'Indira Gandhi, it appears, did not to consult her Cabinet colleagues, or diplomats, or civil servants when she decided to sign the agreement in Shimla.' 'We ruefully recall Bhutto's perfidy and the Indian prime minister's gullibility,' says Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd).
Let us see the problem for what it actually is: Illegal Immigration plain and simple, confined to the northeast with a definite communal slant that poses a national security risk and one that needs to be dealt with firmly and promptly by stringent identification (and deportation), says Vivek Gumaste.
'Hindus are proud of what the Dharmashastras symbolise, but they don't want to do any work to preserve it!,' Sanskrit scholar Donald Davis tells Kanika Dutta.
Violence has always been a fact of life in Bengal's politics; it is just that the faces have changed, the contesting ideologies have changed, says Saisuresh Sivawamy.
'Pakistan is full of 'religious entrepreneurs' like Hafeez Saeed who poison the minds of the young so that they can be motivated to become terrorists. They work in concert with the rulers of Pakistan. It is a private-public partnership.'
Trinamool leaders have claimed the NRC process and subsequent verification is vote bank politics. Other critics call it as modified ethnic cleansing. But putting poll rhetoric aside, the issue dates back to a time when many of these leaders had no political relevance.
On a visit to India in 2013, writer Ved Mehta -- who passed into the ages on Sunday January 10, 2021 - gave Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel a rare glimpse into his state of mind and what he thinks of the changes he encounters in his motherland.
'... That they should emerge as role-models to be emulated by the fellow countrymen; and that the middle classes should not stick only to hate-filled and scornful criticism and condemnation against the state of affairs,' remembers Mohammad Sajjad.
'The BJP and RSS may realise it is much easier for the ICHR to rewrite textbooks and for the ICSSR to float its bizarre interpretations on social themes than to keep people away from their favourite dishes.'
'Besides electoral opportunism, a sustained vilification of AMU on one or the other pretext helps them sustain their 'everyday communalism', the new strategy of the BJP of the Narendra Damodardas Modi-Amit Anilchandra Shah era,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
The BJP chief began his speech with the slogan of uprooting the TMC government from Bengal and said in order to do that, he would visit all the districts of the state.
A day after total shutdown in Assam to protest against the CAB, fresh protests erupted in the state and neighbouring Tripura and other parts of the nation.
'If the Amendment Bill 2016 becomes law, the indigenous people of Assam will become a minority and the language, literature and culture of Assam will be lost.'
The BJP, which has two MLAs in the MDA government, backed the Cabinet decision.
What the Congress will have to understand is that it is not enough to have a 40-something vice-president in New Delhi, but young faces with fresh ideas in the states,' says Amulya Ganguli.
'According to me, her finest hour was in 1983-1984 when she neutralised a combined US-Pakistan-British conspiracy to Balkanise India by creating an independent Sikh State of Khalistan,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd). A special assessment of Indira Gandhi on her centenary.
One cannot but infer that this brouhaha is a crafty ploy to create an issue out of a non-issue. An overview of post-independent India's history reveals that it is not the BJP or the Sangh Parivar but Marxist historians who have been guilty of debasing history to suit their vested interests, says Vivek Gumaste.
Bharati Dutt witnessed life-changing events that shaped India on the threshold of freedom. Her memories are an account of how ordinary Indians saw India change.
A special Bangladeshi tribunal on Wednesday sentenced opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party's 83-year-old leader Abdul Alim to jail until death for committing large-scale killings and other war crimes during the 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan.
'For some South Asians, it may be tempting to think "I'm not Muslim, this doesn't really affect me".' 'But please know, it affects all of us,' says Arun Venugopal, a reporter at WNYC in New York.
'Communalism and communal riots happened in India only during and due to colonialism. Pre-colonial India didn't have this problem of communal conflicts and religious strife.'
'Not allowing people to speak or listen is the biggest act of anti-nationalism,' says Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, one of India's finest poets.
Modi's tweets talk about the celebration of democracy and also puts emphasis on the education of girls, says Mayank Mishra
Deras like Sacha Sauda made the poor feel secure, cared for, loved, provided a support system and gave them dignity, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
After performing with Manipuri artistes the world over, Astad Deboo, India's greatest contemporary dancer, performed with artistes of the Shri Shri Govindajee Nat Sankirtan in Imphal for the first time.
'For a long time Pakistan dreamt that India would break up and that it would be the predominant power in the region,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'Muslims, like people of all other faiths, are quite comfortable with the idea of nationalism and democracy today. But are they following Islam in its spirit? That is a different question.'
Indian intelligence agencies have often claimed that left-wing extremists are trying to make inroads in the militancy-hit regions of north-east to foment further unrest. But Jaideep Saikia, noted terrorism and conflict analyst, claims, "People who speak of Maoism taking roots in the north-east have not read history".
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