“THERE is no use making the tenure of the election commissioner a fixed and secure tenure if there is no provision in the constitution to prevent either a fool or...

BOOK banning is akin to book burning, emblematic of Hitler’s Germany. It assumes various forms — ban under the Customs Act, 1962, to prevent its import into the country; under...

ALL federations make foreign affairs a central subject. But none render the states as dependent on the centre as India does. Chief ministers take its permission for travel abroad. As...

“LET us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate,” president John F. Kennedy famously said in his inaugural address in January 1961. In those wise...

“MANY of us think that it is rather disgraceful and does no credit to India that this matter should have dragged on so long”, India’s deputy prime minister Vallabhbhai Patel...

AT long last, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed, in measured words, his disapproval of lynchings, which have spread since he took office. He never deigned to condemn them or their...

ARTICLE 35-A of India’s constitution says that no law for Jammu & Kashmir, existing or future, shall be void as being violative of the fundamental rights if it touches “permanent...

IT would be a shame if the international community were to submit to the gross violation of international law that has been systematically committed by the United States, through its...

JUDICIAL activism is a virtue only when it is accompanied by restraint. In India, as in the US, the supreme court has been notable not for restraint, but for excess....

WHEN Mufti Mohammed Sayeed justified the unscrupulous coalition of his Valley-centred PDP with the Jammu-based BJP in 2014, as the meeting of the North Pole and the South Pole, he...