>>> The police used teargas and a lathicharge
to disperse an angry crowd of Muslims gathered
outside the New Indian Express office here on Sunday evening. .....
>>> Protesters gathered outside the New Indian Express office in Bangalore
on Sunday demanded a ban on Dante’s Inferno, quoted in an article The millennium
is dead...Long live the millennium. They said the book insults Prophet
Mohammed. .....
Chitra Subramaniam - The Indian Express - January 3, 2000
>>> Why don't you write about what it really was? People don't know
what the issues are any more'', said the editor of this newspaper as we
spoke about l'affaire Bofors. Thirteen years is a long time to despair
and hope. .....
Francois Gautier - The Indian Express - January 3, 2000
>>> India is entering the third millennium. It doesn't matters that
this is a bit of an artificial date created by the West, which arbitrarily
decided that the year zero started with the birth of Jesus Christ. India
is entering the third millennium. .....
Interview with Captain Devi Saran - Rediff on Net - January 3, 2000
>>> Captain Devi Saran, the commander of the Indian Airlines Flight
IC 814 which was hijacked by five Pakistani nationals on Christmas eve
is, understandably, a much relieved man now. For seven days and nights
Saran, because of the responsibility he had to shoulder, . .....
>>> Dinosaurs disappeared from the face of the world because they failed
to adopt to changed circumstances and failed the test of the survival of
the fittest. The same fate met the communist parties all over Europe. In
China, the communist party survives by wearing a free market hat. .....
Suchandana Gupta - The Telegraph - January 5, 2000
>>> The Left front government in Kerala has shelved a divorce Bill
amendment with parallels to a uniform civil code after the move threatened
to pit the state against the church. .....
Observer Political Bureau - The Observer - January 6, 2000
>>> Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief Rajendra Singh on Wednesday
said that the release of three dreaded terrorists by the Vajpayee government
in the Indian Airlines hijacking episode would hav6 a "demoralising effect"
on the security forces. However, Bharatiya Janata Party vice-president
J P Mathur asserted that the episode "has damaged the image of the party."
.....
>>> The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, in his statements
immediately after the end of the hostage crisis, pointedly referred to
the fact that many Islamic nations had strongly condemned the hijacking
of IC 814. The External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, has hinted
at the co-operation India received from some key Islamic countries during
the crisis. .....
Imran Khan - The Weekend Observer - January 8, 2000
>>> Gunning down of eight tribals at Majhiguda village in Orissa last
week, who were part of a group trying to retrieve their land from Christians,
by the police on December 30 has gone totally unnoticed and unsung. .....
Ashok Mahajan - The Weekend Observer - January 8, 2000
>>> The name ‘Antichrist’ (the chief enemy of Christ) figures in Christian
eschatological literature 'in the letters of St John (1 John 2:18).
Western theologists dealing with apocalypses saw Antichrist in the form
of the emperor Nero at one time and Frederick II, at another. Preachers
spread warnings of the coming of Antichrist in order to call the people
to repentance throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. .....
Virendra Parekh - The Weekend Observer - January 8, 2000
>>> One full week after the event, the bitter taste in the mouth refuses
to go away. Even as the BJP-led government at the Centre was preparing
to surrender to barbarians of Islamic jehad in order to save some precious
lives, the BJP which was long regarded by friends and foes as a party of
hardcore Hindu nationalists was trying to jettison what was perceived as
heavy ideological baggage from the past. .....
Rakesh Sinha - The Times of India - January 6, 2000
>>> Mr Kalyan Singh's expulsion from the BJP and his disassociation
from the RSS were neither unexpected nor inexplicable. The UP state
party unit had, in fact, been in disarray even before the Lok Sabha elections.
The rift between the pro-and anti-Kalyan Singh factions has proved disastrous
for the party. .....
>>> Mr Justice Cyriac Josep of the Delhi High court has defended the
call made by Pope John Paul II during his recent visit of India, for more
conversions to Christianity.
