Articles

By Chaitanya Mallapur & Devanik Saha , New Delhi: A death sentence – such as the one handed to Yakub Memon, lone convict of the...

By Qamar-ul Huda, Mohammed Abu-Nimer and Ayse Kadayifci In October 2007, we were part of a Muslim American delegation of peace and conflict resolution experts who went on a one-week trip to Iran to discuss ways in which various Iranian groups approach conflict prevention, resolution and dialogue. Our delegation met with peace-practitioners, lawyers, human rights experts, NGOs, scholars, religious leaders and students.

(Dec 6 is the 20th anniversary of the Babri Masjid's demolition) By Amulya Ganguli, IANS,

By Nivedita Khandekar, TwoCircles.net, The Indian sub-continent received a unique honour on Friday when Kailash Satyarthi, Indian child rights campaigner, and Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani child education activist, jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014. We take this occasion to review the Indian scenario vis-à-vis girl child education. Excerpts from an interview with Dr Shabistan Gaffar, who is the president of All India Confederation for Women’s Empowerment Through Education and was also the chair of Committee on Girls’ Education for the National Commission for Minorities Educational Institutions:

By Ashish Mishra New Delhi: This year the high-profile Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU) election - which routinely defaces the capital’s walls and public utilities...

By TwoCircles.net team Batla House encounter, which saw two Muslim youth and one police officer killed is now a six months old news. Encounter, true or fake, in the national capital should have lead to investigation and scrutiny, but still questions remain unanswered. A group of Jamia teachers has compiled pubic information to try to piece together the incident. After selling all their printed copies, Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Group has made a pdf version available to TwoCircles.net to put it online. Download link is given at the bottom of this page. Read and discuss.

By Amulya Ganguli, IANS, The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) cosy world of emotion-driven politics has been turned upside down by the Mumbai tragedy. From the late 1980s, the BJP has used ultra-nationalist postures to garner votes. These ranged from the movement to "liberate" the mythical birthplace of Lord Ram in Ayodhya to the pillorying of the Congress for being soft on terror.

Book review: Being Muslim in South Asia By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net, History of Islam in South Asia is almost as old as Islam in Arabia. Population of Arab nations is estimated to be 370 million while more than 500 million Muslims live in South Asian countries. But Arab-centric writings on Islam have done a great disservice.

Anger against illegal Bangladeshi immigrants spills over to take rape accused person’s life By A Ghyasuddin, TwoCircles.net, A lot has been said by many but the fact remains that there was a serious breach of law and order by Nagaland government and the outcome was killing of an under trial rape accused in a most horrifying way for a modern world.

By TwoCircles.Net Staff Reporter, भोपाल/ हरदा: बुधवार की सुबह कोई अचकचा संदेसा लेकर नहीं आई. बीती आधी रात मुंबई से वाराणसी आ रही कामायनी एक्सप्रेस...

By Sayema Sahar for TwoCircles.net,

By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net Gujarat: Julio Ribeiro, former Mumbai Police Commissioner has filed a petition in Gujarat High Court against IPS officer, PP Pandey’s...

By Feroze Mithiborwala,

By Aadil Mir Manzgam (Jammu and Kashmir) : A Hindu temple and a Muslim shrine in this lush green village of south Kashmir have stood...

By PUCL Team In the wake of BJP and VHP's call for an all India Bandh, Indore town witnessed widespread violence on July 3rd & 4th 2008. Seven lives were lost. (Six of them were Muslims). Many people were injured and are admitted in the hospitals in serious conditions. It was merely a glimpse of the intention of the communalist forces active in town and in the state of Madhya Pradesh. They want to replicate the Gujarat experiment of massacre and bloodbath in MP too.

By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday defended the state police which has come under flak in recent times, and stressed that...

SI of Khienwsar police station, along with three policemen and a patwari, have been suspended. Eight people, including five prime suspects have been rounded...

By Vishnu Makhijani, In the 1970s, Vasant Sathe, the information and broadcasting minister, stirred a political storm by suggesting that India needed a presidential form of government. He wasn't being altruistic; it was just his way of paying obeisance to his political master -- prime minister Indira Gandhi.

