While Congress criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government for being "insensitive", saying yoga, a great discipline of ancient India, does not belong to the saffron party, Janata Dal-United termed it as yet another attempt to "impose the communal agenda" on Indian masses.
'She preserved national unity against great odds.'
In a setback for China, an international arbitration court ruled that it has jurisdiction to hear some territorial claims the Philippines has filed against it over disputed areas in the South China Sea, a ruling rejected by China as null and void.
'If Rao had, in fact, given a word to President Clinton in 1994 that India would not test, he would not have encouraged Vajpayee to test. The note, said to have been handed over to Vajpayee by Rao with the words, 'Now is the time to accomplish my unfinished task' may not have been a reference to nuclear tests at all,' says T P Sreenivasan.
The $10.5 billion arms and equipment deal helped to arrest the recent drift in the 'special and privileged' strategic partnership, observes Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
The PLA Air Force has conducted a combat air patrol in the South China Sea recently, which will become "a regular practice" in the future
It is well-known, and the Brooks-Bhagat report vouches for it, that the real failure for the 1962 debacle against China was not military, but political, says Ram Madhav.
He was getting fruits, but no implement to cut them with. He told the judge, sadly: "I have tried and it is very difficult, your honour." His statement quickly brought up the imagery of Peter trying to cut a pineapple with his teeth or a papaya with a pen or a toothbrush.
Two US warships fired at least 50 cruise missiles at the Ash Shai'rat airfield in Homs province in western Syria, from where the US administration believes Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad fired the chemical weapons against his own people, media reports said.
'Headley's testimony indicates to what extent the Pakistan government and its proxies can go to destroy not only Indian scientific talent but also international expertise.'
'In India, China's capacities to conduct new types of warfare is critically underestimated,' says Claude Arpi.
Euro zone leaders will hold an emergency summit on Monday.
Pakistan NSA Sartaj Aziz says he is ready to travel to India but without any pre-conditions
India and Russia on Thursday decided to expand cooperation in various sectors as they signed 16 pacts, including on joint manufacture of 226 military helicopters.
Partial dismantling of subsidies, movement towards a more transparent policy on natural resources and moves to make India more inviting for foreign investors, are some of Modi government's big achievements.
She is changing India one village at a time.
India has been eyeing deeper energy ties with Iran and has already lined up $20 billion as investment in oil and gas as well as in petrochemical and fertiliser sectors there.
China on Wednesday said the US' naval and air incursions in the artificial islands in the South China Sea will be counter-productive leading to "miscalculation" and "crisis", as Beijing summoned the American ambassador to protest the US Navy's sailing of a warship into the disputed waters.
The clichd path of conducting 'uninterrupted and uninterruptable' bilateral dialogue with Pakistan to improve ties remains unimplemented and un-implementable under prevailing circumstances that are unlikely to alter in the near future, says Rahul Bedi.
'We have not seen even during Vajpayee's time what Modi and the BJP has adopted now.'
Former Inter-Services Intelligence chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha has admitted that the deadly Haqqani network was created by it and America's Central Intelligence Agency and claimed that the insurgent group's chief Jalaluddin Haqqani had "in fact been invited to the White House by President (Ronald) Reagan".
Rajmohan spoke with rediff.com, sharing his thoughts on what ails East Delhi, the future of AAP and his plans for strengthening the party.
India on Saturday extended $500 million (Rs 3,328 crore) Line of Credit to Vietnam for facilitating deeper defence cooperation with the south east Asian nation, as the two countries elevated their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership to respond to emerging regional challenges.
At least 36 people were injured on Friday when a blast hit an anti-government protest march in Bangkok demanding the ouster of Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra, raising fears of violence in the run up to the February 2 snap polls.
When Subir Roy met Ruchira Gupta at The Telegraph 35 years ago she was not quite 20 and not a graduate. Today she is the indomitable founder of Apne Aap, which has touched the lives of over 21,000 women who were victims of sex trafficking.
President Pranab Mukherjee will be among over 90 heads of state and government who will attend an emotional memorial service in South Africa on Tuesday for anti-apartheid legend Nelson Mandela, making it one of the largest such gatherings in generations.
As Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah form a joint government after contesting the presidential election against each other, Prakash Bhandari reports from Kabul on the problems facing the new, US-brokered arrangement.
'Modi has lost a great opportunity to show himself to be a leader, mentor and path-setter, capable of rising above narrow party interests,', says B S Raghavan, the distringuished civil servant.
'The UPA was never soft on Pakistan, terrorists and even China, but Sonia Gandhi's Congress rightly earned a "soft" image on issues of hard national interest, leaving the field open for Modi to take it and wrap it around with his implicit Hindutva,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'My interest is to open up transparency to the people who unnecessary raise these issues. The prime minister has full right to go wherever he is going but the question is why is he not transparent on expenditure.' 'When the prime minister went to the UN, he spoke of transparency. You are not complying with it. It shows hypocrisy.' Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd) on why he filed an RTI to find out how much Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spent on his foreign visits.
Rama Krishna Sangu, partner, Manohar Chowdhry & Associates, Chartered Accountants, and a member of the Indirect Tax Committee of ICAI, fielded readers' questions on GST on Rediff Chat.
India's foremost architect and town planner was renowned as much for his 'breathing' spaces as for his irascible personality
'Tax dodging through tax havens is one of the ways multinational corporations and the super-rich in India are using to evade taxes.'
India has given a clear indication that killing of its five soldiers on LoC by Pakistan Army will delay the Indo-Pak Secretary-level talks, asserting that dialogue can only proceed in an environment free of violence and terror.
The Niti Aayog has finalised the first draft of a new national energy policy.
The two districts which are the part of Nepal's Bagmati Zone have suffered extensively in the April 25 earthquake which left a trail of death and destruction.
The foundations of the army's own peculiar secularism are potentially being destabilised
Experts identify two major advantages in building solar plants atop canals: efficient and cheap land use, and reduced water evaporation from the channels underneath
A glance back at some important events that occurred in 2018.
Isn't National Intelligence Grid and UIDAI engineered by vested interests, asks Gopal Krishna.
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