When I first read Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar’s piece “The Pope’s moral blunders on outsourcing” (STOI 2/8/09) I was furious with the Pope for blundering into an area that is not his core competence – economics. I was inclined to believe Aiyar’s opening line that religion and business rarely mix well. I belong to a…

The Delhi High Court judgement on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has opened up a Pandora’s Box of variegated opinions.  The advocates of “gay pride”, a term of their own choice, are obviously gaga.  The Central Government seems to be in a Catch 22 situation, not knowing whether to say yes or…

Almost everybody from Swami Ramdev and Lalu Prasad Yadav, to assorted Muslim clerics, and Catholic spokesperson Rev Dominic Emanuel SVD have opinionated on gay rights.  Central Government Ministers have gone into a huddle.  Gay activists are ecstatic that the Delhi High Court has struck down Sec 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), as being…

It could be idle, idol or even ideal, depending on what one wants to worship. An idol is something that is fired by human imagination and fashioned by human hands.  Humans create their own idols – what they want to look up to.  The idol is determined by the idolater or adulator.  This may sound…

For the BJP, the Third and Fourth Fronts, it is indeed egg on their faces, while the Congress has been egged on by the voters. Why EGG? Not because they chickened out, but because, perhaps for the first time, the Indian voter has voted for the EGG. It stands for Economics & Good Governance. In…

Alistair Browne (AB) was a white man – British. Chirag Din (CD) was his Muslim peon. Jailor Jaimie (JJ) was a robust Anglo-Indian, and Ummed Kumar (UK), though not from that country, preferred to be called a Hindustani. The time – July 1947, the town Kanpur; then known as Cawnpore, the Manchester of the East,…