NEW DELHI: The space for those expressing secular, liberal or progressive views is shrinking rapidly in Bangladesh–this is a view expressed by Bangladeshis as they see hardline elements gaining increasing salience in the Muslim-majority nation. Even more worrying, they say, is that such radical views are no longer confined to Islamist outfits but have spread […]Read More

NEW DELHI: White sands, turquoise waters, soothing sea breezes–a bunch of island nations scattered in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) drew tourists by the thousands until the pandemic struck. But these islands are more than just playgrounds for tourists. There is a maritime ‘Great Game’ going on here, a game triggered by their location along […]Read More

NEW DELHI: The Indo-Pacific is seeing a new entrant: Germany! Why? Germany has no territorial interests in the Indo-Pacific that warrant protection. Nor does it have security treaties with any country in the Indo-Pacific. But Germany’s interest in joining the ‘Indo-Pacific club’ has been the subject of debate in Berlin for some time and the […]Read More

NEW DELHI: The British government is coming out with a report next month that is expected to detail key shifts in defence, foreign affairs and development policy. More interesting, the review is likely to outline a refreshed approach to India as the UK plots its return to “east of Suez”. East of Suez refers to […]Read More

NEW DELHI: Lonely Planet describes Sittwe, the capital of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, as a city that “sits in an incredible spot where the wide, tidal Kaladan river kisses the big, fat Bay of Bengal.” The Sittwe deep water port is part of the ambitious Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project to link the Indian mainland to […]Read More

NEW DELHI: Here’s the issue with India-Russia relations: since much of it is tied to defence which is largely under the radar and, therefore, cannot be talked about openly or in any great detail, an impression may gain ground that all’s not well. “This is far from the case,” says P.S. Raghavan, former ambassador to Russia […]Read More

NEW DELHI: Meet Dr Mumin Chen, deputy representative at the Taiwan Representative Office in Delhi. He’s a former academic from Taiwan’s National Chung Hsing University and is regarded as among the foremost India specialists in Taiwan. There’s something else. During his academic avatar in 2014, he had authored a paper on the India-China border dispute […]Read More

NEW DELHI: In the long history of the India-China boundary dispute, a few incidents remain a landmark. The 1962 war is the biggest of them all; the 1967 clash at Nathu La in Sikkim is another. But another episode of a bloody encounter between Indian and Chinese soldiers that happened in Arunachal Pradesh in 1975 is […]Read More

PUNE: In our lifetime, perhaps the most consequential development is the rise of China. It is already the world’s second largest economy; with a GDP of USD 14 trillion it is already two-thirds the size of the U.S. economy and is expected to overtake the latter in this decade. It is also the world’s largest trading […]Read More

ZURICH: The United States is losing in Afghanistan because it lied to itself. Its war against the Taliban was never driven by a vision of fighting terrorism through nation-building, even though that was what policy debates implied. Rather, the conflict was a two-level engagement: an instinctive reprisal against Al Qaeda to exact vengeance for 9/11, […]Read More