It wasn’t that long ago that Pakistan was using a diplomatic weapon against India that probably doesn’t make it into foreign-affairs handbooks: sarcasm. Still, nothing about the India-Pakistan dialogue process, if it can be called that, has managed to surprise most people. Towards the end of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s tenure, efforts to make […]
A big African American man lay sprawled on an Oakland (California) street. My ‘desi’ sensibility got aroused and I stretched out my hand to help him stand and regain composure. The man looked at me intensely and said “Thanks”. As I was about to say good bye , I asked the man what he wanted […]
IN THE recent history of relations between India and Pakistan, it has seemed an immutable law: that any apparent political breakthrough will be followed by a terrorist atrocity in India blamed on agents of the Pakistani state. The bloodiest of thesea murderous assault on Mumbai in 2008brought a chill that has yet to thaw. And […]
New Delhi: Cracks have developed in the ruling alliance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) following chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeeds death last week, according to news reports. While the PDP has unanimously supported its party president and Sayeeds daughter Mehbooba Mufti as its choice […]
FOR years Saudi Arabia seemed inert, relying on its vast oil wealth and the might of its American patron to buy quiet at home and impose stasis on its neighbours. But oil prices have tumbled, America has stood back from leadership in the Middle East, the region is on fire and power has shifted to […]
European powers have learned the virtues of peace at home. But, as the UK vote shows, the curse of waging war in faraway lands continues. While candidate Trump spouts anti-Muslim rants, elected officials on both sides of the Atlantic are pressing ahead with plans for military action that will shed real blood. The British Parliament […]
AS fate would have it, precisely at the moment when the false Sunni-Shia, Arab-Persian divide was raging between Iran and Saudi Arabia and hitting dangerous lows, I had occasions to visit the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar: physically located between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and yet emotively as if on another planet. […]
There have been double-page newspaper and television advertisements, a flawed notification-based campaign and even a passive-aggressive op-ed by Mark Zuckerberg to get Facebooks Free Basics service off the ground in India. But many in IndiaFacebooks second largest market outside the USremain unconvinced, and some influential entrepreneurs and academics have, separately, ripped into Facebooks arguments for […]
Stratification of society based on age, sex, religion, caste, creed, power, and wealth, physical and mental ability is a reality. Egalitarian society is said to be a myth. Yet history proves time and again that human beings have made constant efforts to fight against injustice based on stratification and bring about some amount of equality, […]
In a talk program titled Is Modis India flirting with fascism?, Mehdi Hasan grilled Ram Madhav on issues ranging from Kashmir to religious intolerance in India. Anger and intolerance, observed the greatest of Indians, Mohandas Gandhi, are the enemies of correct understanding. So what would the Mahatma say if he were alive today, in modern […]
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