by The Indian Express
Actions do speak more than words. In the end, the seriousness of debate with which the Lower House of Parliament had gripped the nation on Tuesday — and put the sparsely crowded MMRDA grounds in Mumbai and Team Anna in cruel juxtaposition — bowed out before the filibustering in the Upper House on Thursday. ....
by The Indian Express
Eventually, the Congress’s Lokpal bill was stilled in Rajya Sabha as much by its ally as by its opposition. The overriding argument invoked state rights versus a domineering Centre. ....
by Zeenews.india.com
A record number of 9.9 million pilgrims from India and abroad visited the Hindu shrine of Mata Vaishno Devi in Jammu region this year, an official said on Sunday. ....
by The Hindu
The State Archives Department is digitising the Mathilakom records (old palm leaf manuscripts of Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram) as part of the second phase of digitisation of old records. ....
by The Times of India
The violence against Reliance group, allegedly provoked by a news telecast
claiming the business giant got Y S Rajasekhara Reddy killed in a helicopter
crash, has triggered unrest in the Congress with fingers pointing at YSR's
son Jaganmohan Reddy. ....
by Philip Goldberg
Last month I attended the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Comprised mainly of scholars who teach and do research at North American universities, the AAR is, according to its mission statement, "dedicated to furthering knowledge of religion and religious institutions in all their forms and manifestations." ....
by The Pioneer
BJP leader L K Advani today hit out at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the Lokpal fiasco in Rajya Sabha, alleging that he had chosen "conspiratorial silence and acquiescence" while the government ran away from a vote on the Bill. ....
by The Pioneer
Bringing the Prime Minister in the line of fire, BJP today accused him and his ministers for the "choreographed disturbance" in the Rajya Sabha on the Lokpal issue and insisted that since the government wanted a weak ombudsman and lacked numbers, it ran away from a vote. ....
by The Pioneer
Hardening its stand on the Lokpal Bill, UPA ally Trinamool Congress today ruled out any compromise on the Lokayukta provision and said the government should have faced voting in the Rajya Sabha. ....
by The Times of India
Chinese manufacturers are increasingly "faking" popular Indian products of consumer goods giants such as Dabur and ITC, undermining the legitimacy of brands and causing losses worth as much as $5 billion annually, officials said. ....
by NDTV.com
British Muslim MPs have been told they cannot have meat slaughtered in line with Islamic tradition because the method is offensive to many of their non-Muslim colleagues, a media report said. ....
by Vidhu Verma
The year 2011 saw the Congress-led UPA Government pulling in different directions. For most part it appeared to be consumed by chaos, corruption and crises. Will 2012 be different, or will it be another year of political deadlock? ....
by Priyanka Srinivasa
"In a ritual passed from mother to daughter, I, too, underwent the awesome training that is required to tie one's own sari in stylish fashion" ....
by Ram Jethmalani
A news report in the New Indian Express dated 30 November 2011 provides an unequivocal insight into the manner in which the CBI has been conducting itself in Gujarat related cases. ....
by Jyotsna Bhatnagar
With Gujarat rolling out the red carpet for industry instead of red tape, everyone, from giant conglomerate Tata to women entrepreneurs from Andhra Pradesh, are eyeing the state as a base for operations. ....
by Archna Shukla
The 32nd Kalachakra began on Saturday with the Dalai Lama praying for world peace and urging Buddhists who have assembled here from across nations to “use your 10 days to imbibe Lord Buddha. We are blessed to be at his land.” ....
by Devendra Pandey
It was only their second season in Mumbai’s famous school-cricket tournament, Giles Shield, and their first semi-final ever. However, the boys of Al Barkaat Malik Islam English School, located in the slum neighbourhoods of Kurla, prayed fervently for one thing: that none of them gets injured. ....
by Esha Roy
The Ningthoujams have been battling drugs for years. All four brothers were chronic drug addicts till a few years ago—when the youngest finally went to rehab and became clean for the first time in years. The eldest, 30-year-old Roshan, was the first to start taking drugs in the family. ....
