Amberish K Diwanji is deputy managing editor at rediff.com and India Abroad. In March 1997, he became the first Indian journalist working on the Internet to win the British Council's prestigious Chevening Fellowship. Amberish began his journalistic career at The Indian Post, worked at The Independent, Mumbai, and DSJ Television before moving to rediff.com in June 1996.

• Of symbolic and real fights
'The communists prefer to wage a war from the cool comfort of Delhi rather than in the gruelling heat of Gujarat, or elsewhere. Or is it, as many suspect, that the communists really have withered and are no longer a potent political force?'

• Sounding the bugle and backing off!
'We are witnessing a national farce, a parody of our nation's armed forces being mobilised, placed along the India-Pakistan border, guns cocked... and then told to wait while the politicians decide what next!'

• Secularism and appeasement
'The tragedy is India does not have any political party that can actually take on the communal forces: if one seeks to appease Muslims, the other seeks to appease the Hindus. No one cares to appease the Indians.'

• Are we joining the ranks of Bosnia and Rwanda?
'The Ayodhya dispute is not the reason for Hindu-Muslim problems in India. It is the outcome of the decline of secularism and the shameless exploitation of religion by political parties for power.'

• NRIs need a new mantra
'If NRIs really want to help India, they should get involved in India's economic growth rather than try and shape a narrow, bigoted rightwing political ideology based on hatred for some.'

• Anger is no excuse to kill innocents
'Hang the Muslims who burnt the train in Godhra, and hang the Hindus who burnt a family in Ahmedabad, but do not kill innocent people in retaliation.'

• India should stay away from the looming war
'India can, and must, take advantage of the anti-terrorist fervour that has gripped the world and strike at the terrorists and the roots of terrorism in Kashmir. It is our best chance after 1971.'

• A train to Srinagar
'Why can't a broad gauge railway line be built from Jammu onwards to Srinagar, up to Leh in Ladakh. Yet, this is not just a plea for a railway line. It is about an "idea", about a project that can help change the situation in Kashmir, and transform the nature of the battle.'

• The hype has failed, let the talks begin
'It is the media that sought to set the tone for the talks and the media that seemed most upset at not getting its preferred headlines. Yet, whether the media desperados like this fact or not, the simple fact is that diplomatic negotiations can never be conducted under the public spotlight.'

• What validity does a Vajpayee-Musharraf deal hold?
'What guarantee does India have that any deal reached between the present leaders will be acceptable to the next set of Pakistani rulers? The argument that this time New Delhi is dealing with the Pakistani Army, the actual leaders, is flawed.'

• They now come for the Hindus
'India can surely actively rally world opinion against the Taleban. Today Hindus have been marked out, tomorrow they may well be targeted for crimes real or imagined and there will be no one to save them.'

• 'The campaign against corruption is a middle-class phenomenon'
'At least in the arena of corruption, Jayalalitha's victory should be an eye opener for the middle-class. Corruption is not "the" issue for the poor people of India.'

• Chinks in the armour
'Now that we have taken sides with the US against China, we need to implement the consequences of this decision. We need to match China on our own strength. Otherwise, we are sowing the seeds of our doom.'

• Of restraint and cowardice
'Sheikh Hasina being in power means little to the families of the killed jawans and to India. In fact, if Khaleda Zia can keep a check on the BDR, she's much better off being in power from India's perspective.'

• A tale of two liars
'In their depositions to the Liberhans Commission, both Advani and Rao have shown that they are mere politicians. If Advani was pathetic, Rao was worse.'

• BJP is damned by perception
'Frankly, if someone had taped a BJP leader taking money in the 1980s, it would not have been half as upsetting as seeing it in 2001. So let the BJP not cry. If they don't like the limelight, they can get out.'

• Will destroying the Bamiyan Buddha recreate the Babri Masjid?
'Liberalism and secularism has no room for medieval crap such as destroying mosques or statues, for whatever reason. After all, the the 21st century is not the 16th!'

• Sonia and her advisors have learnt nothing from history
'Is Sonia really so stupid as to believe that by taking a dip in the river at Allahabad, she will prove her Hindu credentials?'

• Of Kashmir, nationalism and rights
'Why should a division of Kashmir be opposed? Is Kashmiri territory so sacrosanct that it cannot be split up along its fault lines?'

• Ayodhya: What next?
'While many might actually welcome a Ram temple, it is far more likely that a temple on the disputed site today will only open a Pandora's box for similar demands. And such demands can be insatiable.'

