MUSE

“…At the stroke of midnight, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of nation a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance…” an excerpt from ‘Tryst with Destiny’, the maiden speech of independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the eve of India’s first independence day. A day earlier, Pakistan also celebrated its first independence day. The partition of the two dominions (dominion of India and dominion of Pakistan) was necessitated following the Lahore resolution and the two nation theory of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the ‘father of the nation’ of Pakistan. India went ahead to declare itself as the ‘Republic of India’ on 26th January, 1950 while Pakistan declared itself as the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’. A good number of the BJP MPs with Mr. Amit Shah leading the charge have put the onus on the Congress for the partition of India and Pakist

J ust before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, there was hoo-ha from the opposition parties in protest against the issuing of party ticket by the BJP to terror accused Pragya Singh Thakur to contest the parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, not only was she granted the ticket but she also defeated the heavyweight Digvijaya Singh of the Congress Party with a margin of 364,822 votes. Currently, she is the MP from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. This peculiar and controversial character has been in the headlines many a times for reasons obvious to everyone. A prime accused in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blast case which killed six people. She is on trial facing multiple charges under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. She is now out on bail on health grounds. Pragya Singh Thakur is the same person who said that Hemant Karkare died in the 2008 Mumbai attacks because no she cursed him for treating her badly in jail after her arrest in 2008 blasts. Ironically, she is also the only cancer survivor w

Winter has already set in and Dimapur plunges into darkness by 5.00 PM. By 8.00 PM there are barely any soul left on the street and the town wears a deserted look. It looks like as if the town is taken out straight from the Hollywood zombie movie. Dimapur is considered as the commercial hub and more so a city and it is pertinent for a city to have streetlights all over the town which is actually working! But except for one or two, none of the streetlights in Dimapur are functional. This gives rise to countless anti-social elements and they are more emboldened under the garb of darkness. The Municipal Council, Urban Development and the District administration should take up this this matter with utmost priority and ensure its citizens a safe place so that they can go out without having an iota of fear even at night.

E ver since the Narendra Modi Government came to power in 2014 the country has been running amok. The first stint ended drastically yet dramatically with the Balakot Airstrike in retaliation to the Pulwama attack which took place on 14th February, 2019. The Balakot airstrike which was considered as a preemptive by the Indian Air Force (IAF) targeting Jaish-e-Mohammed camp saw no casualties on both sides. The big blow to India was the shooting down of our own Chopper in Budgam, Kashmir on 27 February which was shot down by Indian Air Defense Missile killing all six Indian Air Force personnel on board and its information concealed until recently. Whether or not the IAF killed terrorist sbut the infamous ‘Cloud Radar Theory’ of PM Modi wherein he suggested that the clouds could have helped shield Indian Air Force aircraft from Pakistani radars during the Balakot airstrikes awed many to this day. The Pulwama attack left the country in shock and in great distress. And ironically, the leade

A nd so it’s a wrap-up! The conclusion to one of the most dramatic and ostensibly the most sensational elections in the democratic world. Elections may be over but the fervor has not yet died down. The ostentation of show of strength by the political parties during the elections still rings in the ears of many. The 17th Lok Sabha elections were unprecedented. Because while the opposition chorused on the issues of unemployment, weak economy, agrarian distress, demonetization, GST and a host of other issues. The ruling dispensation for the first time chose to fight on the issues of terrorism, national security, and hyped nationalism! The Congress led by its president Rahul Gandhi rallied on the Rafale Deal accusing PM Modi of giving 30K Crore to Anil Ambani. Rahul’s jibe at PM Modi ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ almost became the de-facto slogan of the opposition parties. This further prompted PM Modi to prefix Chowkidar to his name which was follow suit by his Council of Ministers as well as su

F ive years ago, exactly on this day I wrote an article titled ‘Democracy in Nagaland’ shortly after the Lok Sabha Election was over in Nagaland. And down the years, we have had a state general election and a bye-election to the lone Lok Sabha seat which was necessitated after Mr. Rio vacated the seat for reasons best known to everyone but sadly things haven’t changed yet! This Lok sabha election was no different from the past elections. The overall voter turn-out was 83.12% but there was a steep rise in the percentage only after 13.00 hours which usually is considered as the opportune time for proxy voting. Unlike other elections, this time the NBCC which had erstwhile spearheaded the Clean Election Campaign chose to remain silent and so does its affiliates and the students’ union which had earlier vociferously vouched for the same. The ECI’s directive to use an additional document along with the voter-slip was not complied in almost all the polling stations. The ECI should take co

T he year 2018 unfolded dramatically with the dissent in the Country’s top court wherein four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court, one of whom was the incumbent Chief Justice of India held an unprecedented press conference against the arbitrary decisions of the then CJI Mr. Dipak Mishra a fortiori after the case of Justice H. B Loya’s death was assigned to a much junior bench. Barely nine months in to the year, what surprises us more is that we see an in fighting in one of the country’s premier investigation agency ‘The CBI’. The very agency which people trust more than any other institution. The ‘CBI vs CBI’ pseudonym as carried by the news agencies is not a recent issue. It is the outcome of a feud between the Number 1 and Number 2 of the CBI. It all started with the appointment of Mr. Rakesh Asthana as the Special Director of the CBI despite objection from the CBI Director which we shall see later. Dubbed as the ‘Blue-eyed Boy’ of the Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi by t