2018

From N.C.’s Writings
What has happened to this great country where men and women fought with bare hands to shake off the shackles of a mighty imperial power? The decisive weapon in the nation’s struggle for freedom was the massive strength of its awakened millions set in motion by leaders who could bestir them to go out and meet the adversary. Where has that ultimate weapon been lost?
Today when the very unity of the nation is threatened, a creeping paralysis seems to have gripped those (…)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself and his government take immense pride in the astounding outreach of his foreign policy, raking up a record of doubtful value of visiting so many countries and hugging so many national leaders and global players, not once but many times over, all within a relatively short span of four years. Quiet diplomacy is a concept Modi and his American counterpart, Donald Trump, apparently abhor. Arithmetic apart, is the claim actually tenable?
The results of a (…)

When I used to visit Sushri Krishna Sobti’s home, which is near my own, I sometimes took photographs. One photograph of her, taken in 2011, appealed to me and I put it up in my Flickr “photostream” (https://www.flickr.com/photos/8234304@N03/6471151101/) Some months or years later I put the same photo on Krishna ji’s page on Wikipedia.
The announcement that Krishnaji had won the Jnanpith Award came on November 3, 2017, and pretty soon media people were swarming over my photo of her with (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Alok Sinha
Dangerous Dispatches by Achala Moulik; published in 2016 by National Book Trust, India; pages 379; Price: Rs 410.
A gripping historical novel, written by an Indian, and yet faraway from the 21st century battles of Growth versus Development, of Secularism versus Hindutva et al. Full of romances and intrigues woven around quickly developing international events rewriting national boundaries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia from the last quarter of the 20th (…)

The India-Pakistan Friendship and Peace March from Ahmedabad to Nada Bet during June 19 to 29, 2018 concluded successfully even though the Ahmedabad Police detained the marchers for about three hours at the beginning as soon as it started from Gandhi Ashram and the Border Security Force didn’t give permission to the march at the fag end from Nadeshwari Mata Mandir to the border, a distance of 25 km. Hence the total distance of this march on foot was curtailed to about 250 km. From Gandhi (…)

On May 30 we celebrated the Goa Statehood Day. Goa was liberated from the colonial rule in December 1961. After liberation a major controversy arose as to whether it should remain a separate territory or should merge into a neighbouring State, Maharashtra or Mysore. In 1967, an opinion poll was held, the only such referendum in independent India. It decided that Goa, Daman and Diu should remain a separate entity with the status of a Union Territory. Thereafter all the three major political (…)

by Murzban Jal and Jyoti Bawane
The materialist doctrine that people are products of circumstances and upbringing, and therefore, changed people are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is people that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society (Robert Owen, for example). The coincidence of the changing of circumstances (…)

The attention of the Editors Guild of India has been drawn to the recent case of the Kollam Police in Kerala registering an FIR against Mr. Venu Balakrishnan, Deputy Editor and Anchor of Mathrubhumi News Television channel. This was following a complaint filed by local leaders of DYFI, the youth wing of the ruling CPI-M, under Sec. 153 A of IPC for initiating a discussion on the channel on an incident involving the torture of a young Muslim by the police and the ruckus in the State Assembly (…)

EDITORIAL
Yesterday’s verdict of the country’s Apex Court on the ongoing tussle between the Lt Governor of Delhi and Delhi Government is of extraordinary significance. As has been underscored by The Indian Express while analysing the verdict, there are two major points in the judgment of the five-judge Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India: “one, the ultimate legitimacy, and the consequent responsibility to exercise power on behalf of the people, lies with the elected legislature and (…)

by L.S. Hardenia
I do not hold any brief for Indira Gandhi as far as her decision to impose Emergency is concerned. There is no doubt that the Emergency period will be recorded as a black chapter in the democratic history of the country. But certainly I have every reason to differ with Arun Jaitely when he compares Indira Gandhi with Hitler.
Hitler perhaps was the cruellest ruler in the history of mankind. Besides destroying all the democratic institutions of Germany, which had a (…)