Inaugurating the jubilee
celebrations of the Thrissur Archdiocese here today, Mr Justice Cyriac
said the Pope had really meant ‘conversion’ of people to Christianity and
not mere ‘conversion of hearts’, as is being projected by some Catholic
leaders. .....
Jyotirmaya Sharma - The Times of India - January 8, 2000
>>> After the Kargil crisis the government set up a committee on July
29, 1999 to go into the causes that led to yet another war with Pakistan.
The committee comprising of Mr B G Vergese, Lt-Gen (retd.) K K Hazari and
Mr. Satish Chandra has now submitted its report to the government and
has done so in record time. Mr K Subrahmanyam, chairman of
the committee, spoke to Jyotirmaya Sharma about what went into
the making of the Kargil Review Committee report. .....
>>> The “dissident” CPI(M) leader, Mr. Saifuddin Chaudhury, who is
in the dock for alleged “breach” of organisational discipline, reiterated
today that the party needed to “open up” and change its “closed” style
of functioning. .....
>>> As the sun set on the last day of the century, all the hostages
of the ill-fated Indian Airlines plane IC-814 returned home ending the
eight-day-old hijack ordeal, the longest in the Indian civil aviation history.
.....
>>> When the Australian missionary, Staines, was along with his two
young sons torched to gory death while sleeping in a van in the midst of
an Orissa jungle there was understandably a lot of hue and cry in the country.
A Christian missionary who was serving the sick and the poor in tribal
Orissa naturally evoked a great deal of sympathy. .....
>>> Quattrocchi was the representative of Snamprogetti in India. He
had no locus standi here in the deal. Snamprogetti was not a party to this
deal. Its corporate status is much larger than Bofors. Quattrocchi was
independent of Snamprogetti in whatever he did with respect to Bofors.
.....
>>> One of the hostages aboard the Indian Airlines plane recently hijacked
to Kandahar was Swiss tycoon Roberto Giori, who controls 90 per cent of
the world’s currency printing business. .....
>>> Xu Yonghai has lost faith in Communism and democracy -the last
20 years of living in China saw to that. So, like countless other
Chinese staring into a spiritual void, Xu turned to religion. .....
>>> Islamic fundamentalists living in Britain have established a network
of front companies and bogus societies to work undetected for Muslim militants
operating in Kashmir and other places abroad, Sunday Telegraph said. .....
Meenakshi Jain - The Weekend Observer - January 15, 2000
>>> Two recent, apparently unconnected events, the hijacking of an
Indian Airlines plane IC 814 by Pakistani nationals, and the attack on
The New Indian Express in Bangalore by agitated members of a minority community,
have brought into sharp focus some fundamental issues that have bedevilled
Islam since its advent in the subcontinent. .....
Keki N Daruwalla - The Observer Of Business And Politics - January 14,
2000
>>> ‘Upon my belly sat the saw of fear,’ wrote Carl Shapiro in one
of his poems. One can’t think of a more startling image. From Christmas
eve to the new year, the sow of fear sat on the nation’s belly, as it morbidly
watched the goings-on at the Kandahar airport and hoped that the IC-814
flight would not come to greater harm. And the thought that this is not
a one-time affair and events like this will keep repeating is more galling.
.....
Ambarish Mukherjee - The Observer Of Business And Politics - January
14, 2000
>>> Jyoti Basu-led Marxist government in West Bengal wants to chalk
out a separate course for its education system and wants to keep school
children ignorant of the Constitution of the country.
The state government was
gradually reducing the course content of civics in school syllabus to such
an extent that it deprived the children of any knowledge of even the basics
of the Constitution, Trinamul Congress charged. .....
Saeed Naqvi - The Indian Express - January 14, 2000
>>> The Indian Airlines hijack and lie sudden arrival of the Karmapa
Lama from Tibet has sparked off a debate. is it the government or the media
which is to blame for the unfortunate projection? In other words, is it
a messy projection of events by the media or a simple projection of the
mess for which the government must take the blame? .....
Last message date: Mon Jan 17 11:30:00 2000 Archived on:Mon Jan 24 16:00:00 2000
