Thoughts on issues of current interest
[my comments - as an Indian citizen - within square brackets], including
instances of some double standards of our public figures, especially in
the construction of Indian identity (all those Macaulayan myths, and the
hypocrisy that is Nehruvian secularism) .....
The head of a Catholic order of
nuns , the Brigittines, has been accused by an Italian magistrate of violence
against six novices from India at a convent near Rome, the newspaper Il
Messaggero reported on Wednesday. .....
The university exists for the free
exchange of ideas, right? Then why is it that representatives of one half
the argument - the conservative half - need bodyguards and metal detectors
when they speak on North American campuses, and their leftist counterparts
almost never do? .....
Having purchased and read James
Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India only after it was officially
withdrawn by the publishers, I cannot view the events at the Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute (BORI) as totally unjustified. Certainly, attacks
on centres of learning have no place in Hindu ethos and must not recur.
.....
The disgust was plainly written
on his face. "Our leaders were living in big cities, lolling in luxuries,
while we, the cadre, were sacrificing our lives for the cause," said 'Sergeant
Major' Surajit Deb Barma, 33, who left the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF),
disillusioned with the lifestyle of the leaders. He laid down his gun before
the Assam Rifles last April. .....
The son also rises. While the volunteer
army formed in the name of the father, the Shiv Sena, has acquired an impeccable
pedigree in defending the name and 'philosophy' of their eponymous hero,
it is now the turn of the son's acolytes to lift his credit ratings. .....
Meet the pissed-off programmer.
If you've picked up a newspaper in the last six months, watched CNN, or
even glanced at Slashdot, you've already heard his anguished cry. .....
A former friend and colleague has
made sensational disclosures about how Dr Abdul Qader Khan -- 'father'
of Pakistan's nuclear programme -- stole blueprints and classified components
from the offices of his Dutch employers in Amsterdam. .....
The anti-extortion cell of Thane's
crime branch arrested a suspected ISI operative in Mumbra on Jan 23. The
suspect, identified as Taj Mohammed alias Junglee Pathan, is a Pakistani
national who has been living in India illegally since 1995. .....
The Nobel Peace laureate and Ulster
Unionist leader David Trimble called human rights organisations a "great
curse" yesterday and accused them of complicity in terrorist killings.
.....
There is currently an upsurge of
anti-Semitism all over Europe. In France, the European country with the
largest Jewish community (600,000 to 1 million, or 1% to 1.5 % of a global
population of 62 million), it is reaching alarming proportions. .....
Being a medical professional, have
you found that medical and Hatha yogic science are similar, complementary
or do they completely differ? Does it cause conflicts in you? .....
As the government in the state
strives to absolve Sangh organisations of blame in the anti-Christian violence
in Jhabua, it is clear that the BJP really does not have much choice. It
is payback time for the work the RSS has done in the district. .....
Does anyone remember the Best Bakery
Case and all the hullabulloo that was made over it? The secular media took
the opportunity to call the Gujarat government over the coals, especially
when a lower court discharged the accused. .....
Many years ago, when Soviet books
could be had cheap - indeed, had at all - when Harkishen Singh Surjeet
still dreamt of socialism and when my parents entertained visions of their
son, the would-be maths genius, I was given a book called Figures are Fun,
written by one Y.L. Perelman. .....
Apparently panicked by the killing
of militants and the blocking of arms channels, foreign mercenaries, mostly
Pakistanis, are desperate to cross back over to Pakistan, claimed intelligence
sources after intercepting their communications. .....
The Bush administration, deeply
concerned about recent assassination attempts against Pakistan President
Pervez Musharraf and a resurgence of Taliban forces in neighboring Afghanistan,
is preparing a U.S. military offensive that would reach inside Pakistan
with the goal of destroying Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, military
sources said. .....
Thumbing through the pages on the
Deccan Chronicle site, I happened to scan an article on 'PM vs Sonia'.
The article itself was not worth writing home about - it was just the 316th
such analysis of why Vajpayee's BJP succeeded and Sonia's team failed at
the recently concluded Assembly elections. .....
Family members of a British national
arrested on suspicion of assisting Naga militants say they expect him to
return home within weeks, as authorities in India have agreed to drop the
most serious charges against him. .....
Foreign bank accounts of two senior
Pakistani nuclear scientists, who allegedly received money for passing
nuclear technology to Iran, have been traced by investigators even as the
government ordered all ministries and departments not to invite Dr AQ Khan,
the father of the country's atomic bomb, to any official function. .....
Legal and financial publishing
giant Thomson Corporation recently launched a pilot program to outsource
many of its legal jobs to India, continuing a trend towards U.S. companies
moving professional jobs offshore. Foolish international attorney Rich
Smith takes a look today at the causes and consequences of moving legal
work -- and legal bills -- offshore. .....
Individuals accused by President
Pervez Musharraf of involvement in nuclear weapons proliferation serve
as a front for states involved in leaking secrets, Therese Delpech, a UN
disarmament commissioner has said. .....
