Tag Archives: politics

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

The Mind of a Terrorist: David Headley, the Mumbai Massacre, and His European Revenge – Kaare Sørensen, translated by Cory Klingsporn

David Headley, the American-Pakistani also known as Daood Gilani, lived a double life. One day he would stroll through Central Park in his tailored Armani suit as a true New Yorker, and the next he would browse in the bazaar in Lahore wearing traditional Pakistani clothes. One day he would drink champagne at the most extravagant clubs; on another, he would prostrate himself in prayer in remote Pakistan and pledge fidelity to Allah.

Born in 1960, the son of an American mother and Pakistani father, with one blue eye and one brown, Headley grew up between East and West. He was attracted to both worlds, even working as an informant for the US government, until one day he found he had to choose between the place of his birth and a radical form of Islam preaching global jihad. This is the disturbing story of the mastermind behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people—who two months later flew to Copenhagen to plan another act of terror with the help of al-Qaeda sleeper cells in Europe.

Veteran journalist Kaare Sørensen has reconstructed his movements and planning in a tense feat of reportage. His account, based on extensive reporting, eyewitness interviews, and documentation including wiretaps, court transcripts, and emails by Headley accessed from a chat room cache of nine thousand messages, offers unprecedented insight into the mind of the terrorist. The author has provided updates and a new preface for the English-language edition.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding – Husain Haqqani

The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension and always has been. Pakistan—to American eyes—has gone from being a quirky irrelevance to a stabilizing friend, an essential military ally, and a seedbed of terror. America—to Pakistani eyes—has been a guarantee of security, a coldly distant scold, an enthusiastic military enabler, and is now a threat to national security and a source of humiliation.

The countries are not merely at odds. Each believes it can play the other—with sometimes absurd, sometimes tragic, results. The conventional narrative about the war in Afghanistan, for instance, has revolved around the Soviet invasion in 1979. But President Jimmy Carter signed the first authorization to help the Pakistani-backed mujahedeen covertly on July 3—almost six months before the Soviets invaded. Americans were told, and like to believe, that what followed was Charlie Wilson’s war of Afghani liberation, with which they remain embroiled to this day. It was not. It was General Zia-ul-Haq’s vicious regional power play.

Husain Haqqani has a unique insight into Pakistan, his homeland, and America, where he was ambassador and is now a professor at Boston University. His life has mapped the relationship of the two countries, and he has found himself often close to the heart of it, sometimes in very confrontational circumstances. This has allowed him to write the story of a misbegotten diplomatic love affair, here memorably laid bare.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Whole Numbers and Half Truths – Rukmini S.

How do you see India?

Fuelled by a surge of migration to cities, the country’s growth appears to be defined by urbanisation and by its growing, prosperous middle class. It is also defined by progressive and liberal young Indians who vote beyond the constraints of identity and, paradoxically, by an unchecked population explosion and rising crimes against women. Is it, though?

In 2020, the annual population growth was down to under 1 percent. Only 31 out of 100 Indians live in a city today, and just 5 percent live outside the city of their birth.

As recently as 2016, only 4 percent of young, married respondents in a survey said their spouse belonged to a different caste group. Over 45 percent of voters said in a pre-2014 election survey that it was important to them that a candidate of their own caste win elections in their constituency. A large share of reported sexual assaults across India are actually consensual relationships criminalised by parents. And staggeringly, spending more than Rs 8,500 a month puts you in the top 5 percent of urban India.

In Whole Numbers and Half Truths, data-journalism pioneer Rukmini S. draws on nearly two decades of on-ground reporting experience to piece together a picture that looks nothing like the one you might expect. There is a mountain of data available on India, but it remains opaque, hard to access, and harder yet to read, and it does not inform public conversation. Rukmini marshals this information—some of it never before reported—alongside probing interviews with experts and ordinary citizens to see what the numbers can tell us about India. As she interrogates how data works and how the push and pull of social and political forces affect it, she creates a blueprint to understand the changes of the last few years and the ones to come—a toolkit for India.

This is a timely and wholly original intervention in the conversation on data, and with it, India.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of ISI and Raw—Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark

From 9/11 to 26/11, Burhan Wani to Kulbhushan Jadhav—the India-Pakistan relationship told from the perspective of the R.A.W. and the I.S.I.

With unprecedented access to the R.A.W. and the I.S.I., the world’s most inscrutable spy agencies, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark describe the workings of bitter rivals, mapping their complicated history from the 1960s to the present day. From the Parliament attacks to Pulwama, 9/11 to Osama bin Laden’s assassination, the rise of terror’s shadow armies to the fall of Kulbhushan Jadhav, here are some of the key events that have shaped the region, told from the split viewpoints of duelling enemies.

Levy and Scott-Clark also uncover a darker seam—the destructive impact of C.I.A. interference and how the I.S.I. fought for its life against dark forces it once funded, while the R.A.W. created ghost enemies to strengthen its hand.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Ambedkar’s India – B.R. Ambedkar

Ambedkar’s India is a collection of three of B.R. Ambedkar’s most prominent speeches on caste and the Indian Constitution.

“In the fight for Swaraj, you fight with the whole nation on your side. In fighting caste system, you stand against the whole nation—and that too, your own.”

Annihilation of Caste is one of Ambedkar’s best works in putting together how caste as a system has been eating up the roots of a rich cultural melting pot like India. “Bhakti in religion could lead to salvation. But in politics, Bhakti is a sure road to eventual dictatorship.”

The Grammar of Anarchy reflects Ambedkar’s ideas on how we need to pave the way for Independent India. It reflects his deep love and aspirations for India and its people. “…the sub-divisions [of caste] have lost the open-door character of the class system, and have become self-enclosed units called castes.”

Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development is an in-depth study of how classes went on to become castes and sub-castes to dot the Indian social system. This powerful narrative is a radical eye-opener.