'The creation of Pakistan was integral to Britain's grand strategy.' 'If they were to ever leave India, Britain's military planners had made it clear that they needed to retain a foothold in the NWFP and Baluchistan because that would provide the means to retain control of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.'
'Under the more strident Modi version of Hindutva, Nehru has almost become a contemporary political figure.' 'The ruling party knows that without total erasure and distortion of Nehru, their fantasies will always be wobbly.'
Attlee said Great Britain had concluded that the Indian element of the army was no longer reliable and that Netaji's Indian National Army had demonstrated that. That had shaken the foundation on which Britain's Indian empire rested, argues Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd).
'A new doctrine now needs to be evolved for a new situation, and the army will do it.' 'You won't see more Kashmiris driven in front of army columns.' 'Nor will the army massacre hundreds, Dyer style,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'This is basically aimed at vilifying Nehruvian ideals.' 'Why?' 'Because, Nehruvian leadership is seen by Hindutva forces as the one which did not let them have their Hindu Raj.' 'The Hindutva proponents have always assumed that had Sardar become the first prime minister, India could never have become a secular State,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'There is a design of fundamentalists that the north east must become an Islamic country.'
'Look at the number of billionaires, the number of new billionaires in India.' 'Adani and Ambani are not the only ones.' 'What's wrong with people making money as long as it benefits us?'
'If they were really serious (about conferring the Bharat Ratna on Savarkar) what were they doing for the last five years?' 'Why do they have to take so long?' 'Gandhi himself never got the Bharat Ratna so it does not really matter.'
104 years after it was first written, and 76 years after the poet's clarification, the controversy surrounding Rabindranath Tagore's Jana Gana Mana refuses to go away.
'Wherever in the world there is political instability, those countries are beset with severe crises today. But India is in a much better position than the rest of the world due to the decisions taken by my government in the national interest,' President Droupadi Murmu said in her address to both Houses of Parliament.
'The power of love is the greatest power in the world.' 'Add a smile and you can conquer the world,' Bengali actor June Maliah, the Trinamool Congress's candidate for the Medinipur constituency, tells Swarupa Dutt/Rediff.com.
Here's the full text of address to the nation by President Ram Nath Kovind on the eve of the Republic Day 2022.
'Our honourable CM is so shameless that she will say the state is among the safest for women.'
'Who are these people on the streets?' 'They are youth and students who were hoodwinked, bluffed by Modi for the last seven years, with a promise of 2 crore jobs every year.' 'And Mamata sings the same tune.' 'But the youth can see that as long as there is Mamata or Modi, there is no hope.'
'Unfortunately, during this pandemic, everybody started saying that well, these are desperate times and desperate times need desperate solutions.' 'Purely out of fear, anxiety, panic, this knowledge that people started acquiring from WhatsApp University and social media, it pushed science completely to the backseat.'
Did the human drama provoked by the Japanese invasion of Burma and the Indian exodus from Rangoon inspire director Vishal Bhardwaj's forthcoming epic?
'I am quite optimistic that sooner or later, my wishful thinking would turn into a reality.' The only hitch is that the INC president's own career ambitions may be hurt if the Congress merges with the BJP,' says Sudhir Bisht.
'We still look at films with A-listers.' 'There is change, but it's minor.' 'We still haven't learnt how to invest in stories.'
Bharati Dutt witnessed life-changing events that shaped India on the threshold of freedom. Her memories are an account of how ordinary Indians saw India change.
Over 20 political parties, except the Biju Janata Dal and the Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Front, took part in the massive rally.
'The majority of transmission will be via people who are within two metres of one another.' 'The closer you are, the more likely that you'll be infected.'
Here's the full text of President's Ram Nath Kovind's address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on the first of Budget Session 2022.
Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's customary address to the joining sitting of Parliament on the first day of the budget session.