France, wrote Luigi Barzini, wouldn't
be the great and endearing country that it is, la lumière du monde,
if its quarrelsome people had not been "moulded down the centuries by antagonisms
and tensions between tribes, clans, cliques, classes, coteries, guilds,
camarillas, sects, parties, factions, regions..." The French are ever at
the barricades. .....
India's technology industry has
attacked proposed new US legislation that bans the outsourcing of federal
work to low cost countries arguing it is a protectionist measure contrary
to the spirit of free trade. .....
"Muslims and Christians in India
should not be labelled as minorities as they have their genetic roots here,"
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief K S Sudarshan said on Friday, at the
end of his three-day trip to the state. .....
Neither went to IIT or was with
the Central Government. But the Satyendra Dubey story replayed itself tonight:
Sarita and Mahesh, two social activists who brought about a silent revolution
in the obscure Shabdo village in Gaya by organising extraordinary people's
initiatives, were attacked this evening. Sarita was killed, Mahesh is seriously
injured. .....
Pakistani authorities arrested
two senior officials from Afghanistan's deposed Taliban regime Saturday,
including one who may know the whereabouts of elusive Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammed Omar, Pakistani intelligence sources said. .....
Please do not misunderstand. I
do not think young Muslim women in Britain should be banned from wearing
the veil at school. President Chirac is making a mistake. He is currying
favour with racists. He will regret it. .....
For more than 20 years the Sudanese
government attacked non-Muslims in the south, wiping out largely Christian
villages and pagan tribes in attempts to Islamicize the country. Now, with
a brokered peace agreement between northern officials and southern rebels
nearly complete, government-approved militias are raiding the western province
of Darfur, killing fellow Muslims in the predominantly Muslim area. .....
Author Irshad Manji talks with
her whole body, leaning into an answer, her dark eyes intently watching
as her spiked hair moves. And what she says is difficult for fellow Muslims
to hear: "Totalitarian impulses lurk in mainstream Islam." Simple things
like that. .....
"It's gone too far. I have worked
in other places where you can't even ask for a black coffee," says one
woman. "At times you are afraid to open your mouth in case somebody finds
what you are saying is offensive," adds a man. .....
They're not targeting Jews, Christians,
and the West only, in case you didn't know. Centuries ago, conservative
Muslims determined that they would establish caliphate hegemony over India
as well. More than a year ago, Arutz-Sheva's op-ed editor Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
wrote an excellent executive summary of Islamic attempts to conquer non-Muslim
India over the last thirteen hundred years. .....
India will be the greatest contributor
to the universal world culture that is likely to develop in the years to
come, the Indologist Koenraad Elst, said here today. .....
Religion demands faith, while science
requires facts and logical conclusions to establish the truth. But some
people here, trained in the best of scientific principles, are attempting
to harmonise the divergent principles of science and religion. .....
A group of young film-makers, social
activists and noted intellectuals have made a documentary film on the historic
visit of Swami Vivekananda to Assam in 1901. The film will include footages
of locations at Dhubri, Guwahati and Shillong, where he had stayed, as
well as interviews of descendants of those few people with whom Vivekananda
was in close contact during his visit. .....
Daud Sharifa is meeting a group
of distressed Muslim women - business as usual at her red-brick office
in sleepy Pudukkottai, in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu. .....
Teenage Muslim girls in the United
Kingdom are being abducted in droves from their homes and sent to Pakistan
for forced marriages, a left wing member of parliament has alleged. .....
Having purchased and read James
Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India only after it was officially
withdrawn by the publishers, I cannot view the events at the Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute (BORI) as totally unjustified. Certainly, attacks
on centres of learning have no place in Hindu ethos and must not recur.
.....
Family members of a British national
arrested on suspicion of assisting Naga militants say they expect him to
return home within weeks, as authorities in India have agreed to drop the
most serious charges against him. .....
One should perhaps be 'shocked'
to read in Professor A.H. Nayyar and Ahmad Salim's report on the State
of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan (pub.2003 www.sdpi.org) that the
intended perversion of Pakistan's education system and national curricula
came about as early as November 1947, even before the death of the country's
founder (whose firm belief it was that 'religion or caste or creed has
nothing to do with the business of the state'). .....
Author Irshad Manji talks with
her whole body, leaning into an answer, her dark eyes intently watching
as her spiked hair moves. And what she says is difficult for fellow Muslims
to hear: "Totalitarian impulses lurk in mainstream Islam." Simple things
like that. .....
Does anyone remember the Best Bakery
Case and all the hullabulloo that was made over it? The secular media took
the opportunity to call the Gujarat government over the coals, especially
when a lower court discharged the accused. .....
Like many Hindu faithful, Budhendra
Doobay learned about his religious heritage at home from his elders. But
things have changed for their immigrant children growing up in modern-day
households, where kids are sent to temples during religious festivals to
rediscover their past and connect with their ancestry. .....
The idea that if someone is prepared
to do something truly horrible, he must have a worthy cause remains attractive
to liberal intellectuals, who perhaps envy those who take up arms against
the sea of troubles that is human existence. .....
The biggest and most expensively
built temple, the Shri Shiva Subrahmanya Swami temple at the end of Nadi
Town, was broken into at 12:30am yesterday morning. .....
