It is everybody’s knowledge that Rama belonged to the Ikshvaku race who ruled from Ayodhya located in north east India. But a reading of Valmiki Ramayana reveals that someone identified as Rama’s ancestors once lived in North West India, long before Rama’s times, in a region that bears close resemblance to Swat region of Afghanistan. Fortunately,...
Kartik Purnima, the day of full moon in the month of Kartik, is an important occasion in the Somnath temple in Saurashtra. The very name Somnath evokes strong emotions in Hindus for the numerous assaults struck on Somnath temple in the past. But what many had forgotten in the din is the silent sojourn of Soma, the Moon, across the temple of Somnath on every ...
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to boost efforts by the world’s largest Muslim movement to recontextualize Islam during a forthcoming visit to Indonesia as part of a three-nation Asian tour. The tour is likely to be the secretary’s last official trip prior to next month’s US presidential election. Mr. Pompeo’s engagement with Nahdlatul Ulama,...
In addition to the United States and Qatar’s active development of relations and cooperation, observers’ attention is drawn to the growing ties between Qatar and Turkey, which are perceived ambiguously in the region. Today, Turkey and Qatar are militarily, intellectually and ideologically intertwined. A security cooperation agreement signed in 2014 led to a ...
Russians are amazed by the waves of madness washing over the United States. The recent riots, looting, destruction of memorials, hardball election politics and rumours of impending civil war do not fit the US image in Russian eyes. A Latin American country, say, Colombia or Guatemala, perhaps, but not the United States. The country they admired so much is no...
Secular means not connected with spiritual or religious matters. The Cambridge dictionary defines secularism the belief that religion should not be involved with the ordinary social and political activities of a country. How far is this true in India and the world at large? Sanatana Dharma is possibly the only civilisation that has exhortations like Vasudeva...
The French Revolution was not triggered by royal abuse. The French did not think they would overthrow the monarchy. It was the Parisians, convinced that the capital would be attacked by foreign armies and that the king would not defend it, who seized the weapons that were stored in the Bastille prison. * Historically, the crisis of the West began with the ...
In the Karabakh War, contemporary law is contradictory depending on whether it is interpreted in terms of ownership of the territory or the self-determination of the people. Taking advantage of this equivocation, the Turkish people (i.e., both Turkey and Azerbaijan) have just attacked this territory, self-proclaimed independent (Artsakh) although de facto li...
Vaali vadham had been a controversial one that had invited a number of interpretations for ages. But many interpretations had failed to justify the way Rama killed Vali. But Rama as perfect embodiment of Dharma can never be wrong. He can never be thought to have slipped from dharma at any time in Ramavadhara. Even otherwise as Brahman, He cannot be said ...
Symbolism is in fact the message given by Scriptures and Ithihasas. It starts right from the Vedas. Rig Veda is full of connotations that can be deciphered only by enlightened minds. To an ordinary reader they would look like abstract thoughts sprung from mystic minds. But that they are not so is what all the later works starting from Upanishads...
The world began its countdown to the most dramatic event of this dramatic year, to the US Presidential elections. Will Trump make it? Will this great orange man who beat Coronavirus and came back from the clutches of death manage to beat Sleepy Joe and his multitudes? Or will the Dems take us all into the night of eternal lockdown, where heavily armed...
Censorship in the West flourishes as tech giants turn social media back into traditional programmed media. The United States, United Kingdom and the European Union are fond of passing judgement on nations around the globe regarding “free speech.” While it is increasingly clear to a growing number of people that this “concern” is disingenuous and aimed at...
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan didn’t mince his words at this month’s opening of parliament. In his first assertion of a claim to a lost non-Turkic part of the Ottoman empire, Mr. Erdoğan declared that Jerusalem is Turkish. “In this city, which we had to leave in tears during the First World War, it is still possible to come across traces of the Otto...
The normalization of relations between countries in the Arab world and Israel is an extraordinary event, and therefore signing the peace agreements with the UAE and Bahrain – in Washington under Donald Trump’s hawk-eyed gaze – caused a flurry of comments, analytical articles, reports, and just plain speculation. But there is something that all these material...
Despite the fact that agriculture has been developed for many thousands of years, humanity is still forced to get some of the food it consumes from the wild. For example, a significant portion of people’s diet worldwide is comprised of fish from oceans and rivers. The chief consumer of fish and seafood nowadays is China. For example, in 2015 the Celestial Em...
