book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized

NIXON, INDIRA AND INDIA: Politics and Beyond

At a time when India is seen, rightly or wrongly, as intensely  engaged in an effort to get closer and closer to United States, it is useful  read this book by the well- known journalist and author Kalyani Shankar. The principal theme is how Indira Gandhi was crafty enough to outwit Richard Nixon ,himself a superb practitioner  of the wicked  art of real politik, in the context of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan bringing into being Bangladesh. Those of us who are old enough do  have an idea of how Indira Gandhi did it. But Shankar by accessing the declassified US material and using her contacts with some of the major actors, including Henry Kissinger, has given us a  reasonably  comprehensive account of what happened and why it happened the way it happened. (more…)

November 10th, 2010 | category:book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized |

book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized

Book Review: CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM AT WAR

A clash of prejudices As I finished reading the book, I thought of two other books — Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. All three authors look for the big picture. Unlike the other two, however, the book under review is free from any trace of civilisational ego-centricism. Both Fukuyama and Huntington assume without providing much corroborating evidence the essential, inherent superiority of the western civilisation over others. Ambassador Talmiz Ahmed, currently posted to Saudi Arabia, is refreshingly free from such an ego-centric predicament, as historian Toynbee put it. Why is it that Ahmed is free and the other two are not? The answer is fairly simple. In addition to being an industrious scholar, the author has spent most of his 35-year career in West Asia. He has had the advantage of talking to a wide spectrum of people there, observing their behaviour and the interaction between the West and Islam. (more…)

November 10th, 2010 | category:book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized |

book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized

Book Review: A JOURNEY

Apologia for a war Given that 92,000 copies were sold in the first four days, Tony Blair has felled a large number of trees to argue a case that is seriously flawed. By sheer coincidence, as soon as the reviewer finished the book, the new Labour Party leader Ed Miliband came out with a categorical statement that the Iraq war was “wrong, wrong, wrong”. I had always thought that Tony Blair was really Tory Blair. I felt vindicated after reading the book written in the style of Christian apologetics to defend a position, not primarily to narrate what happened, how and why. (more…)

November 10th, 2010 | category:book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized |

book-reviews, books, politics, uncategorized

Book Review: JINNAH AND TILAK: Comrades in the Freedom Struggle

By A.G. Noorani Oxford University Press, Karachi Pages 465, Rs. 795 Comrades in the Freedom Struggle      The book under review by the eminent scholar- cum- advocate A. G.  Noorani was published in Pakistan and it will attract much attention and debate in India. Noorani's thesis, argued with formidable skill and compelling documentary support, is that Jinnah started as a secular nationalist. The British considered him one among their most formidable opponents. Gandhi did not treat Jinnah courteously. Jinnah was opposed to Gandhi's political philosophy and importing of religion into politics. Yet, Jinnah showed remarkable tact and patience and tried hard to work with the Congress till the Hindu fundamentalists in the Congress made it impossible for him to remain there with dignity. (more…)

July 07th, 2010 | category:book-reviews, books, politics, uncategorized |

international-affairs, uncategorized

Aristotle vs. Greenspan

Even as the global economic crisis aggravates, all that the governments have done so far is to inject money into the market. According to the Bank of England, the global financial firms have lost $2.8 trillion and governments have pumped into them $5 trillion of tax-payers’ money. Yet, the banks are not lending. The White House has urged them (October28) to start lending. Clearly, the band aids have failed to stem the hemorrhage. (more…)

October 04th, 2009 | category:international-affairs, uncategorized |

international-affairs, uncategorized

Most unpopular war in history

Why did the leaders of the international community choose the Azores islands, almost midway between Europe and America for a summit? In order to underline the importance they attach to trans-Atlantic solidarity? No. The choice was made in order to escape from anti-war demonstrators. Even as the leading lights of the ‘coalition of the willing', the chiefs of government of United States of America, United Kingdom, Spain, and Portugal were meeting and taking the world perilously close to a big war, Jose Saramago, the Nobel laureate Portuguese writer taking part in one of the many demonstrations throughout the world said: "We are marching against the law of the jungle that the United States and its acolytes old and new want to impose." (more…)

March 05th, 2009 | category:international-affairs, uncategorized |

book-reviews, books, uncategorized

Book Review: Hannah Arendt and International Relations

Edited by Antony F.Lang, Jr. and John Williams Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2005, pages 236 There are nine papers in all, written by six scholars, two of whom double up as editors. All the writers are university teachers, with four of them teaching International Relations(IR). Hannah Arendt never wrote on IR as such. But, the editors believe that it is possible to gain insights of value in IR from philosophers even if they do not directly theorize on IR. So far no attempt has been made to find out to what extent the ideas of Arendt can be invoked into IR. This book is the first such attempt. (more…)

March 05th, 2009 | category:book-reviews, books, uncategorized |

international-affairs, speeches, uncategorized

India at sixty

We shall, and we should celebrate the first sixty years of our political independence. It is natural to celebrate. There is much to celebrate. At the same time ,we should also do something that is not so natural to us: to introspect. What have we as a people done with the sixty years that have elapsed? How have we filled them? Could we have done better? Such introspection that we have in mind should be undertaken with humility and objectivity. We should exaggerate neither our failures nor our successes. As Shakespeare put it: This above all :to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. (more…)

March 05th, 2009 | category:international-affairs, speeches, uncategorized |

international-affairs, uncategorized

Commonsense on terror

All human beings minus those who mistakenly believe that they gain from acts of terrorism want to live in a terror-free world. Those who believe that they stand to gain from acts of terrorism are a small minority . That minority can be divided into two lots, one, those who plan and carry out the acts, and two, those who believe that in the name of fighting terror they can consolidate and prolong their hold on power. (more…)

March 05th, 2009 | category:international-affairs, uncategorized |