By Aziz A. Mubaraki,

By Anurag Dey Kolkata : He is no magician, but assures the opposition would vanish on polling day. He has no qualms about asking his...

By Brij Khandelwal, IANS, A long time ago, I had moved the Delhi High Court challenging the Indian government's decision to give away the Kachchativu island to Sri Lanka.

New Delhi : A most wanted criminal involved in over 200 burglaries across India has been arrested here, police said on Friday. Nadeem Qureshi, a...

By Dr Wasim Ahmad,

By Rebecca Mammen John, IANS The function of the judiciary is not to stand itself against the policy and politics of majority rule. Courts are there to test the validity and constitutionality of the actions of the state. Judicial activism in India is again in the net of criticism with the Supreme Court making observations on its overreach, with references to several orders passed in relation to the demolition of unauthorised constructions, nursery admissions, air pollution, motor vehicle fines and so on.

By V M Khaleelur Rahman, I have all praise and respect for Ms A Ameerunnisa of Melvisharam for her excellent article in Urdu (titled "Hamaari shadiyon ka Mas’ala") published in the October 2008 issue of Omeiat Journal) about the importance of conducting simple and austere marriages as per Islamic norms.

(This is a rejoinder to an article published on November 30 on TwoCircles.net titled caste on my back, written by Aishik Chanda.) By Yogesh Maitreya, Gopal Guru described that “Indian social science represents a pernicious divides between theoretical Brahmins and empirical Shudras”. Now this divide does not only limit to the social-sciences texts when it discusses the dalits lives through Brahmin-imagination. This divide has an inculcation factor which transmits into other upper castes writers than Brahmins.

By Shreya Mittal As two senior Indian ministers tussle over the declaration of some wild animals as "vermin", the damage to crops from animal attacks...

By Sam Pitroda,IANS, As the world's biggest exercise in democracy gets underway, there is a sense of expectation and anticipation. With an electorate of 714 million people eligible to vote, there is a tremendous opportunity for the people of India to elect a government that will deliver results and improve the growth trajectory of the country. In the present election environment of personal attacks and popular slogans, it is important to look at the long term implications and a concrete developmental agenda.

By Rajendra Shende, The most crucial inclusion in the India-US Joint statement issued on Sep 30 is the strategic partnership on energy and climate change. The actions agreed will have far reaching impacts on India's poor, neo-middle class and youth. They will also enhance the image of an India as a steward in international negotiations on environment.

By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net,

One of my many major grouses with the 'mainstream' Indian media (and this applies to the dominant Western media as well) is the despicable way in which it treats Pakistan. It is as if bad news about Pakistan is always good news for the media. It is also if there is nothing at all good in that country to write about or that anything good about it is not 'newsworthy'.

By Dr. Syed Ahmed, for TwoCircles.net,

By Sreeram Chaulia, IANS Former Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's contention that India has the capability to intercept objects in space and destroy them within a radius of 200 km has ignited a strategic dilemma. The issue has gained significance after the US successfully shot down one of its own collapsing satellites at a height of 233 km. The fear that India will be left lagging in one more global arms race and pay a heavy ex-post price looms on the minds of the country's strategic elites.

By Amit Dwivedi, Uttar Pradesh is one of the most important states of the country in terms of agricultural production. More than 85% of its population is rural based and depends on agriculture for its livelihood. Small and marginal farmers, having less than 2 acres of land are in a majority in the state.

By Abdur Rauf Sheikh,

Date: 13th April 2008. Time: Evening; people are gathering for Maghrib prayer at a mosque in Kotwal locality in Raver (Jalgaon). Timing may be a coincident or planned. A Ramnavmi procession goes past the mosque. Silently? No. The processionists raise volume of their audio system which plays slogans like 'mandir wahin banayenge' (we will build the temple there). Then they throw gulal (colours) incessantly and deliberately towards the mosque. This all culminated into what is everybody's guess. A communal riot.

By Yu Zhixiao, Xinhua Beijing : High Iraqi civilian casualties over the past five years after the U.S.-led coalition forces toppled the Saddam Hussein regime have tarnished the U.S.-imposed democracy in the volatile country, analysts say. The coalition troops started an invasion into Iraq by bombarding the Iraqi capital Baghdad on March 20, 2003, and swiftly brought down the administration of Saddam Hussein, who was earmarked as a cruel dictator by the United States and some other Western countries.

