by Balbir K. Punj
One of the 'Secular' myths
is that Islamic terrorism is a product of poverty, illiteracy, and oppression.
The 'Secular' formulation is that Islamic terrorism is completely divorced
from the theology of faith. In other words nothing is wrong with the Islamic
religious injunctions - only some Muslims are bad and do not abide by
true Islam which preaches peace. .....
by Asim Kumar Mitra
It is no secret now that CPI(M)
ministers are above the law and justice of the land. Otherwise how can
one explain the fact that two senior ministers of Buddhadev Bhattacharjee's
cabinet are officially stated as "absconders" evading arrests
after committing heinous crimes during the past one-and-a-half decade.
Two more party leaders who are CPI(M) candidates in the next year's Assembly
elections, accused of rioting and raping tribal girls, are also recorded
as "absconders" in police files since 1986. .....
by Dr. C.I. Issac
The religious minorities of
Kerala, particularly Christians and Muslims, are proud of their historical
past. However, these days they have started to feel a sense of insufficiency
of their historical value. Since the days of Portuguese, stories regarding
the first century of Common Era (CE) origin and aristocratic beginning
began to circulate widely amongst the Kerala Christians. .....
by Prof. Ramji Singh
Prof. Ramji Singh, BJP MLC,
while terming the Mau riots as a massacre of Hindus, said the local MLA,
Mukhtar Ansari wanted to finish Hindus from the whole eastern region.
"Mukhtar Ansari has unleashed a reign of terror in the whole region
and Hindus are being targeted everyday. The state Chief Minister Mulayam
Singh Yadav, knowingly or unknowingly, is helping him," he added.
.....
by Pramod Kumar
It deeply hurt me when I saw
my neighbour, Shuakat Ali, in the mob attacking my house. We had family
relations with Shaukat and during the last more than two decades we shared
all happiness and sorrow as good neighbours and true friends. His children
always played with my children at our house, studied in the same school
and even go for tuition to the same tutor. .....
by Pramod Kumar
People visit the four kumbhs-Haridwar,
Ujjain, Nasik and Prayag-to wash off their sins. But in a departure from
tradition this time over seven lakh people are scheduled to visit Shabarikumbh
in Dang district of Gujarat from February 11 to 13, 2006, to take a collective
pledge to work for the welfare of crores of Vanvasis and deprived people
of the society. .....
by M.S.N. Menon
Hinduism is a relentless pursuit
after truth. It will burst forth upon the world with a brilliance perhaps
unknown before. On examination, I have found Hinduism to be the most tolerant
of all religions known to me. Its freedom from dogmas makes a forcible
appeal to me. .....
by The Indian Express
The pursuit of Dawood Ibrahim
has just got merrier. The American investigating agency, the FBI, and
the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have ''actively'' joined in
the hunt. .....
by Virendra Kapoor
Some months ago a senior IAS
officer, Lalgudi Vaidhyanathan Saptharishi, caused quite a controversy
by publicly accusing Election Commissioners B. B. Tandon and N Gopalaswamy
of harbouring an anti-Yadav bias. The 1969 batch West Bengal cadre IAS
officer nearing retirement addressed a press conference to fling wild
charges against Tandon and Gopalaswamy. .....
by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Non-violence does not mean
passive acceptance of terro-rism. Rather than reacting with violence to
acts of terro-rism, precautionary measures have to be taken to nip violence
in the bud. .....
by The Hindu
Asserting that "valley-centric"
solutions would not bring in lasting peace in Jammu and Kashmir, a cross-section
of leaders on Saturday called for reorganisation of the state separating
Jammu and Ladakh with migrant Pandits getting their share in Kashmir.
.....
by The Pioneer
The Pioneer had carried a story
on its front page titled - "Lure of UN funds drives NGO to rescue
kids" on Thursday. The investigation revealed that rather than concern
for the rehabilitation of the children, utilisation of funds under a UN
funded scheme had prompted the raids in trans-Yamuna areas in which 477
child labourers were rescued. .....
by Heba Kandil
Exploding buildings, booby-trapped
cars and bloodied victims began appearing on Arab satellite television
recently in daring dramas that deal with Islamic militancy in al Qaeda's
main breeding ground. .....
by WorldNetDaily.com
In an extraordinary event,
three former terrorists will be together at Princeton University to present
insights into the mind of a suicide bomber. .....
by Craig Whitlock
The phones at city hall began
ringing nonstop one morning last year when several masked figures were
spotted walking through the cobbled streets of this pastoral town. A small
panic erupted when one of the figures, covered head to ankle in black
fabric, appeared at a school and scared children to tears. .....
by Joe Milicia
Federal authorities arrested
an Islamic religious leader Friday as they began the process of deporting
him for lying about ties to terrorist groups. .....
by Sandhya Jain
In north India, particularly
in the Mathura region, Krishna is worshipped as the Lord of Radha, and
"Radhe Radhe" is the common civilian greeting in this part of
the country. Krishna is also revered as Radha-Ramana (Beloved of Radha),
and as Radha-Krishna. .....
by Swapan Dasgupta
It takes precious little time
to alter the chemistry of political tittle-tattle. Barely a fortnight
ago, the buzz in the know-all circles of the Capital centred on an emerging
Third Front. .....
by Sandhya Jain
The Hindu mandir has once again
become the focus of secular controversy. Reformists have taken umbrage
at the refusal of Orissa priests to let a White American Hindu woman and
a Thai princess enter the Jagannath and Lingaraj temples. There is also
outrage that the famous Guruvayur temple in Kerala announced it was repeating
five days of pujas after a deranged Christian was found disturbing devotees
on the premises. .....
by Rhys Blakely
The British Asian community
generates around 10 per cent of the country's GDP despite making up only
2.5 per cent of the population, according to research published today.
.....
by The Indian Express
India needs to wake up to new
realities believes 'Super Cop' K.P.S. Gill who wants the authorities to
acknowledge the 'threats' emerging from the eastern neighbour-Bangladesh.
