2018

Inssan abhee tak zinda hae,
zinda hone per sharminda hae!
Human beings are still alive,
they are ashamed to be alive!
[Shahid Nadeem’s couplet on the silence of civil society against communal violence]
For the last 30 years, on every anniversary of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs, this author has been reminding the nation how the Indian state and judiciary did not bother to punish the perpetrators of this horrendous mass killing of the innocents of the second largest religious minority (…)

Your childhood shuttled between India and Sudan,
With your metrologist father, mother and sisters—Anna and Elizabeth;
You chose to live in America,
Homeless, yet at home in three continents.
Your way with words
Walked you towards
Your own way in the world;
Draupadi in my kitchen,
Undraped then redraped
in Manhattan;
Who said Alexander the Great
Conquered the world?
It was you Meena,
With your dark eyes flashing with insight,
Swathed sensuously in a flaming orange (…)

by R.G. Gidadhubli
Uzbekistan is the second largest and most populous state among the five Central Asian countries with a population exceeding 34 million. Shavkat Mirziyoev, taking over the presidency of Uzbekistan in 2016 after the demise of Islam Karimov, has undertaken the task of transformation of the country through reforms and changes in domestic and foreign policies discarding the former policy of repression and isolationism, which he could not do earlier as the Prime Minister. (…)

Ramakrishna was a quintessential Hindu. He believed in and lived by the Vedantic credo that God lives in all human beings—men and women, Brahmins and Shudras, princes and beggars. Nothing demonstrates his faith better than his concern for and love of the pariah and the ‘fallen’ women—the most despised segments of the Hindu society.
His favourite disciple, Swami Vivekananda, gives a very moving account of Ramakrishna performing menial services in the house of a pariah. The pariah would not (…)

“Muslims of India are in a position today that is worst than in 1857 or 1947,” lamented A.G Noorani, leading constitutional expert and prominent author. He was delivering the 12th Dr Asghar Ali Engineer Memorial Lecture, titled “Muslims of India: Past and Present”, organised by the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS) at the Constitution Club in Delhi on November 23, 2018. The lecture was chaired by Hamid Ansari, former Vice-President of India. It was attended by over 200 (…)

BOOK REVIEW
Truth in Fetters: Broken Promises and Shattered Unity by Ram Puniyani; Media House, Delhi; 2018; Price: Rs 250.
Change is in the air!
A retired academic, who had his last assignment as the Vice-Chancellor of a leading university, said something to me the other day, while we were discussing the contemporary political scenario. Frankly admitting that he had supported Modi’s candidature for the PM’s post and had even discreetly campaigned for him in the 2014 elections, he (…)

EDITORIAL
Several developments of late are in the focus of national attention. These include the public face-off between the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, and the Union Government that has somehow been reversed for the present with both sides pulling back from the brink at the RBI board meeting last Monday (November 19) and agreeing to work out solutions to the contentious issues thereby aiding both the financial markets and investors; the events in and around the (…)

In the midst of the unique political turmoil in Sri Lanka since October 26 one important voice was missing. Both Sri Lankans and foreigners wondered why former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga was silent.
Their curiosity was mitigated on November 15 when Kumaratunga spoke up for the first time since the October 26 morning “coup” by President Maithripala Sirisena when he summarily sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and swore in the immediate past President Mahinda (…)

by Nilofar Suhrawardy
October 29, 2018 has passed off and the fear that prevailed earlier regarding communal tension over the Ayodhya issue has, at least for the time being, subsided. Prospects of the Apex Court taking a decisive stand on the Ayodhya dispute on October 29 had indeed raised concern about it leading to communal tension. Paradoxically, little attention was paid to the fact that this is 2018 and not 1992. It was feared (and to a degree still is) about India heading towards (…)

by M.M. Khajooria
Alienation of the youth of Kashmir from India is the hot topic today. Governor Malik has spoken, so have politicians cutting across the political divide. There appears to be a broad consensus on the fact of youth alienation. The perception about its causation is wide-ranging, confused and generally motivated. Pakistan pedalled the perception that the Kashmiri Muslims were being oppressed by Hindu India. The Muslim youth picked up the gauntlet and are fighting the war of (…)