by Gouri Agtey Athale
Who would have thought that busy professionals, doctors, lawyers, an economist, a former Indian Navy officer and others working from home would have the time to become civic activists, leading a cleanliness drive? ....
by Henry McDonald
When water started trickling down a statue of Jesus Christ at a Catholic church in Mumbai earlier this year, locals were quick to declare a miracle. Some began collecting the holy water and the Church of Our Lady of Velankanni began to promote it as a site of pilgrimage. ....
by NitiCentral.com
The Gujarat Government on Saturday demanded the resignation of State Governor Kamla Beniwal, saying that alone could make way for a “free and fair inquiry” into an alleged land scam pending against her in Rajasthan. ....
by Omar Rashid
Uttar Pradesh based social activist Nutan Thakur on Saturday alleged that suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt's "canvassing for and assistance to" his wife Shweta for the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections, violated administrative and electoral laws. ....
by Meena Menon
If chief engineer Vijay Pandhre is unhappy with the Maharashtra government’s voluminous two-part White Paper on irrigation, which was made public on Friday, there is a good reason for it. Mr. Pandhre wrote three letters to the Chief Minister on February — two of them highlighting the sorry state of affairs in the water resources department. ....
by Yudhvir Rana
The demolition of a century-old Hindu temple in Karachi on Saturday by a builder has triggered large-scale protests by the Hindu community in Pakistan. ....
by Arun Shourie
By the end of 2003, we were being told that our agencies had neutralised over 160 ISI modules — counting only those outside Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast. Since then, up to July 11, 2006, again counting only those outside Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, another 75 modules are reported to have been neutralized. ....
by Rabia Ali
In a hurried operation on Saturday, a builder demolished a century-old temple in Soldier Bazaar while the Sindh High Court was hearing a petition seeking a stay order. ....
by Riazul Haq
While the main celebrations for Diwali are set to be held in Gracy Lines Temple near Benazir Bhutto International Airport on Wednesday (today), a number of people celebrated the festival at home amongst friends and family. ....
by Tavleen Singh
You would imagine, would you not, that it would be very, very hard to cheat the Rothschilds since they have been in the banking business for centuries. Right? Well, you would be wrong because you would have reckoned without the chicanery and business skills of the Indian NGO sector. ....
by The Indian Express
Activists of Shiv Sena today burnt the Pakistan's national flag and effigy of its government to protest the demolition of a century old temple in Karachi. ....
by v The Islamic world is engaged in a cultural war with the West and the worst is still to come, Italian author Oriana Fallaci told a receptive Washington audience last night. ....
by IBNLive.com
In fresh trouble for actor Salman Khan, he has been summoned in the 2002 hit-and-run case on a complaint. The actor has been summoned by the court following a complaint that claims that the evidence in the case was faked to manipulate the trial. ....
by Nazir Masoodi
Jammu and Kashmir saw a record turnout of 90 per cent on Monday in the polls for four legislative council seats. Nearly 34,000 panchs and sarpanchs were eligible to vote, and they came out in strong numbers defying threats and boycott calls by hardline separatists. The polls for the reserved seats were held after a gap of 30 years. ....
by Ritu Sharma & Lakshmi Ajay
Vadnagar in Mehsana has a rich heritage, dating back 4,500 years, but it is only of late that it has started to chart a growth story, one that has been boosted by its identity of being home to Narendra Modi. ....
by Janaki Fernandes
Actor Salman Khan has been ordered to appear in a Mumbai court on December 27. The senior inspector of the Bandra Police Station has also been summoned. ....
by The Times of India
The number of terrorist attacks each year has more than quadrupled in the decade since September 11, 2001, a study released on Tuesday said, with Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan the most affected. ....
by Sheela Bhatt
Zafar Sareshwala, who speaks in Narendra Modi's favour and has initiated the dialogue between Modi and Gujarati Muslims, explains to Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt his motivations for doing so. ....
by C I Issac
The Vatican in its third millennium is committed to plant its Cross over Asia as was done in previous millenniums over Africa and the Americas. In the case of Asia, the church generally signifies India and particularly Tamil Nadu, the most vulnerable place of Hindu social formations of India (the reasons for this vulnerability are not the subject of this article). ....
