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Jaish-e-Muhammad means army of Muhammad. This is strange because the Prophet of Islam had no ambitions of conquest. Arab expansion began under the Caliphs, particularly Umar, after Muhammad’s death. The Jaish is a Pakistani entity and its recruits are mostly rural Punjabis. It is much...

Caught in a state of shock and numbness, it will take time for the Indian paramilitary forces to recover and come to grips with huge loss of lives in the terrorist attack staged by Kashmir-based Jaish-e-Mohammed in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir Thursday. Serious questions...

Fire safety remains abysmal in the country despite the numerous examples that incidents in the past have set. Only recently the Apollo Hospital in Bhubaneswar avoided a major mishap after a fire that started in the battery room of the hospital was put out in...

‘Eradication of corruption’ and ‘development’ were two of the major poll planks on which the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government rode to power in 2014. As the term of this government approaches its end, the PM finds himself surrounded by ‘needles of suspicion’, all...

Democracy, widely acclaimed to be the best form of governance that civilised society has, till now, discovered is facing some odds. This is not just in India but also in the United States and the UK – from where India took its early lessons. The...

So far Pakistan has had three Constitutions. All three have one thing in common, and it is the dislike of interest and the modern banking system. The history of this is not particularly Islamic alone. The Old Testament book of Leviticus specifically says that interest...

The Interim Budget presented by the interim finance minister, Piyush Goyal, February 1 was rather heavy on optics and very light in substance. Optics, because the whole exercise, a populist one, was conceived and carried out with an eye on general elections. It was sought...

It is a no-win situation for both sides as the Supreme Court gave its interim order on the Kolkata stand-off between the CBI represented by the Centre, and the West Bengal government that stood solidly behind the police commissioner in the eastern metropolis. The apex...

Two aspects stand out in relation to the unprecedented stand-off between the Centre – through its investigative arm, the CBI- and the State Government in Kolkata since Sunday evening. One is of the need to zealously protect and preserve the principles of federalism that is...

Having been floored in a fight at the Assembly hustings in several states, the natural instinct on the part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP was to turn around and perform a trapeze act. The Budget proposals introduced by the government should, for...