In an effort to reassure the Planning
Board and public its planned Hindu temple and Indian cultural center will
not exceed the designated occupancy limit, the developers have agreed to
host its most popular religious festival elsewhere. .....
What woman who was raised as a
God-fearing Christian would purposefully marry a Middle Eastern Muslim?
Regrettably, Katrina, who unknowingly became a Muslim by marriage, did.
.....
A few years ago, an Indian woman
dressed in a sari approached me at a gas station and asked if I knew the
directions to the local Hindu temple. The woman explained she was visiting
Austin and had heard about this beautiful temple. I was able to give her
directions, as I regularly attend the temple. .....
Jammu (Fides Service) After the
cease fire signed on 25 November Catholics who fled Kashmir hope soon to
return to their homes. Hundreds of Catholic families left Kashmir in 1989-90
when terrorism entered the valley and violence began to spread. .....
Even with knives as sharp as razors,
it takes time to skin a man. After 35 minutes, flesh was hanging from Ram
Mani Jnawali's shoulders and cuts crisscrossed his legs, ribs, arms, hands,
ears and chin. His legs were shattered at the shins, broken stumps marking
where the bones had been smashed across the steps of his house. But he
was still breathing. And yet his teenage tormentors kept questioning him.
.....
A minibus used to transport children
to a Jewish school in the eastern French city of Strasbourg was set alight
Sunday night, police said Tuesday. .....
The Catholic Church is trying to
distance itself from some Christian groups that have come under criticism
in this Buddhist-majority nation for bribing poor people to convert. .....
Thoughts on issues of current interest
[my comments - as an Indian citizen - within square brackets], including
instances of some double standards of our public figures, especially in
the construction of Indian identity (all those Macaulayan myths, and the
hypocrisy that is Nehruvian secularism) .....
He's a strange sort of an Indophile.
A person who's floored by Indian philosophy, who has written tones on touchy
issues like the Hindu-Muslim conflict and one who closely follows the performance
of the Vajpayee-led Government. But Koenraad Elst hasn't yet seen the Taj
Mahal, the tiger or Khajuraho, all must-sees for the foreign visitor. .....
The plot thickens. US and UN allegations
that Pakistani nuclear weapons technology may have been shared with Iran,
Libya and North Korea over the past two decades have prompted a flurry
of supposed investigation inside the country. .....
Two days after erecting a temporary
structure near the controversial Bhojshala in Dhar, Hindu Jagaran Manch
on Tuesday installed the divine flame from the famous Sharada peeth at
Maihar in Satna district brought by a team of devotees. .....
Union HRD Minister Murli Manohar
Joshi on Monday made it clear in no uncertain terms: The January 5 attack
on the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) is condemnable but
the reference to Chhatrapati Shivaji by author James Laine is equally deplorable.
.....
Afghanistan has a fine new constitution,
but for most of its people, security remains the foremost concern. Debates
about the intricacies of civil versus Islamic law or the division of powers
between the central and provincial governments seem secondary when people
are afraid to sow their fields or transport their crops to market. .....
India will be the greatest contributor
to the universal world culture that is likely to develop in the years to
come, the Indologist Koenraad Elst, said here today. .....
The rate of employment generation
in the country has gone up from an average of 1.07 per cent between 1994
and 2000, to 2.04 per cent between 1999-2000 and December 2002. The rise
has been more in the urban areas as compared to the rural ones. .....
The City Police arrested a cellular
phone merchant, Mohammed Kalidh of Ukkadam area, and an auto driver, Sahul
Hameed, on Sunday on charges of murdering an 18-year-old college girl,
Nandini. .....
"My father told me that if ever
anything happened to him, I was to call you," said the plaintive, attention-grabbing
voice of a young Pakistani woman on the telephone to me Sunday. Her father,
a nuclear scientist, had been detained by Pakistan's feared Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI). .....
It is a matter of eternal regret
that foreign policy is not dependent on the sound bites of either the vegetable
sellers or fashion designers of Islamabad. Had it been so, India would
have coupled its joy over Finance Minister Jaswant Singh's pre-election
bonanza with the additional reassurance that the carefully vetted voices
for peace we heard on the news channels constituted the definitive Pakistani
perception of what President Pervez Musharraf called his "deal" with Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. .....
Oil rich Arabs wedding Hyderabadi
women and discarding them after fun-filled honeymoon is passé. The
latest trend appears to be to go in for short duration marriages. The name
of the game is "contract marriage." .....
The Andhra Pradesh unit of the
Bharatiya Janata Party has directly blamed its National Democratic Alliance
partner at the Centre and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu's
government for going "soft" on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
operatives in Hyderabad. .....
Twenty-two bishops and nearly 300
delegates from dioceses spread all over the four Southern states will descend
on Bangalore to attend the four-day Synod meeting of the Church of South
India (CSI), beginning on January 10. The CSI runs 2000 schools, 130 colleges
and 104 hospitals. More than 75 per cent of its 4 million members are Dalit
Christians. .....
Thirty people were injured, five
of them seriously, when a group of armed attackers led by a local BNP leader
allegedly set afire 20 houses belonging to minority Hindus in Bangladesh
on the first day of the New Year. .....
