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Written on April 19th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
A columnist of the New York Times made a cryptic but deeply meaningful comment on COVID-19. He wrote, “The corona virus is more like an earthquake, with aftershocks that will permanently reshape the world.”
Instead of talking about recovery from the wildly spreading virus, pragmatism demands that we focus on what shape the world economy, governments and social institutions will take even if we are able to control the scourge in next six months. We need to visualize the new direction which civilization is likely to shape in the near future. Continue Reading…
Written on April 17th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
Under the headline ‘China didn’t warn public of likely pandemic for 6 key days’, Pakistan’s widely circulated newspaper Dawn published the deeply researched report of the Associated Press. The report gives an exceptional peep into the sordid story of China’s handling of the deadly pandemic, which put succinctly, has been a stinging concoction of cluelessness, hysterical secrecy, and punitive reprisal measures against the leakage of news. Continue Reading…
Written on April 8th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
“The Tablighi Jamaat had in 2010 over 80 million followers spread out over more than 150 countries. The exact numbers are difficult to track because the Jamaat doesn’t follow a centralized system”, wrote the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project in Washington. Continue Reading…
Written on March 30th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
How sad that some intransigent people in some parts of the country fail to listen to the warnings issued by the government at various levels. No less a person than the Prime Minister repeatedly said that he would request the public with folded hands to stay back home and not come out on streets to make crowds. The reason for this kind of unique appeal and with such a profound humility by the highest authority in the country deserves extraordinary regard and response. Continue Reading…
Written on March 27th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
“Sikhs have suffered widespread discrimination in the conservative Muslim country (Afghanistan) and have also been targeted by Islamic extremists. Under Taliban rule in the late 1990s, they were asked to identify themselves by wearing yellow armbands, but the rule was not enforced. In recent years, large numbers of Sikhs and Hindus have sought asylum in India, which has a Hindu majority and a large Sikh population. Continue Reading…
Written on March 19th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
Iran has joined three other Islamic countries to express “anguish” on what they call “killing of Muslims” in recent communal riots in north-eastern Delhi. Turkey and Malaysia lost no time to react angrily on the incident. The OIC has also given vent to similar statement. Continue Reading…
Written on March 6th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
Iran has joined three other Islamic countries to express anguish on what they call “killing of Muslims” in recent communal riots in north-eastern Delhi. Turkey and Malaysia lost no time to react adversely on the incident. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has also given vent to a similar outburst. Continue Reading…
Written on March 5th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
Iran is different from other Middle East countries. Iranians are descended from the Aryan and not Semitic stock. The Shia-Sunni sectarian divide is an important factor in assessing Iran-Arab relations. Though Shia Islam is Iran’s state religion and she has made a valuable contribution to the enrichment of Islamic civilization, yet ethnic divide obstructed harmonizing of relations. Iran never forgave the Sunni Arabs for denying Ali (Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law) and his progeny the right of succession to the Islamic caliphate after the demise of the Prophet of Islam. Continue Reading…
Written on March 1st, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
Stakeholders in the 19-year old US-Taliban war in Afghanistan exude happiness over the signing of the peace deal on Saturday in Doha, the capital of Qatar. It is more than a year that the sides were pursuing the deal but hurdles cropped up unexpectedly only to defer the clenching of the peace. The last time peace talks were suspended by President Trump when, in retaliation to the killing of an American soldier by the Taliban in Afghanistan, he had broken negotiations unilaterally. However, it took a great deal of effort on the part of peaceniks on both sides to put things back on the rails and resume talks. Continue Reading…
Written on February 24th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
Turkish President Erdogan was recently on a two-day visit to Pakistan. He addressed the joint session of the two houses in Islamabad besides holding a joint press conference with the Pakistan Prime Minister. In his address to the previous UN General Assembly, Erdogan was critical about India on Kashmir. Despite attempts by Prime Minister Modi to iron out angularities with Turkey things did not improve. Continue Reading…
Written on January 15th, 2020 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
After some select Asian countries, China, India, and Pakistan achieved nuclear capability, its impact on regional strategy was obvious. Even repercussions of the neo-proliferation possibility had its impact on regional strategy in the Asian continent. Its reverberations were also noticeable in the Western world. As long as the nuclear monopoly rested with the UK, Russia, and France on the European continent, and with the US as the team leader, the talk of real nuclear threat to the world remained much subdued. Continue Reading…
Written on December 23rd, 2019 in Editor's page by heidi
If not democracy then what?
