December Month Articles
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by N.S. Rajaram
The euphoria sweeping the Bharatiya
Janata Party in the wake of its spectacular success in Gujarat is understandable
and justified. A party that looked forward to the forthcoming polls in
several States with trepidation suddenly feels vindicated and vitalised.
But there is no straight road from Gandhinagar to other State capitals
and, if the BJP hopes to give a credible fight in any of these elections,
its leadership will have to stop day-dreaming and get down to brass tacks.
.....
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by Sandhya Jain
The euphoria sweeping the Bharatiya
Janata Party in the wake of its spectacular success in Gujarat is understandable
and justified. A party that looked forward to the forthcoming polls in
several States with trepidation suddenly feels vindicated and vitalised.
But there is no straight road from Gandhinagar to other State capitals
and, if the BJP hopes to give a credible fight in any of these elections,
its leadership will have to stop day-dreaming and get down to brass tacks.
.....
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by T V R Shenoy
What is the connection between
A K Antony, the Congress defeat in Gujarat, and the future of 'secularism'
as defined by the Left in India? Second, why did Sonia Gandhi's call of
'Vikas ya Vinash' ('Development or Destruction') find so few takers in
Gujarat? .....
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by Altaf Hussein
A leading militant group in Indian-administered
Kashmir, the Hizbul Mujahideen, has warned gunmen not to kill policemen.
.....
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by Tapas Chakraborty
A Hindu couple has adopted an "illegitimate
Muslim child" who had become a thorn in the side of the minority community
in a small village about 36 km from here, providing one bright spark of
amity in the gloom of communal polarisation. .....
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by Ashwani Sharma
In a build-up to the elections,
BJP Rajya Sabha member Dilip Singh Judeo held a ‘‘de-conversion’’ camp
for 250 Christian families in Chattisgarh today. .....
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by www.expressindia.com
The alleged spiritual head of the
terror group blamed for the October 12 Bali bombings has been named "Man
of the Year" by an Indonesian Islamic magazine. .....
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by M. V. Kamath
So, who, after all, turned out
to be right? On December 7th, the Kolkata-based The Telegraph noted that
"faint furrows have started creasing the BJP's brow with several opinion
polls in Gujarat predicting a close finish and the most rosy forecast scaling
down the party's tally". .....
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by Los Angeles Times
A leading Pakistani nuclear scientist,
barred by his government from talking to reporters, has made it known through
his son that Osama bin Laden approached him before the Sept. 11 attacks
for help in making nuclear weapons. .....
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by Yahoo News
Pakistani police on Sunday ended
the house arrest of militant leader Maulana Masood Azhar, wanted in India
on charges of terrorism, police officials said. .....
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by Arjanlal Sharma
Q. What is the aim of Sewa International?
A. Sewa International is a non-governmental
and nonsectarian voluntary organisation, ever ready in lending a helping
hand to the needy, offering all assistance to the unfortunate and underprivileged
by helping them reconstruct their life. .....
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by Rajesh Sinha
In the recent months, the English
media in India and the Western media have started attacking the organisations,
which are working for the Hindu interests abroad. The “hate campaign” against
India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) recently is a good example. The
donations from the USA for the noble cause of serving the victims of natural
calamity or for any service-based projects to uplift the poor masses in
the remote areas of our country has been named as “Saffron Dollar” a section
of the English media. .....
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by Deepak Kumar Rath
A report called “The Campaign to
Stop Funding Hate” was released on November 20, 2002, before the media
in New Delhi. The English media lapped up the totally biased and politically
motivated report ever ready to bash organisations related in any way to
Hindutva movement, The report targeted India Development and Relief Fund
(IDRF), a US-based charity organisation, which focusses mainly on five
areas such as education, healthcare, women, children and tribal welfare.
The IDRF is a registered organisation in USA, which allots funds to the
NGOs that are duly approved by the Government of India. .....
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by expressindia.com
In a starling revelation, a former
ISI Chief has claimed in his petition that Pakistan defied the United Nations
ban on supply of arms to the Bosnian Muslims and sophisticated anti-tank
guided missiles were air lifted to them by ISI. .....
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by WorldNetDaily.com
The warhawks have recently had
to revise their shucking and jiving routine on television. It turns out
that Kim Jung Il has nukes and Saddam Hussein doesn't. .....
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by Isabel Vincent
Omar al Khadr worshipped Allah
and Tintin. Even after he hit puberty and discovered American action films
and Nintendo, Omar, a conscientious Islamic student, still loved to quote
from the adventures of the Belgian cartoon reporter, which he seemed to
know by heart. .....
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by Debraj Mookerjee
That the election results in Gujarat
have irrevocably altered the contours of secular discourse in this country
is apparent not so much in the exultation of the religious right but in
the response of professional secularists: They are either into denial or
are sheepishly sidestepping failure by resorting to obfuscatory logic.
.....
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by Catherine Porter
A group of Toronto Muslims reacted
with outrage yesterday after hearing that an Etobicoke mosque issued a
warning to followers that wishing someone a Merry Christmas is like congratulating
a murderer. .....
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by Fakhr Ahmad
Citing a security threat, the US
Pacific territory of American Samoa has banned nationals from 23 countries,
including Pakistan, unless they have specific permission to visit, officials
said. .....
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by Serge Trifkovic
Austere mosques, women relegated
to the background and a puritanical faith that rejects change. A brand
of Islam that drives the Taliban and influenced the young American who
fought by their side has taken root in the Mecca of modernism, America.
The mosques and women in question are in Dearborn, Michigan, the fruits
of America’s "special relationship" with the most rigid totalitarian dictatorship
in the world. Welcome to the Saudi connection, one of the best-kept secrets
inside the Beltway. .....
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by Pierre-Antoine Souchard
French authorities dismantled a
terror cell with ties to Chechen rebels and al-Qaida that planned bomb
or toxic gas attacks in France and Russia, the Interior Ministry said Friday.
.....
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by CNN News
Pakistani police have detained
at least six people, including a radical Muslim cleric, in connection with
a Christmas Day attack on a church that killed three girls and wounded
14 others. .....
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by Manas Dasgupta
The Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra
Modi, has assured the people of "rule of law and administration of justice
to all". .....
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by The Hindu
Making a strong plea for channelling
the ``Gujarat energy,'' the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has said
that the real face of secularism has come out in the open after the recent
elections in the State. .....
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by The Hindu
The total revenue collection at
the Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple during the ongoing Mandalam season crossed
Rs. 30 crores on Tuesday. .....
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by Wilson John
I am desperately searching for
some human rights activists-even one will do-who can take up the cause
of the children being killed by terrorists in Kashmir. These do-gooders
seem to have suddenly vanished into thin air. Perhaps it is the season:
Christmas day and less than six days to New Year's eve. There are plenty
of things to do. .....