In an article titled "Study The
Koran?", Mr. Daniel Pipes, a historian and director of the Middle East
Forum, states that to understand the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism one
should not read the Quran. "Instead of the Koran," Mr. Pipes urges "anyone
wanting to study militant Islam and the violence it inspires to understand
such phenomena as the Wahhabi movement, the Khomeini revolution, and Al-Qaeda."
.....
Smt. Linda Johnsen quotes Professor
Subhash Kak of Louisiana State University (USA) in her book Yoga at the
speed of Light and writes: "The Surya Siddhanta is the oldest surviving
astronomical text in the Indian tradition. Some Western scholars date it
to perhaps the fifth or sixth century A.D., though the text itself claims
to represent a tradition much, much older. .....
Leading Kashmiri Pandit groups
on Saturday attacked J-K Government's healing touch policy as being "unfair"
to the community and rejected proposal for "partial relocation" of the
displaced people. .....
Our representatives from various
parts of the country are of the opinion that after the death of reputed
Journalist - Manik Saha the situation has become more complicated and dangerous.
.....
Can Islam become a moderate religion?
There are many people, especially none Muslims, who think it is much easier
to reform Islam and make it a moderate religion than try to eradicate it.
This question of course would not occur to a Muslim because he does not
believe Islam needs to be reformed. .....
In the half-hour before Mohammed
Jamil ended his life, he was a busy man. As he sat in a pickup truck loaded
with C4 plastic explosives, he made and received no fewer than 109 calls
on his cell phone, talking, at least in some cases, to accomplices in his
effort to incinerate the President of Pakistan. .....
A Christian Pastor of Kaptipada
village in Mayurbhanj district and his accomplice have been arrested for
allegedly ditching a woman of the same village. .....
Holland's 30-year experiment in
trying to create a tolerant, multicultural society has failed and led to
ethnic ghettos and sink schools, according to an official parliamentary
report. .....
Belgium is now in the line to ban
school pupils and civil servants from wearing hijab. The emotive demonstrations
by about 15,000 Muslims across France on Saturday against its planned law
to ban the wearing of hijab by girls in state schools has had apparently
no effect on authorities in Belgium. .....
In 1995, Wahabi terrorists belonging
to a Pakistani organisation then called the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA), and
now called the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), kidnapped a group of Western
tourists in J&K. They operated under the assumed name, Al Faran. One
of them, an American, managed to escape. .....
Troops guarding the world's highest
battle field Siachen glacier in freezing cold conditions in Ladakh frontier
region of Jammu and Kashmir will be soon served with piping hot pre-cooked
food. .....
It is rare for a politician to
give even partial credit to an educational institution for an electoral
victory, especially an institution that chooses to deny any political or
social affiliation. But when HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi was asked
about the BJP victory in the recent Assembly elections .....
If you want to know why bureaucrats
at the Centre are blocking a national Right to Information Act-even though
it has received Presidential sanction-look to Akola in Maharashtra. Here,
a state Act was passed last year and two incidents show how the citizen
has been empowered at the expense of babus, literally. .....
Last week Sonia Gandhi set off
on a kisan yatra. Rural India is so distant from our genteel, middle-class
lives that Sonia appears to have felt the need to dress the part. Perfect
grooming and elegant silk saris were swapped for scruffy Medha Patkar look
and off she went into the wilds of Western Uttar Pradesh with at least
one TV crew in devoted attendance. .....
"Destroy the minority Hindus' sense
of security of living in Bangladesh so that they are forced to flee the
country. This strategy will rid the country not only of the Hindus but
also of all other minority ethnic groups and help Bangladesh emerge as
a true Islamic theocratic country in the world", said People's Investigation
Commission (PIC), an independent body of leading Bangladeshi intellectuals
and human rights activists. .....
How the West was won is an old
story. Although neither New Delhi nor Islamabad wants to talk in terms
of victory the recently concluded SAARC meeting has many success stories
to write home about. But one meeting that takes the cake, or any other
equivalent to the delicious Islamabad sweet, is the "joint statement",
which came as a reward for all the back-breaking diplomatic moves made
by the Indian side. .....
Communal riots have become the
fate of India, thanks to our politicians and their selfish interests. And
ironically most of the riots are engineered by those politicians who claim
to be most patriotic. Their patriotism is designed to win power by propagating
hate politics against minority communities. .....
It was written: the earth is flat.
And when that enterprising, imaginative Italian Gallelio found and provided
proof that the earth was round, he was tortured. Not physically - that
was not necessary. He was shown the torture chambers and different gadgets
used for inflicting pain. That was enough. He could visualise it all. .....
The presence of Indian insurgents
in safe havens in Bangladesh has never been in doubt, considering the volumes
of hard intelligence input that New Delhi has. If confirmation was needed,
a spate of reports relating to multiple incidents on January 2, 2004, and
Dhaka's subsequent responses, gave confirmation to India's long standing
complaint that its neighbour was being less than honest on the issue. .....
The Marxists in Bengal, it seems,
are ready to make amends. To start with, their quest for a national icon
is settling down on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, raising eyebrows within
and outside the party. .....
