Somebody once asked me, 'is Sachin the greatest Indian batsman'? I said "NO". He asked, 'why'? I said there can be a thousand reasons. I know it's not politically correct to say so and more damaging if you write the same. But those who know me and have interacted with me know I have been saying this for a long time and had received equal amount of both outrage and ridicule. You can argue that even Sir Don Bradman had said 'Sachin plays like me'. Shane Warne puts him on top in his list of greats. Sachin is the one who has the maximum number of runs in ODI and also in Test cricket and he has also scored the highest numbers of centuries in both types of the game. But, I will still say he is not the best. In my opinion Sunil Gavaskar is not only the best batsman but also the greatest Indian cricketer ever. See, let's not confuse the...

"What are you doing?" I asked Anwar. "What do you mean?" he said. "Abe ye Jamia me ye rally karne ki kya zaroorat hai? Kyon?" I said. (What is the need for organising a rally in Jamia Milia Islamia?) "You don't understand. This sends very wrong signal, please for God's sake don't do this." Anwar lost his cool and shouted back. "What do you mean?" He said providing legal aid was a fundamental right, how could I object to that. "Look no sane person can object to that but these are not times to expect sanity from any one when nobody knows where bomb will explode and if we all will return home safe," I said. The argument went on and on and it got heated to a point that I thought maybe I would lose a friend. Anwar and I were together in JNU in late 80s and since then we have been like family. We have had very...

I just had a word with my editor-in-chief. He seemed quite disgusted. And he had every right to be. An hour back, there was a newsbreak that Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav had held a press conference to announce to the world that his MPs were being lured to vote against the Manmohan Singh government on the floor of the House. And the price offered was between Rs 25 and Rs 30 crores. The previous day, two MPs alleged that they had been contacted, and a price tag was attached to their votes if they decide to oblige the Opposition. A leader of the stature of CPI chief A B Bardhan has shocked every body with his announcement that MPs are being openly purchased to save the government. He also happened to know the price for each Member of Parliament, quoting Rs 25 crores as the price. These statements are sensational and shocking enough to numb our sensibilities. But I...

Left in India is very powerful for the time being but Leftism at the international map is a marginal force . I still remember my one of the professors, who was a commited Marxist and doyen of Marxist theories , said from a public platform just after the disintegration of USSR , that it is no longer fashionable to call oneself a Marxist . Another professor who happened to be Dalit ,in one of his most frustrating moments, admitted he wasted his life chasing an utopian dream in the shadow of Marxism. Both these gentlemen were still convinced that Marxism as a philosophical argument was a very effective tool for social change but its practitioners have been responsible for its demise. They were honest people and commanded enormous respect from their students and pear group and were willing to internally introspect practical dimension of Marxism . They were intellectually restless to understand what went wrong with Left ideology . But unlike these...