by Sukhdeep Kaur
She asks them to board the ‘trouble train’ that has destinations marked as happy, sad, angry and confused. Children from not-so-privileged backgrounds have the privilege to choose which station they want to get down depending on their feelings to situations she throws at them—a scolding mother, an angry teacher, a bullying friend. ....
by Apurva
Almost two decades ago, this village was heading for disaster. Years of drought had left farmland fallow, electricity was erratic and the nearest telephone was 10 km away. Just as many residents were torn between selling off their land and shifting base, along came a little tried yet courageous idea—social forestry. ....
by Maulshree Seth
In pockets of eastern Uttar Pradesh, he is known simply as the “encephalitis doctor”. Dr RN Singh, a private practitioner in encephalitis-affected eastern Uttar Pradesh, has worked hard to earn that name. ....
by Sushant Kulkarni
Sharada Madne, a 55-year-old labourer working in a pomegranate orchard at Sarole Pathar, a village of 300 families in Nagar district, animatedly narrates how a village vulnerable to whimsical rainfall about 20 years ago has come close to doing the unthinkable—conquering the vagaries of climate change. ....
by Santosh Singh
Sumant Kumar, a small farmer who owns three acres, has become the rallying point for those who believe in the Bihar resurgence. He has recorded paddy production of 224 quintal a hectare, way more than the world record of 190 quintal a Chinese agricultural scientist, Yuan Longping, made seven years ago. ....
by The Times of India
The Maldives has ordered hundreds of luxury hotels to close their spas after protests by an Islamist party which claimed they were a front for prostitution. The move is feared to hit the Islamic country's $1.5 billion tourist economy, which accounts for 30% of its GDP. ....
by Gurmeet Kanwal
Though the year gone by was relatively peaceful for India, the security environment in India's regional neighbourhood has been steadily deteriorating. The greatest causes of regional instability are the strident march of Islamist fundamentalism across the Af-Pak border and the unresolved conflict in Afghanistan. ....
by The Times of India
According to the cabinet member, who personally briefed home minister R R Patil on the episode, when the senior PI did not respond to his call and he personally went to the police station, he was made to wait for long. ....
by The Times of India
PDP President Mehbooba Mufti did praise Gujarat CM Narendra Modi for his approach to investment proposals, a transcript of her speech made public showed. ....
by Arvind Panagariya
That Kerala has the best indicators of health and education outcomes among all Indian states and enjoys a low rate of poverty is beyond question. The state unequivocally enjoys the highest male and female literacy rates and life expectancy at birth, and the lowest rates of infant mortality, maternal mortality and malnutrition. ....
by The Times of India
US president Barack Obama has signed into law a massive $662-billion defence spending bill that also seeks to suspend a big chunk of $1.1 billion military aid to Pakistan, despite his "serious reservations" about provisions regulating detention and prosecution of suspected terrorists. ....
by Kingshuk Nag
There is an IAS officer in the state that I live in. In 2003, he disappeared without informing his bosses. For five years there was no trace of him, officially that is. Everybody knew that he was in the US. The government (read his colleagues in the IAS) was kind enough to persist with his ‘service’ and merely mark him "AWOL" (absent without leave). ....
by Yoginder K. Alagh
It is very sensible not to delay any more the answers to the question of strengthening the food and agricultural supply chain. If anything is holding back the sustainability of a 9 per cent growth rate it is wage goods inflation. ....
by The Times of India
Investigators are working on inputs indicating that the Indian Mujahideen (IM) module led by Yasin Bhatkal, which was busted recently, may have been involved in the Mumbai blasts of July 13, 2011. ....
by Binod Singh
It was a landmark year for China. It marked the 90th anniversary of the founding of Chinas Communist Party. It also marked the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of the Manchu Empire by the Wu Chang uprisings. ....
by Debabrata Mohanty
Finally it was two houses allotted under the discretionary quota of one minister to the family of another that led Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik last month to scrap the system of patronage that began in 1985. ....
by John Chalmers
Returning to India from a summit in Bali last month, Manmohan Singh was cheerful and determined: once dubbed "the leader other leaders love," he'd enjoyed meeting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and President Barack Obama, one of his biggest admirers. ....
by Vishwa Mohan
Existence of various front organizations of Maoists in the national Capital had never been a secret, but the government on Wednesday disclosed their names for the first time, including even the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) that is led by Delhi University Prof S A R Geelani, who was acquitted in the Parliament House terror attack case. ....