• India needs a balanced election system
'Which Indian politician is really worried about the way Mizoram votes? Or Goa? But everyone is worried about the polls in UP or Bihar or Maharashtra. Because in a popular vote system their numbers alone make up for the others!'

• The fallen icon
'Thanks to Azhar's greed, communalists have been given a new weapon. And Indian Muslims' image another battering. Azhar may have just lost a few matches for India, but India has lost much more.'

• The judiciary must take up cudgels on behalf of India's poorest
'For a start, would the honourable justices take the trouble of finding out how truthfully to the letter and spirit are the tribals being rehabilitated; are they being given a life comparable and better to what they had earlier?'

• The curse of casteism
'The greatest tragedy is that the Indian state has simply given up its fight against casteism.'

• Rao goes into history books again
'The first time it was as the prime minister who initiated economic liberalisation, and took India on the road to market reforms. Now, it is as the first former prime minister of India to be convicted in a criminal case of bribery.'

• Return to an abhorrent past
'If the VHP and shankaracharya really cared for those who seek to become Hindus, the way is not to push them into separate temples but to welcome them into the existing temples, to treat them equally.'

• India only aspires, doesn't act like a regional heavyweight
'There are three crises going on in the world which involve India in some way or the other, but the response of the government can only be described as lethargic. India's awesome inaction makes one reach only one clonclusion - that it can hardly aspire to be a great, or even a regional, power.'

• Caste off
"Hopefully, some historian will study the debilitating effect casteism had on India and Indians' ability to defend their country. We need to study the past more thoroughly to prepare for the future."

• Now they come after Valentine's Day
'There is no real harm in celebrating functions such as Valentine's Day. If Thackeray so desires, why does he not designate a Laila-Majnu Day?'

• The battle can only be taken up by true Indians who do not want bigots to govern their life
'Banning the movie shooting only shows that rather than tackle the difficult problem of widows becoming prostitutes in the most holy city of the Hindus, the easy route has been chosen.'

• Indians are running scared
'The fault is not with the government alone but with India's cowardly middle class. This middle class got its way, and in the bargain showed that it lacks the guts to fight, to wage a war against the terrorists.'

• 'Let the people themselves vote to be a part of the nation'
'To keep the country united, we Indians have to strengthen the nationhood among our people, not just station soldiers in troubled regions. Because armies do not make a nation!'

• Equal education for all
'No one can compare the merit of a poor boy in a village struggling to go to school and a boy from an elite school. They occupy different galaxies, not just different worlds.'

• Politicians, patriotism and pettiness
'The message Thackeray wants to send out is that the patriotism of Muslims is suspect, that Hindus in the times of Kargil must not trust their fellow Muslims. All for cheap politics!'

• Avoid all-out war
'Kashmir will then become a dispute where the US might decide to play judge, jury and executioner, to India's disadvantage.'

• To oppose each and every move of the US only makes India irrelevant
• India can never be a great power unless illiteracy is wiped out
• Hindus are very intolerant
• Why do these Hindu groups always seek to turn India into a Hindu Pakistan?
• Singhal is crazy!
• Nationalism versus Secularism: Why should the two be distinct?
• BJP must undergo major changes
• What if Delhi is nuked?
• In deportation lies the very real threat of sending out Indian Bengalis
• Politicians and Commissions
• India's foreign policy needs a new direction
• Intolerant India
• The Unbearable Unimportance of Being India
• Charting a foreign policy for nuclear India
• The China Syndrome
• The BJP wanted glory, even if it meant putting the nation at risk
• More wealth than bombs
• The Middle-Class Syndrome
• The BJP must abandon its extreme right loony fringe to be a viable alternative
• Let the BJP form the next government
• Death and the Dynasty
• The Hindu rightwing has never represented, nor does it represent the true Hindu ethos
• Sonia Gandhi exposes middle-class Indian hypocrisy
• India will thrive if we are committed to the country, not a religion
• Don't throw English out of India!
• Indo-US ties: The need for Pragmatism
• Two deaths and the media
• Myanmar in ASEAN is a chance for India
• Ambedkar's opponents were not the British: it was the Hindus who were unwilling to change or compromise
• Small states an answer to people's alienation
• The importance of a dalit President
• So many rules and regulations gives the impression
of about a dozen Seshans giving orders
• Will the VHP allow tribals and dalits as the
chief priests at the Ram temple in Ayodhya?
• Indian nationhood is not so well defined or
established so as to make us complacent
• The Mauling of the Mahatma
• Conversion and the State
• India's Asian choices
• India-Pakistan war: The end of ideologies and
the two-nation theory
• The lessons India must learn from the UN defeat

Back