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by Francois Gautier
Famous French writer and politician
Andre Malraux once said that "unless the 21st century is spiritual, then
it will not be". What he meant was that the world has now come to such
a stage of unhappiness, of stress, of natural resources wastage, of religious
and ethnic conflicts, that it seems doomed - ecologically, politically
and socially. .....
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by V.Jayanth
Apart from dealing with extremism
and terrorism, the State police are now trying to figure out why there
has been a sudden upsurge in militant activities and an expanding network
of extremist organisations. .....
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by The Hindu
The City police today claimed to
have arrested nine activists of the Muslim Defence Force (MDF), including
a `key member' of the Force, who was allegedly involved in providing physical
training to its members. .....
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by Scott Wheeler
Al-Qaeda and two other Middle East
terrorist groups have established operations and are leading a holy war
against U.S. and British interests from the tiny Caribbean nation of Trinidad
and Tobago, Insight has learned from U.S. government sources and officials
inside the government of Trinidad and Tobago. .....
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by South Asia Tribune
Pakistan defied the United Nations
ban on supply of arms to the Bosnian Muslims and sophisticated anti-tank
guided missiles were air lifted by the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI,
to help Bosnians fight the Serbs, an ex-ISI Chief has officially admitted
in a written petition submitted before a court in Lahore. .....
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by Yahoo News
Pakistan's President intervened
earlier this month to prevent the deportation of Anees Ibrahim from Dubai
to India. .....
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by Kaushik Ghosh
Hiralal Sarnakar travelled for
three days, mostly on foot, from Tetulia village in Jessore in search of
"safety" in a foreign land. .....
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by Tarun Vijay
It's good to find that Sardar Patel
has re-emerged in the Congress Party’s offices, at least in Gujarat. It
will be interesting to know that in the offices of the Deputy Prime Minister
L K Advani and BJP president Venkaiah Naidu, one does not find portraits
of either Shyama Prasad Mookerji or Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, but of Sardar
Patel. .....
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by Radhika Sharma
It is said that in any aspect of
life, the difference between the numbers one and zero is greater
than the difference between the numbers two and one; nowhere is it as clearly
illustrated as in the case of education, where a little bit can go a long
way in improving the quality of life. .....
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by Michael Isikoff And Evan Thomas
When the two Qaeda operatives arrived
at Los Angeles International Airport around New Year’s 2000, they were
warmly welcomed. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar would help hijack American
Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon a year and a half later,
but that January in Los Angeles, they were just a couple of young Saudi
men who barely spoke English and needed a place to stay. .....
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by Syed Kamran Mirza
Frequently we are facing one common
accusation from the Islamists, semi-Islamists and even from the moderate
(ignorant) Muslims—which is "why only critiquing Islam" and why not critiquing
also other religions? This is of course a very prudent question. And this
question needs to be answered by the group of critics. .....
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by The Statesman
Criminals went on the rampage at
a Bharat Sevashram Sangha temple here today and damaged the altar, an idol
of Krishna and some artefacts. Temple staff caught one of them, Afzal Haq,
and handed him over to police. .....
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by Outlook
As many as 130 Christian families
returned to Hinduism at a fuction held in Tanda town of Rampur district.
.....
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by Ahtesham Qureshy
The Muslims in the country are
not unduly worried over the victory of Hindutva in Gujarat. Though disappointed,
or even saddened over the outcome of the poll, they are certainly not frightened.
They take it in their stride and hope both the Gujarat Chief Minister and
the BJP would really act on the policy declaration of "justice for all",
and that in the future, the party shall take even its opponents along while
working towards development. .....
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by Prafull Goradia
That the grammar of Indian politics
would change if Narendra Modi won the elections had been predicted repeatedly
over the past months. A number of commentators had made this prognosis
but the bugle was sounded by the Congress when the electoral campaign began.
.....
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by Desmond Butler
A German man under investigation
for links to top figures of Al Qaeda slipped out of the country last month,
withdrawing his four children from school, terminating his lease and obtaining
visas for Saudi Arabia without attracting any attention from the police,
according to German officials. .....
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by Susan B. Glasser
The echo of Moscow's theater siege
reverberated loudly in the unheated, unfinished mosque where Zvenigorod's
500 Muslims come to pray. Two Central Asian men, sitting here wrapped in
coats against the winter chill, heard it in the hatred of the town drunks
and the scorn of the militia, which confiscated their passports and vowed
to kick them out of the country. .....
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by Chicago Tribune
Dear Abby: I am a Hindu woman living
in the Bible Belt. Many of my friends and acquaintances are Christian,
and they are all wonderful -- except for one thing. Some try in small,
subtle ways to convert me to their faith. .....
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by Tim Johnston
The man suspected of helping to
build the car bomb that killed nearly 200 people in Bali last month said
yesterday that he was delighted with the outcome. .....
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by Stephen Farrell
An Archbishop from the Vatican
arrived in Bethlehem yesterday on a mission to stem the flow of Christians
leaving the Holy Land. .....
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by Tarquin Cooper
I remember the first time someone
suggested I try yoga. They came at me with enough zeal to impress a Jesuit
missionary and the reticence of an anti-smoking bore. I knew all the benefits
of yoga to health, posture and attitude to life but as far as I was concerned,
it was about as appealing as tofu. .....
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by Ahmed Rashid
Pakistan’s military regime last
night abruptly postponed the inaugural meeting of the first parliament
since the 1999 coup as an anti-army coalition of parties looked like forming
a government. .....
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by Patrick Bishop
In the time of Ayatollah Khomeini
Friday prayers at Teheran University were like a religious rock show where
thousands flocked to hear the mullah's sermons. .....
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by Barbie Dutter
Vice-President Hamzah Haz of Indonesia
warned Australia yesterday that an anti-terrorism offensive against Indonesian
Muslims in Australian cities could damage relations between the two countries.
.....
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by Janet Daley
While the number of dead hostages
was climbing on Monday, a Moscow newspaper had a headline that read: “At
last, we have something to be proud of”. Was it right? On balance, I think,
yes. .....
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by Andrew Sullivan
Every now and again the politics
and culture of race in America simply take you by surprise. To coin a phrase,
what's black can sometimes seem white and what's white can sometimes seem
black. Racism goes backwards and forwards in dizzying degrees of cultural
complexity and perspective. .....
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by Manoj Joshi
For the past three decades, New
Delhi has been preaching the world the inequities of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), but it is unlikely to derive any pleasure from the revelation
that Pakistan is providing nuclear weapon-making technology to North Korea.
.....