by R Kashyap
Recently the West Bengal police and CRPF jointly eliminated one of the country’s most dangerous Naxal leaders, Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji, in the West Midnapore district, just 10 km from Jharkhand. Kishenji was reputedly the number three in the organizational hierarchy. ....
by Raghu Krishnan
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the leader was the perfect blend of the man of thought and the man of action like Churchill, Nehru and Kennedy. ....
by Vishwa Mohan
The US continues to be the biggest donor for Indian NGOs, contributing a little less than one-third of the total Rs 10,337 crore received by various non-profit voluntary organizations in 2009-10. ....
by Tanuj Khosla
10 years ago when I was a first year engineering student, two countries were attacked by terrorists in a space of about three months – September 11 attacks in the US and December 13 attack on the Indian Parliament. A decade later when I am older and wiser, I see clearly see that the response of both the nations to these strikes couldn’t have looked any looked more different. ....
by Seema Mustafa
The government of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh will have to crawl on bended knees to appease the angry people of India. Otherwise, it can count its days in office, with each session of Parliament becoming a test for survival ....
by Ramtanu Maitra
The Week magazine, based in Kerala, India, came out recently with a comprehensive report on the massive arms seizure in Chittagong, Bangladesh, in 2004 made by two Bangladeshi policemen. The Week claimed it had unearthed official records on the case in India and Bangladesh, and that it had exclusive access to the 3,500-page Chittagong case diary. ....
by R Kashyap
Naxalism is a stifling political ideology. It rejects, in fact challenges, the nation’s socio-economic system and refuses to engage with the polity. It ravages the life of common people in Naxal-affected areas. ....
by Hindustan Times
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday said that Pakistan has a key role to play in his government's peace talks with the Taliban because the militant group operates from there. ....
by Shafiq Alam
When Bangladesh became an independent nation after a bloody nine month battle with Pakistan that ended 40 years ago Friday, Narayan Chandra Das, a Bengali Hindu, had high hopes for his new country. ....
by Prem Shankar Jha
When Union minister Sharad Pawar was slapped by an obviously unbalanced youth, Anna Hazare passed an acerbic comment, “why just one slap?” As it always happens, he was roundly condemned by the establishment for making a remark in bad taste. ....
by R Jagannathan
Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Dalit followers have done him a great disservice. They have taken over a National Textile Corporation mill in Mumbai—Indu Mill—because they want to convert it into a memorial for him. In doing so, they have adopted the “grammar of anarchy” that Ambedkar abhorred. ....
by Nancy Kaul
In a major victory for Hindu activists, the Delhi High Court on Dec. 21 granted a stay order against the deportation of 151 Pakistani Hindu nationals who arrived in the capital in September and sought asylum on grounds of religious persecution and oppression in Pakistan. ....
by Vinod Kumar
Are government of India policies the cause of Muslim backwardness? No sooner did Imam Ahmad Bukhari took the mantle of Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid of Delhi, he raised the Muslim bogey -- "Muslims (in India) have been reduced to a pitiable condition". ....
by Venky Vembu
The virtue of making donations of food (or annadhanam) to the poor has always been upheld in scriptural parables and in popular culture as worthy of emulation. It has traditionally been pitched as an effective way for the wealthy, even those lacking in empathy towards those less privileged than themselves, to earn karmic brownie points. ....
by Dipali Rastogi
This summer, during our mid-service training programme at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, a poignant lecture by N.C. Saxena, member of the National Advisory Council, had just ended. ....
by Mukesh Ranjan
Coming down heavily on the UPA Government at the Centre over giving 4.5 per cent reservations to the Muslims from the quota for Other Backward Classes, former Deputy Chief Minister and BJP MLA Raghuwar Das on Saturday termed quotas on religious ground "unconstitutional" and threatened an agitation against the move. ....
by R Jagannathan
Despite the objections of many in the UPA cabinet and the advice of economists, Sonia Gandhi is shoving the Food Security Bill down our throats. ....
