India - Miscellaneous

Opium, Art, Eroticism, Radio, Travel

Inside the world's largest opium factory - It remains the world's biggest legal opium factory, dating back nearly two centuries , by Amarnath Tewary - BBC

Indian Modernism via an Eclectic and Elusive Artist - “Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (1882-1966)” - Word is that contemporary Indian art is the next sensation on the international market. So now’s the time to learn something about where it came from , by Holland Cotter - NYT

Cyber Sutra: India's online eroticism - Now known for strict conservatism, India was the birthplace of erotica, famed for its sensual literature and carvings. Andrew Buncombe looks at a modern expression of an ancient urge - Independent

India Set to Lose Voice of America - After 53 Years, Radio Service Will End , by Rama Lakshmi - WP

Assam: India's little-known land - It’s a part of India not at all well-known, so that travellers here can enjoy a feeling of pioneering. I flew from Calcutta to the tea town of Dibrugarh and stayed nearby at Mancotta, a handsome tea estate house dating from the 1840s when the British were annexing Assam in pursuit of a tea bonanza , by Trevor Fishlock - Telegraph

Floods, Dams

Flooding stirs bad blood in South Asia - Politics, corruption and high water trigger a crisis in India and Nepal leaving over 3 million homeless and dozens dead , by Sudeshna Sarkar - ISN

An Environmental Mistake in India - If ever there was a lesson in the unintended effects of damming rivers, the Farakka Barrage is probably it. A 4.5-kilometer irrigation dam constructed on a tributary of the River Ganges in 1974-75, it is threatening to wreak havoc on a series of downstream villages and ultimately silt up the Kolkata harbor, the condition it was partly designed to fix , by Sankar Ray - Asia Sentinel

Kashmir, Naxals, Terror, Human Rights

Will Kashmir Protests and Terrorism Thwart India’s Global Ambitions? - Politicians and extremists exploiting grievances to instigate violence could drive away foreign investors , by Harsh V. Pant - Yale Global

War in the Heart of India - We were somewhere in the wilds of Chhattisgarh state's Bastar region, the remotest heart of tribal India where Maoist insurgents prowl the mountain jungle. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called them the country's biggest long-term threat , by Jason Motlagh - Digital Journalist

India faced with home-grown terrorism - Police have arrested the head of Indian Mujahideen, which claims responsibility for recent bombings , by Mark Sappenfield - CSM

Warriors against the State - The story of two men charged with the grave crime of treachery , by Harsh Mander - The Hindu

Getting Away With Murder - 50 Years of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act - HRW

Fake Encounter ?

Error tactics - The scourge of terror India is facing is compounded by what seems to have become a persistent policy of error on the part of the law enforcement agencies, from the home ministry down to the policeman on the beat , by Jug Suraiya - TOI

Delhi 'encounter' raises questions - As the Indian government comes in for increasingly neurotic and hysterical attacks by the Bharatiya Janata Party for its "weak-kneed" attitude towards terrorism, it's tempted to display machismo by taking ever-stronger measures against Muslims--to the point of staging fake "encounters" in which suspects are simply bumped off by the police , by Praful Bidwai - The News

Is it really Muslims whose credibility is at stake? - There is nothing more subversive than the alternative narrative. A parallel version of the Godhra incident and riots sabotaged the re-election of the NDA government four years ago. A subaltern variation of the police operation at Batla House, near the Jamia Milia Islamia University on 19 September, is undermining the credibility of the Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi government today , by M J Akbar - TOI

Scandal shrouds police in Delhi - India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has ordered the Delhi police to provide details of last week’s encounter in the city in which police claimed to have killed two Indian Mujahideen militants , by Shaikh Azizur Rahman - The National

Death in the neighbourhood - Maintaining that they had reliable evidence implicating the young men, police officials called the Jamia Nagar raid a triumph over the shadowy Indian Mujahideen – even if the crowds gathered outside the apartment at the time were already calling the encounter a fake , by Christian Cotroneo - The National

Indians Question Police Response to Recent Bombings - In the last several weeks, under intense popular pressure to show results, the police across India have made about two dozen arrests, killed a man they described as the “mastermind” of several recent blasts in a dramatic shootout in the capital and presented to the public a rare and swiftly assembled portrait of a spectacularly well-oiled, homegrown Islamist terrorism network , by Somini Sengupta - NYT

Christians, Hindutva

Hinduvatna violence threatens India's constitution - P.V. Thomas, one of India's most senior journalists, says that Hinduvatna radical groups' violence emerges from hatred of Christian charitable efforts. Constitutional order is threatened is no action is taken against extremists - UCA News

Bajrang bomb ticking - The ongoing anti-Christian attacks are not isolated. The Bajrang Dal is slowly but surely growing into a deadly, bomb-making radical group - DNA

Anti-Christian attacks flare in India - Some see a government hand in the fanatical Hindu anger against a minority and its converts , by Mian Ridge - CSM

Bishop says the "worm has turned" after Indian Christians attack Hindu - Beleaguered Christians in India have "run out of cheeks to be struck" a senior Anglican bishop declared yesterday, on hearing reports that a Christian mob had hacked a Hindu to death in the troubled state of Orissa , by Bess Twiston Davies - The Times

India's remote faith battleground - Anti-Christian riots have rocked several parts of India over the past month. Soutik Biswas travelled to a remote region in the eastern state of Orissa, where the recent violence broke out, to investigate the complex roots of the conflict - BBC

India's vengeful Christians turn to murder as Hindus step up their killing campaign - In the remote Indian state of Orissa your religion can cost you your life. Now a Christian mob has resorted to murder. Wielding knives and axes they have stabbed a Hindu man to death , by Rhys Blakely - The Times

Hindu fundamentals are under attack - As a believing Hindu, I am ashamed of what is being done by people claiming to be acting in the name of my faith. I have always prided myself on belonging to a religion of astonishing breadth and range of belief; a religion that acknowledges all ways of worshipping God as equally valid - indeed, the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy , by Shashi Tharoor - TOI

‘We are victims of a political conspiracy’ - BJP Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa completed four months at the helm in Karnataka on September 24. A few days earlier, to mark the completion of 100 days, he released a progress report titled, Bhavya Bhavishyakke Bhadra Bunadi (A strong foundation for a glorious future). But now, Yeddyurappa faces criticism for failing to contain communal violence in Karnataka , interview by Sanjana - Tehelka

Military Power, Strategic Stability

Land of Gandhi Asserts Itself as Global Military Power - In recent years, while world attention has focused on China’s military, India has begun to refashion itself as an armed power with global reach: a power willing and able to dispatch troops thousands of miles from the subcontinent to protect its oil shipments and trade routes, to defend its large expatriate population in the Middle East and to shoulder international peacekeeping duties , by Anand Giridharadas - NYT

U.S. Should Pay Greater Attention to Pakistani-Indian Rift Over Kashmir - Howard B. Schaffer, a former top State Department official on South Asia, says Washington should seek to prevent tensions in Kashmir from complicating U.S. security interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan , interview by Bernard Gwertzman - CFR

Crisis in Kashmir - The ensuing violence, a rise in communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims, and the heavy-handed response of the Indian government have prompted questions about the future stability of the region , by Jayshree Bajoria - CFR

India’s Strategic Challenge in Pakistan’s Afghan Hinterland - “Why did such an attack take so long to happen?” To ask that question would have been to recognize that the United States and NATO have allowed their Kabul surrogate, President Hamid Karzai, and the Indian government to use the supposedly selfless project of Afghan reconstruction as a tool with which to destroy one of the historic tenets of Pakistan’s national security policy , by Michael Scheuer - Jamestown