by The Pioneer
The debate saw a rare engagement between Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi — the two leaders who had fought against each other from Bellary (Karnataka) in 1999. ....
by Ajay Sura
The Kargil war hit Dr N K Kalia hard. Living among the picturesque setting of Palampur in Himachal Pradesh, Dr Kalia paid a terrible price for the conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999: the war snatched his son -- Captain Saurav Kalia, popularly known as the ‘hero of Kargil war’ – away. ....
by Jaibans Singh
Even as the world is gearing up to celebrate world human rights day on December 10, in India the National Human Right Commission (NHRC) is gearing up to take cognisance of a very bizarre allegation. If news reports are to be believed, the commission has asked its Director General (Investigation) to collect facts and submit a report, within eight weeks, on the alleged killing of two army men in Jammu & Kashmir due to mistaken identity. ....
by The Indian Express
If the judiciousness of the choice of Chinese author Mo Yan (pseudonym for Guan Moye) for the 2012 literature Nobel was questioned in several quarters, Stockholm must have had a perfectly Orwellian moment on Thursday, when the Nobel laureate appeared to defend censorship, of the draconian Chinese variety, at a press conference in the Swedish capital. ....
by Aditya Raj Kaul
Narendra Modi avoids the media like plague. What has to be said is told in the public domain, interviews of any kind are a strict no no. Yet the Gujarat strongman agreed to talk to Aditya Raj Kaul in an exclusive and rare interview, propounding his world view like never before. ....
by Dr Vijaya Rajiva
On the twentieth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid (built by the barbarian invader Babur in 1527over a Hindu temple in ) on December 6 1992 by Hindu kar sevaks, many of the mainstream English electronic media in India served up some interesting programs on the demolition and what impact it had on Indian politics etc. ....
by The Free Press Journal
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday released a study on Pakistani Hindus forced to flee to India due to discrimination, atrocities on women and persecution in almost all walks of life and the government of India remaining insensitive to their plight, rather shy to take up their cause with Pakistan. ....
by Inder Malhotra
If the massive Pakistani infiltrations into Jammu and Kashmir on August 5, 1965 were codenamed Operation Gibraltar, the September 1 armoured attack on the strategic Chamb Jaurian sector (‘Strange March to 1965 War’, IE, November 26) had a resounding codename, Grand Slam. ....
by The Indian Express
Amidst protests by girls alleging arbitrary selection of beneficiaries, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Monday launched the ‘Hamari Beti, Uska Kal’ scheme, under which girls from minority communities are given a one-time cash assistance of Rs 30,000 on passing Class X, at Rampur on Monday. ....
by Samvada.org
Mundagodu village, Karwar Taluk, Karnataka December 11, 2012: VHP former president Ashok Singhal, Tibet Prime Minister Sikyong Dr Lobsang Sangay, MLA V. S. Patil and thousands of local Tibetans and monks attended the 23rd anniversary of the conferment of the Nobel Peace Prize to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, at Drepung monastery in Mundgod, Karnataka state, Today morning. ....
by GN Bureau
Alka Sirohi, secretary to the department of personnel, has been appointed a member of the Union Public Service Commission. This much-sought-after posting comes after she helped coordinate the drafting and redrafting the Lokpal bill. ....
by The Times of India
A well-known Hindu doctor was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen in the restive Balochistan province of southwest Pakistan today, police said. ....
by R L Francis
Catholic and Protestant churches across the country celebrated 9 December 2012 as ‘Dalit Liberation Sunday’. The Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) and the National Council for Churches in India (NCCI) have suddenly become worried for their dalit brothers. Both these bodies work under the Vatican and the Geneva-based World Council of Churches. ....
by Kanchan Gupta
There are two versions of what Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said while addressing an election rally at Vadodara in Gujarat last Sunday. According to a report published in the Indian Express on Monday, he said: “The Congress has made a person whose name is (Syed) Ibrahim the chief of IB (Intelligence Bureau).” ....
by The Indian Express
Protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) that have led to delay in its commissioning are "gimmicks and games" of those who do not want to see India emerge stronger, Russian Ambassador to India Alexander M Kadakin has said. ....
