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India and Pakistan have stepped up the rhetoric to a point where the terrorists have been given the key to conflict between the two nations. One act of terror now will leave the UPA government with no option but to declare war, with Pakistan having already taken itself into battle mould with fighter jets flying over key cities and the army amassing at the borders with India.
There seems to be little concern in either capital about the consequences of the war rhetoric. Senior (…)

(Published earlier in The Hindu)
The path to peace in Chhattisgarh lies in implementing the court’s orders.
— Photo: Akhilesh Kumar [Caption] Women wait for their turn to vote in Nagarnar, Bastar. In Konta, Bijapur and Dantewada, no one who was adversely affected by the Salwa Judum was able to vote.
Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s December 17 statement in Parliament dissociating the Union Government from ‘non-state actors’ like the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh is a welcome step. (…)

[The Daily Star >http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=69273]
Standing at many intersections. What were the arguments in favour of secularism? In the 1960s, a push-back against West Pakistani colonisation. In 1971, it was simply and joyfully, a decisive rejection of the Pakistan model. Later in the 1980s, it was also expanded to explain that religion was for private space, inner life, spiritual healing; but not for politics. Now in this decade, we also insistently (…)

sacw.net, 28 December 2008 Karachi is much like Bombay (as we have always called it) in many respects. Filmmaker Anand Patwardhan on a visit here once commented that it reminded him of Bombay thirty years ago. One of their similarities, besides the Arabian Sea lapping their shores, is being home to hordes of migrant workers, like Ahmed Sher.
Ahmed Sher came to Karachi from his impoverished native village in southern Punjab some thirty years ago in order to earn and send money home, working (…)

Hindustan Times
The mood here is not jingoistic and there is no beating of the drums of war. But it is grim all the same with some army units being pulled out from the western marches for deployment on the eastern front and the military in a state of “high alert”.
Mumbai has slipped into the background and the dynamic of Indo-Pak confrontation — something with which both countries are all too familiar — has taken over. Apart from the usual suspects mouthing the usual clichés about giving (…)