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by A K Ray
In one of the most brutal acts,
the Pakistan Army tortured six Indian soldiers, including a young Lieutenant,
gouged their eyeballs, burnt them with cigarette butts and chopped off
noses, ears and genitals." Thus ran the news report on June 11, aptly
head-lined, 'Barbarians'. That was the state of Lieutenant Saurav
Kalia and five of his men from 4 Jats who had gone on a patrol on May 14
in the Kaksar area. .....
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by The Statesman
Thai Muslim communities in the
South provided support to Jemaah Isalamiyah militants since some members
of the communities were educated in the same places in Afghanistan and
Libya, the Secretary-General of National Security Council Gen. Vinai Pathriyakul
said yesterday. .....
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by The Statesman
Preliminary investigations have
revealed that the Catholic church which was attacked and robbed was involved
in converting the area’s residents to Christianity, police here said today.
Police suspect that the attack was pre-planned and carried out by local
villagers because they were against conversions and also wanted to disrupt
the Christmas party. .....
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by Pramit Pal Chaudhuri
Saddam Hussein was an active partner
in Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme not just once, but twice. Iraq
funded Pakistan's clandestine nuclear weapons project in the early 1980s
in return for uranium-enrichment technology. A decade later, the two were
back in bed. This time they were busy trading money for an A-bomb design.
.....
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by Avijit Nandi Majumdar
Police have arrested three persons
in connection with the Christmas plunder of Maliapota Catholic church
in Tehatta and suspect the raid was carried out by a gang comprising
criminals from Nadia and Meherpur and Rajshahi districts in Bangladesh.
.....
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by The Hindustan Times
Pakistan has secretly informed
the United States that a number of its scientists and military officers
were "personally" involved in providing nuclear arms technology to North
Korea, Japanese media reported on Wednesday. .....
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by Sunando Sarkar
“We are going to take your head
if you don’t part with your land.” Faced with the grim choices she had,
Shefali Ray ran. She started on her journey — from Madra village of Khulna
district in Bangladesh to a place near Gobrapur village of North 24-Parganas
in India – before dawn the evening after she learnt what fate had in store
for her. .....
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by Shahid K Abbas
The two-day national executive
meet of the Bharatiya Janata Party concluded on Tuesday with Deputy Prime
Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani endorsing party president Venkaiah Naidu's
proposal of "replicating the Gujarat experience in the next series of assembly
and Lok Sabha elections." .....
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by Howard W. French
North Korea's decision this weekend
to remove international controls from its nuclear reactors and from a large
supply of weapons-grade fuel is as much a political challenge as a military
one, experts on the country's behavior say. .....
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by Howard W. French
North Korea warned today of an
“uncontrollable catastrophe” unless the United States agreed to a negotiated
solution to a standoff over its nuclear energy and weapons programs. .....
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by Joby Warrick
The recent disclosures of secret
nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea -- combined with the North's
threat this week to resume plutonium production -- have presented the United
States with its most serious nuclear challenge since the early 1990s. The
episodes have not only forced a reassessment of when the two countries
could become nuclear powers but also exposed widening gaps in the international
fire walls built decades ago to halt the spread of nuclear materials and
technology, weapons experts say. .....
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by Fakir Hassen
Around 1,000 mourners, including
the national health minister, paid their last respects here to a pioneering
South African Indian doctor who served as a role model to hundreds of students.
.....
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by Sify News
There is growing resentment against
the US in Pakistan, with the majority feeling that Islamabad could be the
next target after Iraq. .....
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by M. Venkaiah Naidu
I extend a very warm welcome to
all of you at this important meeting of our Party National Executive. It
is a meeting to rejoice, to celebrate - and to re-dedicate ourselves to
the tasks ahead. .....
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by Mohammed Shafeeq
Muslim groups in Andhra Pradesh
have threatened to intensify protests against the killings by police of
two youths from the community if a judicial probe is not initiated. .....
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by Mid-Day
Praveen Togadia, in the city for
Sadhvi Rithambara’s Bhagwat Saptah, spoke to the press at Bangurnagar,
Goregaon (W). .....
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by Mid-Day
VHP leader Praveen Togadia today
clashed out at the ban imposed by Congress-led DF government in Maharashtra
on his speaking at public meetings and said the state could go the Gujarat
way. .....
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by Syed Amin Jafri
Two cops abducted by the outlawed
People's War were set free on Saturday night after the police released
13 Naxalite sympathisers from its custody in Guntur district in Andhra
Pradesh. .....
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by K.T. Sangameswaran
With the police receiving information
that a Pakistani also is associated with the Saudi Arabia- based leader
of the Muslim Defence Force (MDF), whose members were arrested in the State,
investigators are to probe the organisation's possible links with the banned
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the ISI of the neighbouring country. .....
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by The Hindu
In a bold move, villagers of Kamareddy
mandal raised a voice of protest against the outlawed People's War naxalites
for obstructing development in the villages by destroying public property.
.....
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by The Hindu
Pakistan had deflected and frustrated
a U.N. probe into an offer made by Islamabad to Iraq of nuclear weapons
know-how, allegedly made in the 1990s on behalf of Abdul Qadeer Khan, father
of Pakistan's atomic bomb, former U.N. weapons inspectors were today quoted
as saying. .....
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by S Gurumurthy
The Gujarat election result has
hit the 'seculars' like a thunderbolt. They are howling 'harvest of the
hate', 'Moditva at work' 'pogrom on minorities' and so on. Days before
the Gujarat elections, the secular media had virtually written off the
BJP. But the results were an electric shock. It demonstrated not just the
rift between the 'seculars' and the Hindus but also that the seculars were
blind to a rising tornado of Hindu reaction -not against the Muslims, but
the seculars themselves. .....
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by Yahoo News
China stepped up its battle against
Muslim separatists on Monday as President Jiang Zemin (news - web sites)
agreed to a pact with neighbouring Kazakhstan to fight terrorism and religious
extremism. .....
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by Alex Perry
If attacks such as Sept. 11 and
the Bali bombings have any positive spin-off, it is that governments from
Indonesia to Pakistan are finally conceding that they have a terrorism
problem. Not so Bangladesh. When four simultaneous bombs exploded in crowded
cinemas in Mymensingh on Dec. 7, killing 17 people and injuring 200, home
minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury didn't blame al-Qaeda or any home-grown
movement but his government's political opponents. .....
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by Dr Shashiranjan Yadav
Of the total number of Congress
candidates for the December Gujarat Assembly elections, as many as 65-that
is, 36 per cent-were not from the original ranks of the Congress. A few
months before the Assembly elections, Shankersinh Vaghela was appointed
the State Congress President. Vaghela was expelled from the BJP. Both these
instances explain that the Congress has snapped itself from its roots.
.....