by The Pioneer
2011 will be best remembered as the year of mass uprising against corruption in India. The year started with nationwide raids by the CBI on the 2G Spectrum Scam culprits and the arrest of tainted former Telecom Minister A Raja and DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi, when caught with crystal clear evidence. ....
by Kanchan Gupta
Nothing about what the Congress does is accidental; no two actions of this party are coincidental. Dishonesty, deceit and deception are the three strands of the Congress’s DNA ....
by Rajinder Puri
There are several examples of the political elite’s collective insanity but the huge debate sparked by the proposed reservation for minorities takes the cake. The UPA government on the eve of the assembly elections announced a sub-quota for the minorities within the existing quota of reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs). ....
by Dhananjay Mahapatra
The Supreme Court has rejected a five-decade-old perception built on the basis of several reports of Commissions of Inquiry that during communal violence the police were generally biased against minority community and arrested the victims instead of the assailants. ....
by The Economic Times
BJP on Thursday asked Congress not to fake outrage over the defeat of the bill to grant constitutional status to Lokpal and acknowledge that poor floor-management led to the embarrassment for the government. ....
by Madhuparna Das
The last two years have witnessed a sudden spurt in the number of Chinese “journalists” and “research scholars” coming to Kolkata and the eastern region of the country. ....
by Patrick de Jacquelot / Les Echos / Worldcrunch
This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Les Echos. ....
by Dr Jay Dubashi
Until recently, I used to think that NGO was the name of a sports car made in Japan or Korea for use on Indian roads. It never struck me NGO could be some kind of a racket to make money without actually doing anything worthwhile, the sort of thing some of us are very good at, particularly those with contacts with foreign agencies, who are suckers for this kind of thing. ....
by Ashok Singhal
The Int'L President of Vishva Hindu Parishad Sri Ashok Singhal told the media that a few organizations and some people entrenched in the central government were exerting acute pulls and pressures to get the Communal Violence Bill 2011 passed in the Parliament as a law at the earliest. ....
by P.N. Benjamin
Freedom of Religion Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 22, 1978, seeks "to forbid conversions from one religion to another by the use of force or inducement or deceit or by any fraudulent means." ....
by Amarnath K. Menon
He will travel for three days every week. He wants to build the organisation from the grassroots up so that it is a formidable force by 2014-its golden jubilee year, by meeting cadres, recruiting people and raising finances. Meet the new Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) chief Gullampalli Raghava Reddy, 55, who took over the reins from ailing octogenarian Ashok Singhal, the organisation's face for the past nine years. ....
by Inder Malhotra
In two earlier articles in this series (‘Dialogue of the deaf’, IE, January 22, 2010) and ‘Immoveable objects”, IE, February 5, 2010), I have given as many dreary details as possible of the failed Swaran Singh-Bhutto “talkathon” that began in Rawalpindi on December 26, 1962 and collapsed in New Delhi on May 16, 1963. ....
by Outlook
“Maj Iqbal was my handler. He and Lt Col Hamza listened to my plan for more than two hours. The Lt Col assured me of all financial help.” ....
by Chandrani Banerjee
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), India’s premier agency to investigate terrorist-related cases which was set up in December 2008, interrogated David Coleman Headley, one of the prime accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, between June 3 and June 9, 2010. ....
by Lola Nayar
“There are many households in our village who have NREGA cards but have not sought work for over two years,” says 32-year-old Umesh Kumar, gram pradhan of Bhainswal village, in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh. In fact, Kumar recounts having to actually go around persuading people to come for work “whenever we get projects for implementation under NREGA”. ....
by Chandrani Banerjee
While other children would playfully latch on to each other and run in circles as a chugging human train, little Laxmi Lakda had already made up her mind: she would drive a real train someday. It was an unusual career choice, but this feisty lady from Jharkhand kept her dream right on track. ....
by Sheetal
I recently returned from an amazing five days in sunny Buenos Aires. Both the city and its denizens are charming, warm, and welcoming. As my husband and I strolled through the various neighborhoods, we found that Buenos Aires magically blended the best of Paris, Barcelona, Athens, and Mumbai. ....
by Suhag A. Shukla, Esq.
