A Latin response to Latin America
Column by M.J. Akbar Karol Jozef Wojtyla, the first non-Italian Pope in more than four centuries, did not get elected to the throne in 1978 merely through a throw of electoral dice. The central purpose of his papacy was not advertised when he became John Paul II, but has become a proud part of the official narrative today. He rose to prominence in 1964, More...
Peace, but with justice
Column by M.J. Akbar - Since an improvement in bilateral relations was clearly not on Pakistan interior minister Rehman Malik’s agenda, why did he come to India? There has to be some rational reason. Tourism offers More...
Goodbye yesterday, welcome tomorrow
Column by M.J. Akbar One of the minor games of public life is decoding the difference between what a politician says and what he means. Bal Thackeray, who founded the cadre-based Shiv Sena in 1966, and nurtured More...
Washington’s revenge
Column by M.J. Akbar When Abraham Lincoln was told at the height of the devastating civil war that his most successful general, Ulysses Grant, was drinking too much he wanted to know the brand of Grant’s favourite More...
Laughing all the way to the White House
Column by M.J. Akbar On which occasion were Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the two claimants for the White House, more accurate? When they were making claims amid amateur posturing during the second Presidential More...
The price of a womb
Column by M.J. Akbar The government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi has laid down its code of governance. You can sell a fertile womb at heavy discount as long as the child is still inside. This More...
The remote has become a neighbour
Column by M.J. Akbar Technology has liberated prejudice and its consequence, rumour, from accountability. When the village was still a mere village, and had not gone global, prejudice had a face and a name. This More...
The Great Wall of Silence
Column by M.J. Akbar What is the difference between Indians and Pakistanis? The answer is uncomplicated: there is no difference. We are the same people, with similar personality strengths, and parallel collective More...
Hobson’s Choice: It’s either Olympics or politics
Column by M.J.Akbar - Mr Jeremiah and Ms Cassandra have long been publicly moaning that the difference between news and entertainment has either disappeared or fast getting there. Such lament comes from confusion. More...
Bedtime story for a political fantasist
Column by M.J. Akbar - This story is true, for I do not possess the fabulous imagination necessary to make it up. Nor, I think, do the editors of the British paper the Sunday Times, where I read it. A Russian More...