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by Anjali Mody
In the course of the December 13
Parliament attack trial, issues of admissibility of certain types of evidence
that could benefit some accused were raised. The decision on whether such
evidence could or could not be admitted was to be decided by the Judge,
S.N. Dhingra. .....
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by The Indian Express
Professor Michael Walzer of Princeton
University has intellectually engaged with democratic values like justice
and toleration as much as Just and Unjust Wars. Last Saturday, he spoke
about the justness of the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 and how unjust
it is of Pakistan to support cross border terrorism in J&K. In the
second and concluding part of an interview with Ajit Kumar Jha, Walzer
deals with the problem of religious sectarianism and intolerance towards
minorities in both United States and India after 9/11. .....
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by The Indian Express
He’s no pacifist but he’s opposed
to the United States waging war on Iraq. He considers the liberation of
Bangladesh in the 1971 Indo- Pakistan war as ‘‘a justified military intervention.’’
Meet Michael Walzer, the author of the classic Just and Unjust Wars and
professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
.....
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by Biresh Banerjee
The five member fidayeen squad
that raided Parliament House on December 13, 2001 was initially to have
comprised of six terrorists. .....
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by Sunando Sarkar
A few years after trying its best
to unsettle the Ramakrishna Mission-run primary school at Baranagar for
daring to teach English at the primary level when the Left Front government
was yet to be convinced about its benefits, a Cabinet minister owned up
that the education policy was riddled with mistakes. .....
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by Steven Stalinsky
For the past two decades, the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia has been engaged in an extensive effort "to spread Islam
to every corner of the earth."[1] This has meant supporting or creating
schools with a curriculum primarily based upon the teachings of Sheikh
Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, the 18th century founder of the Islamist Wahhabiyya
movement. .....
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by Yahoo News
The Orissa High Court has ruled
that a Muslim husband is obligated to pay a reasonable maintenance for
his divorced wife beyond the three-month 'iddat' period. .....
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by R. Venkataramani
A submerged coastal city near Poompuhar
in Nagapattinam District could well be the birth place of modern civilisation,
archaeologists say. .....
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by Swati Das
The Tamil Nadu police seem to have
averted a major disaster with the arrest of six persons from the newly-formed
Muslim Defence Force (MDF). .....
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by The Daily Star
At least five women and a girl
belonging to the Hindu community were gangraped by an armed gang
at Gopalpur village under Kachua upazila in Bagerhat district on
November 16, some of the victims and their family members alleged
while talking to this correspondent on Thursday. .....
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by Ashwani Sharma
A 17-year-old Dalit was allegedly
lynched yesterday at Bhilai for his affair with a Muslim girl. Om Prakash’s
body was found hanging from the ceiling of a cattle shed which was locked
from outside. .....
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by Balbir K. Punj
Recently, news about two canonisations
or the conferring of sainthood by the Vatican, has hit the headlines. One
is of the late Spanish priest Josemaría Escriva (1902-1975), the
founder of Opus Dei, the 85,000-strong controversial revivalist wing of
Catholicism. .....
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by Deepak Joshi
Though the Titwala police ignored
it in its remand application in the Kalyan court today, Colonel Chitale's
Maharashtra Commando Academy has recruited a second batch of youngsters
to give military training. However, the training couldn't begin as both
Chitale and his commando trainers Sanjeev Atre were arrested by the police.
.....
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by Sarbari Majumdar
It started as a trickle, developed
into a steady stream and is now threatening to turn into a tide spilling
over the borders of Bangladesh into India's northeastern states. Thousands
of Hindus and hundreds of Muslims who support the defeated Awami League
party have crossed over the border to India, carrying endless tales of
rape, torture and murder as well extortion and destruction of property.
.....
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by Orville Schell
No society of global consequence
today is more in a state of irreconcilable contradiction than the People's
Republic of China. A vast and overpopulated nation in the midst of a fevered
but precarious transition, its leaders have failed to articulate a coherent
development model as a guide for reform. .....
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by Sify News
An official at a madrassa, in northern
Bangladesh has been arrested for allegedly raping 20 boys, newspapers reported
Sunday. .....
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by Ershadul Haq
Tales of torture haunted a crime
convention here, as the audience fell silent with horror on hearing
sagas of rape and pillage allegedly by activists of the ruling Bangladesh
Nationalist Party-led government. The convention on "Crimes Against
Humanity" has been organised by the BNP's political rival, the Awami
League, and focuses on post-election atrocities on nearly 20 million
Hindu-dominated minorities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. .....
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by Book Review by M. V. Kamath
Debunking the fundamental Avataar
of the RSS The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is a probably the most
controversial if not hated and reviled organisation in contemporary India.
It has been called every vile name under the sun. Suffronist, communalist,
fundamentalist, fascist and if there can be anything worse, surely, our
'intellectuals' would be most happy top use that to damn the RSS. .....
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by Angana Chatterji
The tyranny of dogmatic Hinduism
and Islam promotes and sustains cycles of violence in South Asia. The crusade
of Islamic fundamentalism in the region is a recognized fact in response
to which there is an increasing, and often strategically ineffectual, assemblage
of force and political will. Hindu militancy in India is yet to receive
similar scrutiny. .....
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by Dr Manzur Ejaz
Pakistani nuclear scientists should
get their resumes and passports ready to move somewhere else: they are
considered the weakest link in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Elements in Pakistan's nuclear programme are suspected of helping not only
the North Koreans but Iraqis and Iranians as well. .....
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by Yahoo News
Suspected al Qaeda forces who shot
and killed a U.S. soldier on Saturday fled across the eastern border into
Pakistan, the U.S. military said. .....
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by S Rajagopalan
A leading American think tank sees
a “serious strategic partnership” unfolding between the US and India at
a time when Washington, in its view, is “starting to turn sour on Islamabad”
because of its growing radicalisation. .....
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by Irfan Husain
Perhaps Salman Rushdie is not the
right person to cite here, but in a recent article in the New York Times,
he has asked a very pertinent question: why aren't Muslims more critical
of the many awful things that happen with such dreadful frequency in the
Islamic world? .....
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by Anwar Iqbal
Fear grips Pakistanis living in
the United States as Washington screens hundreds of thousands of Muslim
immigrants, looking for possible terrorists. .....
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by Yahoo News
A fast track court here today convicted
all the eight accused in the 1997 murder of traffic constable Selvaraj
and reserved the pronouncement of sentence for December 23. .....
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by Sify News
Police in New Delhi on Saturday
stopped around 150 Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists from performing prayers
at a mosque which they claim was built over 27 demolished Hindu temples,
police said. .....
-
by Francois Gautier
The other day I visited a tribal
village, which was only 20 kms away from Bhubaneswar. The poverty I witnessed
there was appalling: no drinking water, no proper housing, the children
to whom we distributed food packets were sickly looking, undernourished,
dirty and badly clothed. .....
