Narendra Modi can pick up a tip from the Samajwadi Party ramlila. If he doesn't want L K Advani as President, he might anoint him Bharatiya Bhishma Pitamah, suggests Sunanda K Datta-Ray.
Former Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf possibly knew about slain Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his place of hiding, an eminent British journalist who reported for years from Afghanistan and Pakistan for the New York Times has claimed.
'The evidence about a plane crash that killed Netaji as stated in the Shahnawaz Committee report, is quite strong.' 'None of the files that I read bear any evidence that it was Nehru who ordered this kind of intrusive surveillance.' 'The government's excuse that declassifying some files may affect India's relations with friendly foreign countries is not a credible one.' Subhas Chandra Bose's grand-nephew and Trinamool Congress MP Sugata Bose on reports that his family was under surveillance for 20 years and the rumours over Nataji's death.
The strategic success of the surgical strikes has not matched their brilliant tactical achievement, says Shekhar Gupta.
The NHRC issued notice to the Union ministries of home and human resource development seeking a report over the reported ill-treatment of Kashmiri people in the aftermath of the attack.
'Our Lockdown Life has a sort of schizophrenic, Dr-Jekyll-and-Mr-Hyde personality about it,' says Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
'The only effective defence against a suicide attack is 'pre-emptive' destruction of the attacker,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba's technology chief had posed as an Indian businessman while negotiating to buy from an American company a Voice-over-Internet Phone service that was later used by the LeT handlers to communicate with 26/11 attackers while concealing their actual origin.
After the Paris terror attacks, "we know what Mumbai-style attack looks like", a leading British daily said on Monday, underlining that this is war in which everyone is equally at risk.
To make it possible to attract the best of our young people to join the armed forces, all university courses anywhere in India should include compulsory National Service for a total period of six months, says T Thomas
While Smriti Irani might bristle with faux indignation at the 'malicious' newspaper report, it is very clear that just as Teacher's Day was hijacked by her boss and a day of celebration became an assignment, the first attack on Christmas as a holiday has been made in the war on India's cosmopolitan way of life, says the Mango Indian.
The world had almost completely forgotten about Partition, and many never learned about it, says Guneeta Singh Bhalla, the woman who founded the 1947 Partition Archive.
A dismissed air force official, who allegedly shared secret documents with intelligence operatives backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, has been arrested from Punjab by the crime branch of the Delhi police.
Pixels could very well be the most unremarkable Hollywood film of the year, says Paloma Sharma.
'I want to be murdered at your hands, so I can live on in history. The verdict of who is or is not a traitor cannot be pronounced by a secret agency, but by history.' Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, who survived an assassination attempt on April 19, challenges his enemies to dub him a traitor and says nothing will stop him from exposing them.
'Will this surgical strike of ours put an end to Pakistani terror?' 'And if not, what will we do when the next terror strike happens?' 'Will there be another surgical strike or will we have to do something bigger?' 'How big does it have to be to get Pakistan to totally stop?'
MUST READ: The speech Nayantara Sahgal was not allowed to give.
Advertising taglines such as 'Bright in studies, bright in sports' attempted to drive home the message that Bournvita, a chocolate drink, could build a child's mental and physical faculties.
Ahmedabad's cultural scene would not have gone beyond the garba, but for Mrinalini Sarabhai's pioneering efforts.
'Small bands of terrorists believe they can destabilise superpowers if they are ready to become martyrs.' 'Since the road to paradise is under the shade of swords, it is a win-win situation for those ready to die for the cause of Allah.'
Here are 15 things you should know about Bharat Ratna Atal Bihar Vajpayee.
Former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had sought American assistance and wrote to the then US president John F Kennedy to provide India jet fighters to stem the Chinese tide of aggression during the 1962 Sino-India war, according to a new book.
We list down some of the memorable performances as historical figures.
Nehru's sentimental attachment to the Mountbattens deeply vitiated the Kashmir issue. It was certainly the most important factor for the failure to find a solution in the first years of the conflict.
One of the most sought after exhibitions in Asia, as many as 549 companies are participating this year with 53 fighter aircraft on display.
Hein Kiessling has the kind of access in Pakistan that journalists (and spies) would die for, says Kanika Datta.
From triple talaq to simultaneous polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday touched upon the various issues n his monthly 'Mann ki Baat' radio address.
'I didn't want the biopic on Swami Chinmayananda to be a propaganda film,' filmmaker R S Prasanna tells Shobha Warrier/ Rediff.com
'There is a remarkable link between the eating of beef (or at the very least, tolerating the eating of beef) and India being a superpower.' 'In India, whenever an empire was strong, religion took a back seat.' 'Alternatively, whenever religion asserted itself, the main empire of India crumbled...'
'Here was a man who played a major part in helping the Bengalis of East Pakistan create a new nation, secured the merger of Sikkim into the Indian dominion and built R&AW into a formidable outfit, comparable to the best in the world.' Rameshwar Nath Kao shunned the limelight, hated to be photographed and preferred to work behind the scenes. A revealing excerpt from Nitin A Gokhale's much awaited book, R N Kao: Gentleman Spymaster.
'Those who have followed politics even when there was no Twitter know what the word 'jumlebaaz' means,' says Utkarsh Mishra.
'The parallels between 1914 and 2014 are striking. The crumbling of American and Russian hegemony, the rise of powerful terrorist groups, ferment in the Middle East and the rise of China... These closely mirror the world of 1914,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'Ne Win kept good relations with the Nehru family even though he did nothing to do business with India. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated, Ne Win took off to an undisclosed destination, leading to rumours that he had gone to India. But we had no knowledge of his visit and days later, we were told that he was so struck with grief that he went into meditation on an island.' Ambassador T P Sreenivasan delves into Rajiv Bhatia's new book on mysterious Myanmar.
The band's trip to Rishikesh delayed their split till 1970! This & other unheard stories...
From Aurangzeb to Sangh Parivar, the year 2016 offers plenty of hope in historical and modern literature.
He said it was not only a tax reform but 'is a measure that lends strength to the new culture of honesty'.
The files, digitised and given "preliminary conservation treatment" by the National Archives of India, were released on the birth anniversary of Netaji.
Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial Narendra Modi on Saturday hit back at Congress Vice president Rahul Gandhi for attacking him on his links with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, saying he was "proud" of the ideology and the principles based on the "altar of sacrifice and service".
'That has always been my ambition -- to take the reader behind the scenes, to the places he was not allowed to visit, but which I had the privilege of entering.' Haresh Pandya remembers Ted Corbett, sports journalist extraordinaire, who passed into the ages on August 9.
As two recently declassified Intelligence Bureau reveal that the Jawaharlal Nehru government had spied on the family of Subhas Chandra Bose for nearly two decades, one of India's political mysteries takes centrestage. Rediff.com reproduces this 2006 report in which Sumit Bhattacharya reported that a website claims that Netaji, in fact, did not die in an air crash, as was being believed, and that Netaji had escaped to Russia.
