ISSUES AND CONCERNS

INDIAN HISTORY: SHOULD WE REWRITE IT! Sanjaan was a well known port in the Valsad district in the coastal Gujarat state. According to sources among Parsis, they migrated to India between the year 785 AD and 936 AD at the height of their persecution in their land of birth in the distant Persia, which is the later day Iran. They were a very prosperous, civilized and cultured community. They came in search of security of their persona and security for their faith. Having trusted their land of migration, they remained unconditionally faithful to the soil of their adoption and in return they remained completely protected in an atmosphere of peace and stability. Parsis prospered and flourished. Rest as the cliché goes, is a resplendent history and a glorious public knowledge. But sadly, did not find itself written into the pages of India’s evolving history. Why and how of it could be some interesting reading of some calculated disinformation/misinformation effort of some vested interest grou...

NEW DELHI: Since a week or so in the print media, electronic media and so also social media collectively called public space, the issue of rejection of tableau for display on 26th January Republic Day parade at Rajpath was making its interminable rounds. Earliest to make noise was the rejection of the tableau of Guru Narayana, a venerated social reformer of Kerala. Whether it was the Left government at Thiruvanantapuram or the most dominant community of Kerala, the Idiga’s, so also Billawas of Coastal Karnataka, all went to the market crying hoarse and rightly so. Clearly their feelings were hurt. Then comes Tamil Nadu with its history of the Southern State depicting “Tamil Nadu in the Freedom Struggle”, with heroes of the soil, beginning with highlighting the achievements of its legendary heroes and heroines, like V. O. Chidambaram (VOC) a.k.a. ‘Kappalottiya Thamizhan’, a pioneer in indigenous shipping company among the earliest to compete against the British. Reportedly the 150th bir...

SYED WASEEM RIZWI & ALI AKBAR CHANGING DYNAMICS OF AN EVOLVING INDIA & ITS RELEVANCE December 7, 2021, English newspapers carried a news item in its inside pages “Ex-Chief of Shia Waqf Board in UP converts to Hinduism”. One paper said “Wasim Rizwi is now Jitendra Narayan Singh Tyagi!”. Different papers titled it differently. But none of the papers coined their title as Ex-Chief of Shia Waqf Board leaves Islam or Wasim Rizwi has left Islam. What is important is not what he has become as from 7th December 2021. But why has he changed the status quo? What really made him to embrace another faith is less important than what forced him to give up a faith he was born into and practiced it for close to 50 years? There must have been some very pertinent, disturbing and profound reasons, disturbing to Syed Wasim Rizwi, more than anybody else. Another day and another individual. An eminent Malayalam film director, 58 years old Ali Akbar, announced on 11th December 2021 that he and his w...

NEW DELHI:Shashi Tharoor, the MP from Thiruvanantapuram has a fairly well deserved label of being an intellectual, besides a mastery in Queen’s English. But then, these accolades do not mean that people like Tharoor cannot lose a sense of proportion. And, that is exactly what happened with Shashi Tharoor recently. Speaking to Associated News of India, the Member of Parliament from Kerala is reported to have remarked “Citizenship Amendment Act is fundamentally anti-national”. Clearly he has decided to care less for logic and more for his kind of politics.Whatever the reason he is ascribing to this outlandish remark, he is clearly reading without the book. He needs to update his knowledge of the fundamental basis on which this particular enactment was deliberated and legislated. The Britishers partitioned the country because the Muslim League wanted their piece of land since they felt unsafe to live in a Hindu majority India. So Pakistan was created and most Muslims migrated to the ne...