'Modi deliberately chose such unhinged people because they said what he wanted to, but couldn't,' says Aakar Patel.
'India, which climbed the escalation ladder first, has climbed down.'
'It remains unclear what Indian objectives have been realised in precipitating the crisis in the first instance last Tuesday,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The country's top security body "concluded that India has committed uncalled for aggression to which Pakistan shall respond at the time and place of its choosing," it added.
'Treating our ethnic cleansing with budgetary measures and financial doles is - one, not a prudent solution and second, an insult to our cause. Please understand the gravity of the situation. Our exodus is just a symptom of the malaise that has affected the valley. We would prefer to stay in exile than being sent back to be slaughtered again in a few decades. Please treat the disease and not the symptoms,' writes Lalit Koul 'Sharnarthee'.
Through its early days to the 1980s, Pakistan sought to expand its sphere of Islamic influence through Afghanistan to Central Asia and got Pakistani citizens recruited in the Afghan government institutions in the 1990s when the Taliban were power. Now, it is looking eastward through India to Bangladesh and Myanmar to establish an imaginary caliphate.
Jaswant speak of his new book India At Risk, Mistakes, Misconceptions and Misadventures of Security Policy and explains to Sheela Bhatt why India is at risk.
'No country or society ever prospered or remained secure by marginalising more than one-sixth of its own,' warns Shekhar Gupta.
'India was in no position to wage another war in 1965, having suffered a morale-shattering defeat in 1962. The three services were in the middle of a modernisation and expansion phase and therefore not fully trained or battle-ready.'
'If you put colour-coded internal security maps of India in May 2014 and now, the picture won't be flattering to Modi.' 'Failures on internal security are now piling up and can break Modi's momentum,' says Shekhar Gupta.
13 persons were picked up by the Special Cell after a late night operation on Tuesday. Of them, three -- Sajid, Sameer Ahmed, and Shakir Ansari -- have been arrested, four let off and six are still being questioned by the investigators.
'I say Modi was India's last chance.' 'Because the kind of work this government has done -- I'm talking about physical delivery -- is fantastic, like no time in our history.'
'We will have to wait till the snows melt in June/July 2016 before we can get a clearer idea of whether Pakistan intends to get serious about ending support for cross-border terrorism,' says G Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner to Pakistan.
The report said India continues to experience attacks by 'Pakistan-based terrorists'.
The cascade of cordiality on both sides after the Modi-Sharif handshake in Paris was preceded by much planning and even goading from UK, US and Germany.
Prime Minister Khan said his government was keen to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attack to book, asserting that it was in the interest of Pakistan.
'Our policy seems to be to give away part of J&K, even though we are entitled to the entire state.' 'The Congress has done so, and the BJP is following the same policy.' 'No one is applying their mind to the legal position.' 'Kashmir is not a part of Pakistan under its own constitution.'
Will he take Modi's 'sab ka saath, sab ka vikas' route? Or will he turn UP into Egypt under Morsi, asks Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Should India engage Pakistan's generals directly, bypassing Imran? Ambassador G Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner to Pakistan, ponders Delhi's diplomatic dilemma.
'How can Kashmir be demilitarised if the terrorist threat remains and Pakistan continues to incite elements in Kashmir to keep the internal situation unstable?' asks former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal.
Following is the full text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 73rd Independence Day.
In any institution that has a passionate ideology, the moderate is always vulnerable to the person who is more extreme, because that is what the supporters want.
We sorted through countless photographs taken around the world to come up with the top photos of 2019. Together these images tell the story of the year -- capturing moments of hope and heartbreak, triumph and tragedy.
Glimpses of I-Day celebrations across India.
The Zakat Foundation of India runs welfare initiatives for the destitute and helps with the education of poor students. Upasna Pandey/ Rediff.com discover the origins of this organisation
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The Indian Army must be given a free hand to retaliate punitively at one or more places of its choosing on the LoC. The aim should be to cause maximum damage to the forward posts of the Pakistan army, particularly those through which recent attacks have been launched, thereby raising the cost for the army, says Gurmeet Kanwal.
Pakistan's new Army Chief has begun setting the stage to act against groups like LeT and JeM
'A collapsing Pakistan may well unleash its nuclear weapons as the last throw of the dice. With a nuclear arsenal of over 50 bombs, even a regional nuclear exchange can devastate the world.'
The increase in violence along the Line of Control in the last few weeks indicates that despite the olive branch offered by Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, hard-line elements in Islamabad are in no mood to become friendly with India.
Sanjeev Nayyar suggests 16 measures by which we can tackle our unrelenting and untrustworthy neighbour.
'We could crack IM modules in the country because one arrested member would spill beans on the other.' 'With ISIS, every module is different and is possibly being handled by different operators abroad.'
'Despite Modi's high-flown rhetoric about good-neighbourly relationships in South Asia, he lacks a road map how to proceed -- be it with Bangladesh or with Sri Lanka and Pakistan... But a deeper question arises here: Did he duck on his own accord or under the diktat from the RSS, asks Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'E Ahamed will be sorely missed as a decent and wise man who made the best use of his political career and personal abilities for the good of the nation,' remembers Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'China's growing nexus with Pakistan and the two countries' unresolved territorial disputes with India continue to pose a formidable national security threat to India,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
'If Haider petitions the court and the government for legitimate rights it is called minority appeasement, but when Hardik orchestrates violence he is lionised, romanticised and given huge media space that ends up both legitimising and oxygenating his movement, no matter how contrary it is to the Rule of Law,' argues Shehzad Poonawalla.
Hours ahead of his dinner with President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautioned the United States against hasty withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan, citing the mistakes it has committed while pulling out from Iraq.
This theory of 'Hindus vs the rest' sees the two communities as two separate blocs. Isn't that the two-nation theory? What of the deep bonds that the communities have on the ground? asks Jyoti Punwani.
The Jamaat-ud-Dawa not only collected funds for charity and diverted it to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, but also helped the outfit legitimise money collected through extortion, counterfeiting, smuggling and animal skin trade. Vicky Nanjappa/Rediff.com reports
Water scarcity is often a factor in conflicts, but is India ready to cope with limited water resources?
'When war is thrust on you as in 1962 and 1965 or is tempting as in 1971, ensure that all other fronts are kept quiet, leaving your army free to deal with one,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Corruption in the scheme may have nothing to do with fake children being shown to siphon out money, says Somasekhar Sundaresan.
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