.....
by Abhijit Bhattacharyya
There was a picture of a Bangladeshi,
Gulam Mustafa Sheikh, in newspapers recently. He was arrested for impersonating
as an Indian armyman. Dressed in a soldier's gear, he carried a photo-identity
card of a 'Lieutenant' of the Indian Army. .....
by Udayan Namboodiri
Mr Krishna Kumar's much-hyped
"load reduction" scheme, which was used to push NCERT's Curriculum
Framework-2005, has evidently been torn apart by HRD Minister Arjun Singh's
jholawallah brigade which was recruited to draw up the History component
of the Social Science pedagogy. .....
by Udayan Namboodiri
What is so earthshaking about
the "nationalist movement in Indo-China" that it should be represented
with greater emphasis before India's 14-year-olds than their own freedom
struggle? And, that too in a textbook titled India and the Contemporary
World? .....
by Gautam Sen
A huge number of people have
a stake in ensuring an overbearing role for the government in running
the Indian economy. The government is the central platform for the destructive
re-distributive struggle that has seized India, overshadowing the primary
goal of productive effort. Everyone seeks a piece of the ill-gotten revenue
pie and has an imaginative argument to buttress their claim. .....
by Gautam Sen
India is encountering a geopolitical
pincer movement to corner it, prior to its eventual liquidation as a significant
political entity. The principal instigator of this pincer movement is
China, which has already garlanded India with a ring of hostile countries,
itching to see it prostrate. The garland of thorns surrounding India begins
with Bangladesh, Burma and Nepal and ends with the bleeding dagger of
Pakistan already thrust deep into India's body politic. .....
by Newkerala.com
The small minority of Roma
people - said to be descendants of the warrior classes of northern India
- has been identified by a European Union (EU) agency as the group most
vulnerable to racism in Europe. .....
by Kanchan Gupta
My father would often tell
me hair-raising stories of how, while fleeing from East Pakistan in 1947,
he had to hide in paddy fields along with his widowed mother and younger
siblings, the youngest a mere toddler, to escape blood-thirsty mobs screaming,
"Allah-o-Akbar". Those must have been terrible moments for a
13-year-old. .....
by Yahoo News
In the first instance of its
kind, the Indian Army Wednesday discovered a cache of weapons hidden by
guerrillas in the home of a former soldier in Jammu and Kashmir. .....
by Greg Weston
For four days and nights, a
small army of attorneys virtually barricaded themselves in the 27th-floor
boardroom of a Toronto law firm, determined to negotiate an end to one
of the most shameful chapters in Canada's history. .....
by Yahoo News
An Italian judge who refuses
to hear cases because there are crucifixes in the nation's courtrooms
was convicted Friday of failing to carry out his official duties and sentenced
to seven months in jail. .....
by A Surya Prakash
What is it about Islam that
makes it incompatible with democracy and the core ideas in a modern Constitution
like the one that governs us in India? Despite the untiring efforts of
millions of Indians to build democratic institutions and remove discrimination
on the basis of caste, creed and gender, Muslims clerics and community
leaders seem determined to undo the constitutional scheme. .....
by Minhaz Merchant
With the arrest of Tariq Dar,
the "white-collar" Pakistan-financed Lashkar-e-Toiba suspect
in the Delhi serial blasts, the question resurfaces: Can India trust General
Musharraf on his promise to dismantle Islamabad's infrastructure of terror?
The short answer: No. .....
by The Times of India
Setting aside CIDCO's allotment
of over 37,000 sq m land on Palm Beach Road to six "dummy" housing
societies, a division bench of Justices H L Gokhale and Roshan Dalvi also
directed Vijay Associates (Wadhwa) Developers to pay the petitioners Rs
1 lakh as costs for the litigation for its hand in what the judges called
"the most outlandish (attempt) by the builders to grab land under
the shroud of housing societies which existed only on paper". .....
by Chandan Mitra
I have only one question to
authors Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth: Why did they allow a masterly
socio-political history to degenerate into a leftist pamphlet in the last
40 pages of their 293-page manuscript? Not only did they foist an agenda
on the readers, but the addition of the sub-title "Plurality, Hindutva
and Beyond" to the title The Shaping of Modern Gujarat also gives
the misleading impression that their work focuses on the emergence of
one of India's most prosperous states into "a laboratory of Hindutva".
.....
by Uday Mahurkar
There is a new buzz on the
Indian tourist circuit, and it originates from the unlikeliest of destinations.
Kutch in Gujarat is a flat, endless desert that has, till now, been largely
known for its population of wild asses and, of course, the earthquake
that devastated the region in 2001. .....
by Amarnath K. Menon
Political manoeuvring to somehow
bring Muslims under the ambit of the reservation umbrella are being repudiated
by courts time and again. For the second time in 17 months the Andhra
Pradesh High Court has spiked the 5 per cent reservation that the state
sought to provide Muslims in public employment and educational institutions.
.....
by Muzamil Jaleel
When the devastating earthquake
set off a fresh wave of peace and cooperation along the Line of Control,
the J-K Police says, foreign militants infiltrated into the Valley in
large numbers. Around 125 of them are suspected to have entered Srinagar
city which has witnessed a sudden spurt of fidayeen and car bomb attacks.
.....
by The Indian Express
Satyendra Dubey was from IIT.
He could have gone anywhere and taken the safe options when confronted
with a wrongdoing. But he joined the public sector National Highway Authority
of India and got murdered for speaking up against the contractor mafia.
Manjunathan Shanmugham was from IIM. He, too, had the choice of a cosy
job in the private sector where the most dangerous threat is to one's
annual bonus. But Shanmugam joined the public sector IOC and lost his
life to the oil mafia. .....
by Baya Agarwal
They never wanted him to join
the army. Today, they couldn't be prouder of their 30-year-old son, the
first medical officer to reach quake-hit Uri on October 8. .....
by Johnson T A & Aman Sharma
Lost in the din over the Bihar
elections is the story of 27-year-old IIM graduate Manjunath Shanmugham
killed for doing his duty. As a manager with the Indian Oil Corporation,
he ordered the shutdown of an IOC petrol pump in Lakhimpur Kheri-where
he was posted-for allegedly selling adulterated fuel. .....
by Gautam Siddharth
Picture this town in the heart
of Middle India: One-horse Jehanabad is covered under winter fog and a
haze from the smoke of burning wood and charcoal from mud and brick ovens.
