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...

Dr. Rajendra Prasad: Correspondence and Select Documents ~ Avatans Kumar Today, as we celebrate the birth anniversary of Dr. Rajendra Prasad (or Rajen Babu), here is an interesting episode in the political life of the first President of the Republic of India. The Constituent Assembly was tasked to frame the Constitution of the Republic of India.  Dr. Rajendra Prasad was the President of the Assembly. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to make C. Rajgopapalchari the interim President of the Republic of India.  Rajaji, at that time, was serving as the Governor General of independent India.  Pandit Nehru wrote a letter to Rajen Babu about his ‘consultation’ with Vallabhbhai Patel regarding this issue.  In his letter, Nehru indicates that Patel agrees with him.  Panditji writes: “I have discussed this matter with Vallabhbhai and we felt that the safest and the best course from a number of points of view was to allow presen...

(From DailyO ) The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on November 13 has released its yearly  Hate Crime Statistics  for the year 2017. With a total of 7,175 hate crimes reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program database by the law enforcement agencies across the country, the data shows an uptick of 17 per cent from a year before. There were 6,121 hate crimes reported in the year 2016.   As unfortunate and abhorrent this statics is, the data also shows a rise in hate crimes against Hindus. There were a total of 1,749 religion-based hate crime victims in 2017. Out of those, there were 15 Hindu victims compared to just 5 two years ago in 2015.  While the bulk of the victims of these religion-based hate crimes were the Jews alone (58.1 per cent), there were a total of 53 combined victims belonging to Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist faiths. Many blame President Trump’s rhetoric and policies squarely for this rise. (Photo: Reuters) The data is alar...

(From DailyO ) Human beings have perhaps been building statues and monuments since the beginning of history itself. From the Pyramids to the Eiffel Tower, from Discobolus of Greece to the Buddha of Bamiyan and Cristo Redentor of Rio de Janeiro, human societies have undertaken the construction of such massive projects from time to time. Human beings have been building statues and monuments since time immemorial. (Source: Reuters) And the Indic civilisation is the only surviving major pagan culture where idols (or statues) have played a significant role in people’s everyday lives. Notwithstanding the plunder, destruction, desecration and theft of its heritage, India is a land of statues. So, when India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated to the nation this new statue of Sardar Patel on October 31, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Yet, it will be disingenuous to overlook the huge significance of the Statue of Unity. This Statue of Unity now stands as the t...

(From DailyO ) “What’s in a name?...” It is an oft-quoted question. Taken from Shakespeare’s famous play Romeo and Juliet , this quote suggests, at least as far as the great bard himself is concerned, that a name means very little in the grand scheme of things. It is the character of an individual or an object, believes Shakespeare, that counts the most. A rose, as the next lines from the play explain, if called something entirely different, would still smell as sweet as it does with the name ‘rose'. But as we know, a name isn’t such a trivial concept at all. A name defines the character, is the other side of the argument. A rose is called such because of its smell. We cannot call a chameli a rose — and expect it to smell like a rose. No other flower can potentially smell like a rose. Names matter. Each flower is distinct, down to its own iconic fragrance (Photo: India Today) Names are very important across all cultures. Naming is one of the most ancient thi...