Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have secured a rare concession from Pakistan that 'terrorism' and not the issue of Kashmir be the central theme of the India-Pakistan dialogue.
'Amit Shah and his fellow travellers need to realise that India was divided because of competitive communalism of forces like Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, prodded, aided and abetted by the colonial power,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'If JNU students are anti-national, why do we send in the police? Why not send in intellectuals like M V Kamath to have a debate and discussion?'
'Once accession to Pakistan appeared unlikely, the British instituted Operations Gulmarg and Datta Khel respectively to foil possible accession to India.'
'I'm very proud of having worked with one of the finest minds of India and Indian cinema.'
Pakistan's holy trinity -- its government, military establishment and the ISI -- differ on Pakistan's domestic and foreign policy issues. So when India talks to Pakistan's political leadership it can't be sure that the promises can be delivered, says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
'Over one million people served in various battlefronts during World War I. And yet, even today, we know so very little about them.' 'It is absolutely essential to acknowledge this part of India's colonial history,' Santanu Das tells Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com
Major Somnath Sharma was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously for his bravery in the Kashmir operations on November 3, 1947.
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).
WWhat Pakistan faces in the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan is virulent insurgency and terrorism, fuelled by its association with Al Qaeda
Sanjeev Nayyar suggests 16 measures by which we can tackle our unrelenting and untrustworthy neighbour.
At least seven people were killed on Thursday in Pakistan in two separate blasts, including a suicide attack on the Pak-Afghan border apparently targeting soldiers.
For Aanchal Malhotra, the stories of Partition were stories that needed to be told; they needed to be chronicled.
'The animosity in the BJP against Swamy continued for a good more than thirty years.' 'It was only after herculean efforts by a reconstituted and more just RSS, that Swamy was finally inducted into the BJP in 2013.'
Lieutenant General Harbakhsh Singh, GOC, Western Command, disobeyed the then army chief and took on a superior Pakistani armoured column. The Indian Centurion tanks outgunned the more modern Pakistani Patton tanks in the battle at Khem Karan, that proved the turning point of the 1965 War. Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd) salutes the Soldiers' General.
The key airbase at Panagarh in West Bengal has been renamed as 'Air Force Station Arjan Singh' in honour of the Marshal of the Air Force, who turned 97 on Friday.
'The PLA has continued to do exercises and drills and recently carried out air exercises with fighter jets.'
The emperor's appetite for enlarging his realm translated into a fetish for raising taxes, despite the simplicity of his personal lifestyle, points out Devangshu Datta.
The Indian Army has shown it can face down the PLA, but is too often held back by a political leadership that lacks boldness, asserts Ajai Shukla.
'Tying somebody to the jeep is not the military way, but the officer was able to come out of the situation without any bloodshed.' 'I am not supporting him, but I am also not criticising him.' 'He had to use some mechanism to save the uniformed personnel, many of whom were Kashmiri boys of the J&K police,' points out Lieutenant General D B Shekatkar (retd), who was instrumental in the surrender of a record 1,267 terrorists in Kashmir.
'Our biggest problem has been keeping this country together.' 'Nation building is never easy. It is a very difficult task.' 'Even 70 years is not too long a time.'
China has chosen to keep New Delhi guessing, while retaining for itself the option of constantly changing facts on the ground and shifting the LAC westwards -- the strategy called 'salami slicing', notes Ajai Shukla.
After the Ladakh fiasco where Xi Jinping did not expect the Indian Army to resist his land-grabbing tactics, he has to save face before his colleagues in the Communist party.' To bring the threat of a mega-dam to the northern Indian border is a clever move, observes Claude Arpi.
'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.'
Nehru's sentimental attachment to the Mountbattens deeply vitiated the Kashmir issue. It was certainly the most important factor for the failure to find a solution in the first years of the conflict.
'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.'
'Many sepoys fought with distinction, winning some of the first Victoria Crosses to be awarded to Indians; and indeed, as in any army fighting under such inhumane conditions -- standing in the freezing sludge, with shrapnel tearing through bodies and being subjected to gas attacks -- some buckled under pressure.'
We bring you a presentation of some of the best photos from around the world in the month gone by
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, February 20, irritated the Chinese government so much that it summoned the Indian ambassador to register its protest against Modi visiting a territory China claims as Southern Tibet.
'The Indian Air Force wanted to fight. My squadron leaders and flight lieutenants, all of us were eager to fight. Unless they are keen I can't have confidence.' Marshal of the Air Force, the legendary Arjan Singh, on the 1965 War.
'The thin line is a permanent dilemma with soldiers. You have to appreciate that in that dilemma and chaos there are officers who stand and lead their men.
'Godse is no more, but the mindset which gave birth to such distorted philosophy is unfortunately still with us.'
'It is a pattern of behaviour of the Chinese that whenever a Chinese leader visits India or an Indian leader visits China, some incidents take place.' 'When Modi visits China, we should look out for some similar demonstration by the Chinese.'
'A participant in many rounds of the border talks with China once told me that China seemed not interested in resolving the border issue as it wanted to keep it as a ready excuse to intervene in the sub-continent,' says Colonel (retd) Anil A Athale.
With Beijing having had a profound rethink on India's admission as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the tectonic plates of the geopolitics of a massive swathe of the planet stretching from the Asia-Pacific to West Asia are dramatically shifting. That grating noise in the Central Asian steppes will be heard far and wide -- as far as North America, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
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