Peace is one of the most basic human desires. In a negative sense, peace stands for "absence of discord, disharmony and conflict," while in the positive sense it means "cooperation, harmony and mutual goodwill." Justice and fair play are obvious preconditions for peace and without ensuring justice in the society peace will remain elusive. Another precondition is the existence of a rational and humane social order which keeps individuals well knit with another, conscious of...

The two persons responsible for introducing economic reforms in 1991 to liberalize the Indian economy were the current Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and Harvard-educated Finance Minister Chidambaram. This year, 2007, India and Israel celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of their bilateral relations. While this phase marks a significant shift in India’s foreign and trade policies, relations with Israel (albeit low-profile) pre-date this period, going back to the 1970s when Israel...

"How can we get a bottle of ‘Daroo’ when both you and I are empty-pocketed right now?" The newly recruited young Hawaldar glared at his senior colleague. The exorbitant-bellied Hawaldar waved his right hand. "What’s the use of our being ‘public sevaks’ if we can’t get two free drinks?!" "Free?" "Yeah, free, the Dhaba is illegal, the bastard has no license to sell Desi Daroo and so he keeps two bottles for me everyday&helli...

Our country is celebrating 60 years of our political independence. It is a fit occasion to take stock of our performance during the long years vis-a-vis targets set for the period. It is said the three colours in the flag signify important national inspirations. The saffron is supposed to represent the high ideals of sacrifice, detachment and renunciation whereas the white colour stands for purity and uncontaminated and unadulterated truth. The green colour represents prosperity, abundance, e...

Cultural suicide that the globe is witnessing during the recent decades has scared only a few searching souls. It is no surprise that the Muslim youth, like the frenzied young everywhere, have been dazzled by the western culture, promoted in the name of globalisation and living in a modern world.

Long ago, youth like Maryam Jamilah, who were raised in New York, London, Paris, Moscow and Tokyo, warned the Muslim youth about the tragic consequences of blindly copying the glittering west...

Women’s liberation and emancipation are popular slogans in the West, but with little credibility plying along. Islam has guaranteed everlasting rights from the very birth of the female up to her death, actually even further. But reality rudely checks in all the noble and high bestowals deemed upon this section of mankind by the religion of creation. We look at Muslim women in India, a nation that has a rich multicultural heritage which has inevitably led to a lot of rewriting and overwr...

Imperialism means different things to different sets of people. When the Europeans arrived in Africa they faced little resistance and soon snatched almost the entire western and southern part of that continent from the native Black rulers. The Negroes were hunted down and massacred and millions of them were shifted to the new land of America to work as slaves. In countries like Congo, according to author Adam Hochschild, the Belgians, killed between one and 1.2 crore (10 to 12 million) people...

Terrorism and Muslims have become synonymous. Be it fact or fiction, that may be a completely different matter, yet the media is certainly projecting such a scenario. Whenever and wherever any terrorist activity takes place in the world, from the very first moment, media pronounces judgement that it is the handiwork of Muslims. Electronic media takes lead, print media follow suit, politicians also take cue and within a short span of time, the whole world believes that Muslims or some Muslim o...

On December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded in the bank of Agriculture in Piazza Fontanna, Milan, killing 16 people and injuring about a hundred. Soon after this a suspected anarchist, a railwayman by profession, was held for questioning at the Milan police headquarters. The suspect died when he allegedly fell from the fourth-floor window of the police interrogation room. However, it was suspected by a section of media and intelligentsia that the anarchist did not fall but was killed when he was to...

Five years into President Bush's declaration of the “global war on terrorism,” the latest State Department report shows a 25 per cent increase in worldwide terrorist attacks over the previous year. Terrorism is an abominable tactics, not an ideology. Thus declaring “war” against it, while politically expeditious, is in reality temerarious, as it only attacks the symptom without addressing the cause.
Global patterns show that terrorism is not exclusive to any one...

For the first time in history, on April 28, 1915, a group of 1,200 women from warring and neutral countries named the International Congress for Women came together to protest against World War I at The Hague in the Netherlands. This later became the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Thus began a century in which women and their organisations and movements mobilized in support of peace and disarmament.
During the Cold War, women lobbied against arms stockpili...