Category Archives: Current Affairs

by Razi Azmi Two recent events on far sides of the globe have given many people in the Third World, from ordinary folks to autocrats and dictators, occasion to gloat and beat their chests triumphantly. Though they are different in … Continue reading →

We have grown so accustomed to a ministry of information that we hardly notice that Western, democratic countries do not have any such entity. There is no minister of information in USA, UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, nor in … Continue reading →

Our pursuit of higher and higher rates of growth and profit, gluttony and profligacy and our endless armed conflicts are wreaking havoc on Mother Earth. The scourge of plastic, pollution of air, river and sea, deforestation, overfishing, relentless mining and … Continue reading →

What Covid-19 has put in very sharp focus is the utter powerlessness of man before the forces of nature as well as the futility of talking science and reason to obscurantists, religious bigots and conspiracy theorists.

Human societies lay great store by pomp, ceremony and rituals; indeed, people live and die by them.  In death, people become larger than life.  Funerals are occasions demanding great attention to detail, the reading of eulogies and the offering of … Continue reading →

The anti-Liberal “patriots” who denounce majoritarian oppression against a minority in another country either perpetrate or tacitly support discrimination against minorities in their own country. Paradoxically, they adore the liberals of that country and denounce their own.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad once remarked that India is a country, while Pakistan is an experiment. Narendra Modi’s determination to enforce the ideology of Hindutva on one of the world’s most diverse and complex nations quickly transformed India from a normal … Continue reading →

Politics and statecraft may not be a gentleman’s game like cricket, but one still needs to abide by the rules and maintain some measure of humility and civility. . . If allowed to develop unabated, this growing tendency to denounce all … Continue reading →

These good Samaritans had nothing in common with the people they served, except the bond of humanity. Everything, other than this common bond, set them apart: language, culture, religion, lifestyle, cuisine, costume, standard of living, everything. Can I think of any … Continue reading →

(Note from author: This article was published in the Daily Times on 29 February 2012, following the death, on 5 October 2011, of Steve Jobs, founder of Apples Inc., who gave the world iMac, iPad and iPhone.)