By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,

By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net

By Asim Khan,

By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net

By Anand Philar, IANS, It is time to pick up the pieces of Indian hockey even as coach Jose Brasa is humming John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" melody. One suspects that the Spaniard believes that he could be the first before the firing squad, post the Hockey World Cup.

By Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, Over the last few years we have been seeing a cynical game being played with increasing enthusiasm by all kinds...

By Mayank Chhaya, IANS,

The Gujarat verdict sets a forbidding precedent and administers a much needed dose of justice to the body politic By Aijaz Zaka Syed

फ़हमिना हुसैन, TwoCircles.net दिल्ली: इस शहर में जहां एक तरफ़ मेट्रो की रफ़्तार से भी तेज़ ज़िन्दगी भागती है, जहां बड़े-बड़े आलीशान मकान और कोठियां...

Waris Mazhari, a leading Islamic scholar, is the editor of the New Delhi-based Tarjuman- i Dar ul-Ulum, the official organ of the Old Boys' Association of the Deoband Madrasa.In this interview with Yoginder Sikand he talks about the problems that mark inter-sectarian relations among the Indian Muslim ulema. YS: The Quran and Hadith places much stress on the unity of Muslims. How, then, do you explain the fact of fierce sectarian disputes among the different groups or sects of Muslims today?

By Amulya Ganguli, IANS The immediate threat to the Manmohan Singh government over the civil nuclear deal with the United States seems to have disappeared. For a start, it has been able to work out a formula for pacifying the belligerent Left parties by setting up a committee to examine the deal. But it is clearly no more than a typical delaying tactic to defuse the situation and doesn't mean the pact is about to be scrapped. It is really a step that will enable the Left to claim that it has not been roundly rebuffed.

By Suhail Reza

By Mike Ghouse Khuswant Singh, whom I have admired growing up, and have religiously read his Illustrated Weekly magazine, has now written a column "Why Muslims Lag behind". I am challenging his take on four issues he contends with. i) Polygamy - ii) Burqa, iii) Alcohol iv) Pork Polygamy:

By Amit Kumar, TwoCircles.net Patna: Savita Ali remembers the time when she was in school, in a village called Naraina, district Panipat. She had just...

By Fr. Cedric Prakash sj*

By Latha M. Srinivasan, IANS, It was the sheer hard work of his campaign volunteers and extensive ground game that won Barack Obama his second term as US president.

By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net

By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net Hyderabad: Not many people would consider giving up their comfortable, albeit hectic schedule in the US and traveling to...

By Soroor Ahmed, Notwithstanding tall promises by Narendra Modi that the BJP would provide strong and powerful government, which will deal with enemies head-on, the record of the six-year rule of the National Democratic Alliance (1998-2004) does not inspire much.

New Delhi: Condemning the BJP's "insensitivity" over the death of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, the Congress on Sunday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi...

By Asghar Ali Engineer

Unheard & Unspoken: Terror stories from Madhya Pradesh: Part 10 By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net

By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net,

By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net, What initially appeared to be one-off theatrics enacted by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on June 12––he cancelled the dinner of BJP bigwigs–– have now grown into full-blown dangerous game of communal polarization. Nothing exemplify this better than the way the lone Muslim Janata Dal (United) Lok Sabha MP from Bihar, Monazir Hasan, was made the villain of the piece on the India Shutdown (Bharat Bandh) day on July 5.

By K. Subrahmanyam, IANS A leading national daily had articles on Benazir Bhutto's assassination under the headline "Chronicle of a death foretold". Both friends and her opponents had warned Benazir about the threats to her life if she returned to Pakistan. Being an exceptionally brave woman and committed to reintroduction of democracy in Pakistan, she accepted the risks and returned home.

By Amulya Ganguli, The Delhi elections next month will show whether Narendra Modi continues to find it difficult to score sweeping victories in states where he faces a modicum of political resistance.

By Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, Thanks to India’s strong democratic tradition, even Narendra Modi came to power after a regular vote. This tradition requires that new legislators and governments are allowed a fairly long grace period before their performance is evaluated. This is why no legislator is interrupted in his or her maiden speech in assembly or the Parliament.