-
by Amberish K Diwanji
It was a chance remark made by
a Gujarati Hindu colleague to his Muslim colleague. “Thank God Modi won
otherwise I don’t know what would have happened to the Hindus.” .....
-
by M.V.Kamath
So the Bharatiya Janata Party has
won the Assembly elections in Gujarat. Won? It has not just won; it has
totally demolished the bogus party called the Congress. The people of Gujarat
have given a resounding slap to the secularists that they will not forget
for a long, long time. For months our secularists sought every manner of
means to run down Gujarat, Gujaratis, the Gujarati police, the Gujarati
Administration and the Gujarati ethos. .....
-
by Mayerdak
The ultra Islamic coalition government
of Bangladesh's Prime MInister Khaleda Zia includes as it's partner the
Islamic supremacist Jamaat-E-Islami. For many years, the Janaat was led
by Golam Azam, a rabid communalist, who had returned from Pakistan when
General Zia, Khaleda ZIa's husband was still alive and in power as the
nation's president. .....
-
by Dr. Anis Shorrosh
When we immigrated from Jerusalem,
Jordan in January, 1967, little did I imagine that Islam would become center-stage
in world news. As my sincere interest in the growth of Islam in America
intensified, I began to discuss, dialogue, and then debate Muslim leaders
throughout the world from an Arab Christian’s view of Islam. .....
-
by Ali Al-Timimi
The latest conflict in Kashmir
between the Mujahideen (those who fight in righteous jihaad) and India
brings to mind the ahadeeth regarding the conquest of India prior to the
day of Judgment. .....
-
by Julia Duin
Churches are getting a bad rap
these days. Some pollsters say at best, religion is losing its grip on
American society; at worst, growing amounts of Americans are finding the
institution irrelevant. .....
-
by Herald
Reacting sharply to justice Krishna
Iyer's Tribunal report indicting Gujarat caretaker chief minister Narendra
Modi and others as responsible for post-Godhra riots, VHP today charged
“Leftists and secularists” for “siding with radical Islamic movements like
the Tableegh Jamaat to defame the Hindu community”. .....
-
by Mohammad Badrul Ahsan
What about the men who inflicted
those wounds? They have gone back to their mothers, wives, daughters and
sisters with the calm of a storm that has spent its force. What will they
do? Will they ever feel guilty for what they did? How will they cope with
the love for their own women if the contorted face of their victims flash
in their minds? Perhaps the rapists have a way to deal with it because
they are different men. For the rest of us, it is hard to believe that
they were men at all. .....
-
by Jamal Hasan
Who's Ashrafuzzaman Khan? Why is
it so important that we now know the content of his dairy? Please be patient
and read this write-up. I will let you draw your own conclusion regarding
the culpability of this man. .....
-
by Sandhya Jain
Intoxicated, or perhaps exhausted,
by its exuberant diplomacy with the US for a share of the action against
international terrorism, the BJP-led government has failed to take note
of the orchestrated violence against Hindus in Bangladesh, and the dangerously
rising levels of Islamic fundamentalism there. Over three weeks after the
victory of the Bangladesh National Party- Jamaat e Islami alliance resulted
in virtual genocide against Hindus, and to a lesser extent Buddhist Chakmas
and Christians, the Vajpayee regime has reacted to the sordid events with
deafening silence. .....
-
by Priyadarsi Dutta
During the infamous Noakhali riots
of 1946, where the Hindu minority was ravaged, the visit of Gandhiji, along
with Sucheta Kripalini, Renuka Roy and Sneharani Kanjilal, greatly helped
restore peace. Gandhiji went to a village called Kadihati and planted a
jackfruit sapling as a symbol of peace in the compound of the Kadihati
High School. .....
-
by Anand Mohan Sahay
The Bihar police has announced
a reward of Rs 25,000 for the arrest of Sultan Mian, who reportedly forced
a woman named Kanchan Mishra into marrying him, provoking controversy.
.....
-
by Seema Mustafa
The Congress party is in danger
of being isolated by the handful of parties that were prepared to break
bread with it just before the Gujarat polls. .....
-
by James Bone
A Pakistani scientist approached
Iraq soon after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to offer nuclear weapon designs
and help in procuring bomb components, according to a document found by
United Nations weapons inspectors. .....
-
by Rediff on Net
Three Asian youths hailing from
Pakistan have been sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of murder
of a white teenager in Peterborough, England, soon after the September
11 attacks in the US. .....
-
by The Hindu
Three girl students were shot dead
by militants in Thanamandi area of Rajouri district late last night, just
a day after posters appeared ordering women to wear `burqas'. .....
-
by Udayan Namboodiri
An Indian government dossier documenting
the growth of Dawood Ibrahim’s empire in Pakistan, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia
and the UAE says D-Company is pumping money into Gujarat to heighten communal
tensions. .....
-
by Brian Ross and Vic Walter
Two veteran FBI investigators say
they were ordered to stop investigations into a suspected terror cell linked
to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Sept. 11 attacks. .....
-
by Anuradha Dutt
It is time the print media started
some rigorous monitoring of editorial content before the State feels compelled
to initiate remedial action. While press freedom is indisputably integral
to a democracy, it should not be misused by undiscerning editors to publish
seditious reports, under incendiary headlines. A leading daily, which prides
itself on its over century old tradition of making and breaking news, committed
a terrible gaffe in its Sunday section (December 15). .....
-
by Rajeev R Roy
The conviction of the Delhi University
(DU) lecturer, Syed Abdul Rahman Gilani, in Parliament attack case has
become a major issue in the upcoming Executive Council (EC) and Academic
Council (AC) election. .....
-
by Rana Ajit
In a bid to check religious fundamentalism,
the Union Government is contemplating to make legislative intervention
to regulate unseemly activities inside places of worship and religious
instructions. .....
-
by The Pioneer
The man who wryly calls himself
the media's favourite dartboard, Mr Narendra Modi, made a keen observation
in an interview following the announcement of the Gujarat poll results.
He had been noting, he said, the media spin being given to the landslide
victory he had crafted, in order to denigrate it. .....
-
by PRESS RELEASE
The Federation of Indian American
Christian Organizations of North America (FIACONA) is "deeply concerned"
about the outcome of the election results in Gujarat, India over the weekend.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a two third majority in just concluded
elections. The outcome is seen as a major blow to the 'pluralist
democracy' and the future of over 40 million Indian Christians and 130
million other religious minorities living in India. .....
-
by Balbir K. Punj
You happen to preside over the
destiny of the oldest political party by a quirk of fate and an unfortunate
assassination in your family. .....
