Bharat Rakshak

g.sarkar, What have we yielded on exactly? A symbolic vote which would not have changed the outcome? Also, you speak about short term gains. The Indo-US agreement is not a short term gain, and what is more important, it is in an area of crucial importance for India's economic growth-energy. Without ...

Hi, I think India must stand by its vote in the IAEA. As others have pointed out, we have never received substantiative support from Iran on issues that matter like J&K or even the nuclear tests that we conducted. We owe the Iranians nothing, and after Mr Ahmednijad's speech in New York to the U...

Alok_N,
I think we are in agreement. I know that cosmology is complicated and questions of this nature are not fully settled, I only wanted to know your point of view. Thanks for clarifying it.

Alok_N, Actually, within the framework of the theory of General Relativity, it does imply existence, unless GR is incorrect or there is a fundamental limit to how heavy stars can get. Additionally, the evidence existence of neutron stars is pretty conclusive, so there is no reason to believe that th...

Alok_N, I am not a cosmologist and practicing relativity theorist, but I agree with vsunder. Einstein's theory, (without any quantum mechanics) does allow for the existence of blackholes, and the schwarzschild metric does have singular behaviour, which theoretically correspond to black holes. As far...

Regarding the Berry phase phenomenon. Pancharatnam was one of the earliest to recognize this phenomenon in optics. Also, Van Vleck considered the occurence of this phase in atomic and molecular systems in a paper on the Born-Oppenheimer approximation in the early 1930's. Berry has taken the trouble ...

Hi, Correct me if I am wrong, the point that people seem to be making here is that the conventional theory and regime of deterrence that has been accepted for the last 50 odd years has broken down. This breakdown is because some of the assumptions behind deterrence theory no longer hold-that of rati...

narayanan, I think that in the present context, it would be difficult to carry out attacks on C^3 installations in Pakistan of the nature that you are recommending. This is because they would probably cross the threshold required for the Pakistanis to use nuclear weapons (assuming that they still ha...

Hi, The latest step in the tamasha has just begun. One can expect the Pakistanis to never disappoint: Pakistani leader suspected moves by atomic expert. Some excerpts: "President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged for the first time on Monday that he had suspected for at least three years that Pakis...

And it is hard to take all this "pressure" on Pakistan seriously when this has been going on for more than 12 years with the knowledge of western governments. It is disingenuous to pretend that this was not known until it came out now miraculously, now. It does not fool people, it just irr...

rahul r,
incidentally, caste in India is not present solely among hindus, it is present in India's muslim and christian communities as well. Some of the backward castes among them repeatedly ask for reservations.

Present day Patna is among the most ancient cities in India which has been continuously inhabited. As Pataliputra, it has been the centre of some of India's greatest empires. Takshasila is in present day Pakistan. Hopefully its heritage will not be entirely destroyed. Down south, Madurai is of consi...

narayanan & Sam, Thanks for your comments. Consider the following however: I make the assumptions that : i. It is in american interests to see India not solve its Pakistan problem, and to see India hurt by it. ii. The "denuclearization" is a ploy by the official arm of Pakistan. In rea...

Narayanan, It is entirely possible that the offer was real. It is an excellent cover for deniable nuclear and WMD threats/strikes by the Army of Islam. I would not be surprised if Jamali comes out publicly and unilaterally declares Pakistan's denuclearization. It is easy for him to do this because h...