by Kapil Dave
Even his detractors admit that Narendra Modi is the most hard-working politician they've seen in a long time. It is not without reason that elections in Gujarat have always revolved around a one-man army who can outrun all his opponents in the final lap. With technology on his side this time to amplify his solo campaign, he hardly needed any support from either local or central BJP leaders. ....
by Pradeep Thakur
Yoga guru Ramdev is in the midst of formulating his future course of action - whether he should consider joining a political formation, float one of his own, or remain on the fringe and run a countrywide campaign against corruption and black money. He tells Pradeep Thakur that FDI could even be tainted money, sourced from terrorists or state enemies. ....
by C. V. Sukumaran
‘Society made him a criminal and a murderer,’ says the former Supreme Court judge, Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, about the cold-blooded killer. (“A question of rights and wrongs”, Open Page, The Hindu, Nov. 25). And the Judge sees ‘injustice’ in his hanging. ....
by Hindustan Times
The father of the Indian soldier tortured and mutilated in the Kargil conflict has no hopes from the not so sympathetic Pakistan. "We pin our hopes only on the Supreme Court rather than on Pakistan," N.K. Kalia, 64, said. Kalia's comments came after visiting Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said it was not clear if a bullet or the weather had led to the death of Capt. Saurabh Kalia. ....
by V. Balachandran
It a time when even "lit fest" carnivals are busy discussing China, it seems odd not to expect our media worrying about that country's alleged expansionist moves. Queries about the Chinese Navy's aggressive posture were naturally the major topic during Navy chief Admiral D.K. Joshi's press conference on Navy Day. ....
by Kounteya Sinha
Can you sit and rise from the floor unaided and without holding an object for support? Now, scientists say that ability to sit and rise from the floor is closely correlated with all-cause mortality risk. ....
by Vijayendra Mohanty
In case any Aman ki Asha hippies haven’t realised it till now, Pakistan Interior Minister’s ‘weather’ comment was meant as a deliberate insult. It is time we grew a spine and started seeing it as such. ....
by Dr. Manish Kumar
The CBI raided the vault of the Reserve Bank of India and found a huge cache of counterfeit Indian currency lying in the denomination of 500 and 1000. This was conducted when the CBI raided some 70-odd branches of various banks on the India-Nepal border from where counterfeit currency racket was unearthed. ....
by Amit Chaturvedi
After a series of controversial remarks by Pakistani minister Rehman Malik outraged India, the main opposition party, the BJP, has asked the government to explain why he was invited to New Delhi. ....
by Rajeev Chandrasekhar
In many senses, December 16, Vijay Diwas, commemorated the anniversary of an event that makes Indians believe the best in themselves. ....
by The Indian Express
The dozens of vehicles that roared into northeast India this week on a rally from Indonesia symbolize deeper ties between the South Asian giant and Southeast Asia, but the dreadful roads along several parts of the 8,000 km (5,000 mile) journey also show how much remains to be done. ....
by Vimal Bhatia
In winter, thousands of Houbara birds from cold countries come to the desert areas in Pakistan opposite the international border adjoining Jaisalmer-Bikaner without any inkling of the danger that lurks in the area. Teams of royals from the Arab countries camp here and hunt these birds. ....
by Aseem Shukla
Four legislators stood at a podium on another unseasonably warm December day in the shadows of Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Sombre and stern, they took turns delivering blistering monologues into microphones that outnumbered the stray staffer milling about. ....
by Sandeep
This man has caused great loss not only to the Muslim community but to the entire society. He may be occupying a very high office, but we will not spare him. He has committed grave and deliberate mistakes. I have ordered a detailed inquiry into the bank’s functioning. ....
by Vijayendra Mohanty
I am not sure if I am alone in feeling this — I think I am not — but given the nature of public discourse in matters of religion, it doesn’t strike me as surprising that more people (no matter what their religion) do not talk about this. ....
by Firstpost.com
It’s increasingly becoming clear that even if Muslims, who were scarred by the 2002 riots in Gujarat, want their wounds to heal, there is a dedicated cottage industry that is hell-bent on keeping their memories alive for far longer than is good for them. ....