Kashmir Herald through its deep-throat
contacts managed to get the transcript of a discussion between Pakistani
Dictator-Chief Executive-President-Commander-in-Chief Pervez Musharraf,
his political advisors, Pakistani religious leaders and ISI Generals. .....
Hurriyat Conference today said
it wanted to hold talks with militant leadership in Pakistan on Kashmir
issue after parleys with the Centre and threatened to pull out of the dialogue
process if the Government refuses permission to its leaders to travel to
the neighbouring country. .....
The Austrian village of Seibersdorf
is so anonymous that cab drivers from nearby Vienna have difficulty finding
it. But it is home to a laboratory complex whose scientists have the power
to start a war or keep the peace. .....
According to intercepts available
with Indian intelligence agencies, the ISI has organised a meeting of top
terrorist organisations in Bangladesh. The meeting may be held in the next
few days. .....
The operation in which two senior
Hizbul Mujahideen commanders were killed in Held Kashmir soon after the
Indo-Pakistan talks is being speculated in Srinagar as part of a "secret
agreement" with Islamabad. .....
At least one person was killed
and over a dozen injured, most of them seriously, in an outbreak of communal
violence in tribal-dominated Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh on Friday
as a sequel to the rape and murder of a nine-year-old Christian girl. .....
At least three persons were killed
and over a dozen injured, most of them seriously, in group clashes in Jhabua
district today, triggering tension and heavy deployment of security forces
in sensitive areas. .....
After successfully taking on a
footwear manufacturer who displayed images of Lord Shiva on high-heeled
sandals and a plumbing supply company which showed Nataraja as a scantily-clad
woman taking a shower, Hindus in the US are girding their loins for a new
battle. .....
It has taken an audacious attack
on an army base, including the murder of four soldiers - two of whom had
their throats slit - the theft of more than 300 weapons and the torching
of 21 schools as a diversionary tactic to finally expose the Thai prime
minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, as a ruler with no clothes. .....
Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand
Advani fears a demographic invasion by Pakistanis who come to India with
valid travel documents but then dissolve among the Indian nationals. .....
In a week of socialist protest
that starts today at Goregaon, the World Social Forum (WSF), the Mumbai
Resistance (MR) 2004 and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
Red Flag, three parties who swear by red in different shades, will be conducting
anti-globalisation seminars in the city. .....
Christian and Muslim representatives
marched together along the India-Pakistan border to affirm their desire
for peace in Kashmir and support initiatives for dialogue in both countries.
.....
Asian muggers of Indian and Pakistani
origin are believed to be among those behind an "alarming" increase in
the number of gang rapes here, according to Scotland Yard. .....
The presence of Indian insurgents
in safe havens in Bangladesh has never been in doubt, considering the volumes
of hard intelligence input that New Delhi has. If confirmation was needed,
a spate of reports relating to multiple incidents on January 2, 2004, and
Dhaka's subsequent responses, gave confirmation to India's long standing
complaint that its neighbour was being less than honest on the issue. .....
Pakistan plans to encircle India
with a jehadi belt and destabilise peace in Central Asia, a top field comander
of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance has claimed. .....
The government of Denmark just
approved an Astaru-like religion as one of the religions that they officially
recognize. Big day for pagans in Denmark! .....
There have been many attacks on
Christian churches in Sri Lanka over the past two months. The Sri Lankan
media has not covered it and the international media also largely ignored
the issue. Buddhist crowds had been angered by illicit conversions. .....
The certifying engineers of secularism
have not overcome their blinked approach to communal violence in India.
Their theory has it that communal violence in India is primarily the creation
of the majority community (read the Hindus and the Sangh Parivar) over
the hapless minorities (Christians and Muslims). .....
There is no doubt that Farooq Abdullah
is regarded as "secular" face of Kashmiri Muslims. He himself is married
to a British Christian. HIs son and well established politician, an aspirant
on the national scene, Omar is married to a Sikh girl. But when Farooq's
daughter marries a HIndu, she is abandoned. Neither the father nor the
son attends the marriage. .....
In a major achievement, Police
and security forces today claimed to have killed Hizbul Mujahideen's second
most important commander, Abbas Malik alias Abbas Rahi of Doda, in a brief
encounter at Tengpora, in Srinagar outskirts. In other militancy-related
incidents across Kashmir valley since last evening, militants killed a
CRPF soldier in Tral while as militants have shot dead two civilians in
Bandipore area. .....
Expressing satisfaction over improving
situation in the State, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GoC-in-C)
Northern Command Lieutenant General Hari Prashad today asserted that Army
would continue its counter-insurgency operations in the hinterland of the
State. .....
Communication intercepts indicate
that terrorist camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir have not been wound up,
Army Chief Gen N C Vij said here today, asserting that work on anti- infiltration
fencing along the Line of Control would go full pace. .....
The agreement between India and
the United States on cooperation in civilian nuclear and space activities,
announced by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President George Bush
in New Delhi and Monterrry, Mexico, respectively, should not be seen purely
in terms of the tangible results it will yield. .....
