2018

If the Trump White House had let it be known a couple of months ago that it was working with the Kremlin to schedule a summit meeting between the two Presidents, all hell would have broken loose in the Washington Beltway. But that isn’t happening. There is an eerie calm in Washington, as if Trump’s detractors have run out of ammunition.
What explains it? First, the fizz seems to have gone out of the Russia collusion theory. Robert Mueller could keep uncovering crimes in American public (…)

by Sudhakar Vaddi
Since almost seventy long years, the Korean Peninsula is a ground for a confrontation between the North Korea officially the Demo-cratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States (US). This alone made the first ever US-North Korea peace summit talks, held in Singapore on June 12, 2018, significent. The diplomatic stage for the Singapore summit was prepared through the sequence of events starting from the Winter Olympic Games in South Korea officially the (…)

by Arun Srivastava
Oblivious of the changing contour and character of Dalit politics, the RSS and its front organisations continue to pursue their old strategy of insolently denigrating the Dalits. That the members of the Sangh Parivar do not nurse the sense of respect towards the Dalits is evident in their refusal to subscribe to the utterances of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Dalits are an integral part of the Hindu society and they should be respected.
Reluctance of the cadres and (…)

The failure of the democratic experiments in Kashmir has a long history. Kashmir’s strongest leader in post-colonial India, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, was all of a sudden informed by the Superintendent of Police in August 1953, when the Sheikh was holidaying in Gulmarg, that he had been dismissed as the chief of the State and was being interned. The Sheikh stayed out of power for 22 years, until he accepted an accord with Indira Gandhi in 1975.
The Congress-National Conference alliance, (…)

I feel honoured that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken notice of my criticism. Indeed, he praised me and said: “I respect veteran journalist Kuldip Nayarji, he fought for freedom during the Emergency. He may be a harsh critic of us but I salute him for this.” The Prime Minister and I are on the same page when it comes to the criticism of the Emergency imposed by Mrs Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister.
Where we differ is the shape of society we want. He belongs to the Bharatiya (…)

by Atanu Sengupta and Sanjoy De
In Tradition
Formal-informal transactions are not new to India. State control in almost all spheres of life alongside parallel existence of the informal sector has been the hallmarks of the Indus Valley Civilisation. Through the web of cities, towns, villages and even smaller settlements, Indus Valley Civilisation showed a remarkable standardisation in almost all spheres of life. Long after, if we pass on to the period of Ashoka (the Great Mauryan ruler), (…)

The United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on June 14 published a “Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir: Developments in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir from June 2016 to April 2018”. This is the first such report on Jammu and Kashmir by the UN. It covers both India and Pakistan controlled areas of the former princely state. The Government of India has rejected the OHCHR report as “fallacious”. The spokesperson of India’s Ministry of (…)

Children being ripped away
from the arms of their mothers;
parents not being able to see
where their kids have gone;
from within the metal cages
heart-rending cries rising,
asking for their papi, mami—
what a scene of inhumanity!
But in the intense sobbing
insensitivity finds a joke:
child actors staging an orchestra;
only a conductor missing!
Then a jacket causing outcry:
I really don’t care, do u?
Is it a message against ‘fake news’
or demonic (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Important events are graduated into landmarks in History as they are invested with hindsight. Perhaps it would be premature to call an event a landmark on the very morrow of its happening. By this criterion, the meeting of the Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan at Islamabad on June 19-23, 1997 has a significance which needs to be taken into account.
For years at a stretch, there was no formal meeting at the official level to decide on the agenda for a (…)

Everything has been tried—
From cajoling to condescension,
Gentle pellets to ammunition.
These are people of a different
Kind; they think they have
A right to their own mind.
They do not know that democracies
The world-over have long left
That sort of thinking well behind.
Have we not interlocuted for
Many a year? Have we not told
Them what they must hear?
Whatever may be said has been
Said; it is their wish to proliferate
The valley with the dead. Alas,
What (…)