Archive for Articles
People’s War: People’s Defence
Two contradictory news items had hit the headlines of mainstream dailies on May 4th 2008. A delegation of the Communist Party of India consisting A. B. Bardhan, Gurudas Dasgupta and D. Raja had called on the PM on May 3 (Hindu front-page) to urge the leader of the coalition government headed by Congress Party to [...]
Far East by North East of our minds
It is rather difficult to define the geographical, political, ethnic, linguistic, cultural and economic parameters of the place we call North East- North East of What? Is it North East of geophysical India, Indian mindset or anything outside India?
Kosovos in India?
I am not seeding a new idea. I am sharing not only the idea but concerns and apprehensions expressed in several world capitals over the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo, a breakaway Albanian Muslim majority province of Serbia. Normally a distant Muslim province of 2 million people of which 10% are Orthodox Christian Serbs, [...]
Blinded mice & jewel of India
Twenty-sixth January visited to remind us that we had given to ourselves a Republic with democratic and secular dispensations. Long live the Republic and long live the Crown of Homo sapiens’ exalted civilisation.
Discovery of and by Pakistan
“Nehru wrote The Discovery of India in the Ahmednagar Fort prison. I began my journey to discover Pakistan in the New Central Jail, Multan…”
So reads a small segment of the book on Discovery of Pakistan- The Indus Saga-From Pataliputra to Partition by Aitzaz Ahsan, a legal luminary, human rights activist and an unrelenting champion of [...]
A guided tour to outer-India (I)
Have you heard place names like Somdal, Chapkikarong, and Soraphungetc? Some may have, most must not. Do not sound to be Indian names. Yet they are Indian name places in Manipur.
The Indian army and paramilitary forces took over three months (Nov-07 to February 08) to partially recapture the sensitive Somdal areas on Indo-Myanmar border from [...]
A Gun-point Marriage in Pakistan
Most Pakistanis, barring close aides and admirers of General Musharraf, power-starved followers of Benazir Bhutto and chronic dreamers of democracy have been foxed by the twists and turns in Pakistan’s political fortune and its internal security concerns.
All muslims are not terrorists: some are
The print and electronic and vast sections of Muslim friends have confronted me with the questions: Why all Muslims are painted as terrorists? This is a painful question to face and more painful to answer. My efforts have always been to say as persuasively as possible that a few Piranhas do not make all the [...]
An itinerant’s journey through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir
Traveling through Kashmir, one can not exactly start either from New Delhi or Islamabad or Srinagar. History has shut all the known doors and has opened several secret windows. One such window is the mind of Pakistani ruler of the day. Having fought two major wars and series of proxy wars to prove that Kashmir [...]
Assam: The Bangla hand
The latest ULFA carnage in Assam has been diagnosed by top leaders like quack doctors, broadcasting panic, and their diagnosis is wide off the mark.
Ministers with foot-in-mouth disease rushed to comment about ISI-ULFA involvement and ascribed various silly reasons to befuddle the people. The media has quoted ULFA vice-president Pradip Gogoi as saying that [...]
Balochistan-cruces of history
Most puzzling problems of history-the inscrutable cruces; are creatures of history, intertwined with political geography, which often transcend to the realms of geostrategic Gordian Knots. Balochistan is such a cruces of history, which lay in the main marching tract of human civilisation,
Bangladesh at crossroads
Bangladesh is at crossroads. Political developments during last two years had brought into sharp focus the quantum of ideological chasm between the forces headed by pro-liberation combine headed by Sheikh Hasina and the post-Mujib political usurpers headed by Begum Zia. Bangladesh was born out of the aspirations of the Bengali speaking people to achieve political, [...]
Bangladesh: A Need to Rediscover the Secular Forces
Some scholars and geopolitical analysts feel that the epicentre of the concept and practice of Islamist jihad has shifted from Pakistan to Bangladesh. It has emerged as a critical breeding ground of Islamist jihad. Mushrooming of jihadist tanzeems between 1980 and 2005 apparently supports these allegations. Escalation of violence aimed at overthrowing the constitutional democracy [...]
