'My brave JCO managed to get to the gun, sit on top of the dead man and fired away at the attacking aircraft till they melted away into the darkness.'
The period of Internal Emergency from June 1975 till January 1977 was a great learning experience for me. I was still a student and one of the youngest detenus who spent 19 months in detention for having opposed the Emergency.
'R N Kao was a spymaster, an institution builder and a gentleman.'
'If there is lesser number of elections, populism will naturally be restricted.' 'Decisions will be taken speedily because there won't be the spectre of adverse electoral impact of the decisions because elections will be held once in five years or maximum two times in five years.'
Against the backdrop of the West Indies team's withdrawal from its tour of India, Rediff.com takes a look at instances when cricket tours have been called off midway through a series.
The Congress kept sheltering Quattrochi, and the BJP was more intent on shielding the Hinduja brothers. The fact is that the two roads crisscrossed, and neither the truth prevailed nor did the law take its course, says Mohan Guruswamy.
He challenged the Congress to select someone 'capable' as its president, who did not belong to 'that one family'.
'What I remember best is the vigour with which she threw herself into the job, the passion she had for issues, particularly those that affected the poor.'
'Most Hindus believe in living in peace with their Muslim neighbours and vice versa.' 'It is this India we have to preserve.'
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.
NSA Menon's wisdom says that the idea to be superpower is not really desirable, it is better to be different. Sheela Bhatt reports.
'Nitish Kumar's government will be at stake. The JD-U is working with a very thin majority, which is a borrowed majority. With just two seats Nitish Kumar has no moral right to stay on,' says Professor Prabhat Ghosh.
'The biggest advantage for India was its seasoned and experienced political leadership who had spent decades struggling against the Raj and had spent years behind bars.' 'Not a single prominent leader of the Muslim League spent one day in jail.' 'Gandhiji, Nehru and Sardar Patel were intelligent, shrewd men with their hands on the popular pulse.'
Coming down heavily on Pakistan, President Pranab Mukherjee has said unless it dismantles the terror infrastructure on its soil, there is no scope for progress in talks between the two countries.
'The tiger is the epitome of evolution.' 'Every tiger has a stripe pattern that is unique. Each tiger is unique.' 'Tigers are very elusive. It is said a tiger sees you nine times when you see it once.'
'It is obvious within these two months that in many ways Narendra Modi has a great degree of resemblance with Indira Gandhi.' 'The same style of management of power. The same kind of attempt to reduce a large section of the political leadership into, if not spectators, bureaucrats. His leaders are taking orders from him and executing those orders.' 'This is the model that has worked in Gujarat. And he is hoping that it will work in India.'
'What hurts people most is dynastic impulses and corruption under a family-ruled Congress party -- and Nehru has borne the brunt of it... I cannot be blinded by how the Nehru family has functioned but just as Gandhi can't be judged by his descendents, why should Nehru?' asks political scientist Ashutosh Varshney.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has to deal with 3 powerful enemies: the media, the political establishment, and business houses.
'We saw how vigorous democracy was when it dislodged authoritarianism under Indira Gandhi. We saw its vigour again when it voted Mr Modi out of humble origins as prime minister. It was Nehru who laid that foundation for India and what is worrying today is Modi's rather imperial style of functioning,' says writer Nayantara Sahgal.
'He deserved to be field marshal because he carried the air force and navy with him in '71. Remember we were fighting on two fronts -- east and west. He stood out.'
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