When Karl Marx wrote on July 22, 1853, that Arabs, Turks, and Mughals who invaded India soon became ‘Hinduized’, as an eternal law of history by this ‘superior civilization’, he emphasised the process of historical Hinduization. Later, Jawaharlal Nehru admitted in Discovery of India that the idea of ‘Bharatavarsha’ is clearly outlined from the time of...
Almost a decade after the launch of the so-called “Arab Spring”, one of the most troubled regions in the entire world remains threatened by the prospects of facing a new wave of protests demanding regime change due to the ever growing number of problems in such spheres as personal finance, urbanization and unemployment. Since the original Arab Spring in late...
It was on the soccer pitch that 2022 World Cup host Qatar definitively shrugged off the UAE-Saudi-led economic and diplomatic boycott of the Gulf state as the crisis entered its third year with no prospect of resolution. World soccer body FIFA’s abandonment of Saudi-United Arab Emirates-backed plans to expand the 2022 World Cup from 32 to 48 teams just days ...
The results of the 2019 general elections came as a surprise to no one. But what really surprised many was the scale of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory. The BJP won 303 seats, while its allies took another 50 seats giving it a commanding majority to form the government on its own. The key factors for the victory have been a scam-free five years wh...
Getting India to smoke the peace pipe seems to have become a crusade of sorts for Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan. Twice in a period of two weeks, the premier has made an offer for resumption of talks between the two countries. On May 26, when the massive mandate for the Bharatiya Janata Party and allies heralded the return of Prime Minister Narendra Mo...
The parliamentary elections of 6 November 2018 deprived President Trump of his majority in the House of Representatives. The Democratic Party assumed that this would lead inevitably to his destitution. Of course, he had done nothing to deserve it, but a flood of hysteria swamped the two camps of the United States, exactly as it had during the Civil War...
In the dramatic escalation of tariff and trade war tensions between China and the USA, China President Xi Jinping made a well-timed visit to see the JL Mag Rare-Earth Company Ltd., a state-owned complex in Ganzhou. Though he did not openly threaten, he sent a clear psychological message to Washington that China has more weapons in its arsenal to pressure the...
Although Sonia Gandhi’s formidable personality holds the Congress together, the party is beginning to flounder in the absence of clarity on whether Rahul Gandhi’s resignation has been withdrawn or accepted. The Wayanad MP offered to quit at the Congress Working Committee meeting on May 25, taking full responsibility for the failure to dislodge the Modi...
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) investigations into Easter Day blasts have revealed the following details: On April 21, 2019, St. Anthony’s Shrine Kochchikade, St. Sebastian’s Church Negombo, Zion Church Batticaloa, Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo, Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Colombo-2, and the Kingsbury in Colomb...
Major challenges await the second term of the Modi government. The country’s economy is not in good shape. Joblessness has reached a 45-year high at 7.8 per cent for urban areas and 5.3 per cent for rural areas. Though the government has dismissed comparison of data with previous years, saying it is a new matrix for estimation and cannot be compared with pre...
Force the adversary to expand recklessly in order to unbalance him, and then destroy him. This is not the description of a judo hold, but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA. With a staff of thousands of experts, Rand presents itself as the world’s most reliable source for Intelligence and poli...
The latest round of negotiations between the United States and the Taliban reached their inglorious conclusion in the capital of Qatar (the city of Doha, May 1, 2019). Nonetheless, Suhail Shaheen, the political spokesman for the Taliban (an organization banned in Russia), tweeted, somewhat tersely, that during the sixth round of peace negotiations “some prog...
The crisp definition of democracy – rule of the people, by the people, for the people – was popularized by one of the most popular presidents of the USA, Abraham Lincoln. But the idea had initially been mooted by Plato in Republic (380 BC). Direct democracy, where people participated directly in the governance of the society, had existed in Athens, Greece, i...
In the wake of Thailand’s recent elections, US and European-backed opposition forces were caught flatfooted, reeling from losing the popular vote to the military-linked Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP). Additionally, “rising political star” as the Western media refers to him, billionaire heir Thanathorn Jungrungreangkit, head of the opposition Future Forward P...
The results of the European Parliamentary elections do not correspond in any way to what was expected – including by this writer. The present analysis is based on the provisional results of Monday 27 May at 10 a.m. GMT.
1] Compared with the results of 2014, voter participation has grown from 43% to 51%. Of course, several states had organised other votes fo...
There was a time when few people outside the UK would have known or cared when its Prime Minister was leaving office. However the Brexit saga has ensured that everyone now knows that poor Theresa May, after three years of trying to force the UK parliament to do what she herself campaigned against, will be standing down on Friday June 7th 2019. Commentators a...
In 2015, at the Biennale art festival in Venice, Swiss artist Christian Büchel transformed the ancient Catholic church of Santa Maria della Misericordia into a mosque. Büchel decorated the baroque walls with Arabic writing, covered the floor with a prayer rug, and hid the crucifix behind a prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca, the sacred city of Is...
Radha Rajan’s latest book, The Shrinking Hindu Nation, is a grim reminder of the multiple existential threats facing the Hindu civilization, both internally and externally. It is a wake-up call for Hindu leaders, especially the avowedly Hindu Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to do more for the beleaguered Hindu samaj. The author calls for critical self-evalua...
The Indian-backed Iranian port of Chabahar has emerged as a major loophole in a tightening military and economic noose and ever harsher US sanctions that President Donald J. Trump, reluctant to be sucked into yet another war, sees as the best way to either force Tehran to its knees or achieve regime change. Alice Wells, the State Department’s assistant secre...
Jeeves, the excellent valet of Mr Wooster, had an ace up his sleeve: if the going was tough, he used his access to the records of the Junior Ganymede club, and there he could find embarrassing stuff against anybody who had ever employed a valet or a butler, for these gentleman’s gentlemen were obliged to inscribe in the club’s book all imprudent exploits of ...