Contemporary developments in India’s foreign policy are often based on perceptions and not facts, views divorced from reality and political advocacy based on make-believe. India’s approach to the Sri Lankan issue and the vote in the Human Rights Council (HRC) is a case in point. Variously described as a “new low” in our foreign policy […]
Since the end of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war in 2009, the government has clearly been focusing on expansion, with new investments in infrastructure and the private sector that are helping to spur growth and contributing to an increase in disposable income and rising consumerism. While this growth is largely positive, there has also been […]
As a defender of Tamil rights, Karunanidhi is in competition with the state’s Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. She has been proactive on this front, recently ordering a school football team home from Colombo, even going to the extent of suspending a sports official. Under her watch as Chief Minister, ordinary Sri Lankans (including Tamils) have been […]
If the pressure being brought to bear by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and other Tamil political parties and groups on the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to take a strong stand against Sri Lanka in the Human Rights Council (HRC) is aimed at helping the Tamil minority in that country, it is unlikely to […]
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has denied that the Army killed LTTE chief Prabakaran’s 12-year-old son Balachandran. “Had it happened, I would have known [it]. It is obvious that if somebody [from the armed forces] had done that, I must take responsibility. We completely deny it. It can’t be,” he told The Hindu in an exclusive interview. […]
NEARLY four years after its civil war ended, Sri Lanka is far from at peace over its recent history. Despite denials by the country’s leaders, notably its powerful defence secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, that Sri Lanka’s army committed war crimes in the final weeks of fighting, in 2009, troubling new evidence keeps on appearing. Read Here […]
Pundits and the press too often treat terrorism and guerrilla tactics as something new, a departure from old-fashioned ways of war. But nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout most of our species’ long and bloody slog, warfare has primarily been carried out by bands of loosely organized, ill-disciplined, and lightly armed volunteers who […]
ALMOST FOUR years ago, the Sri Lankan government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa won a decisive victory in a 26-year-long civil war with rebels from the island’s minority Tamil community. The cost was horrific: A United Nations investigation subsequently found that up to 40,000 civilians may have died in the government’s final offensive. But the triumph made Mr. […]
The New York Times recently reported that China apparently has agreed to take over the operations of a $200 million port it built for Pakistan in Gwadar, on the Indian Ocean close to the Iranian border and close to the entrance to the Persian Gulf. We’ll see if this actually happens. If it does, it will be geopolitically significant. To a […]
This is the story of how and why the framers of the Constitution of India deliberately designed a procedural error in the adoption of the new Constitution with a view to severing the seamless transition of legal authority from the British Crown-in-Parliament to the new Republic of India. The deliberate procedural error consisted in a […]
looking beyond borders 