By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net Everybody loves a bad fatwa. And why not? It fills column space for newpapers; It brings in viewers for Television channels; it plays into the image of Muslims as a backward community for communalists; and it gives activists a chance to reinforce their secular credentials. Never mind that this fatwa will not change the lives of millions of Muslims and text of the fatwa could be not what has been reported or maybe the said fatwa doesn't even exist.

By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net, Last Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi handed a beautiful and thoughtful gift to the President of Mongolia Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj. It was a copy of the earliest illustrated Persian work on the history of Mongol tribes. The book called ‘Jame at-Tawarikh’ (Collection of Histories) was authored by Rashiduddin Fazlullah Hamdani [1247-1318CE], who was the Vazir of Mongol king Mahmud Ghazan Khan [Reign 1295-1304].

By Syed Ali Mujtaba, There is a view among a segment of Indian Muslim that instead of seeking favors from the government and hankering for reservation for shedding the burden of backwardness, some members of the community should come forward and emulate the Super 30 model of Bihar to uplift the fellow members of the community.

By Asghar Ali Engineer, There is always a big gap between theory and practice, theology and history. Indian constitution, no doubt, is one of the best in the world. It is truly secular in spirit so much so it was secular even when word secular was not added to it until 1975 i.e. during emergency. If it were truly implemented India would be an ideal country to live in especially for minorities, both religious as well as linguistic.

By TCN News, Aligarh: Sunni Theological Society Department of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) organized a national level on the theme “Human values in world religions”...

By IANS,

By Brij Khandelwal Agra: As Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav completed two years in office Saturday, questions are being raised over governance and...

By Commander (Retd) Neil Gadihoke, IANS,

By Asghar Ali Engineer

The way Raj Thackeray has provoked street violence in Mumbai and the way state government handled it has indeed shamed all those who stand for democracy and peace. It is not for the first time that peace in Mumbai has been broken. Citizens of Mumbai have experienced it time and again. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena is after all offshoot of Shivsena and Bal Thackeray, Raj Thackeray's guru and his ideological inspiration, has done it many number of times.

By Nivedita Menon, Fashion designer Anand Jon has been sentenced by a Los Angeles court to 59 years in prison for violent sexual assault on seven young women, some of them under-age. His defence tried to move for a mistrial on the grounds that one of the jurors had contacted Jon’s sister during the trial, but a new trial was not granted by the judge. The concerned juror delivered a “guilty” verdict along with the other 11 jurors in the case.

By Amulya Ganguli, IANS, Although Christians were described as internal enemies in Guru Golwalkar's catechism of hate, "Bunch of Thoughts", they were not targeted by the Sangh Parivar - the right-wing Hindu nationalist political grouping - as systematically as at present. The Parivar's primary enemies were always the Muslims. They were accused of having invaded the country from the eighth century onwards, destroyed temples during the medieval period and finally partitioned the country in 1947. Islamic terrorism is the latest addition to this list of sins.

By Vanya Mehta, TwoCircles.net, Since the publication of Arundhati Roy’s introduction to The Annihilation of Caste, called “The Doctor and the Saint,” intellectuals and Dalit activists have spoken out against her as a choice for the introduction as well as her over-emphasis on Mahatma Gandhi’s story over Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s story.

By Juliette Schmidt Last week I began a virtual tour of Ramadan around the world, inspired by the stories of my Moroccan, Pakistani and US-based colleagues at Search for Common Ground, a non-profit conflict transformation organisation. This week, as even Toronto buzzes with invitations to fast-breaking iftar dinners, I look to Lebanon, Indonesia and Guinea.

By Arun Kumar Washington: It looks like a replay of the Devyani Khobragade affair that strained India-US relations, but it isn't. A former domestic...

Saffroning Kerala: Part 6 By Abdul Basith, TwoCircles.net, Root of ‘problem’

By Dr. Syed Ahmed,

Final part of the 2-part series on Gujarat's development By Faraz Ahmad

सिद्धांत मोहन, TwoCircles.net भारत में सिनेमा बदल रहा है और इस तरीके से बदल रहा है कि भारतीय समाज कई दफा उन बदलावों को स्वीकार...