The Senate Finance Committee has
asked the Internal Revenue Service to turn over confidential tax and financial
records, including donor lists, on dozens of Muslim charities and foundations
as part of a widening congressional investigation into alleged ties between
tax-exempt organizations and terrorist groups, according to documents and
officials. .....
At no time in history has India
been Islamic. Indeed, how could it have been when it has always had a majority
of non-Muslims, as it does even today? True, certain parts of the country
in certain periods did have Muslim rulers who imposed Islamic law on the
entire populace they governed, but that does not make India Islamic, since
a non-Muslim majority continued to follow their own religious tenets, come
what may. .....
Coimbatore Jan. 5. R. Premkumar,
first additional district judge and judge of the fast track court-II, today
convicted and sentenced five youths to undergo a three-year rigorous imprisonment
(RI) on charges of sedition and objectionable publication aimed at creating
communal animosity and harming national integration. .....
Sounds uncannily like a finance
ministry press release, but it's actually an invite to an art exhibition
called Let's Rock, by Samir Mondal, a Mumbai-based artist. The invite ends
by saying: "Everything's possible, everything works." .....
When sales brochures from Pakistan's
Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) are found with dangerous middlemen in
Libya and Iran, who trade in illegal nuclear technology, the tracks are
difficult to cover. When second-hand Pakistani centrifuges are discovered
by UN inspectors in Iran, the plot thickens. .....
The sun was playing hide and seek
when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee walked onto the manicured lawns
of 7 Race Course Road. But his mood was sunny, expansive, confident and
ready for anything. Tailed by PMO officials Ajay Bisaria and Ashok Tandon,
the just-turned-79- year-old spoke for 90 minutes to Editor-in-Chief Aroon
Purie and Editor Prabhu Chawla. .....
We have an ancient saying in India:
satyam vad, or speak the truth. Over the years it has undergone a slight
modification, so it now reads: speak the truth, but do so in a palatable
manner. .....
He has mesmerised audiences since
he started performing at the age of 18. Today, even at the age of 73, Dharmiklal
Pandya, one of the last exponents of Gujarat's medieval art, Manbhat Akhyan,
has not lost his magical cadence. So touching is Pandya's rendition of
verses from the Mahabharata, Bhagvad Gita and the Ramayana that listeners
become totally involved and react instinctively to the episodes he narrates.
.....
While they were tucking into pav
bhaji at a small Dadar joint. Sweta and her Assamese friend Pretina Nunisa
were mistaken for women from the red light district. Businessman Sanjay
In-amdar. the teenagers' host in Mumbai realized with dismay just how ignorant
Mumbai is about north-easterners. .....
It would be tedious to list
how many times India and Pakistan have "agreed to talk", and the disastrous
record of failure and recurrent violence. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee noted rightly at the South Asian Association for Regional Summit
Cooperation (SAARC) in Islamabad last week: "History can remind us, guide
us, teach us or warn us. It should not shackle us." .....
Justifying its decision to dismiss
the state government's appeal and prayer for a retrial in the Best Bakery
case-prodded by the Supreme Court-the Gujarat High Court has observed that
''there seems to be a definite design and conspiracy to malign people by
misusing...witness Zaheera (Sheikh), who is hardly 19.'' And that Zaheera
''can easily fall prey to anyone and play in the dirty hands of anti-socials
and anti-national elements.'' .....
Raising "serious" doubts over claims
of Zaheera Sheikh - key witness in the Best Bakery carnage in Vadodara
of that threats forced her to turn hostile during trial, the Gujarat High
Court has observed "there seems to be definite conspiracy to malign people
by misusing her." .....
US Congressman Joseph Crowley yesterday
warned that Bangladesh's image abroad might be tarnished due to recent
incidents of religious intolerance in the country. .....
The Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat
published an interview with Nabil Sahrawi, also known as Abu Ibrahim Mustafa,
a leader of the Salafi Group for Da'wa and Fighting in Algeria. This group
has been linked with Al-Qa'ida. Prior to publication, the interview, which
is Sahrawi's first, was posted on Islamist websites. .....
A wag once complained that whereas
history repeats itself, historians repeat each other! We may thus be destined
to see adherents of the sidelined Marxist school of historiography reproduce
the old discredited dogmas in 'parallel' textbooks aimed at competing with
NCERT's new course books. .....
Bharatiya Janata Party president
Venkaiah Naidu has reiterated that Ram temple, Article 370 and the Common
Civil Code were very much on the party's agenda and even though due to
compulsion of the NDA coalition they could not be implemented, the party
would keep on pursuing them. .....
It is a matter of eternal regret
that foreign policy is not dependant on the sound bites of either the vegetable
sellers or fashion designers of Islamabad. Had it been so, India would
have coupled its joy over Finance Minister Jaswant Singh's pre-election
bonanza with the additional reassurance that the carefully vetted voices
for peace we heard on the news channels constituted the definitive Pakistani
perception of what President Pervez Musharraf called his 'deal' with Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. .....
They had been watching him for
months, aware that his pop star good looks concealed a secret life as one
of Europe's new terrorist kingpins. Finally, on a cold winter dawn, the
police moved in. Abderrazak Mahdjoub did not resist as armed German officers
surrounded his Hamburg home and led him away. .....
