"If I was the foreign minister, I would have had contact with them. I would have gone out of my way and told my intelligence agency to make a contact quietly," former external affairs minister Natwar Singh said.
Many of the stories, the pictures going out of India worldwide lately with these provocative processions, taunting of Muslims, bulldozers targeting mostly their properties, the sweeping 'othering' of a community of 200 million are painting the front pages and TV screens in the democratic world. That is where most of the friends we covet lie. Soon enough, these will also make our vital friends among the Muslim nations, from Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, uneasy. The best time for course correction is now, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
It will not be to India's advantage to create misperceptions that it is bandwagoning with some Anglo-American project for regime change in Myanmar, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Snooping is one of the oldest peccadilloes of man, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Praising the US for turning barriers into bridges of partnership, he said that America had stood with India when the support was needed the most, like when terrorists attacked Mumbai in November 2008 and in other economic endeavours as well
'We're clear Covishield is not a problem. The UK is open to travel and we're already seeing a lot of people going from India to the UK, be it tourists, business people or students,' Alex Ellis, British high commissioner to India, said.
Our government has failed the country on several counts. All this must change for India to redeem itself in six months, says Naushad Forbes.
'We are two countries that, as Swami Vivekananda said in Chicago more than a century ago, have sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations on Earth.' 'People are watching to wait and see if this Modi moment is going to be the moment when the world's oldest democracy and the world's largest democracy finally capitalise on the full, inherent potential of this relationship.' Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from the State Department's lunch for Prime Minister Modi.
'Hot Mess Holiday airs on December 11 -- it's a really fun story.'
Modi presented Obama with a richly silk-covered special edition of Mahatma Gandhi's interpretation of the Bhagvad Gita, and recordings of Dr Martin Luther King's speech when he visited India in 1959 and also a specially framed photograph of Dr King when he visited Rajghat. Modi had scrupulously researched and selected these gifts for Obama and more gifts would be presented on Tuesday during their summit for both the President and the First Family.
Richard Rahul Verma, the first Indian American to serve as US Ambassador to New delhi, quips that surviving the first month in India is his first goal.
'Our approach to India is no different from the approach that we have made in India over the years, recognising its non-aligned status. That's their decision; we're not trying to change that. We have common interests, and we have actually built on those common interests... We think there's more potential to build on those common interests.' 'Security, stability, freedom of sea lanes, economic development, energy, all those are certainly in the interest of India and the region, as they are to the United States.' The transcript of US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel's interaction with reporters travelling with him hours before he landed in New Delhi on Friday on a three-day visit to India.
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