Mr. Charan Singh has good reasons to be desperate. Among the top leaders he has drawn the smallest crowds wherever he has gone in recent weeks. His Congress (U) partner is finding the cross of his leadership too heavy to bear and may well wish to seek respite from it. … Read More
Mr Nehru was not much younger than Gandhiji. But he represented a more confident national mood which was at least partly the product of Gandhiji’s more defiant leadership. Mr Nehru was not proud of the state of Hindu society. He detested the caste system in particular. He would have loved … Read More
It is shocking that Mrs. Gandhi should have lent credence to the charge that an unnamed cabinet colleague in 1971 was in touch with the CIA and that he had informed it of a possible Indian attack on Pakistan. She can claim that she has done no more than invite … Read More
Unable to grapple with the present, old men often relive their past. Mr Charan Singh and Mr Raj Narain are doing precisely that. Else they would not be blaming Mr Nehru for the country’s ills more than 15 years after his death. It would have been a different matter if … Read More
It is still a commonplace to attribute the overthrow of the Shah and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to the repressive nature of the previous regime. There is a measure of truth in it. Instead of harnessing the Western-educated intelligentsia to his purpose of pushing Iran into the 21st century, … Read More
Amnesty International has done well to bring it out that martial law in Pakistan, as it is now being implemented, is illegal in terms of the Supreme Court’s judgement in November 1977. The country’s highest judicial body had then ruled that martial law had a legal basis only so long … Read More
It is not at all clear why Mrs. Gandhi has chosen to express the doubt that elections to the Lok Sabha might not be held on January 3 and 6 as scheduled. On October 22 the President, Mr. Sanjiva Reddy, gave a solemn assurance to the nation not only on … Read More
Whether the Lok Dal-Congress (U) alliance will survive is anybody’s guess. For all we know it may, because it is not inconceivable that Mr. Charan Singh may agree to drop his public criticism of Mr. Nehru and Mr. Devraj Urs to come off his hobby horse of “uniting” all Congressmen, … Read More
The text of President Sanjiva Reddy’s broadcast last Monday leaves little room for doubt that he has spoken on his own initiative and not on behalf of the government. For he has said that he (and not the government) is determined that no problem “will be allowed to stand in … Read More
In an editorial entitled “Indian Mephistopheles” on October 5, we posed the question whether it was open to the caretaker Prime Minister to change the composition of the government or the power balance within it by reshuffling the portfolios. What happens, we asked, “if Mr. Charan Singh decides to end … Read More
