“Indian Army is a very potent, responsive and accountable element of national power. It remains committed to be able to take on any challenge as far as external threats are concerned and similarly take on any internal disturbances when called upon to do so. So, as far as the Army is concerned we always carry on in a professional manner and a very strong code...
India is firmly set on the road to become a modern Hindu Rashtra. That is the most important message from the Lok Sabha elections 2019. Seven decades after the independence, Hindus are coming into their own. It is not the end of their troubles, but it marks the beginning of the phase in which they are taking their destiny in their own hands. If that is “comm...
As of May 10, Mr. Trump has arbitrarily increased tariffs on Chinese goods imported into the US, worth about 200 billion dollars, from 10% to 25%. It is an action without any foundation. An action that makes no sense at all, as China can and will retaliate – and retaliate much stronger than what the impact of the US’s new “sanctions” bear – because these arb...
When the Notre-Dame fire began on the evening of April 15, 2019, all the French media and many foreign outlets focused on the burning cathedral. Many foreign media started their newscasts with this news, but not France2. The public channel had planned to devote its program to President Macron’s announced speech concluding the “Great National Debate”. The edi...
May 23, 2019 possibly has the whole world waiting with bated breath for the results of the general elections in India. I am not a psephologist but share the feel good factor that makes many predict a definite victory for Narendra Modi. His first term has to be considered successful for merely applying brakes on a nation that was fast sliding into an...
Washington’s overt aggressive behavior on the international stage provoked by its desire to impose its own vision of the way that the Middle East must look in the future has pushed most of its traditional allies away from it. So it’s only natural that the US keeps losing allies left and right, gradually alienating Qatar, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The mu...
Pakistan risks falling off the tightrope it walks as it attempts to balance its relations with rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Developments in recent days, including this weekend’s Baloch nationalist attack on a luxury hotel in the strategic port city of Gwadar [May 12-ed] and a legal dispute over completion of a gas pipeline against the backdrop of Saudi-Iran...
On 30 April 2019, the former Emperor of Japan, Akihito, abdicated, and the next day his 59-year-old son, Naruhito, took over the Chrysanthemum Throne. This signaled the end of the 30-year period in Japan’s modern history, known as “peace everywhere” (or Heisei), and the start of the new epoch, denoted by two Kanji characters, which, on transcription into the...
Let’s start with the “long” 16th century - which, as with the 21st, also saw a turbulent process of marketization. At that time, the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation were trying to rebound across Asia - but within a context where the rivalry between the Iberian superpowers of the age, Spain and Portugal, still lingered. The Reformation first attached itse...
Mounting tension between the Trump administration and Iran are likely to shed light on US dynamics shaping today’s geopolitical environment. Looming large is the figure of US national security advisor John Bolton, a proponent of a muscular US foreign policy in which the United States employs military force to impose its will and fortify its superpower status...
The liberation of the zone administered by Daesh as a state does not mean the end of this jihadist organisation. Indeed, while Daesh is a creation of the NATO Intelligence services, it represents an ideology which mobilises jihadists and may outlive it. Al-Qaida was an auxiliary army for NATO – we saw them fight in Afghanistan, then in Bosnia-Herzegovina, an...
After the Second World War, in 1947, ambassador George Kennan created the policy of containment [1] and President Harry Truman constituted the apparatus of national security (CIA, Joint Committee of the Chiefs of Staff, National Security Council) [2]. Washington and London then turned against Moscow, which had only recently been their ally. They were plannin...
It is unproductive to speculate why, but a vocal section of the Western commentariat is showing an increasing intolerance towards strong and nation-centric leaders in the rest of the world. Three notable examples are Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Narendra Modi. Putin won in May 2018, Xi Jinping can’t be toppled, and Modi is currently fighting...
The effectiveness of China’s effort to brainwash Uyghurs and Central Asian Muslims in the troubled north-western province of Xinjiang may be tested. With the recent release of 40 Uyghur wives of Pakistani traders, businessmen and professionals, some of the former re-education camp detainees hope that after three months of observation by Xinjiang authorities,...
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the elusive chief of the Islamic State (IS) in a rare video released after five years on April 28, 2019, has claimed that the IS was responsible for carrying out the Easter Sunday serial suicide blasts in Sri Lanka that left 253 people dead and over 500 injured. The video said that the attacks were in retaliation for the loss of Baguz, ...
The Cathedral of the Resurrection of Lahore proudly exhibits a small cross in a glass case. It is known as the dubious “Taxila Cross”. When the cross was discovered in 1935, Cuthbert King, the British deputy commissioner of Rawalpindi, knew of The Acts of St Thomas and seized upon this find as ‘proof’ of the existence of Christianity in northwest India...
It is now confirmed that Rajiv Gandhi in 1987, when he was prime minister used the carrier INS Viraat for a family vacation for his family (Sonia’s family) and some friends. A carrier does not go alone. It is accompanied by escort vessels like destroyers, frigates and a submarine or two. So what you have is not a carrier, but a carrier group or carrier...
Sri Lanka, Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019: More than half a dozen bomb blasts shook the country killing from 250 to more than 350 people. Depending on who counts, the death toll varies. The devastation took place in in several Catholic churches and luxury hotels. Other explosions, including from – what they say – are suicide bombers, have since killed...
As the country is observing the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, there are voices – some quite shrill and strident – exhorting fellow countrymen to come out of his lingering influence in one area where he failed miserably – communal harmony or, more bluntly, Hindu-Muslim relations. One such voice is Radha Rajan, whose latest book, The Shrinking Hin...
In Indonesia, both presidential candidates have declared victory, just a few days after the elections that were held on 17th April, 2019. Both of them are pro-business, both Muslim, and both insist that the Communist Party should continue to be banned. Neither of them is even thinking about stopping their country from committing one of the bloodiest genocide...