December 09, 2006

Dr Manmohan Singh claims the heritage of Gandhiji. He travelled in the rail compartment from which Gandhiji was thrown out in South Africa with much fanfare. But is he following the policies suggested by Gandhi? Gandhi was a strict proponent of economic sovereignty of the country. His thinking can be best understood by comparing with that of Dadabhai Naoroji and Jamshedji Tata.
Naoroji advocated the policy of growing within the unjust economic order imposed by the British. In 1901 he wrote (…)

Secular souls went gaga over the miserable showing of the BJP in the Assembly elections in Kerala last May. Not only did the Hindutva party fail to win a single seat, a number of its stalwarts fared miserably. O. Rajagopal, who was a Minister in the A.B. Vajpayee Government and is reportedly popular in the State, could only finish third in Palakkad where the outfit boasts of sizeable pockets of influence. History thus repeated itself for the Kerala BJP, which has drawn a blank in every (…)

So Many Journeys by Shiela Gujral; Allied Publishers Private Limited, New Delhi; Rs 295.
It is maintained that a creative writer takes to biographical writing when he or she finds the creative in him or her drying up. Rajinder Singh Bedi, the renowned Urdu short story writer, once shared this fear with me: “Duggal, I dread the day when I would go dry.”
Blissfully, it is not at all true of the author of the book under review. Shiela Gujral is as active, as prolific as a (…)

Rejoinder to Sreedhar’s “Separate Telangana: Beginning of the End” Telangana is today a hot issue and something no party can ignore to address. It has become imperative for every political party worth the name in Andhra Pradesh to acknowledge the issue of separate Telangana. That the Congress-I and Telangana Rashtra Samiti had a political alliance and ‘controversial’ understanding on the demand of a separate State during the last elections that dethroned Telugu Desam does not (…)

The recent decision of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) supremo and Union Minister for Labour and Employment, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, to quit the UPA Government at the Centre for its failure to form a separate State of Telangana merits an analytical consideration.
As a matter of fact, the UPA Government has shown statesmanship in taking a firm decision on the demand of the TRS which has once again brought the issue of the creation of small States into sharp focus. It may be recalled that (…)

The Jai Telangana Movement (JTM) has once again attracted the national headlines. The movement that evoked popular response in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh in 1969 is back to square one. It reminds one of those momentous events which happened in the wake of the ‘Paris commune’, a century ago! Incidentally, such youth movements were being organised at home and abroad during that period. The rise of the Naxalite movement in various parts of India is a case in point. At the (…)

The concept of human rights presupposes that the individual himself is the basis of rights. The realisation of such rights must depend on the actualisation of these rights in individual relations.1 The major ideological division is between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism. It is necessary to discuss ethical reasoning on human rights within the cosmopolitan/communitarian divide in the era of globalisation. A discussion of cosmopolitanism supporting the liberal idea needs a communitarian (…)

Shinzo Abe, the newly elected Prime Minister of Japan, is generally considered to be a hawk and a nationalist. He has declared that he wants to make Japan ‘a country that is trusted and loved’ by the entire world. In his first address to the Japanese parliament he announced that he wants to pursue pro-active diplomacy including an aggressive pursuit of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, an honour many feel that Japan has clearly earned. He also expressed his willing-ness to engage (…)

The government’s decision to set up a National Human Rights Commission is a significant indication of its being able to read the signs of the times. The Prime Minister has made the eloquent claim about his government’s commitment to upholding human rights: “We must send a clear message that we do not tolerate violation of human rights.” He at the same time conceded that “there is need to identify the weaknesses, the gaps between pronouncements and action, and between legislation and its (…)

While Union Coal Minister Shibu Soren’s conviction and sentence on grave charges of abduction and murder has caused acute embarrassment to the UPA dispensation at the Centre and the Opposition BJP has predictably seized the opportunity to corner the ruling coalition with renewed vigour, one of the principal supporters of the Central Government—the CPM—has been placed in an unenviable position for the overzealous advocacy of a Tata car factory at Singur in West Bengal’s Hooghly district by (…)