-
by Shashi Tharoor
Bangalore, India I made separate
trips from Bangalore recently that revealed, within a span of 48 hours,
two different but related facets of India. Late one night I set out on
a four-hour drive with my mother to the well-lit and orderly town of Puttaparthi
in Andhra Pradesh. .....
-
by Prof. V. Rangarajan
Ludwig Wittgenstein, the renowned
Cambridge philosopher and exponent of Logical Positivism, has said that
language is a game with words as tools like the pieces of chess and there
are not any fixed, atomic and simple elements of reality corresponding
to words. .....
-
by Hinduism Today
Hindus in India are astounded when
they hear that one or another temple in America or England has bought or
rented an unused Christian church. The Church of England has so many unused
facilities that they have a web site, http://england.anglican.org/rcsale/redchhome.html,
to solicit “successful and sympathetic conversions of and uses for redundant
church buildings.” Since the 1960s, the Church has put to new use about
1,500 buildings, and has a fairly constant listing of 20 to 25 more available
each year. .....
-
by Hinduism Today
Bradford’s Hindu cultural society
submitted a proposal in mid-2002 to the Bradford City Council to allow
a small stretch of the River Aire at Apperley Bridge to be used for the
scattering of ashes after a traditional Hindu funeral. A spokesman for
the cultural society says, “Most of our community still travel to India
for the purpose. But using the River Aire would allow those who can’t afford
it to also scatter ashes.” .....
-
by Lavina Melwani
I met with a committed group of
young Hindus, the organizers of the Get Connected 2002 Festival, in Wembley.
These were by no means somber, religious conservatives, but fun-loving,
vital young professionals whose goal is to put the energy and magic back
into religion for the younger generation. .....
-
by Thomas Donnelly
Now that the United Nations has
approved a new resolution on Iraq, one with disarmament provisions that
Saddam Hussein apparently accepts, the diplomatic dances between the United
States and its European allies have entered a new phase: the quick, swing-your-strategic-partner
square dance hoped for by the Bush administration has given way to the
sort of elaborate minuet favored in continental capitals. .....
-
by nknaidu@is.com
The spring of 2003 will mark the
100th Anniversary of the first arrival of South Indians to Fiji from Chennai.
To commemorate the occasion, the India Sanmarga Ikya Sangam has set aside
a half-acre parcel of land where they plan to build a museum. .....
-
by Jamal Hasan
This goes back to the time when
seventy-five million people of the erstwhile province of East Pakistan
were engaged in a life and death struggle against an army bent on genocide
to preserve the power and privileges of ruling elite hailing from the opposite
end of the subcontinent. Mr. Enayet Karim, a career diplomat in the Pakistani
Foreign Ministry, had just defected from the service in protest against
the genocidal military campaign in East Pakistan. .....
-
by S. Aravindan Neelakandan
For seven-year-old Shreema, 13th
Jan 2002 was a special Sunday. All through the year, the girl had awaited
the dawn of this day. For, that was the day one goes out and purchases
new clothes, new toys and sweets, as the next day would be Makar Sankranthi
-- the harvest festival celebrated throughout India. The Singicherra Bazar
was bustling with activity. .....
-
by M.G. Radhakrishnan
Father Joseph Pallath's hunger
strike to protest against his dismissal by the Jesuit society has inspired
many others in Kerala to speak out against the wrongs of their congregation
leaders. First came the bold statement of the Catholic Priests Conference
of India's Kerala chapter that it would no longer remain silent if its
members' rights are violated. .....
-
by S Gurumurthy
As we began our journey as an independent
nation we were told that our polity would be based on three pillars. First,
that it would be classless. Next, that it would be casteless. Third, that
it would be secular. .....
-
by Cho S. Ramaswamy
Everything is lost; tragedy has
struck; the heavens have fallen; after this it could only be the deluge;
God — if there be one — save the country; the BJP under Narendra Modi has
won a thumping two-thirds majority in the elections to the Gujarat Assembly.
.....
-
by G Parthasarathy
December 31, 1999, the last day
of the 20th century, will be remembered as the day on which the Government
of India meekly caved in to terrorist demands. Seated along with three
hardcore terrorists whose proclaimed aim was the disintegration of India,
the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh travelled to Kandahar,
the spiritual capital of the Taliban, to publicly shake hands with representatives
of that regime and hand over the three terrorists in exchange for passengers
of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC 814. .....
-
by Liz Trotta
Oriana Fallaci, her once-famous
face framed by clouds of smoke curling from a black cigarette, is sitting
in her antique-filled Manhattan hide-out, talking about threats against
her life. .....
-
by Dharam Shourie
Despite assurance by the then American
president Richard Nixon to the Congress that the United States does not
"support or condone" Pakistan's military repression in the then East Pakistan
[Bangladesh] in 1971, Washington did nothing to stop genocide, according
to a summary of declassified documents. .....
-
by David Klinghoffer
I wish I could crawl into the head
of British historian Karen Armstrong, whose comments about Islam
and the prophet Muhammad are astonishing. In good conscience, how does
she say the things she does? .....
-
by The Times of India
A civil court has summoned Pakistani
cricket star and ex-captain Wasim Akram for contravening Islamic law by
modelling in a liquor advertisement, court officials said Thursday. .....
-
by Ramesh Thakur
While India is the world's most
populous democracy, Israel is the Middle East's most notable. Relations
between democratic countries can be strained on particular issues, but
the underlying strength remains resilient. Judaism and Hinduism are among
the world's ancient civilizations and "root faiths" that have given birth
to other major religions. .....
-
by Sify News
Hollywood star and reborn Buddhist
Richard Gere on Wednesday evening presented the 'Light of Truth Award'
to the "people of India" for the unparalleled contribution to those displaced
by the Tibetan diaspora. .....
-
by Vinay Krishna Rastogi
A high alert has been sounded in
Ayodhya in view of reports that Pakistan-based terrorists organisations
might blow up the makeshift Ram Janmabhhomi temple to avenge the victory
of the BJP in Gujarat elections. .....
-
by The Free Press Journal
The outcome in Gujarat clearly
stunned everyone. The winners did not expect this kind of victory and the
losers this kind of defeat. But the voters did. Otherwise, the results
would have been different. Of course, the media pundits and other analysts
would come up with `hazaar' rationalizations for their failure to read
the voter mood right. .....
-
by www.expressindia.com
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
said on Tuesday India has taken a serious view of attacks on minority Hindus
in Bangladesh and asked authorities in Dhaka to guard their safety. .....
-
by Shahid K Abbas
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday
described Bangladesh as an "emerging terrorist State along with Pakistan",
and urged the United States to attack Pakistan instead of Iraq. .....
-
by Rediff on Net
The BJP on Thursday sought withdrawal
of the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to Pakistan as that country was
not extending the same benefit to India. .....
