25th May 2003 The move for healing the Indo-Pak rupture has affected people of Indian origin in the core of their being. The importance of Indo-Pak relations can be judged from the fact that we already have two responses to the column for 18th May 2003. Both are from the USA and from heretofore or… Continue reading The Disease Becomes Remedy!
Column for 18th May 2003 Perhaps it is time again to talk of cross border ties and of friendships on hold, of shared joys and sorrows. The partition of the country (14th and 15th August 1947) is a living memory for those who were adult at that time. It is as well to remember that… Continue reading Cross Border Friendship
Column For 11th May 2003 Atal Behari Vajpeyi, Prime Minister of India can talk about a last chance for peace in his lifetime because in India, unlike Europe and the USA, death is not a forbidden subject. This may be because the Hindu looks upon death not as a full stop but as a comma,… Continue reading Bahadur Shah’s 1857 Proclamation and the British Response
Itihaas How the British Broke Savarkar April 29, 2002 V.D.Savarkar is a hero of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. Their coming to power has seen a Postage Stamp issued to make his visage familiar to his countrymen. There is also a film about his life and his exploits. All this was not done earlier as the… Continue reading How the British Broke Savarkar
April 29th, 2002 Jinnah sold the idea of a homeland for Muslims by conjuring up the spectre of Hindus forming a brute majority. The Hindus claimed that tolerance was a way of life with them. 2002 developments from 27th February onwards in Gujarat appear to be Jinnahs nightmare come alive. The assiduously cultivated myth that… Continue reading Are There Tolerant Religions?
April 9, 2002 Are we in for a repeat of the Age in History called Later Mughal? Is Atal Behari poet and Hindi orator a reincarnation of Muhammad ShahRungeelaa? We think like this because both (Atal Behari Vajpeyi RSS prachaarak and Muhammad Shah Prince of the House of Taimour (Timur or Tamerlane) share a passion… Continue reading Communalism, Corruption and Incompetence
Was there Hindu-Muslim conflict in the reign of Awrungzeyb Alamgir (1658-1707)? Was the Emperor anti Hindu? Did the Empire break up because of Awrungzeyb’s communal policies? Perhaps we can examine these questions from the life of a premier noble of the Empire, Maharaja Jaswantsimha of Jodhpur. Three hundred and twenty two years ago, on 28th… Continue reading Awrungzeyb and the Rajputs
Itihaas : Correcting A Limited, Stereotype View Urdu is now a ‘dead’ language. It is easy to dismiss its poetry as decadent and its poets as maudlin sycophants who eked out a living by writing panegyrics redolent with fulsome flattery of their patrons. The patrons were Emperors and Nawabs… Continue reading Correcting a Limited, Stereotype[d View of Udru]
April 13th, 2003 2003 Spring is witness to an outrage against humanity. This is the unprovoked war on Iraq. It has killed maimed and rendered homeless many thousands of Iraqis. The claim made is that the war is being fought by ‘to liberate Iraq’. This great economy with the truth recalls ‘The White Man’s Burden’ invented… Continue reading Return of the White Man’s Burden
Thursday, May 10th, 2007 1857 — the millions killed, the hundreds of thousands made homeless and the billions worth of property destroyed, the terror (does it continue?) struck in Indian hearts at the mere sight of a white person — the conditioned reflex of all Indians deferring to the opinions of the white man—especially about… Continue reading The British stifled Indian Identity