Yoga can wreck your body and make you fat -- at least according to New York Times science writer William Broad. Between Maureen Dowd's column back in October, "How Garbo Learned to Stand on Her Head," on Broad's upcoming book, "The Science of Yoga: The Myths and the Rewards," and Broad's own piece last week, "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body," Broad has taken up prime journalistic real estate to grind his axe with yoga. ....
by David
The New York Times printed a controversial article last week about yoga and injuries. Various yoga teachers have penned responses, but I’ve yet to see one that I find fully satisfying (the one that came closest was by Michael Taylor of Strala Yoga, and I also enjoyed Eddie Stern's witty riposte). ....
by Sheetal
I’d like to thank the The New York Times for continuing to fuel the relevancy of the Hindu American Foundation’s Take Back Yoga campaign. The latest piece in the Times Magazine, “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” by William Broad, just adds more fodder to the campaign. ....
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
Governor Salmaan Taseer died at the hands of a religious fanatic on January 4 last year. Fearlessly championing a deeply unpopular cause, this brave man had sought to revisit the country’s blasphemy law which, as he saw it, was yet another means of intimidating Pakistan’s embattled religious minorities. ....
by Minxin Pei
Most of the world rejoiced when the Soviet Union disintegrated two decades ago. But in Beijing, the mood was considerably darker. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which itself barely survived the crisis of Tienanmen in the spring of 1989, was apparently grief-stricken. ....
by Drishtikone
As we speak, there is a very fundamental flaw in India’s Governance. The Head of the Executive branch of this Parliamentary Democracy has never been elected by any one to any constituency by vote. Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India is not an elected member. ....
by R. Upadhyay
The recent offer of the UPA coalition to reserve 4.5 % seats for minorities within the OBC quota of 27% in Government jobs has once again reminded the people the evil effects of vote bank politics. ....
by The Times of India
Home minister P Chidambaram on Thursday said the September 2008 Batla House gun battle with suspected terrorists was genuine and there was "no scope for re-opening the matter". ....
by The Times of India
Despite stiff opposition to the 'Surya Namaskar' exercise, a record number of 50 lakh students across Madhya Pradesh today took part in it, with state chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan leading from the front. ....
by The Times of India
That the EC's issued a notice to Congress leader Salman Khurshid for promising minority sub-quotas during poll campaigning in UP comes as no surprise. Across the spectrum, political parties in the state are engaged in competitive electoral mobilisation along caste and religious lines. The Congress had proposed a 4.5% sub-quota for minorities within the existing OBC quota. ....
by The Indian Express
If the Batla House encounter continues to spark confusion, noise and controversy, it is in no small measure due to the Congress. The facts of the incident on that day in New Delhi’s Jamia Nagar, September 2008, in which two suspected terrorists and a police officer were killed, are mired in a dispute that’s been propped up by, among others, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh. ....
by Swami Vivekananda
In reading the Bhagwad Gita, many in western countries may have felt astonished at the second chapter, wherein Sri Krishna calls Arjuna a hypocrite and a coward because of his refusal to fight, or offer resistance, on account of his adversaries being his friends and relatives, making the plea that non-resistance was the highest ideal of love. This is a great lesson for us all to learn, that in all matters the two extremes are alike. ....
by Rediff.com
Swami Vivekananda's famous speech in Chicago at the Parliament of Religions played a key role in spreading Hindu philosophy in the West. ....
by Indrajit Hazra
Over a fabulous spread of home-made vegetarian food, I was listening to Rajan Mehra, chairman, Rupa Publications Group, telling me about, what he considers to be “the most important publication” of his career. Coming from a publishing house that has made its mark — and anchors its business — by publishing best-selling ‘chatpata’ books by writers that most famously include Chetan Bhagat, the 11-volume, 7,086-page Encyclopedia of Hinduism, is clearly a radical departure. ....
by Shashi Shekhar
The Congress’s communal brinkmanship and the Election Commission’s over-zealous conduct have made the contentious issue of a Muslim sub-quota the centerpiece of public debate in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election. The issue has effectively shut out debate on everything else to the point where it becomes necessary to ask if the Uttar Pradesh poll is now a referendum on this single issue. ....
by Divya Talwar
The use of Sharia, or Islamic religious law, is growing in Britain, with thousands of Muslims using it to settle disputes each year, but women's groups and some others are objecting. ....