By Arul Louis , United Nations:UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein has condemned Sri Lanka for attacking his organisation's investigations into human...

A non-vegetarian family cornered among vegetarians during a train journey By Indscribe

By A. Faizur Rahman for TwoCircles.net,

By Amulya Ganguli The fallout from the Samajwadi Party's infighting is clear in Uttar Pradesh. Till the fratricidal strife broke out, the party had...

By Afzal Usmani, The Aligarh Movement was not an instant phenomenon. It took its shape in many many years and was started even before Sir Syed moved to his final home Aligarh. Among the first step towards establishing M.A.O. College and Aligarh Movement was establishment of Scientific Society at Ghazipur in 1864. This was a new beginning of Cooperation between Indians and British and among Indian intellectuals living in British India. Here is a brief history of Scientific Society and establishment of Aligarh Institute.

By Beth Murphy, CGNews, "Have you ever worn a burqa before?" asked the Amnesty International representative.

By Mahtab Alam for Twocircles.net While there is a lot of discussion happening around on how ‘Muslim voters’ polled in the recently concluded assembly elections...

By Ranjana Narayan , New Delhi: An air of quiet confidence pervades the Trinamool Congress office here as the party headed by "Didi", West Bengal...

By Manzar Bilal, TwoCircles.net,

By Sheikh Khurshid Alam, The decriminalization of Section 377 by the Delhi High Court in the Naz Foundation case had drawn mixed reactions in 2010...

By C. Uday Bhaskar, IANS,

By TwoCircles.net news

By Anjuman Ara Begum, TwoCircles.net,

By Saeed Naqvi Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte admittedly has an uncontrollable temper, otherwise he would not have used a common Filipino term of abuse against...

By Sanjay Kumar & Badre Alam, "For a successful revolution it is not enough that there is discontent. What is required is a...

By Joydeep Gupta, IANS, Two big-ticket resignations last week will have far-reaching effects on climate geopolitics. The decision by India's top climate negotiator Shyam Saran to quit will make it easier for the US to push emerging economies to do more to combat climate change. So will the decision of UN climate panel chief Yvo de Boer to quit six months ahead of schedule.

By TCN News Desk,

By Nikhat for TwoCircles.net, Vasant and Rajab lived together, breathed together and died together for a noble cause but death separated them. They will never be separated. The spirit of both Vasant -Rajab will remain with us --- Hemalata Hegishte, Vasant’s sister on their martyrdom. 26 February 2010

By Charu Bahri Mount Abu, Rajasthan: I wouldnt be around to write this story if the Bahri clan I hail from - Hindus from...

By Jaspal Singh for Twocircles.net News reports from India have been full of demonstrations, counter-demonstrations about the JNU events and there have been plenty...

By Sushma Ramachandran, IANS, With the mandate for the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) clearly in favour of development, economic issues will top the agenda of the new government, as it seeks to meet the high expectations of the poor and homeless and fulfil the aspirations of the masses as quickly as possible.

By Dharmarajan Krishnan, In the past, it passed for a moment of instant fun. In shops, behind the busy payments counter, you saw this advisory on bold display: "In God we trust, others pay cash!" This was their way of telling the customer that you’d better pay for the purchase cash down, no running after in case you default! Long after those times, you are perhaps inclined to believe that the cash-only obsession has withered away. Think again!

By Syed Ali Mujtaba, The amusing picture of how mass copying is done in a high school board exam being conducted in Bihar has attracted eyeballs all over the world. The visuals graphically show the relatives of the students writing the examination, climbing to the window of the exam halls and provide hand written answer chits to them to copy in their answer sheets.

By Rahul Singh, As the Narendra Modi government completes 100 days in office, the prime minister seems keen to implement far-reaching changes, phasing out the old and ushering in the new. One of the first things he did was to question the relevance of the Planning Commission - a question also asked by his predecessor Manmohan Singh in 2009.

By Mohammed Abdul Jawad, Alas! When Ramadan begins, then those who take delight in watching television dramas get more excited because in Ramadan alone there are dozens of soap operas. It’s not that people neglect the reverence of Ramadan or discard fasting. But, besides fasting in Ramadan, they stay tuned, with punctuality, to watch soap operas and special shows that are broadcasted on different channels.

