Some of you may have already read the story of a recent, extraordinary judgement by the Kolkata High Court that involved the religious conversion of a minor:
Calcutta High Court on Wednesday (16th Dec) granted the anticipatory bail plea of a 26-year-old youth from Murshidabad who had been accused of kidnapping and marrying a 15-year-old girl.
Sairul Sheikh, a resident of Bakultala in Behrampore, had been accused of kidnapping and forcibly marrying Anita Roy.
A division bench of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh and Justice S P Talukdar allowed Sheikh’s plea after his lawyers …

Most readers of this blog would be aware of “Friends of BJP” and the dedicated team that conceived this group last year. One of the stated aims of “Friends of BJP” is to get “Middle India” more engaged with politics, public policy and governance – something that resonates strongly with me.
I was therefore very pleased to receive an email from Rajesh a few days ago asking me for my thoughts/views on issues that the group and the party (BJP) must focus on in the coming decade.
As most of you know, …

While trawling the web looking for something else a few days ago, I stumbled on an account of a meeting between Swami Samarth Ramdas and Guru Har Gobind ji that took place in Kashmir almost 400* years ago.
This was an unexpected discovery. I was not aware that such a meeting had taken place…and I wondered whether the encounter had a role to play in Samarth Ramdas’ later life when he came in contact with Shivaji Maharaj.
Unfortunately there was not much I could find about the meeting, except a few links. …

Is someone ghostwriting for Prof Chomsky or has the wise professor chosen to ignore facts?
Thanks to Amitabh (and Rachna) for alerting me to this statement from a recent article by Prof Chomsky. Writing in “War, Peace and Obama’s Nobel“, Prof Chomsky says (emphasis added):
Iran hasn’t invaded another country for hundreds of years—unlike the United States, Israel and India (which occupies Kashmir, brutally).
As Rachna mentioned in her email,”Someone well known is lying. He is Noam Chomsky and he has lied about India and the lie is huge”.
Nothing more needs to be …

On Wed evening, as the chaos at Heathrow was unfoldoing in front of me, the “still calm” part of my brain was thinking about what might have triggered the seeming breakdown of the entire system…
Not that the snow or the severe weather was a surprise…
And not that things were somehow smooth until 7pm before suddenly unravelling…
As early as 11am on that day, flights were being cancelled and rescheduled. Even while this was happening, online departure schedules were blithely showing “Scheduled” for flights later in the day; albeit with a disclaimer: …

Start your weekend with this ruling by Judge William Young while sentencing Richard C. Reid, the “Shoe Bomber” (Thanks to Sh Krishen-ji for alerting me to this)…
Next read, They Killed My Lawyer – a horrifying story from Russia by William Browder
Move on to Aroon Raman’s sketch of Subramania Bharati…
and finally dwell on Tavleen Singh’s tutorial for Rahul baba.
Excerpts from all the four links below, as always.
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*** Excerpts from “Ruling by Judge William Young: Sentencing of Richard C. Reid” ***
…We are not afraid of you or your terrorist conspirators, Mr. Reid. …