-
by The Hindustan Times
Contact between the East and West
probably began more than 5,000 years ago - 3,000 years earlier than previously
thought, according to Chinese archaeologists. .....
-
by Shreekant Sambrani
This is not an instance of the
Monday morning quarterback’s after-the-fact wisdom. I wrote, in these columns
on March 21, ‘The 1995 BJP victory in Gujarat was the harbinger of its
national ascendancy. .....
-
by The Indian Express
The release of Masood Azhar, the
head of Jaish-e-Mohammad, by the Lahore High Court from preventive detention
comes a month after the same court released Hafeez Mohammad Saeed, the
chief of the banned terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Toiba. .....
-
by BBC News
Canadian intelligence officers
believe an Algerian man arrested in the capital Ottawa last week is connected
with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, reports say. .....
-
by Shubhrangshu Roy
Much as I despise Narendra Modi,
I cannot help but be overawed by the BJP's clean sweep of the Gujarat polls
riding on the crest of a Hindutva wave. .....
-
by M Saleem Pandit
The Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI) on Tuesday busted a fake passport racket and arrested four employees
of the Srinagar Passport Office. .....
-
by Carl Campanile and Murray Weiss
Religious tensions erupted yesterday
after authorities confirmed that an Arab girl beat up a Jewish girl at
a Brooklyn middle school. .....
-
by Onkar Singh
Shaukat Guru and his wife Navjot
Sandhu alias Afsan Guru, two of the four convicted in the Parliament attack
case, had a tiff before Special Judge S N Dhingra could begin hearing arguments
on the quantum of sentence to be awarded to them. .....
-
by Anthony Browne
I don't really care for foxhunters.
Despite growing up in the countryside surrounded by foxes, I rarely met
those who kill them for fun. I don't believe their spin about its economic
importance. I am against cruelty to animals, and all things being equal
I would support a ban. .....
-
by John Harwood
Americans are fixated on Iraq,
where they expect the ground to shake with war before long. But in the
process, most are missing the fact that an equally momentous event may
be taking shape next door in Iran, where the ground already is shaking
because of another powerful force: young Iranians. .....
-
by The Asian Age
Osama bin Laden has asked America
to stop supporting India in Kashmir in a detailed new message reported
to he circulated among British Muslim terrorists. .....
-
by Sify News
An English vicar has banned yoga
from his church because he fears the exercise classes could lead participants
on a path to "eastern mysticism", The Telegraph reported today. .....
-
by Anthony Browne
I don't really care for foxhunters.
Despite growing up in the countryside surrounded by foxes, I rarely met
those who kill them for fun. I don't believe their spin about its economic
importance. I am against cruelty to animals, and all things being equal
I would support a ban. .....
-
by Vitusha Oberoi
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)
is all set to bring the Ayodhya issue to the centre stage again to
cash in on the Hindutva wave begun in Gujarat. .....
-
by Daniel Pipes
Forget print, go to film. Put together
a handsome documentary with an original musical score that presents Islam's
prophet Muhammad in the most glowing manner, indeed, as a model of perfection.
Round up Muslim and non-Muslim enthusiasts to endorse the nobility and
truth of his message. Splice in vignettes of winsome American Muslims testifying
to the justice and beauty of their Islamic faith. Then get the U.S. taxpayer
to help pay for it. .....
-
by Anwar Iqbal
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have
been added to the list of countries whose nationals are considered high
terrorist risks. .....
-
by Arvind Lavakare
Irrespective of whether Godhra
impacted the result of last week's Gujarat assembly poll, post Godhra happenings
have moved a well-known Muslim scholar of India to facilitate an earthquake
in his community. .....
-
by Robert Bruce Ware
The Third World War began a decade
ago. We have been losing it because we have failed to comprehend it. The
world is approaching a pinnacle of instability with conflicts in Afghanistan,
southern Asia, West Asia and the Caucasus. To varying extents, all of these
crises have been provoked in the service of a single cause. A common enemy
confronts diverse nations, many of which are antagonistic toward one another,
and some of them are becoming more antagonistic because they fail to grasp
their situation. .....
-
by New Indian Express
A submerged coastal city near Poompuhar
in Nagapattinam district could well be the birth place of modern civilisation,
archaeologists say. .....
-
by Hemal Ashar
The Murud-based Maharashtra chief
of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Venkatesh Abdev, said Narendra Modi’s
victory in Gujarat need not spell fear for Muslims. .....
-
by Swati Das
Challenging the Tamil Nadu government
legislation banning forceful conversion, Dalit groups had proposed a mass
conversion of 3,000 people on Friday morning. But the much-publicised programme
turned out to be a damp squib as only 40 changed their religion to Buddhism
and Christianity. .....
-
by V Gangadhar
Hard, cold facts are more important
to Russian President, Vladimir Putin than diplomatic niceties or vague
statements. On the eve of his state visit to India, the Russian leader
told Indian media persons in clear terms that he saw a clear danger in
the likelihood of Pakistan's nuclear arms falling into the hands of Islamic
fundamentalists. Such a happening would have a disastrous consequence not
only in the subcontinent but the entire world, he warned. .....
-
by The Times
An awards ceremony has had to be
abandoned because the winners, all household names, do not want to be “outed”
as Christians. .....
-
by Miranda Eeles
President Khatami of Iran stoked
growing tensions between the country's hardline judiciary and reformists
yesterday, when he condemned the death sentence imposed on a liberal academic
for criticizing the Islamic faith. .....
-
by Tim Reid
Harvard University yesterday cancelled
a reading by Tom Paulin, the Irish poet, after he allegedly said Jewish
settlers born in the US but living in the Israeli-occupied territories
were Nazis who should be “shot dead”. .....
-
by David Blunkett
Sometimes one small word can tell
us more, than a lengthy speech. Among the many thousands of words which
will be written about the Criminal Justice Bill, I wonder how many will
focus on the fact that we always refer to the criminal justice system rather
than the criminal justice service. .....
-
by Nick Danziger
A year Ago, Kabul was a bleak,
sad place. No one would dare speak to a foreigner for fear of attracting
the attentions of the police from the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and
Destroying Vice. You could blithely step off the pavement into the street
and would be very unlucky to be knocked down by anything other than a bicycle.
Men and women went from place to place like mice. The silence was rarely
broken. .....
-
by Efraim Karsh
On Friday evening, October 11,
2002, a 20-year-old chemistry student carefully tidied his backpack before
leaving for the city's main shopping mall. On arrival, he cast a quick
glance around before making his way to the local McDonalds’s. The place
was full of families enjoying a Friday night out. .....
