S. Balakrishnan - The Times of India - February 4, 2000
>>> Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham Sri Jayendra Saraswati
has supported the Gujarat government’s decision to permit its employees
to take part in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ‘shakhas’. .....
>>> Vajpayee government’s foray into a review of the Constitution promises
to be highly educative: It will tell us a lot not only about the Constitution
and the political system but also about the people who run it. Whether
it will be anything else remains to be seen. .....
Sridhar Krishnaswami - The Hindu - February 5, 2000
>>> Pakistan’s military leader, General Pervez Musharraf, has drawn
a clear distinction between acts of terrorism such as hijacking passengers
and kidnapping tourists and the Islamic “freedom struggle” in India’s Kashmir
and other parts of the world. He argued that to call the ‘Jihad’ in Kashmir
as terrorism was not correct. .....
>>> The Sanskar Bharti’s letter to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Ram
Prakash Gupta, demanding immediate ban on the shooting of Deepa Mehta’s
film Water in Varanasi and a probe into the alleged bungling on her part,
has further deepened the row......
S. Gurumurthy - The New Indian Express - February 7, 2000
>>> Before Independence two persons wrote on the title "Mother India".
One was Maharishi Aurobindo, who saw Mother India as Divine Mother. The
other was Catherine Mayo, who saw the same mother as filth. .....
Mubashir Zaidi - The Hindustan Times - February 2, 2000
>>> Pakistan's military government is currently working on a draft
law to regulate and monitor the workings of madrassas, religious institutions
as well as to keep tabs on sources of their funding and educational operations,
Pakistan Observer reported today. .....
Sridhar Krishnaswami - The Hindu - February 5, 2000
>>> Pakistan’s military leader, General Pervez Musharraf, has drawn
a clear distinction between acts of terrorism such as hijacking passengers
and kidnapping tourists and the Islamic “freedom struggle” in India’s Kashmir
and other parts of the world. He argued that to call the ‘Jihad’ in Kashmir
as terrorism was not correct. .....
>>> WASHINGTON: In a remarkably sobering assessment of the threats
facing the US, CIA director George Tenet told a Senate committee Wednesday
that growing resentment of American power plus new technologies means that
the US has become ``a lightning rod for the disaffected''. .....
>>> We see the beginnings of a new culture war in Pakistan.
The first skirmish in this conflict is the demand to ban the festival
of [Basant], or Vasant. An old sub-continental tradition, it celebrates
the onset of spring with kite-flying and other festivities. Much ingenuity
goes into the design of the kite and the string, to give it strength and
agility to capture other kites. .....
>>> VATICAN CITY, FEB 2 (ZENIT).- After 3 years of work, the document
that will guide Catholic pastors and faithful in the principles underlying
the Church's request for forgiveness for errors committed by her children
in the past is virtually complete. .....
Arvind Lavakare - Rediff on Net - February 8, 2000
>>> Dear Congressman Narayanan
At the outset itself, let
me request you not to take umbrage at my addressing you as "Congressman".
That label is not to make you out as a member of the US Congress under
the Presidential system which, at your age of 79, you seem to distrust
and disdain, going by your address to Parliament the other day. .....
The Rediff Interview/ Shyamdeo Ramchaudhary - Rediff on Net - February
2, 2000
>>> When irate mobs decided to take the law, and Water's film-sets,
into their own hands, leading the brigade was the BJP legislator Shyamdeo
Ramchaudhary. Never mind if the government headed by his party had
cleared the script, never mind the impact such 'spontaneous' protests will
have on the image of the nation, Ramchaudhary's demand, made clear to Suparn
Verma, is: make the script public if you have nothing to hide. .....
M. V. Kamath - www.expressindia.com - February 7, 2000
>>> The Secular Parivar -- or Brigade -- if one has an allergy for
the word parivar, has been having a grand time attacking all those RSS,
VHP and BJP -- wallahs who had the nerve to protest against some unkind
things said about Hinduism by Deepa Mehta, the latest secular icon. ......
>>> Early 30 years ago, a Western reporter preparing for a first foreign
assignment, to China, had reason to feel daunted. In the fall of
1970, the country was in the grip of one of the greatest upheavals in its
history, the Cultural Revolution. ......
>>> The bogey of greater autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir is periodically
making the rounds in the beleaguered state, at a time when people are uninterested.
.....
Meenakshi Jain - The Weekend Observer - February 5, 2000
>>> If a common thread runs through the foreign minister’s commendation
of the Taliban and the President’s indictment of the nation in his Republic
Day Address, it is our extreme loquaciousness as a people. We tend to turn
garrulous the moment the spotlight is focused upon us our verbosity substituting
for hard headedness and even awareness of reality. .....
Anil Chawla - http://anilchawla.homestead.com/ - February 10, 2000
>>> For most Hindus Varanasi or Kashi is the same as Vatican is to
Christians, Jerusalem is to Jews (and Christians) and Makka- Madina is
to Muslims. It can of course be argued that the concept of treating a city
as sacred is ridiculous and does not stand to reason. ......