By K.N. Pandita
Anti-CAA demonstrations took violent turn in some Muslim dominated districts of the country. Rowdy crowds have inflicted huge damages on public property. This raises an important question. Have the people of this country taken to the spirit of democracy during the seventy-three years of popular governance? In the course of its long stint in power since independence, the Congress has been claiming with great élan that it is making an enviable experiment of moderating Indian Muslims by using a proven tool called secular democratic dispensation as is enshrined in the Constitution. Continue Reading…
Written on December 13th, 2019 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
The opposition in the Parliament has gone mad on the CAB. It has many components, and each component has its own reasons to oppose CAB. There is no convergence on the question of why to oppose the bill. Muslim leaders like Owaisi and others of his flock oppose it because the bill exposes the hyperbole that Islam or an Islamic State is equitable to the people of non-Islamic faith. Congress opposes it because the bill creates serious doubts among its Muslim constituency about Congress’ effectiveness to speak for them. TMC opposes it because Mamta has burnt her boats with the Hindus of Bengal and, therefore, she must cling to the Muslim vote, right or wrong, for her survival. This is how religion is politicized. Continue Reading…
Written on July 9th, 2019 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita (from July 4, 2019)
Rahul Gandhi’s resignation issue in the aftermath of Congress’ second consecutive defeat in the parliamentary election was dramatized for several weeks, albeit unnecessarily. People in the country and especially several rungs of the Congress hierarchy knew he had no option but to be out. Rahul tried to win as much sympathy as he could from the younger generation in his organization which is evident was noticed when he mentioned that some senior Congress leaders were pushing their wards, obviously against his wishes because he did not like the path blocked for the younger Congressmen. Continue Reading…
Written on July 9th, 2019 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita (from July 2, 2019)
The US has withdrawn from the US-Iran nuclear deal arguing that the deal is imbalanced and inequitable. Iran says she has stuck to the terms of the deal but would resumption of enrichment of uranium for manufacturing nuclear device since the US has broken the deal. The US is determined to coerce Iran into abandoning enrichment of uranium. One coercive tactics used by the US is of imposing sanctions on Iranain oil supplies. She has warned major oil customers of Iran like China, India and Japan not to buy Iranian oil because it alleges Iran uses oil booty to fuel terrorism sponsored by Iranian terrorists in the Middle East. Continue Reading…
Written on June 15th, 2019 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
Hours before leaving for the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meet, Prime Minister Imran Khan in an interview to Sputnik, a Russian news agency, blew hot and cold in the same breath. He began his interview like an astute statesman but at the end sadly watered down all the logic by crying foul against India on Kashmir. Did Pak army’s Zarb-i-azab operation in North Waziristan backfire in which nearly 70 thousand people including about 8 thousand troopers were slaughtered? No, and Pak army was happy to receive accolades from the Pentagon for the killings. Continue Reading…
Written on June 14th, 2019 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
India and Iran, the two Asiatic neighbours are the inheritors of a rich and ancient civilization. Their peoples trace ethnic commonality in the Aryan saga of the hoary past. Their dialects are sourced in the Vedic Sanskrit. Continue Reading…
Written on June 3rd, 2019 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
Days ahead of the parliamentary election in our country, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan remarked in a press briefing that with a right-wing government in New Delhi chances for the resumption of Indo-Pak talks would brighten. As such, the landslide victory of BJP and Narendra Modi – led government would be a consolation for Imran peaceniks in Pakistan. Continue Reading…
Written on May 6th, 2019 in Editor's page by heidi
By K.N. Pandita
With financial crunch tightening its stranglehold with each passing day, Islamabad is re-evaluating some fundamentals of its domestic and foreign policy with which country’s economic stability is closely liked. Continue Reading…
Written on April 30th, 2019 in Editor's page by heidi
Daily Excelsior
Dear Sir
Apropos B.L. Saraf’s “Ram Janam Bhumi …..etc. (DE 29 April). The author rightly apologizes for comparing the otherwise incomparable two civilizational icons of Ram temple and Notre Dame but fortunately hastens to seek protection behind Victor Hugo’s altruism of “learning the art of seeing.” In the first place, Notre Dame was built by a nation that knew how to fight or die for keeping the nation free including its historical and cultural vestiges whereas Ram Janam temple was destroyed by a people who considered it their religious duty to destroy the vestiges of their ancestral civilization because their new faith was anchored elsewhere thousands of miles away from their motherland. Continue Reading…