There is no electricity - there has been a power cut - and most townsfolk
are finishing their chores. .....
by Bashir Pathan
The checkdams built on 73 major
rivers across Saurashtra under the government's participatory scheme have
not only boosted the agro-economy in the region, but also checked migration
of marginal farmers to urban areas. .....
by The Pioneer
There is no gainsaying that
the bulk of India's Muslims require affirmative action to cease being
economically and educationally disadvantaged. Nevertheless, the manner
in which the Standing Committee of the Human Resource Development Ministry's
National Monitoring Committee for Minorities' Education (NMCME) is going
about it, warrants serious concern. .....
by Amarnath Tewary
Will the November 13 Jehanabad
jailbreak once again lead to bloody caste feuds, leaving behind a trail
of massacres in the killing fields of central and south Bihar? .....
by M Saleem Pandit
A car bomb exploded in Srinagar
on Wednesday around the same time a CRPF convoy was attacked. The day
before, a 24-hour gun-battle with fidayeen ended with two people dead
and wannabe suicide bomber in police clutches. Bombs went off in Delhi
killing Diwali shoppers and terrorists struck in Srinagar in a bid to
blow up chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad's inauguration. .....
by Syed Zarir Hussain
Members of a tribe in India's
northeast who claim to be one of the biblical 10 lost tribes say they
are upset over a freeze in their conversion to Judaism following a protest
by the Indian government. .....
by Jagmohan
In connection with the Kashmir
imbroglio, the most serious issue that deserves to be attended on top
priority is not the withdrawal of the Indian troops from the two districts
of the Valley, namely Kupwara and Baramulla, as asked for by General Pervez
Musharraf during his recent meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
in New York, but the issue of international terrorism with which Pakistani-sponsored
terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir is linked. .....
by Vishwa Samvad Kendra, Chennai
It is a case of a history text-book
making history of sorts. Tamilnadu state government did what no authority
has done so far in free Bharat. Its education secretary has ordered removal
of an offending reference to RSS obviously bowing to representations from
Sangh. .....
by Bhargavi Kerur
With more than 40 schools across
the city introducing the concept of Vedic Mathematics - till recently
considered some kind of an esoteric science - the interest in the subject
is catching on. .....
by Subhash Kak
The last time Paris came this
close to anarchy was in the summer of 1968. Then noisy demonstrations
by anarchists and Communists almost brought the government to its knees.
Now, it is not just sound, but also fire. .....
by Yahoo News
India's first indigenous animation
film 'Hanuman' has grossed a record Rs.70 million ($1.5 million), the
highest ever for the genre in the country. .....
by Forbes.com
The suspected mastermind behind
a series of blasts that killed 62 people in New Delhi markets last month
is better known as a successful international drug company executive and
family man, newspaper reports said. .....
by The Pioneer
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
waging a campaign to get the Hindu temples out of the clutches of the
State Governments, has target the "Christian Chief Minister"
of Andhra Pradesh. .....
by The New Indian Express
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)
international president Ashok Singhal on Sunday said all Hindus must start
a Bhaktha mandali in every temple to maintain them in accordance with
the age-old religious and cultural traditions. .....
by Manjari Mishra
The IT revolution is proving
to be a bane for Muslim women in western Uttar Pradesh. Its latest victim
- 24-year-old Saba Khaliq from Moradabad found herself at the "receiving
end" of modern technology when her husband sent her an SMS with the
dreaded words "talaq, talaq, talaq". .....
by Tom Heneghan
Overzealous missionaries are
fanning tensions between Christians and Muslims and within their faiths,
creating potential conflicts that religious leaders must defuse urgently,
a leading Catholic cardinal said on Wednesday. .....
by Yaniv Berman
August 17, 2005 will be remembered
in Bangladesh as a dreadful day in history. During that day, more than
four hundred small bombs exploded across the country. Although the minimal
loss of life was considered to be fortunate - only two people died --
the Islamist group behind the attacks fully achieved what most analysts
believe was its goal: to attract the attention of the government and the
people while sending an unequivocal message. .....
by The Indian Express
Yet again Chief Minister, Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee, has admitted that terrorist groups and Islamic fundamentalists
are active in West Bengal. "In the name of religion terrorist groups
are operating in West Bengal. .....
by Steven Shamrak
There are many different Christian
churches, groups and movements. Some of them call themselves Zionists
or good and true Christians. Many of them are deeply antagonistic toward
main stream Catholics and Anglicans. And, they try to disassociate themselves
from the actions of Church in the past. .....
by Prafull Goradia
There has been a tendency among
people to ignore the role of religion in terrorism perpetrated by Islamists,
says Prafull Goradia The evening after the bomb blasts took up to a hundred
lives in Delhi (October 29), I happened to meet Mr Michael Ismail - a
compromise name as a simultaneous tribute to his Christian mother and
Muslim father. .....
by Andrew G. Bostom
The flames consuming thousands
of automobiles, and the occasional bus, nursery, warehouse, and school
across France are the result of tragic - in the original sense of the
word - set of decisions made by the leaders of Europe, motivated by greed,
jealousy, and hubris. The dream of a Europe restored to preeminence, isolating
and vanquishing the upstart Americans, via a rock-solid alliance with
the Arab world, has become a nightmare. .....
by Daniel Pipes
A suicide bombing in Hadera,
Israel, on October 26 that killed five people inspired the usual Palestinian
joy: some 3,000 people took to the streets in celebration, chanting Allahu
Akbar, calling for more suicide attacks against Israelis, and congratulating
the "martyr's" family on the success of the attack. .....
by Tarun Vijay
While the courage and resilience
shown by the common people in the aftermath of the Delhi blasts has made
Indians taller in the eyes of world, at the same time the blasts have
dwarfed our political leaders who now appear more irrelevant than ever.
