Startling as the Imrana rape case and its aftermath have been, some issues have crystallized with the controversial Islamic verdict that has stunned the entire country. We would do well to examine the tragedy and its denouement dispassionately to arrive at a reasoned understanding of how the continued operation of … Read More
There is an irony in the tectonic upheavals currently besieging the BJP. A party that once rode the crest of a national political quest to give Indic civilization due honour in the public arena is itself convulsed by a clash of ideologies. An elemental struggle is on between those who … Read More
Secularism today ranks foremost among India’s burden of bad ideas, a term coined by Prof. Shiva Bajpai to debunk the ill-founded Aryan Invasion Theory, which held academics in thrall for a century before being flung into the dustbin of history. The term secular entered India’s political vocabulary as a device … Read More
BJP President L.K. Advani’s startling endorsement of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s secular credentials is less damaging than his hallucinations about the common civilizational heritage of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – successor states of undivided India. This politically popular but untrue dogma of ‘one people’ divided by machiavellian politicians needs to … Read More
After France, the Netherlands, and certainly Great Britain. Europe now seems set to vote with her feet against the European Union, sacrificing continental fraternity for a more familial national unity. Liberty, clarion cry of the French Revolution, returned to the centrestage to rescue her children from a stifling economic inequality … Read More
Emboldened at the ease with which the community has been able to secure fifty percent reservations in Aligarh Muslim University, the Jamiat Ulema e Hind has asked UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi for proportional reservations for Muslims in Parliament and the State Legislatures. Far from rebuffing this dangerous overture, which instantly … Read More
As conservative Christian groups in America protest against the Air Force Academy’s decision to investigate complaints of institutionalized proselytisation at its Colorado Springs campus, questions arise about the status of religious freedom in that country. Samuel Huntington, in his expansive Who Are We, admits America has employed highly coercive techniques … Read More
Christian missionaries have added a new dimension to the national debate over conversions with their objections to an unexpected Judaic threat to their flock in the north eastern States of Mizoram and Manipur. With the century-old church under threat of a mass exodus, Christian theologians are working overtime to counter … Read More
Though it is nearly two decades since the agitation for the Ram Janmabhoomi questioned the meaning of secularism, there has since been little serious discussion of the concept. Growing Hindu unease over heightened pro-missionary activism by Congress-led regimes in various States, however, demands that the community’s views be articulated to … Read More
As leaders of all Western nations descended upon Vatican City early last month, there was little doubt they had come as much to pay respects to the departed Pope as to ensure that a White European succeeded as Bishop of Rome. In the weeks preceding Joseph Ratzinger’s elevation, some Cardinals … Read More
