For the family and supporters of blogger Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death in Dhaka in February, it is a time to reflect on where Bangladesh is heading, says Indrani Roy.
'Modi's visit is path breaking in the sense that India has come out of the closet and is prepared to deal with Israel openly and in a host of fields, military as well as civilian,' says P R Kumaraswamy, one of India's leading experts on the Middle-East, currently in Israel.
Rediff.com presents a list of most gruesome terror attacks on schools through the years.
'If you solve it in one day, it will go after a day.' 'If it is there for 100 years or 1,000 years, reservation has to continue.'
In the piece below, Roy's stepdaughter Trisha Ahmed, a second-year student at Johns Hopkins University, recounts the father she remembers and the attack she's trying to forget.
Fighting between Israel and Hamas intensified in Gaza on Tuesday after a brief lull as both sides ignored international calls for restraint and the Jewish state warned of a "prolonged" war that has killed 1,088 Palestinians and 56 Israelis in more than three weeks.
'Many people thought that a Hindu nationalist party's government would take bold steps vis-a-vis Kashmir. But sadly their approach has been led by military and security priorities.' 'We would suggest to India that she initiate the dialogue following the Vajpayee model. That is the way forward. Otherwise, there is a looming threat. We are seeing educated youth joining militancy.'
'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.'
Kejriwal, who had joined International Yoga Day participants last year along with Lt Governor Anil Baijal and the then Union minister and now Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, was found having high blood sugar following his nine-day, arduous sit-in at the Lieutenant Governor's office.
The US National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation spied on five prominent Muslim-American activists, including an Indian-origin attorney, according to the leaked documents which showed use of objectionable religious slurs against these individuals.
Technology can certainly gain India membership in the comity of modern nations in the 21st century.
Boko Haram, which has caused havoc in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country through a wave of bombings, assassinations and now abductions, cannot be viewed through the prism of religion alone. It is also a major political problem, says Confidence Uwazuruike.
Mohammad Sajjad profiles Professor Riazur Rahman Sherwani, 94, versatile mind, intrepid intellectual.
Muslims need to get out of their Isolation Syndrome, argues Mohammad Sajjad.
'Continuity in a common agenda is essential, not to disrupt the progress achieved so far,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Dr Behera speaks about how the nationwide positive reaction to the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir indicates that the very idea of India is changing. From a diverse, multicultural entity, could India be becoming a place where assimilation is more important than accommodation?
'We don't know about our own treasures because we are a colonised people. We are unable to break away from that mindset because it is designed as a mouse trap - and colonised people become pigmies/mice on their own soil. We have lost the eyes to appreciate ourselves.'
'India has been placed at a level, which would ensure that red tape is cut away. That's the biggest assurance that one can get -- the biggest takeaway.'
Here are Aseem Chhabra's picks -- 'films that mattered to me, entertained me and will stay with me through the year.'
A round-up of our favourite photographs of the week gone by.
'We're paying them nothing because that's what they've done to help us. Nothing'
The new executive order, which will come into force on March 16, covers people from Sudan, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.
'A series of arrests have illustrated that IS now has a footprint in India.' 'India has been, for a very long time, a key part of Al Qaeda's global jihadist ambitions.'
The Aligarh Muslim University Teachers' Association on Thursday urged political parties "not to play politics over the dead bodies" of the victims of the communal clashes in Muzaffarnagar.
'The Post's coverage is not an authentic public discourse guided by unbiased Western intellectuals, but a slanted doomsday propaganda orchestrated by Indians and expatriate Indians,' argues Vivek Gumaste.
Crackdowns on bloggers often signal the ominous rise of religious fundamentalism
Historian Stanley Wolpert, author of several books on India, passed into the ages recently. We remember Professor Wolpert with Rajeev Srinivasan's March 1997 interview published on the occasion of his controversial book on Jawaharlal Nehru.
If November 9 ushers in a Hillary Clinton presidency, you can bet your last dollar that Huma Abedin will be back at POTUS' side.
Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar, considered a close confidante of army chief Gen Raheel Sharif, was appointed on Monday as the new head of Pakistan's powerful spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence.
'We have seen in India that radical ideology has by and large not been successful in taking root.'
'The Mughals became completely Indian in every sense and united the vast Indian subcontinent, not only territorially, but also the hearts and minds of people with multiple religio-cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversities' 'The Mughals, arguably, made India an enviable superpower in the then world.' 'Are the Hindutva rulers of today scared of acknowledging Mughal accomplishments?' asks Mohammad Sajjad.
'The challenges of the world are too great for any one religious tradition to address alone... The best way to learn about other religions is not from books, but from people... Go talk to someone from a different faith tradition. Get to know them. Build up some trust.' Dr Katharine Rhodes Henderson, who jointly won Hofstra University's Guru Nanak Prize for inter-faith champions in the United States, discusses religion and the challenges of extremism in this lively interview with Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
'I served the Indian Army and I am an ex-serviceman.' 'I look at this as a battle I am fighting after I left the army.' 'I will not leave till I get her back as my daughter Akhila, and I believe it will happen one day.'
'Is Rahul turning the Congress' covert soft-Hindutva support into overt support now?' 'And if so, following in the BJP's footsteps, is the Congress going to abandon Indian Muslims and Muslim causes altogether?' asks Dr Najid Hussain whose father-in-law former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was killed during the Gujarat riots.
'All these people want is a secure home where they can live and earn in peace.'
India and China on Friday agreed to set up a dedicated communication channel to boost security cooperation as Home Minister Rajnath Singh held talks with China's security czar on issues like cross border terrorism from Pakistan and the Afghan situation.
In the light of the efforts being made to forge electoral unity between scheduled castes and Muslims, Mohammad Sajjad examines what the architect of our Constitution, B R Ambedkar, had to say about the Muslim community.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that Pakistan is verifying the facts to bring the perpetrators to justice.
'In the name of pluralism-secularism, the kind of politics that was pursued revealed to many that it was basically a favour to Muslim conservatism and communalism -- a politics of minority-ism, rather than of secularism.' 'This is how significant sections of Hindus have been made to loathe the very idea of Indian secularism by now,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Those familiar with Hindi poetry are aware of Rahim's elevated status in the medieval history of literature -- he is one of the triumvirate of doha writers, the other two being Kabir and Tulsidas.
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