.....
by Andy Newman
On paper, he looks like a modern
global capitalist, which he is. Mr. Sudyk, an entrepreneur from Michigan,
runs, among other things, an outsourcing company in Chennai, India, providing
medical transcribers and software engineers to American businesses. In
six years, the Indian company - a subsidiary of EC Group International,
a larger outsourcing company that Mr. Sudyk founded in Grand Rapids -
has grown to 75 employees and is moving into a building triple its present
size. .....
by KPS Gill
In Europe today, Muslim youth
are rioting in the wake of an incident in Paris in which the police could
hardly be faulted for their conduct: Three youth, asked to show their
identity papers by the police, fled and jumped a wall surrounding a high
voltage electric transformer, and were electrocuted - two died and the
third was seriously injured. .....
by World Magazine
Egyptian-born scholar Bat Ye'or
has written extensively about the treatment of dhimmis, or non-Muslims,
under Muslim domination. Her latest book, Eurabia (Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 2005), chronicles Arab determination to subdue Europe
as a cultural appendage to the Muslim world-and Europe's willingness to
be so subjugated. .....
by MSN India
Hundreds of scholars from India
and abroad are working on a multi-billion rupee project to make the epic
story Mahabharata available to a global audience. .....
by Priyadarsi Dutta
The Paris riots had not only
strained the fashion capital of the world for two weeks but spread out
to other French cities like Rouen, Lille, Nice, Marseilles and Toulouse.
The rioters are 'North African immigrants' a thinly veiled word for Arab
and Berber Muslims, an amazingly productive community when it comes to
demography. Their uneasy presence in France, veering on aggressiveness,
has been a subject of discussion for last two decades. .....
by Tarun Vijay
In November, the US Congress
will discuss a Bill on Indian Dalits that deals with their treatment.
Congressman Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican who chairs the
House International Relations Subcommittee on Global Human Rights and
International Operations, held previous discussions on the topic in October
this year. .....
by Laxmi Devi
Scene II, Act I: Infosys chairman,
Narayana Murthy, is in his own Kurukshetra, facing attack from former
Prime Minister Deve Gowda, on the Bangalore infrastructure issue. Should
he keep silent or fight back? Just like Arjuna, Murthy is fighting the
battle with his conscience. The supreme management guru Krishna comes
and gives a management insight to Murthy. .....
by Sourav Sanyal
So far, Nobel Laureate, His
Holiness the Dalai Lama, is the only "individual" named in the
list of "VVIPs/VIPs" who don't have to go through a security
check at domestic airports across the country. .....
by The Times of India
Two weeks after the serial
blasts ripped through the national capital, Delhi Police claimed to have
cracked the case with the arrest of a Pakistan-based militant group Lashker-e-Taiba
militant who allegedly coordinated and financed the operation. .....
by Hasan Mansoor
An alarming trend - that of
Muslims kidnapping Pakistani Hindu girls and forcing them to convert to
Islam - in Pakistan's Sindh province is forcing the worried resident Hindu
community to marry off their daughters as soon as they are of marriageable
age or to migrate to India, Canada or other nations. .....
by Dean Nelson
India is accelerating the construction
of a 2,500-mile fence to seal its border with Bangladesh amid growing
fears that its Muslim neighbour could become "a new Afghanistan".
.....
by Ralph Peters
The mosque stood empty beside
the road in a Christian town in Kenya. Funded by Saudis, it wasn't meant
for worshippers. It was meant to stake a claim. .....
by The Pioneer
The British Parliament has
dealt a severe blow to its country's fight against terrorism by throwing
out the most important element in the Government's new anti-terror legislation-increasing
the period of detention without trial from 14 days to three months - on
Wednesday. .....
by Dr. Walid Phares
After every jihadist terror
attack or violent outburst around the world, the mainstream media always
advances its myriad theories about the so-called "root causes"
of the particular attack in question. Unfortunately, most of the time
their analyses are fictions. That was the case last week with the interpretations
of the French Intifada. And this is the case again just hours after terrorists
struck three hotels in downtown Amman, Jordan. .....
by Dr Farrukh Saleem
The combined annual GDP of
57 Muslim countries remains under $2 trillion. America, just by herself,
produces goods and services worth $10.4 trillion; China $5.7 trillion,
Japan $3.5 trillion and Germany $2.1 trillion. Even India's GDP is estimated
at over $3 trillion (purchasing power parity basis). .....
by Patrick Sookhdeo
Trevor Phillips, chairman of
the Commission for Racial Equality, has warned recently of 'sleepwalking
our way to segregation'. Although he was not speaking principally about
Muslims, they have become perhaps the most dominant group in British society.
Divided along ethnic and sectarian lines, Muslims are nevertheless united
by their creed, their law and the powerful concept of the umma, the totality
of Muslims worldwide. .....
by Dr. M.S. Nataraja
Among all the different cultural
associations in America, there are some, which cater to the needs of a
particular caste or religion. There are several associations, which are
formed by particular sects of Brahmins. But, there is one association,
the US Brahmins Association that encompasses all the different sects of
Brahmins. .....
by Daily Excelsior
An Army Major was killed and
two soldiers wounded in a fierce gunfight with militants who attacked
a 14 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) at Bandipora in north Kashmir district of Baramulla
today. .....
by Daily Excelsior
Two Pakistani nationals have
been arrested here with sensitive documents pertaining to vital Army installations,
police said today. .....
by David R. Sands and Sharon Behn
The rioters who have burned
out neighborhoods in cities across France for a fortnight are overwhelmingly
of North African and Arab ancestry, overwhelmingly young, overwhelmingly
male, overwhelmingly cut off culturally and economically from the larger
French society -- and overwhelmingly Muslim. .....
by Simon Kearney
The names of Jemaah Islamiah's
terrorist class of 2004 have been uncovered in the southern Philippines
after intelligence officers found a list of the latest mujaheddin to graduate
from the group's training camps. .....
