Prime Minister Narendra Modi this month will be undertaking one of the longest ever abroad visits by an Indian head of government in recent times. He is scheduled to be on a nine-day, three-nation visit to Myanmar, Australia and Fiji from November 11 to 19. Later in the month, he will be in Nepal to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit on November 26-27.
'The CAA should be kept in abeyance, without making it a prestige issue.'
'Laying down a clear policy on the future of illegal migrants will dispel anxieties and help in implementing the CAA, NPR and also the NCR,' suggests former Union home secretary Dr Madhav Godbole.
Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday attacked Congress, accusing it of trying to help Communist Party of India-Marxist in the coming civic polls in West Bengal and virtually compared its United Progressive Alliance partner to collaborators of Pakistani army during Bangladesh liberation war.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has criticised opposition's ongoing agitation to thwart the January 5 polls and warned that Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Khaleda Zia would be held responsible for the deaths and violence.
At war, the Jalashwa can carry and launch a full infantry battalion in a single wave. At peace, the Jalashwa can evacuate 1,000 people in a single trip. Ajai Shukla explains why the Indian Navy's new tender for more ships like the Jalashwa must be treated with special urgency.
From the Gulf countries to Malaysia and the UK to the US, the multi-agency operation christened 'Vande Bharat Mission' will see the state-owned AI operate 64 flights till May 13 in the first phase to ferry around 15,000 Indian nationals from 12 countries.
'General Sam Manekshaw looked from left to right and said, "Gentlemen, I have come to have a look at you. I am taking a good look at your faces. When I come back after the war is over, some faces may not be here".'
Have we been allowed to forget Partition? Isn't Partition the reason many Hindus cannot bring themselves to trust Muslims? So many Muslims born after 1947 have told me with anguish: "How long will we be blamed for Partition?" notes Jyoti Punwani.
Insisting that the cow should be protected, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday said that even the Mughals were aware of the fact that if they had to rule then an "open support to cow slaughter" would not be feasible while the Britishers failed to understand this aspect.
The military is 'totally prepared to stand up to the demands made by the government and the people.'
Despite documentary evidence supplied by the BSF, the BDR refused to accept that the stranded immigrants were Bangladeshis.
The Bangladesh police on Tuesday arrested two senior leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami for their role in a massacre during the country's Liberation War in 1971.Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Abdul Quader Molla were arrested at the gate of the Supreme Court in Dhaka for the massacre in Mirpuri, Dhaka, in 1971. Senior Jamaat-e-Islami leaders including Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami and General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid have been named as the co-accused in the case.
The Bangladesh cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft law to return land to members of the Hindu families, which were confiscated by the erstwhile Pakistani regime when they fled the country during the 1965 Indo-Pak war.
The issue of erecting fences along the international Indo-Bangla border was in cold storage for last several years.
The Mother House in West Bengal capital is the headquarters of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.
'There is a compulsion to look hard, decisive, and risk-taking; start something; and then conclude it in a way you can claim victory.' 'That is not such an easy option against China,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
'This letter is not a complaint, it's more indignation, because we do not like being used as political tools by people of various parties.'
'Pakistan's security establishment, despite its appallingly immoral approach to conflict, has worked with limited resources to maximise its national defence resources to continue bleeding India,' says Ajai Shukla.
'China need not worry about a truly 'resurgent India'.' 'It's not going to happen.'
Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the state governments have been asked to identify Rohingya refugees in their regions and collect their biometric details.
'Instead of writing NAM's obituary, India should reinvent it,' suggests Dr Rup Narayan Das.
Two passenger ships with Indians and foreign nationals evacuated from conflict-hit Yemen are expected to reach the port on Saturday afternoon.
He also accused her of nepotism by choosing to play the limited role of "bua" (aunt) to her "bhatija" (nephew) instead of becoming "Didi" (elder sister) to the people.
We are spectators who have no voice and no power to influence the giant changes being imposed on all of us, says Aakar Patel.
'The incidents have remained confined to the paramilitary forces on both sides with both the armies scrupulously avoiding getting involved. While this incident has been going on, the LOC has been reasonably quiet. Cross border firing achieves no tactical or strategic aims and is more a symptom of hostility. Unfortunately, India has to learn to live with this. Like Israel, we must construct shelters for the border populations and be ready to retaliate in kind,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
In unusually candid remarks, the Air Force chief termed Pakistani-occupied Kashmir as a "thorn in our flesh".
'The Indian Navy has sufficient combat power in areas of interest to India that can quickly scale up operations if the need arises.' 'This includes all the choke points leading into the Indian Ocean as also areas within.'
Narendra Modi will be the first Indian prime minister in over a decade to stay at the US President's guest house -- the 190-year-old Blair House -- when he travels to Washington on September 29.
'Why has the peace been kept?' 'Basically because there is a balance.' 'Maybe they think that balance has changed.' 'People can make mistakes. People can miscalculate.' 'If that is the cause, then I think what we have done, matching their build-up, etc, it is giving a good account of ourselves in the face-offs.'
Pakistan launched its nuclear weapons programme after its 1971 military defeat to India in order to 'augment its inferior conventional forces,' a Congressional report has said."Pakistan's nuclear energy programme dates back to the 1950s, but it was the loss of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in a bloody war with India that probably triggered a political decision in January 1972 (just one month later) to begin a secret nuclear weapons programme," the Congressional report said.
Asserting a war was not an option between India and Pakistan, Sri Lanka on Wednesday said cross-border terrorism was a core issue on the table for SAARC and the members of eight-nation grouping have to discuss it and its impact before moving forward.
While man and a woman were reported killed when trees came crashing down on them in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, a 13-year-old girl died in a similar incident in adjoining Howrah. No casualties have been reported from Odisha yet.
'India serves itself poorly with its latter-day discovery of Pakistan as an instrument in domestic politics,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
One third of all Indians live in one room. Another one third lives in 2 rooms. They cannot self quarantine or isolate and if infected they will pass it on to others. It is impossible for India to control an epidemic, warns Aakar Patel.
'This army has lost Pakistan's territory, ideology, financial and intellectual capital, ruined its institutions, democracy, the respect for its passport and, like it or not, reduced its status to a globally acknowledged university of jihad,' says Shekhar Gupta.
He was the army commander who planned Operation Bluestar. As army chief he planned Operation Brasstacks which rattled the Pakistan army. General K Sundarji was brilliant, ambitious and controversial, remembers Rahul Bedi.
'Leaders of the Indian community in Hong Kong had broached the idea of developing the Andaman and Nicobar islands for investment and setting up manufacturing units,' points out Rup Narayan Das.
A soldier's General, Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw crafted India's greatest military victory in the 1971 Indo-Pak war that created just not history, but also a new nation.
'As a great democracy, we must be responsible and uphold the rights of those who come to us seeking shelter.' 'Everything in the Hindu faith tells us that this is obligatory on us,' says Aakar Patel.
Esper also highlighted the 'increased' military cooperation with India and called it as 'one of the most important defence relationships of the 21th century'.
