By T.J.S. George Indian literature is the richer for the election of Chandrashekhara Kambara as President of the Sahitya Akademi. The sad part of the story is that the distinguished Oriya writer, Pratibha Ray, was put up as a political opponent and was defeated at the polls. A novelist and academician of international fame, her commitment…
By T.J.S. George Confidence, authoritativeness and clear warning signals echoed from China’s published statements on the Maldives crisis. Keep off, it tells the UN. Any military intervention will be strongly resisted, it tells India. This is the new China rising to world leadership at a speed that is both remarkable and worrying. Usually China does…
By T.J.S. George Now that the budget has assured Devaloka by 2019, we can return to more mundane things: How the Opposition parties can unite against the BJP. The attempts made by some leaders last week were natural. Given the proliferation of parties that distinguishes our long-suffering democracy, electoral alliances are the only way to put…
By TJS George Something extraordinary happened in Kerala last week. It is a State that was taken over quite some time ago by time-servers in public life, corruption kings and one-man parties with names that incorporate the leader’s own name (Kerala Congress-M, for K.M.Mani, Kerala Congress-B, for Balakrishna Pillai). As for Communism, Kerala remains the…
By T.J.S. George Way back in 1857, a foreign journalist described India in words that seem eerily relevant today. (That is going a really long way back because 1857 was the year Indian soldiers rebelled against their British overlords in what came to be known, in Indian terms, as the first war of Independence and,…
By TJS George There’s something about royalty that excites the popular mind. Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej reigned from 1946 to 2016 to become the world’s longest reigning monarch; he was so popular that when he died, Thais wept. Japan’s ruling Emperor Akihito, the 125th in history’s longest royal line (beginning from 660 BCE), has got permission…
By TJS George Machimanda Deviah caught the spirit of our times when he posted: The black buck who was driving Salman Khan’s car had killed Arushi Talwar because she did 2G scam which jumped to death from the Adarsh building. He might have added that Adarsh, caught in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter killing, was arrested for…
By TJS George The reactions to the Gujarat election results were as boastful as the campaign rhetoric was hypocritical, proving yet again that politicians never learn anything. The BJP’s leaders were full of exaggerated claims. Congress voices were similar though the exaggerations were more modest. The khachra parties that should not have been in the…
By TJS George Small minds can create big dislocations in a democracy. When Prakash Karat says that the CPM’s purity cannot be diluted by association with bourgeois parties, when Sharad Pawar fields 72 candidates in Gujarat knowing that he cannot go beyond single digits, when Mayawati, who put up 163 candidates in 2012 and scored 0…
By TJS George No harm would have come to the Congress Party if Rahul Gandhi was named President one fine morning. Much harm was done to its image by staging a charade of an election. As many as 89 sets of nomination papers filed for Shri Gandhi. Not even one nam-ke-wastay opponent. (Dissidents? What dissidents?)…
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