More in India
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Politics of Dress
In August 2009, Sri Venkataramana Swamy College, Mangalore, banned the wearing of the burqah on the college campus. The particular subject of this ban, Ayesha Amin, is a seventeen-year old First Year B.Com student from Bantwal, a nearby village. Seetharama Mayya, the Principal of SVS College, said that Asmin can...
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Echoes of Gokhale
We have talked about the Partition. Now let us talk about Independence. Gopal Krishna Gokhale is not a name you hear too often in the Indian public sphere. And why should you? After all, he was not as exciting as the fiery Bal Gangadhar Tilak or Bhagat Singh. Nor was...
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A Rudderless Party
I usually refrain from commenting on currently active stories because calm reflection yields more positive results than hot-blooded rants. However, in the case of Jaswant Singh (JS) vs. Sangh Parivar, it is of utmost importance that I speak immediately. On the surface, the halla-gulla seems to be yet another intra-Parivar...
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Lotus Blooming…
The Indian media has, over the past twenty years or so, obsessed over the rise of the Right in India in the form of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP and its feeder groups (like the Shiv Sena, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Bajrang Dal, etc.) have been labelled as Rightists,...
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Mission Kashmir
Kashmir – the world’s most dangerous place. Kashmir – where three nuclear powers that have already fought four wars against each other in the past 60 years come together. It is the root of the India-Pakistan strife and a magnet for international terrorists. Since the partition and subsequent independence of...
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India’s Long-Term Defence Strategy
India maintains, to date, the best defence system known to man. Sadly, it takes about two centuries to activate. Let me explain. Since 1757, Britain became the dominant power in the subcontinent. They thought they had colonised yet another backward race and would relieve the White Man’s Burden. Two hundred...
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India’s (Don’t) Look East Policy
Since independence, India has followed, with remarkable success, its ‘(Don’t) Look East’ policy. The basic principles of this policy, as laid down by Nehru in the late 1940s, was to befriend as many states in Southeast Asia as possible so as to create a moral buffer against Chinese aggression and...
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The Talibanisation of Hinduism
So there we have it at last – Hindu terrorists. In September 2008, three bombs attached to bicycles exploded in Malegaon, a small town in Nasik District, Maharashtra. At least 37 people died and over 125 were injured in what was clearly an attack on the Muslim community in the...
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India’s (Un)clear Deal…
The nuclear deal, raising quite a storm in India as well as the world, has now been signed. Scientists, strategists and politicians clamoured to both sides across the world as the deal went through intense scrutiny in India, at the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG), at the International Atomic Energy Agency...
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The Bombay Massacre
It is perhaps the politically correct thing to mutter cliches about the bravery of our fallen men-in-arms, how they died gallantly in service of their country, and what outstanding people they were. Those of you who know me will not be surprised if I refuse to do so. The police...
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A Case of Judicial Activism?
A few days ago, the Supreme Court of India ruled that laws placed under the Constitution’s Ninth Schedule after April 24, 1973, providing immunity from legal challenges are subject to scrutiny of courts if they violated fundamental rights (LINK HERE). This verdict has been hailed by a large part of...
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On Education
Let me state in the beginning that I am a former engineer, currently pursuing a doctoral degree in the humanities, which I hope to follow up with the study of jurisprudence. Much of what follows in this post are opinions formed through my own experiences during my many years as...
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India’s "Black Hole"
In the last week, two atrocities have occurred in the northeast Indian state of Bihar: first, a ten-year-old girl’s finger were chopped off for plucking a few leaves of spinach from a vegetable field, and yesterday, a middle-aged woman was tonsured and paraded half-naked on the orders of the husband...
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On Reservation
One of the burning issues in India today is reservation quotas – essentially, positions are reserved for sections of the population that are designated as “scheduled castes/tribes,” or “other backward castes.” Additionally, there are reservations for military personnel, employees of the central government, descendants of freedom fighters, and a few...