'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.'
'If India employed a strategy of a 'thousand cuts', Pakistan will wither away.'
'The military in Pakistan is capable and self critical, but intelligence is stuffed full of lifers who resist change, which is why career soldiers in Pakistan try with all their might not to be transferred into the ISI.'
'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.'
Bilawal Bhutto's political inheritance is his biggest asset as well as the biggest liability as he tries to make his mark in Pakistan politics. Challenging the Taliban militants is part of that strategy, though it matches with his political ideology. Shahzad Raza profiles the son of Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari.
'Pakistan is full of 'religious entrepreneurs' like Hafeez Saeed who poison the minds of the young so that they can be motivated to become terrorists. They work in concert with the rulers of Pakistan. It is a private-public partnership.'
'For a long time Pakistan dreamt that India would break up and that it would be the predominant power in the region,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'People in Pakistan opened their homes and hearts to me because I was an Indian. I didn't feel alien at all and I felt as if I was in my own country.' 'I believe that there is a strong chance that the Taliban can win over Pakistan. In an era of ideological confusion these people (Taliban) thrive.' 'The Pakistani State is an enemy state not just for India but for Pakistan itself. By funding non-state actors, the Pakistani government is destroying itself.' Film-maker Hemal Trevedi speaks on her experiences when filming a documentary on Pakistani madrasas
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.
'If Indira Gandhi's Emergency proved anything at all, it established that India would be governed, to the extent it can be governed, democratically or not at all,' says Inder Malhotra.
Jaswant speak of his new book India At Risk, Mistakes, Misconceptions and Misadventures of Security Policy and explains to Sheela Bhatt why India is at risk.
'The original dream of people like Faiz was that Pakistan would be something different from the old India: Progressive, forward looking, democratic (if not socialist), tolerant, diverse and pluralistic.' 'I don't think anyone foresaw the catastrophe that Partition was to become.'
'Small bands of terrorists believe they can destabilise superpowers if they are ready to become martyrs.' 'Since the road to paradise is under the shade of swords, it is a win-win situation for those ready to die for the cause of Allah.'
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