by Ranbir Singh Bangladesh became independent in 1971 after a violent and bitter war with its neo-colonial master Pakistan. The eastern part of Bengal joined the newly formed state of Pakistan when the British exited India in 1947. Despite having a larger share of the country’s population the largely Bengali speaking East Pakistan chaffed under […]
by Ranbir Singh When I first stumbled across FA Hayek’s Road to Serfdom it was over half a century after the book’s publication. The idea that socialism and communism could lead to fascism and Nazism (which after all is national socialism in the original German) flew in the face of acecpted discourse which even […]
by Ranbir Singh The last global conflict has entered common parlance and historical mythology as a victory of good over evil, the triumph of freedom and democracy, but above all the defeat of Nazism. In such a politically charged and extremely sensitive topic few would dare challenge the aforementioned assumptions especially in the light of […]
by Ranbir Singh The enticing advertisements by the Department of Tourism by the administration of the Indian state of Kerala entice visitors with seductive images of natural beauty in the tropics, capping it all with the slogan “God’s Own Country”. However it is becoming increasingly apparent that this begs the question, exactly whose ‘god’ […]
By Ranbir Singh Until his death in 2003, Bhishma Sahni was one of India’s most renowned Hindi language authors and playwrites. His 1974 controversial and popular novel ‘Tamas’ (Darkness) won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975 and in 1987 was made into a television series for the national channel Doordarshan. Sahni wrote […]
In his 1993 BBC television series Akbar S Ahmed, former ambassador from Pakistan to Britain and presently Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington DC, stated that Jinnah had created Pakistan so that India’s Muslims could be “safe from Hindu reaction”. But he has remained largely silent on the Hindus […]
The 1915 Armenian and Assyrian Genocides: Inconvenient Precedents for the Arab Spring Revolutions …by Ranbir Singh It was in a speech of 22 August 1939 that Hitler urged his volk to slaughter without mercy men, women and children of the inferior Slavic race as he planned to invade Poland. He ended this […]
Is South Sudan the Key to Christian Survival in the Middle East? by Ranbir Singh As the Arab Spring turns into the inevitable Arab Ice Age where can minority Christians turn The independence of South Sudan on 24 July 2011 was a momentous event. After decades of fighting domination by the Arabic speaking and increasingly […]
Is Walmart the Reincarnation of the East India Company? By Ranbir Singh The recent furore against allowing Wal-Mart and other western multinational companies into India ’s lucrative retail sector is based upon fears that it will bankrupt the small retails who have been at the hub of that country’s consumer sector. There are fears […]
Arab Spring Rolls Into Fundamentalism by Ranbir Singh Independence to India did not change the political system in one important respect. Much colonial legislation remains intact. Most notorious is the Police Act of 1864 which was designed to quell dissent by unruly subjects rather than provide a public service. In fact the very […]
