'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
K Natwar Singh wore many hats as he straddled the worlds of diplomacy, politics and writing but what remained consistent across decades was his sharp-wit and plainspeaking.
'Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai? Don't you believe it. I don't trust the Chinese one bit,' Nehru told Gopalaswamy Parthasarathi before he traveled to China as India's ambassador. Asking GP to be ever vigilant, Nehru advised the diplomat to send telegrams on important matters only to him. Many such anecdotes from a long and eventful career as diplomat and bureaucrat crowd the pages of GP: 1912-1995, discovers Uttaran Das Gupta.
"Modi is a very popular leader. People have given him massive mandate. But this mandate is not a licence to act irresponsibly. Patel and Nehru also had mandate of the people to lay the foundation stone of the country's development," the Sena said.
'Like Nehru, too, Modi has found dealing with Beijing more and more difficult and has adopted an increasingly assertive approach towards managing India's northern neighbour.'
Glimpses of the CWC meeting, which was meant to formulate a plan to revive the party from the death throes of electoral irrelevance, but...
'The Modi government's lack of foresight has compelled India to become an importer of vaccines today and even now, their "vaccine strategy is flawed and discriminatory'
'In spirit, and more importantly in its DNA, this is the Congress Inc, or Incorporated, a family-run entity,' notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Virat Kohli's wax statue unveiled in Jaipur Wax Museum
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday continued to target late Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar, saying that he helped the British rulers and wrote a mercy petition to them out of fear.
A spinning wheel which former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri got as "dowry", Chaudhary Charan Singh's diaries and P V Narasimha Rao's spectacles are among the articles that their families have offered for display at the Pradhan Mantri Sangrahalaya, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.
No one can capture an inch of Indian land till the Narendra Modi government is in power, Home Minister Amit Shah said Tuesday and claimed the actual reason behind the Congress disrupting Lok Sabha proceedings was not the clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers but a question on the cancellation of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) registration of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.
The chapters were dropped by the Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) for the 2020-21 session, as part of the 30 per cent reduction of the syllabus, keeping in mind the loss of academic schedule that the students had to face because of the pandemic.
'Doklam was almost like a trailer to what is happening in Ladakh today.' 'Modi failed to take note and failed to act,' observes Harishchandra Dighe.
Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday rejected in Lok Sabha the claim by Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury that he sat on Rabindranath Tagore's chair during his visit to Visva Bharati.
India's freedom, its rambling but working Constitution, its parliamentary democracy, its lumbering administrative machinery all have many a father, but its greatest claim to fame, especially today, that of being a modern state, is due to but one person: Its first and longest-serving prime minister, Nehru, says Shreekant Sambrani.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday expressed confidence that the NDA will get more than 400 seats and the BJP will win at least 370 seats in the Lok Sabha elections.
Former External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh passed away on Saturday night after a prolonged illness, family sources said. He was 93.
Congress's South Goa candidate Viriato Fernandes has claimed the Indian Constitution was 'forced' on Goa after its liberation from the Portuguese rule in 1961.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel resolved issues of merger of other princely states, but 'one person' could not resolve the Kashmir issue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday, in a veiled attack on India's first PM Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
Amid Narendra Modi's attack on Jawaharlal Nehru, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Saturday said that criticism of the first prime minister by some forces was based on "innuendo, insinuation and falsehood aimed at character assassination".
The argument that a Bharatiya Janata Party government has no business marking the 125th birth anniversary of Panditji makes little sense, says Virendra Kapoor
The warmth and respect for India were evident wherever I went and noticed how most Latin Americans have Indian gurus either directly or online and yoga was very much in vogue, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The Congress has lodged complaints with the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, accusing them of making 'false, divisive, malicious and slanderous' statements during their recent election campaign.
On Children's Day, the President showered his blessings and wishes on children, saying that the future of the nation depends on them.
Biman Basu, the senior-most Marxist leader in the country, pays homage to a comrade he has known and admired since the 1980s.
Joshi's reaction came after Gandhi termed as "very serious" the issue of China releasing a "standard map" that laid claim over Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin, and claimed the neighbouring country has already taken India's land in Ladakh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should speak on the issue.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi to depose before it on July 21 for questioning in the National Herald newspaper-linked money-laundering case, officials said on Monday.
'Nehru was singularly clear sighted about the international political situation.'
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Wednesday said the Preamble to the Constitution is very well there in NCERT textbooks of Class VI as he refuted charges made in this regard by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
In the event that like in the 17th Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi again gets locked out of the House, the Congress needs a second-in-command who will keep the momentum going inside Parliament, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Mani Shankar Aiyar says the Congress party and not then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for unlocking the Babri Masjid gates and claimed that the "Bharatiya Janata Party-planted" Arun Nehru was behind it.
'Nehru is often portrayed as a visionary with his head in the clouds. But he had his feet firmly planted on the ground when it came to building and nurturing institutions and setting them on the right path with the right traditions,' says B S Raghavan.
Hindu religious leader Kalicharan Maharaj, who is facing first information reports (FIRs) in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra for allegedly using derogatory words against Mahatma Gandhi, remained defiant and said he does not have any remorse for his utterances.
'I came to hear you sing Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon. I am glad I have heard you sing.'
'Some of his decisions were not so good, but his intentions were always guided by a deep national interest.'
On the occasion of the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's 125th birth anniversary, Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com visits his residence of 16 years, and comes away marvelling at his enduring legacy.
'India's first and longest-serving prime minister created -- or at the very least imagined -- a modern, democratic nation-State of the 20th century,' says Sunil Sethi.
He won two terms in office, which was a stunning feat for a leader who used his silence as the most vocal weapon to change the economy and the lives of a billion people, asserts Tarun Vijay, former BJP MP and former Chief Editor, Panchjanya, the RSS weekly.
'Much of the Socialism that we attribute to him actually came during Indira Gandhi's time,' says M J Akbar who believes that Nehru's convictions helped shape modern India.
