2021

September 8, 2021
The regional states will be shell-shocked by the brazen way Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), coerced the Taliban to announce an interim government that is guaranteed to preserve Rawalpindi’s control over the levers of power in Kabul.
There are several things to be noted about the so-called interim government announced by the Taliban on September 7. The “moderate” Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, supposedly (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
September 6, 2021
With President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw American soldiers from Afghanistan implemented, which in itself has produced commentaries, for and against, it is time to reflect on where is the American foreign policy heading in the days to come. It is useful to begin by looking at the speech the President made, a few days ago, after the withdrawal of the last soldier from Kabul. Strongly defending his decision to pull back troops, Biden said during (…)

by Bhabani Shankar Nayak*
The people of Kendrapada district of Odisha are fighting peacefully for last two years to save their river Kharasrota. This river is the lifeline of farmers, fishing communities and other communities living besides the river. The Kharasrota river is the source of life and livelihoods for the people of Odisha in general and people of Kendrapada and Jajpur in particular. The successive governments have failed to provide safe drinking water to the people of Odisha. (…)

The Ganesh festival is celebrated country-wide with prayers and rituals, greetings are exchanged, and various food delicacies are prepared. When we relish the delicacies, it is appropriate to remember that every one of those preparations is based upon farm produce, be it grains, vegetables, fruits, or the banana leaves on which the feast is served. This farm produce is the result of many people – the farmer community – working the earth round the year, not only during festivals, to grow (…)

by Professor P Radhakrishnan *
The chaotic proliferation of jurisprudential literature on reservation, backwardness and caste politics, with as VR Krishna Iyer repeatedly chastised the lackadaisical judges for spending more time on extra-judicial activities and not on dockets, is a pointer to the ongoing reservation rigmarole all over the country. How many judges can touch their heart and say they have scrutinized the Constituent Assembly Debates, understood the task of unraveling the (…)

The Major General, Subhash Sharan, made a public statement in Meerut in 2019: “Bhagavad Gita is a military manual and should be read by all the youngsters”. He recalled that the American Army had taken copies of Bhagavad Gita from India for their soldiers to be deployed in war-torn Iraq. To put it in his own words: “To motivate their soldiers, the Americans took 30,000 copes of Bhagavad Gita to teach them ‘Karma Yoga’, that is, the reason behind fighting a battle and engaging their enemy (…)

The terrorist attack in the U.S.A on September 11, 2001 (hereafter referred to as 9/11) was a colossal tragedy and one of those historical events which shape the events of many years to come. All those who want a peaceful world condemned this horrible violence against innocent people with one voice. At the same time, there have been concerns that some important aspects of this tragedy have not been explained adequately, and in some contexts actually there have been strong efforts to (…)

Conundrum: Subhas Bose’s Life After Death
by Chandrachur Ghose & Anuj Dhar
Vitasta
Pages: 834
Price: 995
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Incredible, shocking, stunning! There is no other way to describe this monumental work of history which goes to extreme depths to tell the world what happened to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, whose 1945 death in a plane crash remains wrapped in mystery. Casting their net of research all across India and even parts of the globe, writer Chandrachur Ghose and (…)

by Niranjan Dhar
The concept of secularism had its origin in the later Middle Ages in Western Europe. Secular education was but an attempt to demarcate an autonomous sphere of knowledge, purged of all supernatural presuppositions. It did a lot towards spreading the secular attitude and strengthening the spirit of the Renaissance. Conceptually, of course, secularism did not necessarily mean hostility towards religion. The relation of the one with the other was of mutual exclusiveness only. (…)

by Vijay Kumar*
The Texas Anti Abortion Bill imposing nearly – absolute ban on the abortion beyond six weeks pregnancy marks the beginning of well-orchestrated machination by right-wing religious groups represented by the Republican Party to overturn the most liberating, indeed epochal legacy, of the judgment of the US Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade in 1973 by Warren Berger Court. The Texas bill is intended to perpetuate the stranglehold of patriarchy in 21st century by controlling the (…)