By Moin Qazi for TwoCircles.net O People, it is true that you have certain rights over your women, but they also have rights over...

By C. Uday Bhaskar, IANS On Saturday, Dec 15, President Pervez Musharraf, now a retired general, dramatically announced the lifting of emergency rule imposed by him on Nov 3, when he was still the Pakistani chief of the army staff. In reality this was more an imposition of martial law with the constitution suspended and the judges of the Supreme Court sacked but the semantic charade of emergency continued.

By Asghar Ali Engineer, Religion is believed to be divine. It is divine in more than one sense. Firstly it is divine in the sense that its teachings are motivated by purest of intentions; secondly it is divine as its teachings are transcendent as religion exhort us to transcend what is to, what it should be in society as well as in our personal conduct. But soon after birth of religion it gets mixed up with customs and traditions already existing in society on one hand, and, on the other, powerful interests, often very negation of its teachings, begin to control it.

By Naved Masood, Prof. Ahmad was Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta and a distinguished Molecular Geneticist. The news of Prof Asad Ahmad's passing away came as a complete shock for though for the last several months we were not in touch, such 'net silence' on his part was not unprecedented. It comes out though that this time round it was his serious illness and not his occasional hibernation that led to his silence. His death gives me much thought to reminisce and introspect.

Part 2 By Ahmad Cameron, Judiciary

मोहम्मद ज़ाकिर रियाज़, माननीय मुख्यमंत्री श्री अखिलेश यादव, मैं यह ख़त उत्तर प्रदेश का एक नागरिक और मुस्लिम होने की हैसियत से आपको लिख रहा हूं....

Metaphor for Muslims: The kind of tolerance practiced here is, possibly, unparalleled in the world with green, white and black caps shining together, five times a day. By Mujahid I Mughal, The greatest tragedy that Muslims today are facing is not their poor socio-economic conditions, least educational advancement and insignificant technological development but acute disintegration and vanished Muslim brotherhood.

By Abdul Hannan Siwani Nadvi, 2014 Lok Sabha election has triggered a debate on India's secularism. Some political analysts are of view that this LS poll is Secularism VS Communalism. Some of them have different versions on same subject.

By Shaj Hameed, The February month cover story of the popular narrative magazine, The Caravan, published from Delhi, has already been discussed and debated a lot. Hindutva extremist Aseemanand, speaking to the magazine’s journalist Ms. Leena Regunath, revealed that all the bomb blasts carried out by his team had been with the RSS leadership’s knowledge and approval. Furthermore, the RSS’s national leaders including its general secretary Mohan Bhagwat and national executive member Indresh Kumar had met Assemanand in person and pleaded with him to go ahead with the attacks, at the same time advising him to take care as to not link such terror acts with Sangh Parivar Organisations, especially the RSS. Aseemanand, who has been accused in five bomb blasts across the country which killed a total of 199 innocent people, also revealed that Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s chief minister and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for the next general elections, was a fan and supporter of his extremist activities.

By TwoCircles.net Staff reporter, New Delhi: A delegation of Muslim clerics and social leaders today met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh here and discussed several...

By Mohd. Ismail Khan, TwoCircles.net,

By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net, TwoCircles.net series: Ayodhya 2009

By Uzair Hasan Rizvi, The elections campaign in India is certainly getting more and more nerve-wrecking as the parties are leaving no-stone unturned to woo all the communities and especially the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) are playing different games altogether when it comes to appeasing the Muslim voters.

By Madhuker Upadhyay, IANS,

By Ashok Tandon, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's penchant for a pro-active foreign policy has been on display from day one. His positive initiatives of inviting SAARC leaders at the swearing-in ceremony and selecting Bhutan for his first bilateral visit followed by another important neighbour Nepal have sent encouraging signals to the world community about India's desire for constructive engagement in international affairs, especially according highest priority to peace, stability and development in the sub-continent.

By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent, The wheels of justice have started moving for the victims of 2002 riots of the state with the Gujarat High court having designated special judges for nine fast-track courts to conduct trial of the accused involved in nine heinous riot cases of 2002. However, the Narendra Modi government is yet to appoint public prosecutors to facilitate the trial of the accused.