by V.Balachandran
At a time when our bureaucracy is facing increasing flak for poor governance and negligent rehabilitation work, this old story might gladden our hearts. This is about the massive rehabilitation work directed by a young IAS officer after the 11 December 1967 Koyna earthquake. ....
by The Indian Express
A day after violent protests rocked the capital, scores of people, mostly school students, today gathered at Jantar Mantar and asked the government to provide speedy justice in the gangrape case and ensure prompt and stringent punishment for the rapists. ....
by Sanjay Singh
“There is genuine and justified anger and anguish at the ghastly crime of gangrape committed last Sunday in Delhi. Anger at this crime is justified, but violence will serve no purpose,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in his brief address to the nation. ....
by Monobina Gupta
‘Take back the day and night’ – the emotive slogan echoed across VIP areas of Delhi over the last few days. Until now, protests in Delhi hardly ever moved beyond Jantar Mantar, Ram Lila Maidan, and India Gate. But it’s been different this time. The on-going outrage against the gangrape of a 23-year-old travelled at a rapid pace, breaching the accepted territorial boundaries of protest. ....
by Babita Basu
So, the protests in Delhi turned violent and invoked counter-violence from the police. The crowd turned nasty in its anger. Some believe it, while others don’t. Most people don’t, if you go by what the Twitterverse is saying. ....
by The Times of India
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh finally addressed the nation on Monday morning to calm the protestors agitating against the gang-rape incident in Delhi. But a gaffe at the end of the speech, which was broadcast by major news channels, only left the protesters more incensed. ....
by CP Bhambhri
The Constitution (117th Amendment) Bill 2012 introduced in Rajya Sabha and approved in the Winter Session has intensified conflicts between political leaders on the issue of allowing caste-based promotions in public services. ....
by Niticentral.com
As the Centre reels under acute criticism from all sections of society for failure to provide security and safety to the citizens of Delhi especially women and children, Gujarat has again shown the way by being declared the most ‘safe and secure state’ in India. ....
by Abraham Thomas
The Congress has vehemently denied allegations levelled by the Samajwadi Party about the misuse of CBI against Mulayam Singh Yadav and his kin, but facts tell a different story altogether. On February 10, 2009, CBI stunned the Supreme Court by revealing that the Centre directed it to go slow against the SP leader in the disproportionate assets case. ....
by Chetan Chauhan
Some have managed to beat the so-called unbeatable Unique Identification (UID) system and got fake Aadhaar numbers generated raising security concerns over UPA's new UID based governance model. ....
by Alamgir Hossain
Merina Khatun, 20, was divorced by her husband last week because she couldn’t roll enough bidis a day to supplement the family income. She had left school aged 10 to learn to make bidis but admits to not being very fast ....
by Ajay Umat
The ruling BJP had not fielded a single Muslim candidate yet it managed to win in 11 out of the 18 constituencies where Muslim voters are in substantial numbers and could have swung the results in the recently held assembly elections in Gujarat. ....
by R Hariharan
The 50th anniversary of the 1962 India-China war this year, roused a lot of passions in the country. Much of it was hot air, interspersed with some critical analyses of the war and its aftermath. The analyses focused on the strategic inadequacies of the national leadership, in handling national security, that continues to this day. ....
by Shiv Visvanathan
Emile Durkheim, the great French sociologist, once observed that "socialism is not a science but a cry of grief uttered by an animal in pain". What Durkheim was pointing out was that many forms of protest are symptoms of pain rather than an analysis of a social problem. The journalist or a writer has to capture both sides of an event to be fair. ....
by The Economic Times
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s short address to the nation on Monday, eight days after the brutal gang-rape and assault of a 23-year-old girl in Delhi jolted the entire country, went viral for an embarrassingly wrong reason. After concluding his televised speech, in which the prime minister appealed for calm and sought to douse the protests that had rocked the Capital over the weekend, Singh looked up and asked, “Theek hai (is that fine?)” ....