The post-Godhra communal riots,
which have already effected a change in the conduct of business and social
life, are now impacting the functioning of government institutions. .....
Twenty-two bishops and nearly three
hundred delegates from dioceses spread all over the four Southern States
will descend on Bangalore to attend the four-day Synod meeting of the Church
of South India (CSI), beginning on January 10. The CSI runs 2000 schools,
130 colleges and 104 hospitals. More than 75% of its four million members
are Dalit Christians. .....
Even as militants have mercilessly
killed a couple in Tral and a cable operator in Rajpora area of Pulwama
district, security forces have killed two militants in a fierce gunbattle
in Bijbehara area of south Kashmir since last evening. Meanwhile, security
forces have killed two more militants in the encounter that had begun at
Bakhipora in Rafiabad area of Baramulla district on Friday. .....
The emergence of Middle Eastern
crime groups was first observed in NSW in the mid 1990s. Before then, they
had been known largely for individual acts of antisocial behaviour and
for loose family structures involved in heroin importation and supply as
well as motor vehicle theft and conversion. .....
On January 12, the nation commemorates
the birth of Swami Vivekanand, one of its greatest sons. With his spirited
advocacy of the teachings of Sanatan Dharm he took the world by storm.
In his rather short earthly life he singlehandedly achieved what generations
of men could scarce achieve. He earned respect for his religion. .....
Sita Ram Goel, who passed away
on December 3, had made path-breaking research whose importance has remained
largely unsung. Alexander Cunningham, the founder director of the Archaeological
Survey of India, and a few of his colleagues, had discovered several temples
that had been desecrated and turned into mosques. .....
Sex and violence in films is no
child's play. Actress Raveena Tandon realised that to her discomfort at
the inaugural function of the 13th International Children's Film Festival
recently. .....
Understanding India is important
if we are to have normal, friendly relations with our bigger neighbour
on the eastern border. Ignorance is bliss only for fools and my essay does
not address them. As a political scientist I find India a most intriguing
social science puzzle: a caste-ridden, poverty-afflicted, ethnically and
racially heterogeneous .....
Police here claim that the four
Muslim youths arrested for plotting to kill Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
leaders had links with Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed.
.....
Close to a year after his arrest,
a university computer science student from Saudi Arabia studying in Idaho
was charged on Friday with supporting terrorism. .....
The Indian Government's move to
deport Pakistani nationals residing illegally in India is causing concern
for Pakistani Hindus living in the western state of Rajasthan. .....
I suppose it would have been preferable
if Patrice Lumumba Ford and Jeffrey Leon Battle had made nice with federal
prosecutors and their native land. It might have been helpful if Ford and
Battle had joined other "Portland Seven" defendants and cooperated with
anti-terror investigators. .....
India's caste system affects 10
times more people than are affected by HIV/AIDS world wide. And 20 times
more than were oppressed under Apartheid. A battle against India?s Hindu
caste system is raging, and, curiously, conversion to other religions is
becoming the main weapon of this revolution. The battle is yet to come.
.....
The Shankaracharya of Gobardhan
Peeth, Puri, Swami Nischalananda Saraswati, has urged the Hindus to save
at least Re 1 every day and contribute it to a fund for development of
tribal areas to stop illegal conversion. .....
As if to emphasize that new years
bring new hopes, Libya, Iran, North Korea and Pakistan have in recent weeks
altered their defiant or deceitful behavior on nuclear weapons. Pushing
these four atomic miscreants to clean up their acts should be a top American
priority in 2004. .....
The Union Home Ministry has turned
down the request of a history scholar to publish papers culled out of the
``Quarterly Survey of Political and Constitutional Position in British
India from 1937 to 1947'' that could throw light on the penultimate stages
of India's struggle for Independence and the drift towards Partition. .....
Evidence has been mounting of the
mushrooming of nuclear proliferation to North Korea, Iran, Iraq earlier,
and now Libya since the eighties, with some intelligence reports indicating
its continuation even now. Then there were the suspicions of Saudi Arabia's
acquisition of long-range nuclear-capable ballistic missiles from China
in 1987, and the recent hobnobbing of the Saudi leadership with nuclear
establishment in Pakistan. .....
Both Swami Vivekanand and historian
Arnold Toynbee found Hindu resilience against the onslaught of Islam and
Christianity extraordinary in the annals of civilisations. It was Hindus'
fortress of tolerance and a sense of equanimity that no outside conquerors
could penetrate, and this distinguishes the Hindus from others. .....
They remain the ultimate odd couple,
the general and the poet, two leaders whose past interactions have been
marked by great expectations and even greater disappointments. But as they
posed for the cameras on Monday morning, their handshake firm and ungrudging,
it seemed to herald a new chapter in their relationship. .....
Pakistan was the source of the
centrifuge design technology that made it possible for Libya to make major
strides in the last two years in enriching uranium for use in nuclear weapons,
Bush administration officials in Washington and other Western experts said
Monday. .....
The city's richest Siddhivinayak
Temple at Prabhadevi finds itself in the maelstorm of unholy controversy
with Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) accusing the Temple Trust of swindling
Rs.83 lakh from Siddhivinayak and diverting the same to private trusts
run by ministers and bureaucrats in the state government. .....