by Julia Moskin
New Yorkers have learned to
tread fearlessly in the world of real Indian food. They know pakoras from
samosas and dabble in idlis and utthappams. But a confusing cloud often
looms over the end of those meals: the sweet, colorful, mysteriously milky
world of Indian desserts. .....
by The Deccan Chronicle
In a slap on the face of adoption
agencies resorting to child trafficking in the name of inter-country adoptions,
the Supreme Court on Thursday directed the authorities concerned to ensure
that "behind the mask of social service or upliftment, the evil design
of child trafficking is not lurking." .....
by Mrs Zaman
My daughter is starting her
Cambridge O levels this year. She came home yesterday with her new books
and the title of her Urdu book "Stories from Pakistan" caught
my eye. I decided to take a look at stories that claimed to be representative
of Pakistan. .....
by S R Ramanujan
Any high school student without
specialization of any sort on mediaeval or modern history will tell us
the circumstances under which we allowed invaders and colonialists to
rule us for nearly a millennium. In a way we enslaved ourselves thanks
to the people who helped or rather encouraged invaders' entry to sort
out their own internal problems. .....
by Jonathan Saul
Israel has bowed to complaints
from the Indian government and stopped trying to convert to Judaism thousands
of people in India who believe they are a Biblical lost tribe, the Foreign
Ministry said on Wednesday. .....
by Webindia123.com
The BJP today charged the Uttar
Pradesh government with playing in the hands of the minorities to disallow
the return to Mau of Hindus, whose shops and houses were destroyed in
the communal riots last month. .....
by The New Indian Express
The Iraqi oil-for-food payoff
scandal that has stained Foreign Minister Natwar Singh now threatens to
engulf the Congress party as well. .....
by Dr. Jadunath Sarkar
What was the condition of the
Hindus under Muslim rule in India? This is a very natural question, and
in the present situation of the country the inquiry has a significance
of the deepest practical importance. Every tree is judged by its fruit;
and the ideal Muslim Government of India, namely, a theocracy administered
for Allah by His agents, showed its unmistakable practical consequences
in the moral, intellectual and economic condition of the people of this
vast sub-continent when Muslim rule ended and British administration began.
.....
by The Indian Express
In a stinging indictment of
the Jayalalithaa government, the Supreme Court today slammed its conduct
in the Sankararaman murder case against the Kanchi Seer and transferred
the trial to neighbouring Pondicherry. .....
by Rediff on Net
The Supreme Court on Wednesday
upheld the 1994 Gujarat government order banning slaughter of bulls and
bullocks over the age of 16 years. .....
by Chinadaily.com.cn
Iran's hard-line president
called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and said a new wave
of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Jewish state, state-run media
reported Wednesday. .....
by Geoffrey Clarfield
Last Saturday, less than fourteen
days before the third anniversary of a suicide bomb attack in Bali that
killed over two hundred people, Islamic terrorists have carried out their
second suicide attack on that tropical island, killing over twenty five
people and leaving more than one hundred seriously injured. .....
by The Hindustan Times
Rahul celebrated his 15th birthday
not by blowing candles atop a cake but by lighting 15 earthen lamps -
a trend of traditional celebrations is now catching on among people in
this Rajasthan capital. .....
by Abhay Vaidya
The Catholic church will take
up the study of Sanskrit, adapt to monastic life in an ashram and adopt
the Hindu ritual of aarti during mass if the movement towards 'Indianisation
of the church' gets the nod from 400 priests and five bishops congregating
in Pune. .....
by The Asia Age
"It is very difficult
to say in Pakistan whether the Army is the military arm of the mullahs
or the mullahs the political wing of the Army. If the Army is ousted,
the mullahs will also be out and there will be a return of civilian rule.
That is why both are interested in keeping the mainstream secular, democratic
parties isolated". This was the observation of a leading Pakistani
jurist Farooq Hasan in the capital on Sunday. .....
by The Asia Age
As many as 31 Hindus from seven
families on Sunday fled their mountainous hamlet in Rajouri district after
militants threatened to kill them, official sources said. .....
by Fr Mokesh Morar
The Indian state of Kerala
has, with the help of its communist government and the Church, overcome
poverty and a lack of education to become one of the developing world's
success stories. Fr MOKESH MORAR asks if South Africa can take a leaf
from Kerala's book. .....
by Vaman Phadke and Sandeep Ashar
A shopkeeper and four policemen
were attacked and injured late last night, after they tried to protect
a girl from misbehaving youth at Nagpada. .....
by John Ward Anderson
French police investigating
plans by a group of Islamic extremists to attack targets in Paris discovered
last month that the group was recruiting French citizens to train in the
Middle East and return home to carry out terrorist attacks, sources familiar
with the investigation said. .....
by Priyadarsi Dutta
Anil Narendra, in his article,
'Congress can yet build the Ram Temple' (Farsight, October 7), has apparently
put Hindu stakes on the wrong horse called the Congress, jockeyed by Ms
Sonia Gandhi. Accepting invitations from a few Ram Lila Samitis and undertaking
a few pilgrimages might be good for public consumption but it is no proof
of her being mindful of Hindu interests. .....
by David Sanderson
Torturing detainees does help
interrogators to obtain evidence that could save lives, according to Dame
Eliza Manningham-Buller, the MI5 Director-General. .....
by Milli Gazette
"The All India Muslim
Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM) has, on the basis of reports received, come
to the conclusion that the Mau riots was pre-planned and engineered by
the Rashtriya Hindu Vahini in collusion with the civil and police officials.
.....
by Outlook
In a sudden turnaround, the
man who filed a case of murder against independent MLA Mukhtar Ansari
during the Mau riots today claimed he had never named the legislator and
the police had done so on its own. .....
by Gautam Sen
India is a pretty remarkable
country. It is reported that the Electoral Commission required the removal
the names of 119 Iranian nationals from the electoral register in Kishanganj,
Bihar. One might have imagined that arrests and deportation would follow,
at the very least. But not at all, the votes of their co-religionists
ensure that they will continue to enjoy Indian hospitality unmolested.