by Avijit Ghosh
It is a tale of two speeches. The first, delivered by Barack Obama after the senseless slaying of 20 school kids and six adults in Connecticut last week, seemed to come straight from the heart. Few said that the tear wiped away by the US President during the address was fake. ....
by Kanwal Sibal
If it was wrong to invite Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik to India because he prevaricates on investigations into the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and lets Hafiz Saeed make hate speeches against India unchecked, is it right to believe that Pakistan’s president and PM are welcome because they want to genuinely bring to justice expeditiously those Pakistanis involved in the Mumbai carnage, including Saeed, its mastermind? ....
by IBNLive.com
A 24-year Indian student in Bonn was brutally attacked by Islamic extremists who slashed his tongue when he refused to convert, German police said on Thursday. ....
by Akhilesh Mishra
Dynasty, a political tool in the hands of the ruling class, has become the catalyst for a new colonisation of a country whose soul has already been deeply scarred by centuries of it”. If there was one line we could use which embodies the soul of Durbar, the just-published autobiographical account of journalist Tavleen Singh, then it could very well be this line from the author’s note. ....
by Sandhya Jain
The call for rethink comes close on the heels of New Delhi’s vote against abolition of the death penalty in the UN general assembly, and reflects the desire of a section of our political and judicial elite to conform to European liberalism, even at the cost of the needs of Indian society. They are egged on by NGOs aligned with Amnesty International and similar bodies, and perhaps funded by western sources. ....
by Kiran Kumar S
There was a systematic study of what happened to thousands of Hindu temples across India which don’t exist as they did centuries back. Elaborate evidence was accumulated, studied and presented in these two volumes. Except the Ayodhya, almost all of these cases of temples are not in public memory or media debate today. People have just ‘moved on’ as you hear in intellectual circles. ....
by Rsschennai.blogspot.in
Over 100 years old Bhagwan Shriram Temple in Pakistan was razed to ground along with over 40 houses of Hindus around it. In Sindh province of Pakistan, Hindus had approached the court against the builder's efforts to demolish the Shriram Temple & the court had granted stay. ....
by Dr. Ashok Singal
The Secular Government of India has made an official provision for the spread of Christianity. In its 18 types of visa to outsiders, Indian Ministry of External Affairs has created a special category for Christian Missionaries for their peaceful entry in India and undeterred performance of their holy duty of religious conversions. ....
by Sandhya Jain
Amidst a concerted effort by some intellectuals, retired military and foreign office mandarins to somehow cede the Siachen Glacier to Pakistan, some analysts are striving to promote the Mahabharat in public consciousness as India’s epic of war. ....
by Prithvijit Mitra & Durgesh Nandan Jha
The decision to shift her to Singapore was not a medical decision and was based on "direction from the top (government)", said a senior doctor at Safdarjung Hospital, where Nirbhaya was being treated. Nirbhaya had suffered irreversible brain damage in the early hours of Wednesday, 22 hours before she was airlifted to Singapore, the doctor told TOI. ....
by Seema Mustafa
This is my second letter to you, and since it already seems like old times, I hope you don’t mind the “Soniaji” as against that rather formal Mrs Sonia Gandhi? Of course, I did not hear from you, and must confess to being a little upset. But your letters to Delhi chief minister Mrs Sheila Dikshit and home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde have encouraged me. We are both letter writers. I write to you, and you write to others, quite a nice little pact really! ....
by Arun Shrivastava
A 23-year old girl, raped and beaten to pulp by half a dozen goons, battled for life in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital for almost thirteen days; a day before the end she was flown to a Singapore hospital in a vain last-ditch attempt to save her life. She died early in the morning of December 29. ....
by Nandini Raghavendra
In most mofussil towns of India, a typical matinee show at a film hall would comprise a group of well-mannered people - mostly family - perched in the balcony or dress circle, and another set that occupies the cheaper front-rows whistling and dancing away, and even showering coins, as raunchy item numbers come alive on screen. ....
by Shoma Chaudhury
Perhaps thick skin is a pre-requisite for Indian life. To live without the shield of some moral blindness — to chafe too keenly at what is, against the ideal of what should be — would be to invite madness on oneself. There is much that is wrong with India: one learns to make one’s peace. ...
