Tag Archives: International Relations

Language, the author contends, does more than convey information. It reflects values, ideologies and social norms. Nuance is often lost in translation, and this becomes more problematic during periods of crisis when clarity is essential. In such moments, misinformation can spread rapidly and undermine communication. The saying, ‘truth is the first casualty of war’ serves as a stark reminder of the importance of precise translation in volatile situations.

Like Nehru, Mao also came to power in 1949 convinced that he needed 15-20 years of peace in Asia to develop his own country. Mao told Stalin precisely that at their first meeting in Moscow in December 1949, and Stalin promised that he should be able to ensure that. But Nehru and Mao clearly differed on how peace was to be secured. Within six months of that conversation with Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung were seeking Stalin’s approval to reunify Korea by force of arms, and came close to doing so.

One was the reference to the strong defense mounted by Suu Kyi as the country’s then leader in December 2019 at the International Court of Justice at The Hague disputing the charge of genocide against Myanmar’s armed forces for their actions against the Rohingyas. The author notes that the people of Myanmar were full of praise for her performance, even as much of the outside world was outraged

For the Indian Government, he says, the challenges are to accommodate the unique identity of the Kashmiris (one might justifiably ask: don’t the people of every Indian State have their own unique identity?) and make them renounce anti-India sentiments of their own volition. A ‘serious dialogue’, ‘consultation’ would be a start.

The main theme of the book is how the broad features of Islamic tradition reconfigured by the historical particularities of modernity are martialized in specific practices of Dawat (p. 19). The book elaborates the importance that the Tablighi Jamaat attaches to the ritual practice of Dawat to create a cohesive Islamic society.

VOur two countries have the ability and responsibility to ensure that it broadens yet further and to nurture and enrich these seas to become of clearest transparence.’ In his speech, the Prime Minister also alluded to Swami Vivekananda, describing him as a Renaissance man ahead of his time, and to the enduring contributions of Justice Radhabinod Pal for his dissenting judgement in the Tokyo trial after the Second World War.

A second, and more ominous, outcome of colonization was its propensity to create and control the minds and histories of the colonized. The development of archaeology under state sponsorship in the 19th and 20th centuries and the monumentalizing of heritage played a significant role in this process by documenting and categorizing archaeological sites and monuments, creating thereby monolithic identities for Hindu and Buddhist monuments in India and Southeast Asia. However, a striking aspect of the recent archaeological data is the emphasis on local and regional diversity, whether in the context of Buddhism, the Hindu temple, or inscriptions.

One of the ten Asia lectures, for instance, deals with ‘Fundamentals of Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism’. In fifteen pages, the author has masterfully summarized the contentious issues, contextualizing them against the currents of history with an unerring commitment to details.

As a result of persistent and systematic discrimination by the Sinhala majority, the Tamil resistance movement had by the early 1980s turned militant, led by the well-armed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In 1983 the Sinhalese reacted by systematic attacks on the Tamils, which of course further exacerbated violence by the Tamils.

The volume concludes with three important, though controversial organizations—the Police, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The NIA is the newest of the three, which was created following the Mumbai terror attack in 2008. Akshay Mangla and Vineet Kapoor’s chapter analyses the administrative capacity of the police in terms of police/population ratio and other resources at their disposal

Writing on high level decision-making while history is being made is never easy. Woodward has mastered the art of getting principals, including Trump in the past, to speak of what they knew and why they did what they did in near real time. The book is thus fascinating in what it reveals of the working of Biden Presidency on foreign and security policy. War is a blow-by-blow account of Biden administration’s response to the Ukraine and Palestine crises.

hey start with a clean example of Neche and Gretna on the United States-Canada border, where the citizens of Neche are closer to Gretna across the border than to any other American town. While the Americans in Neche do their shopping and socializing in Gretna, they cannot avail the welfare services offered by the Canadian Government in Gretna. Similarly, another American town, Point Roberts

Chaulia terms the India-Japan partnership as a ‘quasi-friendship’, which though encouraged by the US earlier, has its own logic and internal dynamics today. He says one reason for Japan to turn towards India is its fear that the US would not defend it in the case of a frontal attack by China and that together, India and Japan are alternatives to the other countries vis-à-vis China in the Indo-Pacific. He argues that Japan has helped India sustain its regional predominance in South Asia (p. 91).

These were soon joined by direct recruits, chosen by the Union Public Service Commission. Three officials especially marked out by the author for their contributions are K Natwar Singh, Brajesh Mishra and JN Dixit. MK Rasgotra and Muchkund Dubey were among the several other stalwarts who significantly contributed to India’s conduct of its foreign relations.

During the initial years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), an important task for the Foreign Ministry was to implement a united front strategy in the countries that had kept their recognition of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang regime. Emerged from CPC’s experiences during the war against Japanese imperialists, the united front strategy sought to establish relations beyond the formal governmental level with political parties, civil society organizations and individuals.

Each of the chapters tries to focus on the BRI and its effects across the Indian and Pacific Ocean. Chapter one dwells on the various theories on ‘Silk Road’. The Chinese have tried to revive the idea of the ‘Silk Road’ by initially calling the overland route ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ and by water as ‘Maritime Silk Road’. The purpose was to make China ‘great again’ and to dethrone the US as ‘the world’s leading superpower’ (p. 2). Lintner views China’s initiatives and particularly the BRI from the prism of a new ‘Cold War’.

Warikoo refers to Kashmir as the undivided State of Jammu and Kashmir including Ladakh, Hunza, Gilgit, Baltistan and adjoining frontier territories. Following the Independence of India, when the Gilgit agency was restored to the Maharaja of Kashmir, the British launched a secret mission called Operation Datta Khel, employing their officers posted in Pakistan, Peshawar, and Gilgit to physically occupy Gilgit and hand over to Pakistan.

The book cogently touches upon the dichotomies that beset the nation during its nascent stage and some of which continue to haunt its path. Kamran argues that an inherent religious bias prevented democracy from flourishing in Pakistan. This was despite the nation’s conceptualization on lines of the western modern construct. The religious ‘rationale’ conflicted with ideas of democracy as interpreted and propagated by the West and instead an ‘establishmentarian democracy’ started taking shape.

The concept of the Indo-Pacific itself is a debated one and is seen differently by various theorists, as pointed out by Shubhrajeet Konwer (p.105). It is seen either as a balancing strategy by the realists, or as a new institutional setting of cooperation among the countries of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean by the liberalists, or as an ideational construct of shared values to face a common enemy by the constructivists.

Bangladesh has had democratic governments with intermittent breaks when the military junta took over power through coup d’etat. The recent uprising was not an intervention by the army—to many it appeared to be spontaneous outburst of the masses although now, with the unearthing of many sources, the narrative does not correspond with that which attracted our attention at the outset.