.....
by Balbir K Punj
The Russian Government is planning
to remove Lenin's embalmed body from Moscow's Red Square and give it a
decent burial in some cemetery. It is time the ideologue, after lying
for 80 years in Red Square, following in the footsteps of the ideology
was given a grave, too. Mikhail Gorbachev, who presided over the demise
of Lenin's USSR in 1991, has cautioned Kremlin against undue haste in
burying Lenin. .....
by Middle East Times
The influence of radical Islamist
groups is a growing threat to French business, a leading intelligence
expert warned on Tuesday, citing the discovery of secret prayer-rooms
at the Disneyland theme-park outside Paris. .....
by Newkerala.com
A White Paper on minority repression
in Bangladesh has revealed more than 10,000 incidents of communal torture
have taken place in the country during the last four years of the Bangladesh
Nationalist Party-led right wing government of Khaleda Zia. .....
by India Development And Relief Fund
An earthquake of devastating
intensity hit northern region on 08-10-2005 at 9:20 AM. causing havoc.
Its effect was felt in almost the whole state & northern central areas
of India. Just after the tremors a team of consisting of few workers of
SEWA BHARTI made a detailed survey of the areas from LEH- SRINAGAR, URI
and POONCH in Jammu region, in which thousand of houses collapsed, more
than 1300 people lost their precious life and hundred of thousand rendered
homeless and facing bitter winter. .....
by Alexander Zinoviev
The second precondition for
a successful mass conversion of Muslims to Hinduism is to ensure that
enough talented Hindu preachers, men of exceptional charisma and sufficiently
brave, take this difficult and important task. This mission can be carried
out by people with great spiritual, even occult power, rather than by
intellectuals. In India, there have always been all kinds of mystics,
travelling philosophers, sadhus, gurus, yogis, fakirs-people with real
supernatural power that the whole world admired from times immemorial.
.....
by Alexander Zinoviev
In Europe and all over the
world nowadays it is very popular to speak and discuss about Indian culture,
ancient Indian philosophy and the glorious past of the country. In everyday
life Europeans constantly hear or read in the media about some new yoga
seminar being organised, or about the appearance of a new guru in Western
countries, drawing the public attention. They hear superlatives about
ancient Indian culture over and over again from different places and in
different contexts. .....
by The Pioneer
At least 50,000 quake-survivors
are at risk of being frozen to death on the hilltops in the Allai area
of Balakot town (near LoC) if they are not allowed to come down to live
in tent villages, as local Islamic clerics have reportedly issued a fatwa
instructing them not to climb down the hills as, according to them, it
was "un-Islamic to flee from a disaster zone". .....
by Lajwanti D'Souza
In a bid to encourage Mumbai's
Catholics to marry within the community, the church has decided that individuals
marrying outside the religion, will not be allowed the wedding mass. .....
by Hindu Human Rights UK
As a millionaire businessman,
candidate for London mayor, a tireless worker for charity and raising
social concern over the poor, and someone widely regarded as spokesman
for the British "Asian" community, Ram Gidoomal carries much
influence in the Britain of today. This is especially true among the ethnic
minorities, mainly Hindus, but he is increasingly quoted in the mainstream
media, as someone with knowledge on Hindu and Indian issues, as well as
those concerning race and ethnicity in the UK. .....
by New Kerala
Fifty-eight tribals converted
from Christianity to Hinduism during a ceremony organised by Hindu groups
at an Orissa village Tuesday. .....
by Wilson John
The October 29 serial blasts
in Delhi are a warning to all of us who are basking in the afterglow of
a make-believe harmony across the Line of Control. Opening bus routes,
transit points, good wishes, hugs, flowers, smiles are all fine and necessary
in one way to engage a neighbour who has been more of an adversary in
the past half-a-century of its existence. .....
by Balbir K. Punj
The Lashkar-e-Tayyaba has denied
its links with the triple blasts in Delhi although it found few takers
for its disavowal. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf not only condemned
the attacks and feigned innocence about the blasts (like he did during
the attack on Indian Parliament and London explosions), but offered cooperation
in investigation. .....
by V.S. Achuthanandan
The Kerala High Court has given
a clean chit to Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) activists who created
unruly scenes at Karippur airport as part of giving a reception to the
then minister P.K. Kunjhalikutty exactly a year ago. .....
by Simon Hughes
Al-Qaeda are recruiting White
terrorists to attack the West, it was revealed yesterday. Osama Bin Laden's
fanatics reckon they can avoid detection more easily. Six websites with
known links to al-Qaeda are carrying recruiting appeals and terrorist
training manuals in ENGLISH. .....
by Joanne Collins
Australian authorities believe
they have foiled a major terrorist attack, arresting 17 people on Tuesday
during raids in the country's two biggest cities of Sydney and Melbourne.
.....
by A Surya Prakash
The Volcker Committee's conclusion
that the Congress party and Union External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh
were beneficiaries of Saddam Hussein's largesse is a wake-up call for
all Indian democrats. Coming as it does within weeks of the disclosures
in The Mitrokin Archives II, which spoke of how the KGB funded the Congress
and the Communist Party of India (CPI) since the early days of independence,
it seems the time has come for a credible, full-fledged inquiry into the
funding of political parties in India, including the flow of foreign funds
into party coffers. .....
by Toby Harnden
Iranian state television has
broadcast a cartoon that glorifies suicide bombings against Israelis,
depicting a young boy blowing himself up after being told: "Go and
show the Zionists how brave and heroic are the children of Palestine."