by Meritxell Mir
A Swiss prosecutor has described as a "veritable slaughter" the vicious axe murder of a 16-year-old girl by her 53-year-old Pakistani father, who believed his daughter had tarnished her family's honour. ....
by Asit Jolly
The famed Sufi tradition and spirit of Kashmiriyat in the Valley, already ravaged by decades of insurgency, faces a new challenge. Wahhabism, an austere, puritanical interpretation of Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia, is making deep inroads into Kashmir due to the efforts of the Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, which calls itself a religious and welfare organisation. ....
by Daily News & Analysis
The Supreme Court has put the Home Ministry and Delhi police on alert saying if it’s found that the affidavit filed by them in the mid night swoop on Yoga guru Ramdev’s followers and attack on him in early June is misleading, it would initiate proceedings against the ministry and Union government. ....
by Salman Rashid
Every single Muslim in the subcontinent believes s/he is of Arab descent. If not direct Arab descent, then the illustrious ancestor had come from either Iran or Bukhara. Interestingly, the ancestor is always a great general or a saint. Never ever have we heard anyone boasting of an intellectual for a forebear. We hear of the progeny of savage robber kings, but there is no one who claims Abu Rehan Al-Beruni or Ibn Rushd as a distant sire. ....
by Chandrani Banerjee
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), India’s premier agency to investigate terrorist-related cases which was set up in December 2008, interrogated David Coleman Headley, one of the prime accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, between June 3 and June 9, 2010. ....
by Rediff.com
Swami Vivekananda's famous speech in Chicago at the Parliament of Religions played a key role in spreading Hindu philosophy in the West. ....
by Namrata Joshi
The house of Deborah Di Fiore, Sophia Edstrand and Nur Kaoukji takes your breath away. It is as though one of those charming artist studios in Monmartre has been relocated to Jaipur. Inside these bright pink and green walls are lamps in frames of bamboo latticework, an assortment of wooden tables and unusual glasses, and a splendid collection of trunks. ....
by The Indian Express
The Bangladesh army has foiled a plot by certain “religiously fanatic” serving and retired army officers to overthrow the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. ....
by The Indian Express
Dantewada’s bullet-riddled, violence-framed narrative is tragically familiar: the border town of Chhattisgarh that is caught in a long-drawn-out crossfire between Naxals and security forces, its people wracked by deprivation and illiteracy and pushed further into the margins. Turning that story around isn’t easy for the state — not exactly the most popular there — but someone is trying to make a difference. ....
by Virender Kumar
Last September, when the Samajwadi Party launched its UP election campaign, Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose government had been voted out in 2007 for letting loose “bullies” and “ruffians” in the state, put his son Akhilesh Yadav in the driver’s seat and withdrew into the background. ....
by The Times of India
Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot on Tuesday said he feared trouble if controversial author Salman Rushdie attended the Jaipur Literary Festival. “A few Muslim organizations met me and have threatened to organize protests. Moreover, a breakdown of law and order is not ruled out,” he said, adding, “No state government will want a law and order situation. I have informed the Centre about the prevailing sentiments.” ....
by Dr Pravin Togadia
In 1947, Bharat became independent from the British but broken and looted. The same ordeal is hovering over Bharat now with Muslim Reservations. After 1947, 3 Crore Muslims stayed back in Bharat who rejecting family planning and common civil core increased their population to 15 crore now. ....
by Noha El-Hennawy
As the Muslim Brotherhood strives to project the image of a moderate and democratic political organization, a book featuring the angry account of a former member has hit the market. ....
by Compassdirect.org
Sudan’s Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowments has threatened to arrest church leaders if they carry out evangelistic activities and do not comply with an order for churches to provide their names and contact information, Christian sources said. ....
by Uday Mahurkar
For over two centuries now, a question that has defied an answer has been: what became of the Maratha soldiers who disappeared on January 14, 1761, after the third battle of Panipat? On the 250th anniversary of the great battle, there is finally an answer. ....
by The Indian Express
Certainly, the Union finance ministry should raise hard questions about large investments in any sector, especially given the state of the deficit. So nobody can fault it for questioning India’s ambitious Rs 65,000-crore military expansion plan, cleared in-principle by the PM last year. ....
