The ancestry of Australian aborigines has been a subject of interest from Indian, and particularly South Indian point of view, ever since it was found that the direct descendants (in Madurai) of out-of Africa migration shared the same genetic marker M130 with nearly half of Australian aborigines. Fourteen members of a family of Piramalai Kallar community set...
Elections in Jammu and Kashmir, regardless of the level at which they are held, have a tendency to heat up the political environment. All parties bare their claws and indulge in the worst form of name calling and trading of barbs/insults. In the melee, important issues are skirted as attention remains focussed on mundane matters that are high on emotion. T...
China’s aggressive posture in the Himalayas, pushing India to invest more and more on its land army, is a decoy to prevent India from developing a strong naval force. At a time of conflict, a much-stronger Indian Navy could cause serious disruption to China’s principal trade route, the one that brings in the bulk of China’s oil and gas from the Persian Gulf....
China-Pakistan collusion to undermine stability in the India-governed part of Jammu and Kashmir is a future development that New Delhi cannot ignore. When India abrogated Article 370 in August 2019, making both Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh India’s Union Territories as of Oct. 31, 2019, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying issued a strongly word...
As of this writing, Indian and Chinese military personnel still stand eyeball to eyeball, staring at each other in barren eastern Ladakh’s Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso. The tenacity of both sides suggests that the de-escalation talks may turn out to be a long, drawn-out process. Worse, the standoff could end in yet another temporary arrangement to be exploi...
Weakened by Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of US President Donald J. Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu risks being caught between a rock and a hard place as Jordan, the Palestine Authority and the United Arab Emirates manoeuvre for control of what is to Jews the Temple Mount and to Muslims the Haram ash-Sharif, the third most holy site in Islam....
A Russian mediated-ceasefire in the Caucasus [October 14–ed.] cements a Turkish-backed Azerbaijani military defeat of Armenia but raises tantalizing questions. Spontaneous mass protests against the terms of the ceasefire and the government’s conduct of the war potentially throw into doubt the future of Armenian President Nikol Pashinyan and Armenia’s ability...
President Trump gave to Israel all she could wish for; he hoped that in return, the Jews would give him America to rule another term. A simple give-and-take, but it didn’t work out as intended. If he were to run for the presidency of Israel, he would have it. If Brooklyn were to decide who’d inhabit the White House, he would be the Chosen one. But Trump’s pl...
On Vijayadasami Day, October 26, this writer went to a temple dedicated to Lord Siva and managed by the Malabar Devaswom Board. Though temples under the Board open quite early for regular rituals, darshan is allowed only after 7 a.m. and devotees have to register their name and mobile number at the entrance, a process that began on the dot of time. Normally ...
According to numerous observers, the “aggressive approach” the Turkish leader R. Erdoğan applies in Turkey’s foreign policy every day evokes more and more hostility and opposition across the world. It is through the fault of Ankara that many of the faded conflicts have flared up with renewed vigor lately. Thus, in the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey is strivin...
In addition to the coronavirus pandemic, some politicians have been infected today by another pandemic – the “NATO” one. Having encapsulated a significant number of countries in coalitions created against its opponents, the United States, in the heat of a militant pandemic, tried in recent years to first create the so-called “Arabic NATO”, and then even an...
By the end of October, as open conflict between President Erdoğan, who demands low interest rates from the central bank to stimulate growth, and financial markets who demand higher rates to “offset risk,” the Turkish Lira dropped a sharp 3% in a day. To date in 2020 the Lira is down 34% against the US dollar and by 70% over the past five years. While some th...
Ethiopia, an African darling of the international community, is sliding towards civil war as the coronavirus pandemic hardens ethnic fault lines. The consequences of prolonged hostilities could echo across East Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Fighting between the government of Nobel Peace Prize winning Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Tigrayan nat...
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan announced on November 1 that his government would give “provisional provincial status” to its occupied territory of Gilgit-Baltistan that was part of the pre-Independence princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. It became part of India on the accession of the kingdom to India in October 1947 and is internationally accepted to b...
This article aims at establishing Mārtānda, described in the Indic texts as the Sun of Younger Dryas. In the process, the story of the wives of the Sun, Saṃjñā who deserted her husband and deputed Chāyā in her place, is also deciphered. This story, treated with derision by many from Max Muller to Wendy Doniger, needs to be revealed in the right purport...
Since Skanda antedated Vaivasvata Manu, as known from the mantra of Indradvaja given by Vaivasvata Manu, it is necessary to investigate the legends of Skanda to get a proper understanding of what happened before Vaivasvata Manu came into being. From the Tamil literary sources it is known that Skanda was a real-life character who ruled from a place called Sou...
My long term plan is to decode the Indic past by establishing the beginnings of the Vedic civilization, the persons involved, the place of genesis and its spread inside and outside India by which we can get a clarity on the vexatious issue of the Aryan invasion / migration, on whether people came from outside India or went out of India and how and when such ...
The month of October was an eventful one for Sri Lanka. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution (20A) empowering the President was passed in parliament with two-thirds majority. The Covid-19 pandemic made a dramatic comeback in a second wave, to boost the virus-affected numbers which stood at 9,791 with 19 deaths as on October 31, 2020. Evidently, the second ...
Indonesia, the new kid on the block in the competition for Muslim religious soft power and leadership, has proven to be a different kettle of fish. Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim movement, rather than the government of President Joko Widodo, has emerged as a formidable contender, one that is capable of operating on the same level as the states w...
Slick public relations packaging is what gives the UAE an edge in its rivalry with both Saudi Wahhabism as well as with Qatar and Turkey. Saudi Arabia is hobbled by the image of an austere, ultra-conservative and secretive kingdom that it is trying to shed and a badly tarnished human rights record magnified by hubris and a perceived sense of entitlement. For...