The expected has at last happened. The Soviet government has finally announced suspension of the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan. The decision is wholly understandable in terms of provocations by the other side, indeed, the surprise, if any, is that the Kremlin should have taken so long to respond … Read More
Thanks to quick intervention by India, the attempt at coup in Maldives islands has ended – and without loss of lives. It is to the government’s credit that it acted within hours of receiving an appeal for help from President Gayoom who had mercifully managed to elude the invaders. By … Read More
Only those who give themselves a past can be assured of a future, great philosophers from Plato onwards have told us. Those who wipe the slate clean (in Mao Zedong’s famous phrase) of the past mutilate the future in the gestation period itself. That is precisely why revolutions often produce … Read More
Collectively, these five men represent the voice of India’s intelligentsia and embody the most cherished ideals of journalism. Manini Chatterjee pay tribute to Khushwant Singh, Kuldip Nayar, Nikhil Chakravartty, Girilal Jain and MV Kamath * To newspaper readers round the country their bylines are as ubiquitous as the inverted red … Read More
As was only to be expected, the Union government’s decision to ban Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses has provoked a fierce controversy in which, understandably, the writer himself has joined with a well-publicized letter to the Prime Minister. After all, Rushdie cannot, as a Muslim, accept that he has deliberately brought … Read More
First it was to be Samajwadi Janata Dal. In Bangalore Samajwadi has been dropped. It is not quite clear whether the deletion reflects recognition of the anti-socialist wave sweeping the world, including communist countries, or whether it is the result of the absence at least at this stage of the … Read More
It will be idle, indeed dishonest, to pretend that we can begin to move towards an order which can be called Gandhian, however much we may stretch our definition, even if Rajiv Gandhi is able to perform the miracle of substantially reducing the scope and rigour of controls over the … Read More
Mr Gorbachov has run up against the inevitable – failure of the economy to deliver. He has admitted as much in so many words in an address to Soviet editors and cultural officials. He has said: “We are going; slowly, we are losing time and this means we are losing … Read More
It was not really necessary for the Prime Minister to make the specific statement that he would not cede territory to China during his forthcoming visit to Beijing. His intention is, of course, obvious, which is to make it known that he does not intend to negotiate a deal on … Read More
The Prime Minister’s decision to drop the defamation Bill will be widely welcomed in the country. The decision is liable to partisan interpretation. It is as possible to see it as a victory for journalists and others who saw the bill as a most dangerous attack on the freedom of … Read More
