'Gandhi was Thakur and Gabbar was Jinnah.'
'If you can have Rampur flown magically to Pakistan's borders, I might ask the nawab to accede to Pakistan. Else, I'm afraid we have no choice in the matter but to join India.'
India's tactical and operational response demonstrated its ability to prosecute tri-service operations, even without a formal tri-service doctrine or the higher command structure needed to coordinate it, points out Ajai Shukla.
'Partition was a two-sided story in a very big way.' 'We've oversimplified it, blamed the British, thought of ourselves only as victims.' 'We've been both victims and perpetrators.'
'Patel was more in tune with the popular mood than Jawaharlal Nehru. While the principle that Hindus and Muslims should be able to live together remained central to Nehru's vision for India, the Sardar was less sentimental.' 'Nehru would angrily face down mobs himself, rushing from trouble spot to trouble spot. A veritable tent city, filled with Muslim refugees, sprouted on the lawns of his bungalow... Mountbatten feared Nehru's impulsiveness would get him killed, and assigned soldiers to watch over him.' Nisid Hajari's Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition casts fresh light on the events and personalities behind the horrific division of the subcontinent which haunts the India and Pakistan to this day.
'Overlying his idealism was a hatred of war and of all things military. He gave no deep thought to politico-military matters and this prevented him from making sound security decisions.'
'Once accession to Pakistan appeared unlikely, the British instituted Operations Gulmarg and Datta Khel respectively to foil possible accession to India.'
Any form of entanglement with India or the US on the strategic plane will be anathema to Sri Lanka's Rajapaksa rulers, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Attlee said Great Britain had concluded that the Indian element of the army was no longer reliable and that Netaji's Indian National Army had demonstrated that. That had shaken the foundation on which Britain's Indian empire rested, argues Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd).
'In the present era of strategic uncertainty and rapidly changing threats, no military professional now disputes the unavoidable necessity of a joint planning staff for the planning and conduct of joint operations so that integrated operations can be planned 'top down',' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Historian Stanley Wolpert, author of several books on India, passed into the ages recently. We remember Professor Wolpert with Rajeev Srinivasan's March 1997 interview published on the occasion of his controversial book on Jawaharlal Nehru.
'If Ruttie had been alive, Jinnah would never have turned communal.'
The failure to restructure our armed forces in line with contemporary needs 14 years after the Kargil war will impose strategic costs beyond just delays and scandals, says Nitin Pai
'Our biggest problem has been keeping this country together.' 'Nation building is never easy. It is a very difficult task.' 'Even 70 years is not too long a time.'
'Our policy seems to be to give away part of J&K, even though we are entitled to the entire state.' 'The Congress has done so, and the BJP is following the same policy.' 'No one is applying their mind to the legal position.' 'Kashmir is not a part of Pakistan under its own constitution.'
'Nehru had multiple chances to make compromises, that would have preserved a united India, and he chose not to,' Nisid Hajari tells Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com
