“Cannot allow yourselves to be caught between a hard place and a hard place”. That is P Chidambaram’s unique take on the Kashmir issue in his column for the Indian Express. The former finance minister believes that the situation in Kashmir has been fractious particularly because different people believe there are different solutions to the problem. While the BJP government votes for a hard, muscular. ‘militaristic’ approach, the Hurriyat has been advocating secession from the Indian Union.
This columnist believes that the problem lies in our present government not actively working to find a solution. ‘No talks’ cannot be a legitimate policy and one needs to invite all stakeholders to talks.
Tavleen Singh. in her column for the Indian Express, deliberates on the ‘lies and deceit’ that India has been given whenever it comes to interactions with Pakistan. She draws on her own experience first, when many years ago, she watched as then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee got on a bus and drove across the Wagah border in a concerted peace effort.
However, “even as Nawaz Sharif welcomed Vajpayee to Lahore, Musharraf was plotting his Kargil misadventure”. Despite all this, Vajpayee continued to bring up Kashmir in all his talks with Pakistan - something that Tavleen Singh thinks we should stop doing.
Meghnad Desai, in his Sunday column for the Indian Express, foretells what 2019 will look like for the government and the Opposition: where the Congress will paint the BJP as an anti-Dalit party, making its case around the Rohith Vermula suicide and other incidents. Desai recalls the explosion last week following the bicentenary celebrations of the Bhima Koregaon battle. What can be seen now, he believes, is the struggle over the Dalit vote bank.
Swaminathan Aiyar, in his column ‘Swaminomics’ for the Times of India, comes up with a rather interesting twist to the clashes and divides that have pretty much defined the last few months of our political scenario. He talks about ‘coalitions’ being formed out of the very divides that India sees everyday. As he recalls the clashes over the Bhima Koregaon battle in Maharashtra, he marvels at the “sheer multiplicity of clashes” that has managed to produce “an unexpected equilibrium”. People who are against each other on one clash seem to unite on another issue, making India a country of constantly changing social coalitions.
In fact, Aiyar points at how our political parties are based on these very divides and shifting coalitions!
Tabish Khair’s column for The Hindu this Sunday is a particularly poignant one, putting forth a well-known but not-oft-remembered thought: that what matters is not where things are from, but what they become with us.
He reaches this conclusion as he flinches from the idea of writing about Christmas and New Years Eve, believing that he will be trolled by many for talking about “un-Indian” issues. Therefore, he vows almost comically to talk of things that are intrinsically “Indian”. However, he seems to keep hitting a wall every time he talks of clothes: while the sari and dhoti are lovely large pieces of unstitched clothing, they’ve never been restricted to India (Greeks, Persians, Romans have used such unstitched clothing too). He hits a wall with talking of an Indian new year too, since there are so many!
Coomi Kapoor, in her column for the Indian Express today, aims to break down the rationale behind Rahul Gandhi’s coming out in support of the Dalits in the recent clashes in Maharashtra over the Bhima Koregaon battle. In a highly political decision, and less than 24 hours after the incident, Gandhi tweeted in favour of the Dalit agitation and accused the BJP-RSS for harbouring a fascist vision. This was unexpected for the state Congress, as it had already decided that the wisest course would be not to take sides.
However, the consensus within party lines was that Rahul Gandhi may have been influenced by new Independent MLA Jignesh Mewani who is proud of “displaying the many WhatsApp messages he exchanges” with the Congress president.
The Bhima Koregaon battle and the clashes over caste that it has influenced 200 years after it ended is understandably the core focus of most Sunday analyses today. Mukul Kesavan in The Telegraph marvels at how the clashes have brought out a different side of each political party. He wonders first at hardliner Hindu group leaders such as Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote, both of whose ‘histories’ he is quick to document (one led an anti-Jodha Akbar protest, while the other has a dozen cases of rioting against him). Both of these men, charged with inciting violence against Dalits, have vehemently denied all charges - while even the BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, an admirer of Bhide, has vowed to arrest culprits without actually charging Bhide or Ekbote.
Manish Tewari, in his column for the Asian Age, has tolled warning bells for India in terms of its relationships with its neighbours. Things are not looking good when it comes to China where the stand-off at Doklam, far from being resolved, is only getting perpetuated. The only silver lining to the acrimony has been that bilateral trade between the two has been growing, with China being India’s largest trading partner.
Nepal, meanwhile, is still suffering from the economic blockade of 2015, while things with Sri Lanka aren’t great either. Tewari also ruminates on Trump’s diatribe against Pakistan which would “push Pakistan into the welcoming embrace of China while Russia would be all too happy that a nation that bled them during the Afghan occupation bled the US equally through its chicanery and double dealing”.
A G Noorani speaks of ‘trust’ as a factor that shouldn’t entirely determine the talks between India and Pakistan, in his column for the Asian Age this Sunday. Noorani reflects on how things stand now: where India’s minister for external affairs has firmly ruled out reviving cricket matches between the two countries, and where India has decided to fully tap the Indus River’s waters under the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960: reportedly to “strike back at Pakistan”. The excuse given for Indo-Pak’s failed relationship is the “lack of trust”. But Noorani believes this should hardly be a determinant for talks.
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