'The problem is not lack of evidence, but the unholy alliance between political parties and church authorities.' 'If you are raising a voice against the priest, you and your family will suffer.'
'From Doklam to Wuhan and the return of the India-China relationship to its previous equilibrium is indeed a major contribution of President Xi and PM Modi. Without any doubt they deserve the kudos for their sagacity and their wisdom,' says Ambassador Gautam Bambawale, India's envoy to China during the Wuhan summit.
'She is tough. She can be stern. She can be unpleasant. Rajiv was none of these things.' 'The Congress cannot survive without the Gandhi family. If Sonia were to quit, their Lok Sabha seats would drop from 44 to four.' K Natwar Singh shares his bitterness about the Nehru family with Rashme Sehgal.
On her last day as India's envoy to the United States, Ambassador Nirupama Rao was felicitated by the Barck Obama administration at the State Department on Monday, with US Secretary of State John F Kerry thanking her for her service toward furthering the strategic partnership between the two nations.
'It is important to note that American officials were trying their best to use the Taliban for their oil games till December 1997 when Mullah Ghous was invited to America. State Department officials did not show any interest in capturing or killing Osama bin Laden even at that time.'
'While economic ties are making incremental progress, it is in the security and strategic domains that the India-Japan synergy is more compelling,' says Dr Rajaram Panda.
'While the Khobragade affair has "upset and diverted attention, it does not mean there is a fundamental flaw in the US-India relationship",' former American envoy Frank Wisner tells Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa.
Girls in the Kashmir valley hurling defiance at the security forces will detract from the legitimacy of India's response and its standing in the world, says Ajai Shukla.
Those who know Shiv Shankar Menon will vouch that he did lots of things, substantial in the immediate neighbourhood and widespread in South Asia, but without making things public. Twenty per cent of Menon's job was visible, while 80 per cemt of his job was not known to the public, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Modi also said the people of India felt proud that President Xi has twice received him out of the capital.
Soaked in patriotism, hundreds of Indians on Monday proudly marked the country's 70th Independence Day, as the tricolour fluttered and the national anthem reverberated at Indian missions across the world.
India is also likely to push for a Free Trade Agreement with the Eurasian Economic Zone and is sharing details of the study it conducted in this regard.
The investigations into and actions being taken by the US State Department's Diplomatic Security Service against Devyani Khobragade were not shared with Secretary of State John F Kerry, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, or Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Nisha Desai Biswal, reveals Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa from Washington, DC.
'Foreign policy-making cannot be shifted out of Delhi and the regional satraps, who do not have a national perspective, should not be allowed to dominate foreign policy. But regional inputs should be integral to foreign policy-making at every step of the way,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
During last week's Nuclear Security Summit, President Obama asked the media to leave and then screened videos depicting plausible scenarios pertaining to nuclear terrorism.
Sujatha Singh is the third senior official to have been dismissed by NDA.
'Indira Gandhi and P N Haksar did not want Pakistan to leave as an embittered foe hell-bent on taking revenge for being humiliated so comprehensively.'
The February 13 meeting between Nancy Powell, who quit as United States ambassador to India on Monday, and Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, was frosty enough to convince the Roosevelt House (the official address of the US embassy in New Delhi) and the White House in Washington DC that much had to be done before US diplomats could aspire to any significant access to a Modi-led government in India.
Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade has moved a federal court here to dismiss the visa fraud case against her, saying there is lack of personal jurisdiction since she had been accorded full diplomatic immunity by the US Department of State.
'I am hoping that now with the strategic status of our relationship, the Indian voice will get heard in Saudi Arabia,' says Ambassador B S Prakash.
Nikhil Lakshman remembers the times he spent with the legendary writer who passed into the ages six days before his 86th birthday.
Soulful strains of some of the most popular and best known western classical music compositions reverberated in the majestic backdrop of Zabarwan Hills when Zubin Mehta, world famous conductor, performed before a mesmerised audience in the Shalimar Gardens on the banks of Dal Lake in Srinagar on Saturday evening.
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.
