It would seem as if the Congress Party were going for broke by rejecting the invitation quite aware that it is unlikely to win even the moderately right-leaning Hindu electorate, let alone the hard Hindu right, in the foreseeable future.
If the Indian American community had any expectations of civility between Haley and Ramaswamy engendered by their shared ethnic roots, they were belied from the get-go of the presidential debates.
The indictment is quite explosive and has significant implications for US-India relations.
Both Ottawa and Washington have historically been rather lackadaisical, if not downright conniving, in their dealing with India’s decades-long attempts to act against the Khalistan movement’s violent underpinnings in the two countries.
The incongruity of “India, that is Bharat”, as given by Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, who drafted the Constitution, was pointed out by some members of the Constituent Assembly just as an independent India was taking shape.
There was something profoundly moving to note that a deep philosophical insight given by Krishna Dvaipayana better known as Ved-Vyasa, the creator of the Gita and the Mahabharat, many millennia ago, should come to underpin the most defining event of the 20th century and beyond.
Gandhi cast the upcoming 2024 parliamentary elections in India as an ideological fight between those who believe in Mahatma's Gandhi’s message of love and peace and his “coward” assassin Nathuram Godse’s message of hatred and violence.
It would have been compelling to see two presidential aspirants in Haley and Harris duke it out during debates. However, those encounters may have to wait for the foreseeable future.
Had Salim Durrani been a cricketer in current times he would have been one of the most admired cricket stars flooded with lucrative endorsement deals. He came at a time when cricket was cricket and not a straight path to insane fame and fortune.
If there ever were a perfect literary candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, it would be Salman Rushdie this year.
