November 11, 2006

Less than a week before the former ruler of Iraq Saddam Hussein, ousted more than three-and-a-half years ago by US troops following an illegal invasion bereft of any legitimacy or popular sanction, was convicted and sentenced to death by an Iraqi court after a trial that, as the distingushed human rights activist and former US Attorney General Ramsay Clark categorically stated (before he was ejected from the court), was a travesty, Saddam’s chief lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi, said in Baghdad (…)

According to the formula, the death penalty is awarded only in the “rarest of rare” cases. There must be something about the crime or the criminal which causes the judge to decide that the penalty of imprisonment for life will be insufficient. The crime must be grave or heinous enough to warrant the extreme penalty, or else the criminal must be considered entirely without hope of redemption.
Criminal. It goes without saying that the person sentenced to death must have been shown (…)

November 14 this year marks Jawaharlal Nehru’s one hundred and seventeenth birth anniversary. On this occasion we are publishing here excerpts from Panditji’s Azad Memorial Lectures (February 1959) carried in Jawaharlal Nehru: An Anthology (edited by Sarvepalli Gopal). Thereafter we reproduce three pieces on Nehru writen by Hajrah Begum, the distinguished Communist and women’s leader who enjoyed close association with Nehru and his family (that appeared in Mainstream’s Nehru birth (…)

Divali at Anand Bhavan in the late thirties used to be a children’s affair. In one of the verandahs, a clay image of Laxmi surrounded by a number of toys, dolls and other presents would be installed. In front of it would be thalis heaped with sweets, fruit, kheel and other traditinal offerings.
Not only Jawaharlal’s young nieces but all the children of the AICC staff from Swaraj Bhawan, plus Hari’s family and the mali’s children would be squatting round in a semi-circle gazing at the (…)

The relevance of Jawaharlal Nehru remains undiminished today. In fact, his ideas and approach to political, economic and social issues are more relevant now than even in his life-time.
It is necessary to state this basic truth and assess the continuing validity and vitality of his approach, because some who unabashedly use his name seek to project him as a pragmatist rather than as the firmly committed socialist that he was.
It is the fashion these days to say that socialism is a (…)

Ever since the announcement of the date of Afzal Guru’s hanging, a nationwide debate has started on whether or not clemency should be granted to Afzal Guru. Afzal Guru was convicted by a Sessions Court and sentenced to death. The High Court confirmed the conviction and upheld the death sentence. The Supreme Court too agreed with the courts below. The offence he is charged with is not a murder committed in the heat of passion; it is not a simple murder. It is not even a dacoity which tempts a (…)

Introduction
There is a discussion in several political and intellectual circles that a permanent solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which is the source of instability in much of West Asia, must move away from the paradigm of a two-state solution to a new thinking based on several other possibilities such as religious, liberal, consociational, and post-nationalist lines. In the context of today’s realpolitik, the Palestinian Question is caught in the maelstrom of the (…)

More than twentyone years after his passing away, Jawaharlal Nehru remains a colossus in the eyes of his countrymen and of the world abroad. Age has not withered his memory nor customs stale it. If Nehru has not become outdated, it is not becuse of any sentimental attachment in which the nation holds him. For, he really belongs to the generation that has literally disappeared from the stage of History. By the very law of life and living, others have come on the stage. For them, he is but a (…)