign affairs but also on several domestic matters. What is more, despite his towering personality, he had, as (…)