-
by Catherine Philp
A Loud crash in the jungle brought
the villagers running. As they dashed to the clearing close to the forest
cave, they found labourers pounding the rock face with hammers, hewing
off chunks of stone to sell for silica. .....
-
by Andrew Gumbel
The joke, during the endless presidential
election recounts in Florida two years ago, was that Russia and Albania
would send poll monitors to help the United States with its unexpected
bump on the road to democracy. Now, the joke has become reality. .....
-
by The Times of India
The controversial BCCI had 'questionable'
relationships with officials from all over the world, including India,
a U.S. Senate sub-committee investigating the bank has reported, according
to PTI. .....
-
by Dr G L Bhan
For several years now there has
been a concerted effort by certain organisations to malign Hindus and Hindu
organisations. These organisations and individuals are at pains to associate
Hindus with fundamentalism and terrorism. This onslaught has intensified
following the recent riots in Gujarat, with pressure being put on the British
Government, and other agencies like Inter-Faith to ban VHP-UK. It is now
common practice to denounce Hindus whenever and wherever possible. .....
-
by The Telegraph
The nightmares that haunted a 24-year-old
mother when she received love notes from a man linked to multiple murders,
abductions and dacoities came true on a November evening when Sultan Mian
descended on the beauty parlour where Kanchan Mishra worked. .....
-
by Dalip Singh
India's crimebusters can't recall
where they have kept the fingerprints of Dawood Ibrahim's brother but they
have put a finger on his sprawling business interests in Dubai. .....
-
by John Lindner
The churches of India are growing
faster than the churches of South Korea, according to a mission leader
from India. .....
-
by Vitusha Oberoi
The Gujarat debacle should prove
to the Congress that bribing the messenger is about as bad as shooting
down the poor fellow. In both cases, the purpose of having a messenger
is defeated. .....
-
by Bertil Lintner
More than three million Muslim
devotees from 52 countries gathered along the bank of the Turag river,
30 kilometres north of Dhaka, at Tongi, Gazipur, for the three-day annual
Biswa Ijtema (World Congregation) between December 14 and 16, 2002. .....
-
by T R Jawahar
In Gujarat, it was not the Congress
that was pitted against the BJP but the 'secular' media composed of national
dailies with their notional agendas and the Stars for whom even the sky
was not the limit when it came to BJP-bashing or Modi-baiting. The election
results have come as a crushing defeat for them, the true opposition, the
ones who actually fought the battle day in day out and at every nook and
cranny of the beleagured State. .....
-
by Yahoo News
Speakers at a Justice and Peace
Commission workshop on democracy and human rights on Sunday did not see
much hope for democracy in a country which was directly or indirectly ruled
by the army and where state institutions were used in the interest of a
privileged few rather than the people at large, reports Dawn. .....
-
by Rita Katz and James Mitre
In spite of our government's stepped
up efforts to combat the flow of money to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's
army of terrorists continues to receive the funding it needs to remain
threatening. It has been over a year since 9/11 and only a handful of al
Qaeda's U.S. financial backers have been curtailed. Information about who
funds al Qaeda and how they do so largely remains a mystery. .....
-
by Gautam Siddharth
It would be a pointless exercise
to bash the forces of Hindutva without adequately concentrating our gaze
on Islam in India. Part of the "communal" problem today in the country
is a result of the increasing perception in a growing section of the Hindu
urban and rural populace of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. .....
-
by www.worldnetdaily.com
As the Watergate scandal of 1973-1974
diverted attention from the far greater tragedy unfolding in Southeast
Asia, so, too, the scandal of predator-priests now afflicting the Catholic
Church may be covering up a far greater calamity. .....
-
by The Hindustan Times
Archaeologists at world-famous
Taj Mahal in Agra have found a formula to save the marble monument from
the corrosive effects of industrial pollution - Multani mitti, an ancient
face-pack recipe consisting of soil, cereal, milk and lime. .....
-
by Aasha Khosa
Releasing militants in Jammu and
Kashmir could result in a spurt in militancy, according to BSF Director
General Ajai Raj Sharma. .....
-
by www.mayerdak.com
While the media spotlight has been
focused on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the rise of Islamic extremism in nearby
Bangladesh has not attracyed sufficient notice. Minority Hindus, Buddhist,
Christians, Tribals, and liberal minded Muslims are under threat as religious
intolerance takes hold following the victory of the Bangladesh National
Party (BNP) in the October 2001 elections. .....
-
by Daily Excelsior
Police today seized a consignment
of explosives from the residence of an army Subedar in Ward No. 1 of the
town while a terrorist was killed in an encounter with army and police
in Surankote tehsil of Poonch district. .....
-
by Virendra Kapoor
Now it can be told. Tehelka
Commission was derailed by those who feared that it would soon unravel
their own dirty doings. Fearing exposure of their get-rich-quick
scam in the name of public service journalism, a conspiracy was hatched
to embarrass the Chairman of the Commission, Justice Venkataswami, with
the sole objective of provoking him to quit in a huff. .....
-
by Amy Waldman
On Dec. 14, B. K. S. Iyengar will
celebrate his 84th birthday the same way he celebrates every day. He will
bend and pull his body into a series of asanas, or postures, that most
men one-fourth his age could not match. .....
-
by Jugular Vein/Jug Suraiya
If today Narendra Modi unfurls
the banner of victory in Gujarat it will be partly my fault. For I am what
I call a two-rupee liberal. Almost daily I face the two-rupee dilemma,
in the form of two elderly gents who sit on the steps of the pedestrian
subway outside the office. .....
-
by M.V. Kamath
So who's to be believed: India
Today or Outlook? As is well-known, they are competitors for the middle-class
English readership and have their own ideology - or whatever it is they
profess - to sell. The former in its November 25 issue carried the results
of an exclusive poll in Gujarat conducted by Aaj Tak-ORG-MARG on how the
state was likely to vote at the forthcoming Assembly elections. .....
-
by Charles Krauthammer
Is Islam an inherently violent
religion? A debate on this subject has received much attention in the United
States. The question is absurd. It is like asking whether Christianity
is a religion of peace. Well, there is Francis of Assisi. And there is
the Thirty Years' War. Which do you choose? .....
-
by www.tvbn.tv
During operation Desert Storm a
Christian man was beheaded for his faith by Saudi officials in front of
a group of U.S. soldiers. This unidentified Saudi had been a Muslim and
had converted to the Christian faith. This conversion put him in violation
of Saudi Arabian law. As a consequence he was sentenced to be beheaded
under sharia, the strict Islamic law. .....
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by Rajeev Sharma
As compared to paltry budgets of
Indian intelligence agencies, Pakistan’s all-powerful Inter Services Intelligence
(ISI) has billions of dollars at its disposal and a significant contribution
— of $ 1 billion — comes from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim every year.
.....