It is a full decade since Ashok Rudra has been gone. There will be never another one like him.
A Calcutta Diary
The minister for justice in Germany can compare George W Bush with Adolf Hitler, irrespective of consequences. We cannot tell off even a mere assistant secretary of the US government when he pitches...
Had our policy-makers played their cards well and not allowed themselves to be led astray by notions of imperial grandeur, we, instead of insignificant Norway, could have played the decisive role to...
Our star cricketers, some of whom reputedly earn anything between 20 and 50 crore rupees annually, should have the modesty to admit what they owe to the nation's poor. It is because the poor are...
As long as the belief persists amongst a sizeable number of political craftsmen that the Nehru-Gandhis are indispensable for the nation, the majority of the electorate will be stubborn enough to...
Having preached for so long the mantra of Kashmir being an integral and inalienable part of India and international meddling in the matter was not on, to agree to the American proposal is going to be...
Immigration of ordinary labour from the poor to rich countries fouls up the ethnic mix; but some kinds of immigrants, scientists, and such others even of poor countries are allowed in. James Tobin...
It is not any extraordinary development that the US government has of late decided to go public with its choice of heads of states and prime ministers of countries located in different continents...
A nation, a substantial section of whom holds in great deference Puranic tracts, will be easily enchanted with mythology, any mythology, even that of a small-time defence bureaucrat suddenly...
Between the two World Wars, literature buffs were wont to spend an enormous amount of energy and talent to discuss the pros and cons of art for art's sake in creative pursuits. We appear to have run...
Where war hysteria is concerned, a military dictatorship and a competitive democracy are equally advantaged or disadvantaged. It is the my-patriotism-is-superior-to-yours syndrome on both sides of...
To name the airport at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands after V D Savarkar, at least some people would conclude, is a deliberate affront to India's war of independence. But, please, hold your horses...
The parallel with the likes of Silvio Berlusconi is breathtaking: non-Christians, according to the Berlusconis, do not belong to civilisation; the non-Hindus, according to the 'parivar' and its...
We cannot both applaud the defence minister's wish to get friendly with the Chinese and at the same time join the Nepal government forces to suppress the Maoists there. Either the defence minister...
Let us be honest, the Gujarat citizens are being honest to the Gandhi legacy, just as the BJP and its 'parivar' have drawn conclusions which are to their own advantage from the examples set by the...
