India, Mongolia: Spiritually Connected Powers of Asia

On May 16 Prime Minister Narendra Modi would twit: ‘First Indian Prime Minister is visiting Mongolia after 60 years of our diplomatic relation’. If China is repositioning itself in the Silk Route (ancient India was a major link too) through larger economic thrust, India has to travel in the same breadth and length with the teachings and philosophy of Buddhism in North and East Asia, as Buddhism flourished prior to the Silk Route era.

AVILASH ROUL

India and the NPT: 2015 Review Conference and Beyond

The quinquennial review conference of the NPT is to be held from April 27 to May 22, 2015. After the failure of the last NPT RevCon held in 2010 hope has once again re-surfaced amongst the international community, including India for a strengthened nuclear non-proliferation regime. The initial success of the three Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meetings held in 2012, 2013 and 2014 is believed to have laid the foundation for successful NPT deliberations that is expected to reduce the salience on nuclear weapons and steer the world towards nuclear disarmament.

Reshmi Kazi
April 2015

The Cost of Ignoring Climate Change is Huge

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government came to power in India in 2014, the nomenclature of policies has been either Sanskritised or Indianised. With tech savvy Prime Minister on the steering wheel, the government is communicating with the general public through catchy one-liners that are quite apt for character-restricted social media like Twitter. Latest in this catchy pronouncement is the Foreign Secretary’s 'SAARC Yatra', as he rounded up tours of four neighbouring countries in the first week of March.

   

AVILASH ROUL

‘Wilayat Khurasan’: Islamic State Consolidates Position in AfPak Region'

Amid a series of government denials from Pakistan and Afghanistan regarding the presence of the Islamic State militant group in these countries and its ongoing outreach activities there, its expansion was corroborated by none other than the Islamic State’s spokesperson, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, on January 26, 2015 (The Nation [Lahore] September 5, 2014; Dawn [Karachi

The Call of the Islamic State Resonates across South Asia

The so-called Islamic State (IS) has effectively replaced Al Qaeda and its affiliates at the vanguard of the global jihadist movement. Under the leadership of Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, the movement remains determined to build upon its powerbase in Iraq and Syria and unite the entire Muslim world under its version of the Islamic Caliphate. In his Ramadan address in October 2014, Baghdadi laid out plans for the expansion of IS networks into what it calls Khorasan – parts of the Indian subcontinent and its near-neighborhood.

ANIMESH ROUL