The Right Perspective

From a firebrand socialist who organised the biggest Railway Strike in the history of India to becoming the Defence Minister of India - George Fernandes The eighth of May, 1974 wasn’t an ordinary day in India.  The Indian Railway, the ‘lifeline’ of the Indian economy, the engine that moved India quite literally, wasn’t moving at all.  The workers of India’s single largest employer had struck work.  Never before had there been a strike that included the entire network of railway employees and claimed the support of almost all unions, including rival factions.  The entire nation came to a standstill. The person behind this strike of such magnitude and far-reaching consequences was George Mathew Fernandes. An icon, a maverick, a rebel, a hero, a face of resistance, George was born to John Joseph and Alice Martha on June 3, 1903 in Mangalore.  Hailing from a deeply religious and devout Catholic family, George was a trained priest. But George ultimat...

MISA, Emergency, forced sterilisations: Why is Priyanka Gandhi resembling Indira Gandhi a good thing?  (via DailyO) Growing up in Patna, Bihar, in the 1970s, I had a front-row view of the events of the historic JP movement.  The then-Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, had just been found guilty of violating electoral laws by the Allahabad High Court. She retaliated by proclaiming a National Emergency on the midnight of June 25, 1975. Constitutional rights were curtailed, Opposition leaders were imprisoned, and the PM was authorised to rule by decree, bypassing Parliament.  Under JP, youth across North India rallied against the Emergency — and against Indira Gandhi.  (Photo: India Today Archives) Jayaprakash Narayan, affectionately called 'JP', an ageing, frail Socialist leader, galvanised the youth across North India to oppose the Emergency, with his call of ‘Sampoorna Kranti’, the total revolution. Protest marches, arrests, extended curfews were the orde...

This article appeared in  the DailyO When Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii, announced her intention to run for US president on CNN’s  The Van Jones Show  on January 12, she became the first Hindu to do so.  Gabbard, currently serving her second term in the US Congress, represents the 2nd congressional district of Hawaii. She was first elected to the Congress in 2012.  Gabbard is a member of the powerful House Foreign Affairs committee. She served as the vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2013, a testimony of her rising clout in the Democratic Party.  She later resigned from the post in 2015.  Gabbard is also a co-chair of Congressional India Caucus. Tulsi Gabbard is the first Hindu woman to run for the top job in America. (Photo: AP/file) Born into an interracial family (Samoan father, Mike, and a White mother, Carol), Gabbard moved to Hawaii in 1983 at the age of two. She was elected to the Hawaii State H...