'It was a mission undertaken in darkness in every sense -- literally, because Afghanistan had no electricity at that time; and, metaphorically because Delhi historically dealt only with the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and the foreign ministry's vast archives had nothing to offer on the culture and politics of the northern tribes in the Hindu Kush.'
'If we play our cards right, we may even benefit from the competition between the US and China as seen from increased investment from each of these countries into India.' 'The size of our market gives us an important lever of power which we shall have to play adroitly and intelligently,' points out Ambassador Gautam Bambawale -- who served as India's envoy to China -- in the Professor V M Dandekar Memorial Lecture 2019, delivered on March 8, 2019 in Pune.
ACN Nambiar's life was extraordinary and intricately linked to momentous turns in history. Having lived in Europe for five decades, he was witness to and entangled with what we today -- with the benefit of hindsight -- call recent history.
Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade has asked a court in New York to dismiss the indictment against her and terminate any 'open' arrest warrants in the visa fraud case, arguing that she was 'cloaked' in diplomatic immunity and cannot face criminal prosecution in the United States
'President Obama will make a historic visit to India in January, becoming the first US head of State to attend India's Republic Day and the only sitting US president to visit India twice.' 'There's little doubt the relationship has been re-energised, with renewed enthusiasm to take our partnership to the next level.'
'His Promised Land was India.' Shekhar Gupta salutes General J F R Jacob, the incredible soldier who passed into the ages this week.
'The people of Pakistan and India will begin to understand what the bottom lines are. What India can accept maximum is known to Pakistan. What Pakistan can accept minimum is known to India.' 'In the absence of atmosphere you can't even talk, you can't think of writing agreements and frameworks. You have to have the right atmosphere. With the previous BJP government it had started and I hope the new BJP government will continue with that.'
If the chemistry between Modi and Xi Jinping goes well, it will herald a new future not just for the region but for the world, says Tarun Vijay.
The Bombay High Court on Thursday handed over to CBI the probe into Bollywood actress Jiah Khan's death, five months after Mumbai police concluded it was a case of suicide and charged her live-in partner Suraj Pancholi with abetting it.
'The past year has yielded extraordinary results in the strategic, commercial, and people-to-people components of the India-United States partnership, US Ambassador to India Richard Rahul Verma tells Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com in an exclusive interview.
'If you look at the relationship with Pakistan, or the relationship with China, both are today, more uncertain than they were when this government came into power.'
Though the Chinese find it necessary to oppose the visits of Indian leaders to Arunachal Pradesh, they want to keep the objections at a moderate level lest it cast a shadow on Narendra Modi's visit to China in May, says D S Rajan.
New Delhi and Beijing are the only two regional capitals that have commented on US President Donald Trump's speech on August 21 outlining the way forward in Afghanistan. The Indian foreign ministry statement was effusive in praise, while the Chinese statement has been one of cautious and guarded hope. Delhi has identified itself with Trump's Afghan strategy, whereas the Chinese stance is calibrated -- observant and objective, keeping a distance, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
he has to demonstrate the ability of his government to take a quantum leap, almost tantamount to setting the Ganga on fire, in the next six months, if not in 100 days, if the people were to take seriously the cascade of commitments spewing out of the President's address to both Houses of Parliament on June 9, says B S Raghavan. B S Raghavan suggests five practical propositions through which the Modi government can bring in paradigm changes.
On Thursday, November 6, the Washington Post newspaper reported that controversial American diplomat, Ambassador Robin Raphel, had her office and home searched by the FBI. This most unusual development likely raised much cheer at India's ministry of external affairs, in whose flesh Raphel had been a thorn through much of her tenure in the first Bill Clinton administration in the early and mid-1990s by her anti-India and pro-Pakistan stand. Seventeen years ago, as she was about to step down as Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, Raphel granted an exclusive interview to Aziz Haniffa and India Abroad, the leading Indian-American weekly newspaper, which is now owned by Rediff.com The July 1997 interview, which provoked a raging controversy in both capitals, Washington, DC and New Delhi, is reproduced here...
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