Over recent weeks a series of events in the states surrounding the Russian Federation has erupted that certainly are not being greeted with joy in the Kremlin. Each crisis center of itself is not a definitive game-changer for future Russian security. Taken together they suggest something far more ominous is unfolding against Moscow. A recent RAND study prepa...
Despite the fact that there are no messages that would cause any alarm from Libyan media outlets in recent days, the situation in this country is still far from normal, but rather has only taken a temporary (and alarming) pause. According to reports from Libya Al Ahrar TV channel, the split in Tripoli has become even more pronounced due to the talks being ...
On Saturday, October 3, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Atal Tunnel. It holds huge strategic and social significance for the country and specifically for Himachal Pradesh and the Union Territory of Ladakh. The Atal Tunnel will reduce the road journey from Manali to Lahaul-Spiti and onwards to Ladakh by at least four to five hours. More imp...
Public opinion polling in the Arab world suggests that autocratic leaders like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his UAE counterpart, Mohammed bin Zayed, have gotten some things right. Both men have to varying degrees replaced religion with nationalism as the ideology legitimizing their rule and sought to ensure that countries in the region broadly ...
The status of this much touted sunshine act, 15 years on, can be summed up in one word - murdered. Murdered by the very Information Commissioners who were tasked, empowered, equipped and paid to enforce it. It is said that the law is like a cobweb, insects get caught but birds just fly through. In the case of the Right to Information Act, it’s much worse....
The current situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan has shown the world the dangers of secret pacts and ancient grudges as a new “August 1914” moves toward reality. As early as 2012, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and the Gulf States began arming al Qaeda and ISIS, deploying them against both Syria and Iraq. Other nations aided as well, not just the US, Franc...
The US is heating up so many irons in so many different fires: new sanctions on Iran, (old one reintroduced) new allegations and arm twisting with China over COVID 19 and Chinese tech companies, and now threats of sanctions against German companies which work together with the Russians in the Nord Stream 2 underwater gas pipeline project. Despite the fact G...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently stressed the need for India to become self-reliant, atmanirbhar. The genesis of this call is rooted in the standoff with China on the borders. China has shown aggression and India is resisting through its military might but also retaliating through economic measures. As per available statistics, India imported goods wort...
The country and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman saw their chairmanship as an opportunity to showcase the kingdom’s leadership and ability to be a visionary global player. But plans to dazzle the grouping and international community with glamorous events in which officials, experts, analysts and faith representatives would develop proposed cutting-edge solut...
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict certainly had its origins in the dissolution of the USSR, but it was revived by the will of the Turkish president. It is unlikely that he took this initiative without first referring it to Washington. This is also what President Saddam Hussein did before invading Kuwait, falling by ambition into the trap set for him and causing ...
Diplomatic parleys to diffuse the situation between India and China in eastern Ladakh are being carried out with great urgency. Towards this end, the sixth virtual meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on border affairs was held on October 01, 2020. The thrust was to take forward the “five-point consensus” between the fore...
Political scientists Alan Chong and Quang Min Pham bring with their edited volume originality as well as dimensions and perspectives to the discussion about the Belt and Road that are highly relevant but often either unrecognized or underemphasized. The book is about much more than the material aspects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In fact, various ch...
The month of September 2020 was a crucial one for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who has been impatiently waiting to gain two-thirds majority support in the parliament in the parliamentary poll, to go ahead with his agenda. Gaining it with the reaffirmation of Sinhala majority has given him confidence to handle the nation facing unprecedented economic woes du...
One of the intriguing issues of Ramayana is that it says that Rama ruled for 11,000 years. His father Dasaratha also was said to have lived for 60,000 years. Information like this makes the ‘rational’ one dismiss the very history of Rama. There is nothing irrational or fictional about it if we know some basics of Time computation in olden days. First of...
In Valmiki Ramayana 1-3 where the plan of the Epic is described, we come across a verse “Vaidehyaah ca visarjanam” (1-3-38) stating that Valmiki described in the Epic the exile of Sita and also how Rama ruled the country. This means Uttara kanda was composed by Valmiki only. In the next verse it is stated he had written ‘anAgatam ca’ - what is going to come...
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t miss a beat during his address to the United Nations General Assembly, insisting that he, unlike the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, would not accept a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is not endorsed by the Palestinians. Mr. Erdogan’s solemn pledge may earn him brownie points with large segmen...