VINDICA

A very nice article about the Indian capital.

KPS Gill argues that the Muslim community must rise up in rage against those who are calling for violence as a form of protest against the cartoons. He also mentions that the radicalization of political discourse and demonization of non-Muslims in islamic countries creates an atmosphere for terrorism, even though it is obvious that terrorists are a miniscule proportion of the Muslim population. There is an American Indian saying: 'it takes an entire village to raise a single child'. Similarly, it takes a very large community, often entire nations, to raise a single suicide bomber. Instances of enlighted opinion among the Muslim community have been documented elsewhere. However, they have been drowned by the violence of some of the protests.

The story is about the politics of cricket, and India's attempts to muscle into the high table of the game's backroom. One startling insight however, was not about cricket at all: With Non-Alignment, South-South cooperation and third world-ism, India finds itself burdened by the legacies of history. It realises its natural seat at the high table is not compatible with endless engagement with lesser powers. As in diplomacy, so in cricket: the BCCI wants to play Australia and England more often than it does Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It sees this as a mutually-enriching, profitable enterprise, the old "Asian alliances" be damned. This, in short, is the dilemma of India's Foreign affairs ministry.

Tariq Ali explores the darker side of Enlightenment Philosophy, which is widely cited as in Europe as the driving force behind the Freedom of Expression movement there. Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes. The quote is attributed to Voltaire, and there are others in similar vein from many different Enlightenment writers. Tariq's argument is that the Cartoons had more to do with this darker side of the Enlightenment Philosophy than it does with the whitewashed and varnished side that seeks to promote Freedom.

The Government of India is pushing for a survey to find out the the number of Muslims in the Armed Forces. The well thought Rediff article questions this survey and suggests that it is politically motivated. It defends the secular nature of the Army and makes the reasonable point that there are other ethnic minorities who are also underrepresented (like Telugus and Gujaratis). The article also comes out strongly in defending the secular culture within the army, citing examples such as the Army's relatively blemishless record or dealing with communal riots fairly, and its attempts to foster cross religious respect and understanding through construction of "combined prayer halls, called Sarva Dharma Sthal" where all religions are represented. As a matter of fact, this issue was brought up more than 2 years ago by Frontline. In its typically well researched article , Frontline concludes that there is infact under-representation of Muslims, but that communal recruitment ...

India's presentation at the world economic summit recently concluded at Davos created a lot of buzz, receiving universal applause for a professional and slick performance. This Wharton article takes a deeper look at how the Government-Industry partership pulled it off.

A piece about the recent controversy surronding attempts by quasi-religious groups to introduce Intelligent Design as a scientific alternative to Evolution. The article is long, but it does take more than a few words to explore all aspects of the issue.

Two pieces of good news. The Airport Strike has been called off after the Government courageously stood its ground, and India voted to refer the Iran case to the Security Council Earlier, the US Ambassador, Mian Mulford, had made things difficult for India to do the right thing with his needlessly provocative, and counter productive comments . The political setup in India ensures that any government seen as towing the line of a foreign power will not go unpunished. Mulford merely managed to inflict a wound on a government that is keen to work closely with the US. The self goal was blocked, but it came at a great political cost to a pro-US government.

An excellent article on Jinnah, debunking his secular credentials, in the wake of Advani's comments about Jinnah having wanted a secular Pakistan. Despite wiping out Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis, the Muslims of Pakistan have become more sectarian and intolerant about their Islamic faith than they were 50 or 100 years ago. Islam has assumed dangerously virulent forms today and Pakistan has come to be associated with terror and tyranny, rather than democracy and secularism. These developments are intrinsic to Jinnah’s ideology rather than unintended, unexpected by-products. Jinnah's legacy, says Madhu Kishwar, is a planted seed of hatred that consumes Pakistan and burns India in its wake. Another comment of note is about how the Sangh and Shiv Sena are but mirror images of Jinnah's politics. The Sangh Parivar hates Jinnah because Jinnah succeeded in his mission of dividing India by "uniting" Muslims into an ethnically cleansed state, whereas a whole century ...

The Manmohan Singh cabinet awarded contracts for upgrading of the Delhi and Mumbai airports. The Airports Authority of India employees have been on a strike since the announcement, goaded on by the Left parties. The Left says that "it is not against the modernisation, just against the privatisation". My question is this, if the modernisation is going to cost thousands of crores of rupees, where is the money going to come from? Of course, it has to come from poverty alleviation schemes like the Rural Employment Guarantee program. In effect the Left is protecting the interests of the coddled middle class against the interests of the poor. This stand is borderline immoral, besides being against all possible national interests. The AAI strike has happened in spite of the fact that the Government has promised none of the current employees with lose their jobs. The saddest part of the whole thing is that given the spineless behavior of this government in the past, it is prob...

A story about how the Rural Employment Scheme launched by the Congress government is affecting the lives of ordinary people in a village in Andhra. While concerns about corruption and underfunding of the scheme are very real, any valid argument on this issue must seek to provide a decent alternative to the scheme. The cost of leaving desperate people in the mercy of nature's vagaries is simply too much for the nation to bear.

A very good article espousing animal rights. Not being a animal rights believer myself, it takes a lot for me to agree with such opinions. However, this article comes close, grabbing my attention with the very first powerful paragraph. In 55 BC, the Roman leader Pompey staged a combat between humans and elephants. Surrounded in the arena, the animals perceived that they had no hope of escape. According to Pliny, they then "entreated the crowd, trying to win its compassion with indescribable gestures, bewailing their plight with a sort of lamentation." The audience, moved to pity and anger by their plight, rose to curse Pompey — feeling, wrote Cicero, that the elephants had a relation of commonality (societas) with the human race. Interestingly, it also contains many ideas that can be applied just as well outside the context of the argument on animal rights. Sympathy, however, is malleable. It can all too easily be corrupted by our interest in protecting the comforts of a wa...