Opinions and Editorials

Here is a hypothetical question. You are the head of a counter-terrorist force in Bombay. It is 26/11. Terrorists are spreading havoc in the city. You don't know how many of them there are or what they are planning. But thanks to the sacrifices of a few brave policemen, Ajmal Kasab arrives in your custody.

Books on Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founding father of Pakistan, will fill many shelves of a library. We assume that all that could be known about him has been recorded and there is little new material to bring to light besides interpreting his role in Indian politics leading to the Partition of the country in August 1947.

It's so Thamel. "When I Miss Pattaya, you come running Rangeela." The comment appears to be about a transvestite beauty contest held annually at a fleshpot in Thailand. It is followed by a Kurosawa growl. I'm in Itta, a dimly lit, monsoon-musty, handkerchief-sized Japanese eatery.

We all have dreamt great dreams, had great visions right from the innocent times of our childhood. But due to lack of encouragement from our elders and contemporaries, they fade away to the darkness of some remote corners of our hearts. Some very predominant ones may be rekindled in future, depending on many factors, whereas others just wither and die down.

A year ago, tiny Georgia tried to regain control over its breakaway enclave of South Ossetia. The Russians quickly expelled the Georgian army, to almost universal opprobrium from the West.

The statement of Mohan Bhagwat, sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) , on the importance of ideology has put a question mark on the future of senior BJP leaders. Bhagwat's message to the BJP cadres, mostly drawn from the RSS, is that the party is in a mess because it has deviated from its ideology. Therefore, the only way to restore sanity is to go back to its core beliefs.

That old grandmother of languages, long kept on a ventilator by outdated school curricula, is being given a fresh lease of life by a group of determined enthusiasts. So while in Lucknow, an e-tutorial project aims to put a module of courses online to enable people to study Sanskrit, an academy in Gujarat is using the lure of Bollywood to resuscitate a near-dead language.

It's difficult to not give into the many temptations that the big, bad world lures us into every moment. Even hunkering in front of a computer screen and attempting to look busy has its own problems, Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) to be precise. But there's always hope.

Nuclear testing will always attract an unusual degree of public attention. One, it is a technological accomplishment which has over the decades developed an unusual aura of cultural symbolism. Two, its very nature means it cannot be carried out in a transparent nature.

What is it about Mohammad Ali Jinnah that draws pensive BJP leaders like moths to a naked flame? The Indian public is indifferent to the creator of Pakistan, but the BJP's amateur historians can't keep away from him. They must go on romantic quests for true, pristine secularism.

Arriving in Mexico from New York, the balmy weather, the fragrance of vaguely familiar tropical flowers and the shades of brown into which I, as an Indian, effortlessly blend, make for a heady atmosphere. To get to Oaxaca one has to change planes in Mexico City.

The opaque glass that screened all information about the assets of our judiciary has now been replaced with a clear one. But, you can only look through it from a distance. After years of wrangling, the Supreme Court has finally agreed to make public the assets and liabilities of its judges on a website.

India has set itself an underwhelming trade target for the next five years, with hopes of matching its performance in the previous five riding on a global recovery. The country has doubled its merchandise exports in the five years since 2004, and is content with redoubling them by 2014.

Once it is granted that in India we practise a different kind of secularism, a secularism unique to us, it becomes very difficult not to grant the same status to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. This may seem bizarre given that some of those are avowed theocratic States.

As hooks for controversy, personalities are more tempting than amorphous ideas. As such, much of the debate following Jaswant Singh's new book, Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence, has focused on the writer's appraisal of key individuals. Singh's book is sympathetic towards Muhammad Ali Jinnah, seeing him as a tragic hero.