By Badre Alam and Sanjay Kumar for Twocircles.net The Una incident has once again exposed the hypocrisy of the so-called ‘Gujarat model’ as...

By Asghar Ali Engineer, The word jihad’s literal meaning is to strive, for any thing good including striving for peace, for welfare humanity. If the Qur’anic verses in Qur’an are read with its oft repeated command that the believers should enforce what is good and forbid what is evil (ya’murun b’il ma’ruf wa ynahauna ‘anil munkar) the whole meaning of jihad assumes a new significance.

By Mara Rudman, CGNews,

By Mohammad Reyaz, “I have come here to visit the grave of our champion, the hero of Afghanistan,” says 25-year-old Haroon, at the half-built mausoleum of Ahmed Shah Masood in Panjsher. Haroon is a Tajik now settled in Kabul, who is unemployed and does not mince words in declaring that he will vote for Abdullah Abdullah, a close aide of Masood, in the April 5 presidential elections.

By S Hasan Zia Rizvi, TwoCircles.net,

By Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam for TwoCircles.net, Recently there was a talk about how people have been killed in fake encounters. The police have claimed...

By Yogesh Maitreya, Daisy Katta, “That firing was something as if it was firing of India and Pakistan war” said Bhante Kashyap, reminiscently, one of the eye witnesses of Ramabai Nagar homicide of 1997, in the heartland locality of Mumbai, Ghatkopar East. Another narrator and also an eye witness of this arrogantly brutal massacre of Dalits in Ramabai Nagar, has depicted how thirteen years old boy had been shot dead by police’s bullet hitting his skull and splintered it in two pieces. Few more eye witnesses as well as victims, after seventeen years of the incidence have gathered courage to come up on the stage, provided by ‘Ramabai Nagar Hatyakand Sangharsh Samitee’ at their arranged conference at Ramabai Nagar, on the seventeenth anniversary of this incidence.

By Mayank Chhaya, IANS,

By Zohra Javed I just cannot get her out of my mind. That sweet little girl. How old must she be...? Two...three...not more in any case.

New Delhi : India is a tolerant country with a few intolerant people and it is time to focus not just on Hindu fundamentalists...

By Aabid Ali Haider for TwoCircles.net, The brutal and harrowing rapes in Kerala have revealed that women in India are unsafe when it comes to...

By Vishal Gulati Chandigarh: English school teachers in Punjab have flunked the English language test. From tenses to spellings, every thing they wrote was wrong, resulting...

Valjibhai Patel, Director of the Ahmedabad-based Council for Social Justice, is a noted lawyer and Dalit activist. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand he talks about his work and the Dalit movement in Gujarat YS: As one of the pioneers of the Dalit movement in Gujarat and one of the few surviving leaders of the Gujarat Dalit Panthers, how do you account for the relative weakness of the movement in the state today?

By Vikas Datta, Can humour continue to work its magic across translations? Can key contemporary issues figure - and even be deliciously satirised - in a comic book, and that too when the setting is far in the nearly unrecorded past? Can stereotypes evoke laughter, not xenophobia?

By Faraz Ahmad, The media surveys have always troubled me with skepticism and disbelief, partly because I am not particularly good at arithmetic, which is why I had to give up studying science and turn to the study of English Literature. To this day numbers give me jitters what to talk of graphs and percentages and therefore I fail to comprehend the psephological analyses conducted on various TV channels with utmost confidence by erudite and articulate psephologists like Yogendra Yadav, Swapan Dasgupta or Arnab Goswami. Frankly I am not sure how much of this Arnab or Rajdeep Sardesai actually understand. I of course remember that my good friend Yashwant Deshmukh was doing his surveys sitting in The Pioneer Bureau room on his laptop for the 1996 elections for which a paper like The Pioneer, sinking fast, paid him substantially. That made me further lose any faith in the science of psephology. In a country like India which is so wide and varied where language, culture and food habits change every 50 kilometres, it is incomprehensible how any sample survey at best of a few thousand urban babus could reflect the true picture of the overall people’s mood.

By Sadiq Zafar for TwoCircles.net, Azamgarh has been the land of oriental learning since the colonial times and a center of religious excellence in...