Pairokar

Book Review    In our area, there is an unwritten prohibition for not keeping the book Mahabharat in the home. The popular belief is that who keep Mahabharat in their house, they unwittingly invite quarrels and struggles in their own families. Superstition has no logic. So, people read it in bits and pieces. My acquaintance of Mahabharat was also through the commentary written on it by Chakravarthy Rajagopalachari in my university days. I have always felt this the book should be read as there is hardly any aspect of machination, deviousness, deception, fraud,  cheating, craftiness,  cruelty, cunningness, compassion, pity, valour, bravery, devotion, magnanimity, and sacrifice is left untouched in it.     Contrary to the popular concepts and beliefs, I have found that two characters of it stood out taller than others and they were Karna and Duryodhana. While the first one was the victim of injustice through and through from beginning to the end...

Justice R Banumathi, who retired today as the Judge of the Supreme Court thanked Jesus Christ more than once in her farewell speech organized by the Supreme Court Bar Association for making her what she is. It was uncalled for her to have uttered that ‘though she is a Hindu, she believes in the gospel of Jesus Christ.’ As a retiring judge, she could have thanked God, which is an omnibus term instead of thanking Jesus Christ to make her faith and predilections known to one and all. If she is a Hindu, which she claimed, she could have spoken about any of the symbols of her faith or not have spoken at all as it was immaterial on the occasion of her farewell. But the way she used the name of Jesus Christ, that too more than once, was no less than a sneering comment on the faith i.e. Hinduism.   This amounted to running down one religion and extolling the other. This was a very subtle and dexterous way of propagating one religion at the cost of others. If she had not said tha...

Three Cs (Communism, Christianity and China) are Causing Rift Between Nepal and India     It is cliché to say that the Nepal-India relationship is very old. In fact, it is inseparable, and the credit goes to the people of both countries. If something turns wrong between India and Nepal, the palpitation of the hearts of the people on both sides automatically go up. Sometimes misunderstandings develop and then the responsibility falls on the governments to remove them, but officials are often found to be caught napping. Lately, some vested interests have become overactive to create differences where there are none and drive the wedge where there appear to be some. India, being the large country, in the area as well as in population, has the bigger responsibility to see that misunderstandings are nipped in the bud.    The role of a section of Indian media has been quite reprehensible besides being highly irresponsible. Nepal is the only country, whose citizen...

There is an almost an outcry from Jammu and Ladakh regions to declare Hindi as the State language. There is some opposition, of course, from the valley and the reason is obvious but that is totally misplaced. Hindi is compulsorily taught in all schools across all three regions. The dialects that are spoken in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh are Dogri, Kashmiri and Ladakhi respectively. Ladakhi is considered to be close to Tibeti.  Hindi is understood by every inhabitant of the state. Therefore, in all fairness, Hindi should have been declared as the state language even before the abrogation of Article 35A and 370 from the Constitution of India. There is, therefore, no justification to have the land and other records of both union territories in Urdu. Large scale land frauds have also been reported because of the Urdu script that has been used in the official records. Urdu can be certainly be retained as the second language. After all, Urdu is the second language in Uttar Pradesh, Bih...

You cannot expect the security forces, including the police, to wear the ‘rule of law’ on its sleeve to deal with such criminals, who care two hoots for the law and other human beings. Therefore, Yogi Adityanath government is fully justified in razing the house of that notorious outlaw Vinay Dube so as to nab him.  Law must serve as a deterrent for others also. Some will say that why to bulldoze his house to catch him? By asking such questions, one unwittingly provides a shield to the outlaws. Think of the sponsored anti CAA protests, was it possible to control in U.P. without adopting the unorthodox method of making the violent protesters pay for the damages caused to the properties? No, it was not possible at all. The primary responsibility of the government is to maintain law order and for that purpose, it may adopt all means at its command.  There is no doubt that in Uttar Pradesh all political parties, without exception, have given protection to criminals o...