It is a dark legacy bequeathed by Nehru to India. In its DNA lies the subconscious fount of India's schizophrenic geopolitics that forsook in one sweep all its historically-entrenched strategic interests in Tibet in favour of China, says R N Ravi, on the 60th anniversary of the Panchsheel Agreement.
Modi talking about Balochistan, PoK and Gilgit is a tectonic shift in India's policy towards Pakistan, says Abhay Jere.
The local labour force is streaming out of the region, creating a vacuum that makes it easier for the Bangladeshis to fill in, says R N Ravi
Robin Raphel, a former US diplomat now under a counter intelligence investigation, has spent much of her professional life dealing with Pakistan and defending it against criticism as she doled out billions in aid to the "frenemy".
Rajiv Gandhi would have turned 72 on August 20. Had he lived. On a humid night 25 years ago, the former prime minister of India was murdered in cold blood by an LTTE suicide bomber. Neena Gopal was an eyewitness to the assassination, and in this exclusive extract from her new book, The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, she reveals for the first time what she saw in Sriperumbudur that night.
'I could have never imagined any other prime minister giving time to a separatist leader.' 'I think the Hurriyat should not be ignored. I think like Pakistan, they are being unnecessarily ignored.' A S Dulat, the former RA&W chief who visited Kashmir recently, speaks to Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Seeking to give a big push to the Lokpal Bill, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday appealed to all political parties to support the legislation saying it is a "very very powerful instrument" in the fight against corruption.
The operation, which the sources said was coordinated by NSA Ajit Doval, led to the rendition of the 33-year-old princess, who has said she was seeking to escape torture inflicted by her father, UAE PM and Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.
'Headley's confirmation of certain aspects of the conspiracy, its planning and what his role was will definitely matter.'
A gunman opened fire on Friday at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport in Florida, causing multiple fatalities, officials said.
The shooting took place at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando.
Three eyewitnesses, who saw deaths around them, as terrorists pumped bullets into a bus (GJ09Z9976) carrying 56 tourists heading to Katra from Srinagar, recount their horrors.
'Without it, it is going to be much, much, much, much worse.' 'In the meantime, we really need to work on a sort of war footing, given that it is a natural disaster, provide relief, provide essentials, till we get biological herd immunity, we need to get economic immunity, and also social immunity.'
Experts trace the reasons for the 26/11 attacks to the Pakistan's military interest in three key areas: Kashmir, Afghanistan and nuclear armaments.
You just cannot let an institution go adrift and never reporting to any other institution and never submitting itself to any monitoring review or evaluation with regard to its functioning and particularly with regards to an institution which has dominion over the lives and liberties of citizens. That kind of total abdication of government responsibility with regard to that kind of an institution will be dangerous to democracy itself, to the people, Bahukutumbi Raghavan tells Sheela Bhatt
The ongoing vicious game between Delhi and the so-called 'separatist' militias has severely blighted the Nagas' life and gutted their dignity, says Ravindra Narayan Ravi
Prohibition is resulting in prisons getting overcrowded.
Muzzling NGOs is unbecoming of a democracy. Self-confident democracies encourage, indeed applaud, the involvement of citizens' associations, including NGOs, in social and political decision-making and development planning. Instead, our paranoid government bullies and terrorises them, says Praful Bidwai.
'How come with Nehru at the helm, India missed so many buses? He had such unchallenged power that he could have taken the country in any direction he wanted. The sad conclusion is inescapable that Nehru let things drift in true Hamletian ambivalence,' says B S Raghavan.
New Delhi bureaucrats, accustomed to leisurely lunches, golf in the afternoon and long weekends, have been shaken out of their somnolence, say authors. Fear and suspicion hang heavy over the red-sands.
What Headley's testimony does achieve is expose the Congress' ham-fisted attempts to taint an otherwise credible probe. That, however, does not become an assertion of Ishrat's membership of the LeT.
There's a certain amount of drama to the profession. Sample these taglines: 'We can see the unseen'; 'I can plant my detective in your guest bedroom.' One agency has even ensured that all its phone numbers end in '007'.
Claude Arpi salutes Lieutenant General Zorawar Chand Bakshi, India's most decorated general, who passed into the ages recently.
'NSA Doval and the PM are known to admire Israel's tough response to cross-border terrorism.' 'However, New Delhi's situation is far more complex than Tel Aviv's, which enjoys military superiority over all its neighbours,' says Ajai Shukla.
Let us hope that what happened in 1962 will never happened again, prays Claude Arpi
Gurmeet Ram Rahim also made an appeal to his followers to go back to their homes, a development which may come as a big relief to security personnel.
The Sheikh Hasina-Narendra Modi summit put India-Bangladesh ties on a firmer pitch. Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd) takes stock.
'There cannot be any compromise on that. After all, all instrumentalities of the State have been made to serve it. Why was the Constitution made? It was made to serve the cause of India.'
'She was just a little girl. She didn't understand religion. Who is Hindu, who is Muslim.' 'She was just 8! Why punish her?' The family of the eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped and murdered in Jammu's Kathua district say everything has changed since that horrific crime.
State govt said it is not averse to seeking Army's help to maintain law and order.
The Election Commission has a fight on its hand as candidates use ingenious methods to smuggle in money to Voters.
Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley, convicted in the US for his role in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, on Thursday told a court in Mumbai that terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba wanted to eliminate Bal Thackeray but the person who was assigned the job to kill the late Shiv Sena chief was arrested.
'This is the first time the US has formally recognised the threat India faces from terrorist organisations based in Pakistan.'
The Enforcement Directorate has managed to sniff out over Rs 9,000 crore as suspected haul from money laundering in a decade, but it has yet to link those against anyone successfully in a court.
'In the first meeting of this new year, we took a joint new year resolution that we will complete it this year. At the time things were not very clear, but the mood was clear that yes, we must resolve it.' 'Yes, details have to come out, but there are some sensitivities, there are some stake-holders not yet on board, especially other Naga undergrounds etc, we would like them to come on board... So at a proper time it has to be revealed to the country, and to the legislature. Perhaps, we may have to wait for some more time.' 'With better understanding of the Indian system, many of them have learnt, realised, appreciated that Naga nationalist aspirations can be accommodated in the Indian system. The Indian system is pretty comprehensive and flexible.' 'A Naga has as much stake, claim over India as any other Indian. There is no distinction. This, Nagas have realised, that yes, Naga nationalist aspirations and Indian nationalism are not mutually exclusive.' Ravindra Narayan Ravi, the Government of India's Special Interlocutor for the Naga talks, explains how the Naga Peace Accord was reached in an exclusive interview to Saisuresh Sivaswamy/Rediff.com
A new report says Indian jihadis, including the Indian Mujahideen, are significantly more lethal as a result of external support, primarily from Pakistan. Aziz Haniffa reports.
A list of all the foreign visits taken up by PM Narendra Modi this year and their outcomes.
'If India employed a strategy of a 'thousand cuts', Pakistan will wither away.'
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