I had no consternation that, as one of the many hosts and facilitators of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, I would be attending to guests at a gala dinner where President George W. Bush would be the star attraction.

Here was a man who I think had wrecked much of the Muslim world. [Read more]

There is a thing or two about the government’s approach towards Muslims that is worrisome. One of them is that the government sometimes takes Muslims too seriously!

Take for instance the UPA government’s somewhat anxious efforts to streamline madrassa education, a system of education which is not just largely informal but its curriculum is also often viewed as irrelevant. [Read more]

If Muslim-perpetrated terror creates Islamophobia; smart counter-insurgency should be able to purge it (by eliminating terrorism). Abusive counter-terrorism on the other hand fuels more terror and, therefore, more Islamophobia. Muslims clearly have more at stake in the war on terror than others do. [Read more]

Not entirely unanticipated but a surprise nonetheless. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for President Obama has been received with churlish criticism and variously interpreted as a Nobel for political stardom and stirring speeches. It has also been called “a premature Nobel”. [Read more]

History is bu-ran-ji in Assamese, the only word from the now-extinct Tai tribal language of the Ahom people — who ruled Assam’s Brahmaputra valley between the 13th and 18th century — to have survived. Assamese replaced Tai in the early 19th century.
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