The Islamic Circle of North America,
or ICNA, along with the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, and
representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR,
are mainstays of the American Islamic conference circuit, which has featured
radical clerics and ideology derived from its overseas forebears. .....
The present article is in response
to recent writings by Rajiv Malhotra on RISA-L scholarship and Hinduism
that appeared in Sulekha. It has been written in my capacity as a Hindu
living in the diaspora as well as a member (albeit marginalized!) of RISA-L
and is addressed to the readers and members of Sulekha .....
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
said yesterday he will enforce martial law in Thailand's mainly Muslim
south, where insurgents this week have seized weapons, burned schools and
attacked police outposts, killing four soldiers and three policemen. .....
My message is to urge jihad to
repulse the grand plots hatched against our nation, such as the occupation
of Baghdad, under the guise of the search for weapons of mass destruction,
and the fierce attempt to destroy the jihad in beloved Palestine by employing
the trick of the road map and the Geneva peace initiative. .....
As foreign tourists knock again
at India 's door, north India had better sit up and take note. The official
feedback is that more visitors are now heading south. In the 1980s, says
an official, 71 per cent of foreign tourists used to stick to north India.
Now, just 48 per cent stay in the region as the southern experience and
superior service scores. ''People are looking for new destinations,'' says
the official. ''Growth to south India is becoming big.'' .....
Dharmpal is a noted Gandhian and
historian of Indian science. He is well known for his "rediscovery" of
Indian science. His work has often been path breaking and instilled a whole
generation of Indians with a new-found faith in the country's indigenous
scientific traditions and cultures. .....
For centuries, religious, social
and political influences from across Asia trickled into this scenic Himalayan
region, making it renowned for its tolerance. .....
As this issue went to press, Southern
Baptist workers were already planning massive relief projects inside Iraq
which will need hundreds of volunteers to staff. .....
Come alone. No names revealed.
No tape recorder, no mobile phones and definitely no cameras. After
giving the rules, the Pakistani bureaucrat chuckled as he explained how
to find the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. .....
Pakistan on Tuesday reacted coolly
to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's suggestion of India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh jointly celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1857 uprising.
.....
Pakistan on Tuesday reacted coolly
to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's suggestion of India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh jointly celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1857 uprising.
.....
The signing of the additional protocol
on terrorism at the 12th SAARC summit in Islamabad is likely to put pressure
on "Indian-sponsored" terrorism in at least three SAARC nations, according
to a report in the Daily Mail, a Pakistani newspaper, on January 5. .....
The Pakistani nuclear scientist
who labelled me a "Hindu bastard" is the focus of renewed interest by US
and British intelligence services for his role in using Libyan slush money
to further his country's weapons programme. .....
Devotees queuing up at the Siddhivinayak
Temple, Prabhadevi, nowadays get a pamphlet before prasad. The pamphlet,
distributed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), has raised an unholy row.
.....
International Affairs Advisor to
Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga and a former Foreign Minister,
Lakshman Kadirgamar, has said that the countries of South Asia must show
concern for India's security. .....
In a competitive democracy, every
election campaign involves a calculated gamble. Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee's apparent decision to go along with the rest of the party and
settle for a general election some five months ahead of schedule is no
different. The ruling BJP, it would seem, has chosen to go to the people
for another term on the strength of what stock market analysts describe
as sentiment. .....
Since the creation of their state,
Pakistani politicians have maintained that Kashmir is a national issue,
far more important than any other issue, and that the legitimacy of their
entity would not be complete without having full sovereignty over the entire
Kashmir territory. Additionally, it has been repeatedly said that any Pakistani
leader giving up on this issue would be doomed to death. .....
Screen heroes may rekindle memories
of the 1999 Kargil War, but Indian Army officer Lieutenant Triveni Singh
became a real life hero when he gunned down two terrorists in direct combat.
The young soldier's raw courage averted what could have been a bloodbath
at Jammu Railway Station on January 2. After accomplishing his duty, the
brave officer laid down his life. .....
In the 1990s, the Narasimha Rao
government took far-reaching initiatives to free the economy of stifling
controls and paved the way for liberalisation and globalisation. .....
He has become a legend in his lifetime.
B K S Iyengar , or "Guruji", has played a key role in putting the ancient
art of yoga firmly on the global map. He has helped separate the physical
aspect of yoga from its spiritual side, taking it into a secular space
beyond the boundaries of India. .....
Shall I recall, Mr Lyngdoh, what
you told the BBC the other day? Not just about Indian politicians. Also
about Indian democracy. Indian states. This is what you said: Indian "politicians
are a cancer that kills the system'. 'They are like Zamindars exploiting
the resources of the state'. Did you not stop at that? No. .....
In the umpteenth incident of its
kind in Jammu & Kashmir, J&K Police personnel, "guarding" a family
of the minority Hindu community, have surrendered their automatic weapons
to militants in Chadoura area of Budgam district. Five of the six Police
guards have been immediately arrested, put behind bars and placed under
suspension. .....