.....
by KR Phanda
Mr N Jamal Ansari in his article,
"Read the facts" (October 12), essentially makes two points:
One, Muslims are the largest minority and if they lagged behind, nation
would suffer. Two, the Government through legislation, declare Aligarh
Muslim University as a minority institution as it is the fountain head
of Muslim renaissance. .....
by Syed Amin Jafri
The Andhra Pradesh government
will file a special leave petition in the Supreme Court against the state
high court verdict striking down the five percent reservations for Muslims
in educational institutions and public employment. .....
by The New Indian Express
Senior Congress leader and
former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi on Thursday asked party leaders
not to support the anti-Maoist movement as the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh
(RSS) leaders were involved in the agitation. .....
by Michael Martinez
Rick Steves is a travel conglomerate.
He writes guidebooks, hosts a popular TV travel show, owns a tour company
and sells everything from backpacks to portable clotheslines. .....
by Lisa M. Krieger
The Dalai Lama has an idea
for a scientific experiment: Identify which region of the brain experiences
empathy. Is it the same place, he wonders, whether your empathy is for
a loved one or a hostile enemy? .....
by Dr. C.I. Issac
The religious minorities of
Kerala, particularly Christians and Muslims, are proud of their historical
past. However, these days they have started to feel a sense of insufficiency
of their historical value. Since the days of Portuguese, stories regarding
the first century of Common Era (CE) origin and aristocratic beginning
began to circulate widely amongst the Kerala Christians. Later on this
articulated tradition got deep rooted with the Christian faith. .....
by St. Petersburg Times
A City Council member, referring
to the 2001 terrorism attacks, said his election rival's Indian background
makes him suspect. .....
by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
In the village adjacent to
the Art of Living ashram, a garbage truck dumps the waste of Bangalore
city on the roadside. When the village youth realised this was a major
health hazard, they decided to stop this. When the garbage truck came
they punctured its tyres, instead of sending it away. .....
by Varghese K. George
Bihar's five crore voters are
divided into 200 plus castes. Aspirations - individual and collective
- in Bihar are defined by caste more than any other factor. That is why
caste is the most significant determinant of voting behaviour in the state.
.....
by The Times of India
Diwali is a time to be excited
about the new clothes goodies, fireworks and a whole lot more. But what
does the mother of all festivals mean to someone who is a stranger to
it all? We trooped around the city to find out if Diwali was just another
holiday or meant anything more to foreign students in India. .....
by G. Parthasarathy
We should repay Pakistan in
kind for acts of terrorism it perpetrates on our soil. India has to apply
pressures on Pakistan diplomatically and covertly that compel General
Musharraf to change his ways. .....
by Pramod Kumar Singh
The ongoing investigations
into the serial blasts that rocked the Capital last Saturday have provided
new leads to Delhi Police and Central intelligence agencies which are
now zeroing in on certain Bangladeshi nationals who could have carried
out the terror strikes at the behest of top commanders of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba
(LeT). .....
by Buddy Naidu
Two books that depict Jesus
Christ on their covers with devil's horns have sparked outrage among Christians
in the run-up to Christmas. .....
by The Economic Times
The government should dump
the Haj subsidy, rather than expand its benefit to income-tax payers,
as proposed by minister of state for home Sriprakash Jaiswal. .....
by Marwaan Macan-Markar
Prospects for peace in Thailand's
troubled south have dimmed due to escalating incidents of violence by
shadowy, Muslim-Malay insurgent groups on the one hand and calls for tougher
measures by Buddhist monks on the other. .....
by Daily Excelsior
Investigations into the serial
blasts in Delhi indicated linkage of Muzaffarabad in PoK to the incident
and Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Toiba (LeT) is a strong suspect irrespective
of its denial, police sources said here today. .....
by Kanchan Gupta
The latest issue of the Economist
describes Mr Manmohan Singh as a Prime Minister who is "in office
but not in power... someone to be pitied rather than admired". .....
by Kate Heneroty
The Dutch Equal Opportunities
Commission will hear the nation's first case brought by a Muslim woman
who was refused a job because she would not wear a headscarf. .....
by Business Standard
The external affairs minister,
Kunwar Natwar Singh, can be forgiven for feeling like the Wodehousian
character, Roderick Spode, who while out for a walk in the garden stepped
on the sharp end of a hoe whereupon the handle leapt up and conked him
on the nose. The shriek of surprised outrage that Mr Spode let out is
well-matched by Mr Natwar Singh. .....
by Bhavna Vij
The CBI has found documented
evidence of dubious foreign exchange transactions of Congress MP and former
Union Minister Satish Sharma which involve illegal foreign bank accounts
and evidence of alleged money laundering. .....
by Alex Pomero
Some months back I watched
a documentary which aired an interview with a young Palestinian terrorist.
Most people would be appalled simply at the fact that someone who had
killed innocent people is being treated like a celebrity and given an
opportunity to "explain" himself. But what was more shocking
was that he showed absolutely no remorse for having killed innocent people
on the streets of Israel, including women and children. .....
by Marwaan Macan-Markar
The hill tribes of northern
Thailand have survived centuries of displacement, hardship and discrimination.
But now their uniquely colorful culture is under a new threat, albeit
a well-meaning one: Christian evangelism. .....
by The Times of India
Is India waiting for some one
else to declare Pakistan a terrorist state? The fact of the matter is
that India is the country worse hit by terrorism -- sponsored by none
other than Pakistan. Over 50,000 people have been killed in terrorist-related
violence in India since 1994. Why then should we wait for a declaration
to this effect from the US -- and that too, knowing well that for over
half a century, successive US governments have supported and sheltered
Pakistan to achieve their own ends. Our readers have raised this and several
other questions. .....
by PC Vinoj Kumar
History will one day talk of
Nagapattinam in the same breath as Chicago and Hiroshima. What the 'great
fire' did to Chicago in 1871, and the atomic bomb to Hiroshima, the tsunami
did the same to Nagapattinam on December 26, 2004, when 40-50 feet giant
waves lashed the shore, killing over 6,000 people and rendering thousands
homeless. .....
by Mahesh Langa
Jamnadas Thakkar's is one of
the thousands of families that bore the brunt of the Gujarat earth- quake
of 2001. His family lost eight members when their palatial bungalow spread
over 450 square yards crumbled like a castle of cards. .....
