It is obvious enough that under the existing circumstances President Venkataraman had no choice but to dissolve the Lok Sabha and order fresh elections. But that does not settle the basic issue of the President’s powers in this matter. And it does not even touch the question of his duty … Read More
It would, on the face of it, be grossly unfair to compare Rajiv Gandhi with Saddam Hussein. For while the Iraqi leader has brought disaster on at least two countries, Kuwait and his own, Rajiv Gandhi has hurt, however badly, only himself and his party. There are other significant differences … Read More
Millions of Muslims in India, as in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries, support Saddam Hussein in the Gulf war and wish him to win against the US-led coalition of which Saudi Arabia is the second most important constituent. This is an extraordinary development which can be explained primarily in terms … Read More
Weak-minded moralism, on the one hand, and incapacity to grasp the implications of the limitations of US power and Saddam Hussein’s ambitions, on the other, alone can account for much of the writing on the Gulf war in the Indian print media. It is difficult to explain it in other … Read More
Saddam Hussein has proved wrong friends and foes alike. Contrary to the hopes and calculations of both, he has brought on his country a war which can only prove disastrous for it. Indeed, even in retrospect, it is difficult to find a rational explanation for his behaviour in terms of … Read More
Pakistan is not likely to be impressed either by Chandra Shekhar’s search for better relations with it, or by his warning against ‘nuclear adventurism’. Pakistan does not, indeed cannot, care for friendly relations with this country and it does not need to engage in any kind of military adventure. Its … Read More
We may welcome it, or we may condemn it. We cannot deny it. Hindu upsurge is a fact and in all probability it is there to stay. That is what lends significance to 1990 above all else. India has taken a historic turn. Only the pace of the march towards … Read More
We did not need the latest riots in Aligarh, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad to show that our ‘secular’ order is in deep trouble. This has been evident for years and, indeed, decades, even if many of us have refused to recognise the reality and come to grips with it. For instance, … Read More
A spectre haunts dominant sections of India’s political and intellectual elites – the spectre of a growing Hindu self-awareness and self-assertion. Till recently these elites had used the bogey of Hindu ‘communalism’ and revivalism as a convenient device to keep themselves in power and to ‘legitimize’ their slavish imitation of … Read More
The Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute has brought to the fore the critical issue of the nature of the Indian State as nothing else has since partition and independence in 1947. The secularist-versus-Hindu-Rashtra controversy is, of course, not new. In fact, it has been with us since the twenties when some … Read More
