New Chance for Peace
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will open talks on a two-state solution on Thursday in Washington. These will be the first direct negotiations between the two sides in 20 months, and there will be an early test of the two leaders’ seriousness of purpose. Mr. Netanyahu’s moratorium [...]
V.R. Krishna Iyer: Dreaming of a chance for peace
The India-Pakistan discord and the repeated armed conflicts between the two countries have stemmed chiefly from the accession to India of the state of Kashmir. The strife has caused a heavy drain of human and financial resources over the years, including in Jammu and Kashmir itself. We must halt the disaster and end the recurring loss of life and [...]
V.R. Krishna Iyer: For Indo-Pakistan concord
Who but the justices of the sub-continent will tell the governing classes of India and Pakistan to go for an “ephphatha” to make both countries listen to possible settlement measures as an urgent desideratum for survival and development? (Ephphatha is an Aramaic word that means “to be opened.”) We are ready for peace talks, India had [...]
Sherry Rehman: The need to give dialogue a chance
Resuming dialogue is always weighed down by anxiety over the outcome. But India and Pakistan need not worry. Nobody realistically expects too much out of tentative renewals. They hold little promise of anything except an exchange of chai and samosas. Yet these renewals are bright arcs in the treacherous sky that hangs over the nuclear neighbours. [...]
China challenges Obama’s Taliban plan
U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan to reconcile with the Taliban in Afghanistan ought to win him a second Nobel, although during the entire period between 1901 and 2009, a Peace Prize was never awarded twice to any of its 97 individual recipients. An exception of course can be made. From a historical perspective, if the Obama plan advances, [...]
Rajinder Puri: India-Pakistan peace: Now Or Never?
Home Minister Chidambaram has delayed visiting Pakistan to discuss 26/11. The SAARC summit is postponed. Meanwhile, India’s Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao, had contacted her Pakistani counterpart for a foreign secretary-level meeting. That meeting later this month will precede the SAARC summit. It is a good sign. Substantive issues need to be [...]
Time To Talk
The imperative of peace between India and Pakistan "is so blazingly obvious", declared Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid at a literary exchange organised by the Aman Ki Asha initiative. The South Asian region is at the cusp of economic transformation which would improve dramatically the lives of people in both countries. But this prospect is clouded [...]
M.K. Bhadrakumar: The audacity of Afghan peace hopes
Last Thursday the region took a ride in the raft of optimism to peace. The London conference on the Afghan problem certainly gives grounds for optimism. From the Indian perspective, however, what matters most is to be able to behold just in time that, as the Old Testament says, “there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s [...]
V.R. Krishna Iyer: Questions of judicial access
A Supreme Court of India, and a Supreme Court for all Indians: these two versions can be radically different in terms of principle and content. The Preamble to the Constitution has pledged the people of India to justice — social, economic, cultural — and political India with a geopolitical concept. Indians represent a humanist-socio-economic [...]
Less and less room to hide
Three weeks after some semblance of normalcy returned to Manipur — with the reopening of educational institutions after a four-month forced disruption and the positive news that the Central Bureau of Investigation will probe the 2009 ‘encounter’ deaths of Sanjit and Rubina Devi — comes another reason to cheer. The National Human Rights [...]