Sultan Shahin - The Hindustan Times - February 10, 2000
>>> They face death by shooting, burning or killing with axes if they
are deemed to have brought shame on the family. They are killed for supposed
'illicit' relationships, for marrying men of their choice, for divorcing
husbands. .....
http://www.stratfor.com/SERVICES/giu2000/020700.asp - February 7, 2000
>>> The United States is moving to redefine its policy in Kosovo. The
immediate reason can be found in the deteriorating situation on the ground.
Last week, violence intensified between ethnic Albanians and Serbs; this
was not something that the United States bargained for when it intervened
last year. ......
>>> Twenty-year-old Ikram Mohammed Imaduddin, a Fort Bend County resident,
accused of kidnapping 19-year-old Shalu Aggarwal, a North Harris County
resident, is in Harris County jail. .....
>>> Hijacking, per se, is an act of terrorism. No matter even if the
hijackers
were innocent Afghans seeking political asylum and wanting to get away
from
the oppressive Taliban regime. British authorities, particularly the
Special
Air Services (SAS) at the Stansted airport, deserve a special commendation
for a professional job well done. ......
Saubhik Chakrabarti - The Statesman - February 24, 2000
>>> MUCH left/liberal outrage has flowed into the controversy over
Water. But
does anyone remember the loud protests when a senior CPI-M leader killed
the
idea of multiplexes in Calcutta on the grounds that they will pollute
national culture even further? ......
>>> About 30 years back, an episode involving the murder of a Dalit
had made a
lot of noise. That Dalit had grown a moustache and that was his
crime. He
was murdered on account of a pervert mindset, which held that Dalits
have no
right to sport moustaches. The Moustache was only the pretext.
.......
Observer Political Bureau - The Observer - February 23, 2000
>>> Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) chairman Prof. B
R Grover
announced on Tuesday that the Council would be issuing a ‘white paper’
on
the recent controversy dogging the ‘Towards Freedom Project’ as also
the
relevant documents and the mounting expenditure’........
>>> Q. Could you give us the details on these incidents?
A. The attacks on RSS cadres date back to 1958. In 1958, the Mangalore
Ganesh Beedi factory shifted to Mangalore (from Kerala) due to labour
problems created by the Communist unions. .......
Virendra Parekh - The Observer - February 25, 2000
>>> One thing is common to mullahs, missionaries and Marxists. Whenever
they are given a dose of their own medicine, they call it a foul play.
No wonder, the
secularist lobby dominated by their friends is incensed. ......
>>> The “hit squads” of the militants which are now striking at security
forces
with impunity in the Kashmir Valley, were conceptualised by Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence in the early Nineties. .......
Press Trust of India - The Observer - February 28, 2000
>>> Blaming the Sangh parivar for the decision of the Indian Council
of
Historical Research (ICHR) to recall and review two volumes of Towards
Freedom was a ‘ruse’ on the part of the Leftist historians to cover
up their
prejudices and failures, RSS ideologue and director of ‘Bharatiya Vichara
Kendram’ P Parameswaran said here on Sunday. ......
>>> In 1976, when India was groaning under the impact of Indira Gandhi's
dictatorship, the Congress appointed a committee headed by Swaran Singh
to
review the Constitution. .......
>>> The first thing Indira Gandhi did after imposing the emergency
was to push
through the 39th Amendment to bar courts, with retrospective effect,
from
entertaining election petitions against the Prime Minister. ......
>>> Indian-Americans, who now hold 40 percent of high-tech jobs in
Silicon
Valley and the Washington area, are pouring money into political campaigns
and helping change the shape of U.S. relations with India, where
President
Clinton will visit next month. .......
Rudrangshu Mukherjee - The Telegraph - February 26, 2000
>>> Two contending versions of Indian history and two sets of patrons
are at war
in the Indian Council for Historical Research. This is a polite way
of
saying that these two ways - in which the powers that control the Indian
state want Indian history to be tailored - are fighting a battle by
proxy. ........
>>> Nigeria, in a backlash to last week's northern religious blood-letting
as
violence in Africa's most populous nation appeared to be spinning out
of
control. ........
Prepared and distributed by Sankskar Bharati in public interest
>>> A lot of rumours are afloat about the contents of the script of
Deepa
Mehta's film 'Water'. People are making their own guesses about it
because
Deepa Mehta has not shown the authorised 'script' of the Film to anybody.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has too not tried to remove
the
cover which wraps this script. .......
Preetam Srivastava - The Pioneer - February 22, 2000
>>> Taking the privilege enjoyed by sadhus and men-in-saffron in the
Bharatiya Janata Party regime, the Pakistani ISI agents have included saffron
colour dresses and sadhus make-ups in their costumes to hide their identifies.
......
Last message date: Mon Feb 28 11:30:00 2000 Archived on:Tue Feb 29 12:00:00 2000
