Rumi Nations

The Office of the President of India is not a reward bestowed upon an eminent person for a lifetime of services rendered to the nation or for any other factors. It’s a serious constitutional office, the highest office of the land. I wish to submit that by withdrawing himself as a candidate in the elections to this office in this turbulent climate, Dr. Kalam has done a disservice to the nation. He would have been a serious challenger to the canny politician Pranab Mukherjee and by his action, he becomes an accomplice to the smooth and dangerous ascendancy of Mr. Mukherjee to this key office. The country is surely bigger than Dr. Kalam. Not a Routine Matter No serious observer of politics in India will look upon the choice of Pranab Mukherjee as its candidate by the Congress Party as anything but a cynical and calculated as well as canny move by the party to position its man in the key role of President in advance of the likely fractured mandate of 2014. Never before in...

Shashi Tharoor successfully navigated the intricate waters of international diplomacy for more than 30 years. However, he finds the waters of Indian politics to be rather murky. Tharoor’s undoing has been restlessness to a certain extent. He has tended to assume that being modern and transparent in a democracy bursting with youngsters can only be the right thing to do. However, India is more complex than that. Perhaps, Tharoor needs to re-absorb the lessons that Nehru mentions in his Discovery of India. India’s roots stretch back thousands of years into antiquity. Though Indians might appear to have adopted all the tools and benefits of modern technology — such as cell phones and airplanes, etc. — that does not mean that Indians have foregone their ancient heritages. So, Indians continue on with their archaic ways of worshipping gods and ‘sacrificing’ animals as the occasion requires. Indians continue to practice the age-old ‘custom’ of dowry in a non-so-subtle manner and casteism is a...