by The Pioneer
While the Western discourse on human rights is individual-centric, the Indian model puts emphasis on one's duties rather than enjoyment of rights, says Ashok Vohra ....
by Rathin Das
A day after the Gujarat Government moved high court, seeking quashing of the Governor’s order to appoint retired Justice RA Mehta as Lokayukta, many questions have been raised on the whole episode. ....
by Swaraj Thapa
A day after NDTV journalist Pankaj Pachauri was brought in as communication adviser in the PMO, Harish Khare, media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, stepped down from his post. ....
by Saba Imtiaz & Sameer Mandhro
Money, jobs and a debt-free life: It sounds like a sweet deal for many of the Hindu labourers in Matli, but it comes with strings attached — convert to Islam. ....
by B. Raman
It is learnt from reliable sources that the Bangladesh authorities suspect that the Hizbut-Tahrir (HT), Party of Liberation, banned in October 2009 had links with 16 middle-level officers of the Bangladesh Army involved in the plot to stage a coup against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which was discovered in December last. ....
by NDTV.com
Observing that Ayudha pooja is referable to reverence or respect given to objects through which a person performs his occupation, the Madras High Court has held that "showing respect to the place of work and the objects of work will in no way offend the feeling of others or offend secularism". ....
by A Subramani
Is conducting Ayudha Puja or Saraswathi Puja in government offices a non-secular activity deserving to be banned? 'No', the Madras high court has ruled. ....
by Ian Caleb
A MAN arrested in a police counter-terrorism operation told an officer he would “cut your head off and machine gun the lot of you”, a court has heard. ....
by Rajesh Kalra
On January 17, the Delhi High Court ruled that although the highly tom-tommed Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) used in our elections are NOT tamperproof, it is still not in a position to issue any directive to the Election Commission (EC). However, it added that since EVMs are the backbone of our election process, needful should be done to dispel doubts. ....
by Haroon Habib
Bangladesh is happy that its armed forces foiled an attempt to destabilise the elected government. But the extremist, religious ideologies which reportedly influenced the plot are a cause for serious concern. ....
by PN Benjamin
A retired judge of Karnataka High Court, M.F. Saldanha has recently said that Christians in Karnataka State are under an unprecedented wave of persecution. He has also termed Karnataka as “the Rogue State No.1”. Unfortunately for Saldanha, he himself admits that the State has not recorded any killing in this season of “persecution”. ....
by Sunday Times
Tolerance of Islamic vigilantism is helping to breed a new generation of terrorists in Indonesia, the International Crisis Group warned in a report Thursday. ....
by BBC News
A man who downloaded a recipe for the deadly poison ricin and documents about how to make bombs has been jailed for two years and three months. ....
by Barnabas Team
Opposition is mounting to the growing use of Islamic law to settle civil disputes in Britain as a Muslim campaigner backs a bill that aims to stop sharia councils from falsely claiming legal status England and Wales. ....
by Gilbert Kreijger
The Dutch minority government plans to ban Muslim face veils such as burqas and other forms of clothing that cover the face from next year. ....
by Swapan Dasgupta
The extent to which the discourse on the vexed issue of reservations has changed over the years is quite remarkable. When the Constitution was being framed, the remnants of the Muslim League argued that independent India should persist with the reservation of seats in legislatures for Muslims and other religious minorities. ....
by Esha Roy
Since the last Assembly elections, the Manipuri politician has only gotten richer, with those showing some of the highest growth in assets part of Chief Minister Ibobi Singh's cabinet. ..
by Milind Ghatwai
Holding that Gita contained philosophy and not religious teachings, the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday dismissed a petition challenging introduction of ‘Gita Sar’ (essence of Gita) in school curriculum. ...
by Kashmir Sentinel
My dear Lord Mountbatten, I have to inform your Excellency that a grave emergency has arisen in my State and request immediate assistance of your Government. ...
by Tavleen Singh
Last week in the Idea Exchange page opposite was the interview of a man who has been responsible for terminating a project that could have turned India into a hub for aluminum production and brought enormous prosperity to Orissa. ...
