Two Taliban suicide bombers struck a historic church in Peshawar Sunday, killing at least 78 people, including women and children, in the deadliest attack on the minority Christian community in Pakistan's history.
'For over a decade, the United States has been shaping the contours of Hinduism. It has been doing this from the perspective of upper caste and conservative interests,' Professor Shefali Chandra tells Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
'Mulk gets a lot of things right, including its vision of the country as a place where underneath the punctilious, forced-secular surface there are volatilities waiting to go off,' says Sreehari Nair.
'I sat down and asked them what they would want in their new school. One student said a football field, another one asked for computers. One little girl came and sat next to me and said, "A separate toilet for the girls." I think these small things make a huge difference in the future of education in India,' Nita Ambani tells Aseem Chhabra/Rediff.com
'The top-most functionaries and destiny-makers of the nation have thrown away the pretensions of statesmanship.' 'They seem to have made a categorical announcement that the next general election will be fought on the solo plank of Hindutva, rather than on good governance, economic development, and employment to youth', says Mohammad Sajjad.
'When you are returning your award you are commenting on the country and not the government.' 'Can we actually say that a vast majority of Indians have become communal? The data shows actually no. That is not true.' 'In religious terms India has a lot to teach the world because we are genuinely liberal, but in gender terms we have to learn lot from the West. In gender terms, we are terrible.'
'I have seen that many madrassas do not celebrate Independence Day and Republic Day. They don't even invite people for Independence Day celebrations and this is an insult to nation. It is wrong.'
Mohammad Sajjad profiles Professor Riazur Rahman Sherwani, 94, versatile mind, intrepid intellectual.
The 1965 war teaches us that war by escalation is a real possibility. Despite clear threats, Pakistan never believed that India will ever cross the international border. In the age of nuclear deterrence, this failure to deter Pakistan is the central lesson of 1965, says Colonel Anil Athale (retd).
If viewed as a part of the Al Qaeda's radicalisation effort to produce jihadists out of discontented Muslim youth in India, the call could well have a much larger dimension, both in the near as well as long term, directly impacting on national security, says Bibhu Prasad Routray.
'A collapsing Pakistan may well unleash its nuclear weapons as the last throw of the dice. With a nuclear arsenal of over 50 bombs, even a regional nuclear exchange can devastate the world.'
'The challenges of the world are too great for any one religious tradition to address alone... The best way to learn about other religions is not from books, but from people... Go talk to someone from a different faith tradition. Get to know them. Build up some trust.' Dr Katharine Rhodes Henderson, who jointly won Hofstra University's Guru Nanak Prize for inter-faith champions in the United States, discusses religion and the challenges of extremism in this lively interview with Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is a fraud, a liar and a hypocrite, top Democratic leaders and speakers at the party's national convention said as they lashed out at the billionaire from New York.
By weakening Sharif, the corps commanders could have a final say in important matters like relations with India, dealing with Taliban militants, interacting with Americans and once again achieving strategic depth in post-NATO Afghanistan. Which is why they may be behind the unrest in Pakistan led by Imran Khan and Dr Tahirul Qadri, says Shahzad Raza.
India's Kailash Satyarthi received the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 on Wednesday, sharing it with Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai, the youngest ever Nobel laureate, for their work on promoting child rights in the troubled sub-continent, where millions are deprived of their childhood and education.
A lot of the terrorism that is affecting Pakistan is really a blowback of the Pakistani state's policy of using jihadist groups as instruments of state policy. And unlike some other countries with similar policies, Pakistan doesn't have the benefit of the political and social space for pulling back from the disastrous course, says Sushant Sareen.
MUST READ: The speech Nayantara Sahgal was not allowed to give.
'We must begin dialogue with openness and goodwill, but we will not proceed very far without trust and good faith. The alternative is the violence of 'might is right,' which settles very little and destroys so much of real value,' says Dr Rudolf C Heredia, author of Religious Disarmament -- Rethinking Conversion in India.
'...because we are truer to the spirit of the Hindu faith.' 'There is absolutely no question that the Hinduism of the mob lynchers, the people who have killed others because of what they are eating or how they are worshipping or the faith they belong to or what they're doing professionally, those are, to my mind, not Hindus at all.'
The ordinary life lived in Pakistan is rarely a part of Indian imagination. This is this gap that Pakistani television serials have succeeded in bridging, says Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
If November 9 ushers in a Hillary Clinton presidency, you can bet your last dollar that Huma Abedin will be back at POTUS' side.
A documentary on football and a biography of Jesus make Roopa Unnikrishnan mull over the lessons organisations can learn from honest outsiders.
Following is the full text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 73rd Independence Day.
'Mohammad Akhlaq's death isn't only about a Muslim being killed out of sheer communal bigotry, but also the denial of the Constitutional guarantees of "due process" under Article 21 and the freedom of choice,' says Shehzad Poonawalla, who has moved the National Commission for Minorities over the murder.
'Communalism and communal riots happened in India only during and due to colonialism. Pre-colonial India didn't have this problem of communal conflicts and religious strife.'
'Indira Gandhi, it appears, did not to consult her Cabinet colleagues, or diplomats, or civil servants when she decided to sign the agreement in Shimla.' 'We ruefully recall Bhutto's perfidy and the Indian prime minister's gullibility,' says Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd).
'It is difficult to imagine the BJP becoming the legatee of Ambedkar. Whichever way one looks at it, Ambedkar's thought and Hindu nationalism are not easy to reconcile.'
'The real danger in India right now is that identity politics is being stoked in extremely dangerous ways.' 'The narrative you get about churches in the mainstream Indian media and the narrative you get in the social media is very different.' 'Many Americans today want to appropriate Indian culture. They want yoga, but they say yoga has nothing to do with Hinduism. They want Ayurveda, but they say it's got nothing to do with Hinduism.' 'Hinduism has been failed by political constituencies in India -- seculars and the right-wing.'
The Varanasi versus Azamgarh story is about the fears and insecurities of two of our strongest leaders, Narendra Modi and Mulayam Singh Yadav, says Sheela Bhatt.
'This can lift us out of confusion, misery, melancholy and failure, and indeed guide us when it is contacted.' 'For us to ignite our spirituality, we need to look inward and transcend our egos. We need to recognize, connect with and integrate the eternal spirit within,' says A P J Abdul Kalam in his latest book, Transcendence.
'The diplomat's arrest has led to a major diplomatic spat, the likes of which I have not seen in my nearly three decades of covering the US-India relationship, says Aziz Haniffa. 'The knee-jerk reaction by the powers-that-be in Delhi was myopic to say the least.'
'I can tell you the case that hurts me the most is the one in which the little boy is forced to sign the Kohinoor over.' 'You take a mother away from a child, you surround him with grown ups speaking a different language, you tell him he must sign this over or else...'
The following is the full text of US President Donald Trump's first address to a joint session of the Congress on February 28, as prepared for delivery and released by the White House press office.
An inspired performance from Douglas Costa helped Brazil to a 3-0 win over Peru on Tuesday and lifted them into third place in the South American qualifying group for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Arun Jaitley and Janardan Dwivedi have rewritten the rules of politics in the Age of the Internet and its young and restless user base, reports Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
