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Behind the four-year judicial marathon
"Protect the trial, forget the Jain Commission" -- this is the signal bosses of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) are said to have received from 10, Janpath around mid-1997. By that time, Sonia Gandhi also appears to have dismissed the Commission as a platform for petty politics and was apparently convinced nothing tangible would emerge from the half-baked theories of conspiracy being pursued by it.
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Pseudo-sympathy
Now is the time for all major political parties to come to the aid of Muslims. They just cannot afford to ignore the biggest minority holding the balance in many a Lok Sabha constituency across the country. Thus, it is not unusual that they are at it again, trying to wheedle votes out of a sense of victimhood. However, what merits note is the hypocrisy of the entire exercise and the increased hollowness of the poll-time rhetoric. It is not Muslim-wooing that is being indulged in so much as minority intimidation.
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The past holds the clues
The two nations that emerged from the partition of the Raj, India and Pakistan, celebrated the 50th anniversary of their independence in August last year. In both cases, celebrations were subdued, but more so in Pakistan. Two former colonies on the periphery of the Raj celebrate the 50th anniversary of their independence this year; Burma (now Myanmar) was part of the Raj till 1937 and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) was not.
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Giving the tabloids their due
Sexgate, Fornigate, Bimbogate, even Finalgate. From Watergate to Whitewatergate to this. It's a full-blown scandal and global networks are trying hard to call it "Investigating the President" (CNN) or "Clinton Under Fire" (BBC) or even "The President in a Crisis" (NBC), but no amount of semantics can hide the fact that tabloidisation of politics is here to stay.
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