by Mahesh Langa
The devastation wreaked by
the October 8 quake brought back memories for residents of Kutch who were
victims of a similar disaster on January 26, 2001. Four towns were reduced
to rubble on the morning of Republic Day when the rest of the nation was
hoisting the national flag and children were singing the national anthem
in schools. .....
by K P S Gill
'Where the mind is without
fear'. That, in a single phrase, is my ideal of an India empowered. This
ideal is under constant threat, a brutal reminder of which we have just
seen in Delhi. But the idea and spirit of India are not threatened only
when Delhi or India's Parliament are attacked. They are undermined when
the most powerless and insignificant of our citizens in our farthest peripheries
are terrorized by the lawlessness and violence that have become endemic
to so much of the country. .....
by Swapan Dasgupta
It is comforting to pretend
it's going to be another joyous Diwali. Since the bombs exploded last
Saturday, killing 65 ordinary citizens- we still don't know the final
count- and leaving another 210 seriously injured, the Capital has been
subjected to some dreary sermons. .....
by Deepti Kaul
Youngsters today are too westernised.
Most parents lament: "Ask them to accompany you to the temple and
they pull a long face." So, are today's youth losing touch with religion
and culture? .....
by Prem Shankar Jha
"Thank God for the Supreme
Court," was my first reaction when I read this morning that it had
shifted the murder case against the Kanchi Shankaracharya to Pondicherry.
For ever since the Chennai police had arrested Jayendra Saraswati on the
night of Diwali 11 months ago, I had been filled with a sense of foreboding.
.....
by Rizwan Ullah
Power is energy, an enabling
condition for survival. Power may or may not come from the barrel of the
gun but it certainly does not come through begging. It does not drop in
the begging bowl nor it is offered on a platter. It certainly comes through
a workable strategy, masterminded in view of the requirements of the circumstances
and implemented timely and vigorously. .....
by Daily Excelsior
Expressing outrage at Saturday's
serial blasts in Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said there
was an "external hand" behind the explosions and asked Pakistan
to put an immediate end to terrorism radiating from its soil. .....
by S Gurumurthy
''Do not believe such silly
things as there was a race of mankind in South India called Dravidians
differing widely from another race in northern India called the Aryans.
This is entirely unfounded.'' This is not from a saffron scholar of the
21st century. But Swami Vivekananda said it before an audience in the
then Madras city as the 19th century was drawing to a close. .....
by B. Raman
Only the Sikh terrorists, the
Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF), of which the Al Qaeda,
the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) are amongst the
members, have the capability for organising the kind of three well-co-ordinated
blasts which struck Delhi on the evening of October 29,2005, reportedly
killing about 50 persons. .....
by Dina Nath Mishra
Colonial rulers knew how to
enslave the Indians. They derided Indian civilisational treasure and its
contribution to world. They planned it meticulously, invented a number
of theories, wrote hundreds of biased and seemingly scholarly books and
projected dozen of myths. They knew that the Indians took pride in their
Vedic traditions. .....
by Simon Kearney
The names of Jemaah Islamiah's
terrorist class of 2004 have been uncovered in the southern Philippines
after intelligence officers found a list of the latest mujaheddin to graduate
from the group's training camps. .....
by Frances Grandy Taylor
Growing up in Mumbai, India,
Beena Pandit remembers the sights and sounds of the Hindu holiday of Diwali,
a time of celebration that marks the year's end. The house was filled
with the aromas of traditional dishes, there were special candy treats,
and children would get new clothes, she said. .....
by Daily Excelsior
Shaken by the earthquake and
the reverses at the hands of security forces, militants in J&K are
busy trying to regroup and mobilise overground workers for big strikes
next summer. .....
by Rediff on Net
Outraged by what he termed
as baseless and untrue allegations in a United Nations report which named
him as one of the beneficiaries in Iraqi oil sales in 2001 under the Oil-for-Food
programme, External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh on Saturday said this
was part of the campaign to malign the Congress party and its senior leaders.
.....
by Arvind Lavakare
Mirwaiz Umer Farooq is angry.
So are Mehbooba Mufti and other political leaders in the Kashmir Valley.
And so too is M J Akbar, the editor-in-chief of The Asian Age in Delhi.
All of them are indignant in various degrees that the people of India
have not done enough for their Kashmiri brethren struck by the earthquake
of October 8. .....
by Anuradha Raman
As gifts go, this one will
be music to Sonia Gandhi's ears. Not only will the denizens of her constituency
Rae Bareli tune in, it will also double up as a sop for son Rahul Gandhi's
Amethi. .....
by Saurabh Shukla
Delhi Call it a tiff over influencing
Muslim politics or the spillover of Haj diplomacy, but a war of words
is on between the Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed and
Mohammed Azam Khan, a minister in the Mulayam Singh Yadav Government in
Uttar Pradesh. The issue: sending officials on Haj deputation to Saudi
Arabia. .....
by Rajnish Shukla
Making music is the biggest
passion of his life. It is only the instruments that are small. Surendra
Mehta, a 77-year-old retired railwayman, makes miniature musical instruments
ranging from the sarangi to the sitar and has made 200 so far. In March
next year, Mehta aims to open a museum housing 344 miniature Indian folk
musical instruments. .....
by Manorama
Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj
on Friday termed as "fanciful", Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's
suggestion of reservation for Muslims in government jobs. .....
by Julia Moskin
New Yorkers have learned to
tread fearlessly in the world of real Indian food. They know pakoras from
samosas and dabble in idlis and utthappams. But a confusing cloud often
looms over the end of those meals: the sweet, colorful, mysteriously milky
world of Indian desserts. .....
by Abhishek Kapoor
This is as real as realpolitik
can get. In Godhra, synonymous now with the Sabarmati Express carnage
and the riots that engulfed Gujarat in its wake, the municipality is going
to be governed by the BJP with support from all the 18 elected Muslims.
.....
by The Hindu
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday
directed the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT)
to respond to a bunch of petitions seeking deletion of certain "objectionable
portions" in the history books for classes VIII, XI and XII published
by the Council. .....
