Arun Shourie

Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Eminent Historians

How is it that what was explicity forbidden by the Constitution- classification based on cast - has become the rule? How is it that what were enabling provision have become mandatory minima ? Where does the figure 50 per cent come from ? How is that in practice it is exceeded blatantly ? Are the benefits not being hogged by a few, the better -off among these castes? Has the creamy layer been actually hived off? How is that what were begun as reservations in promotion also? How did this become a right to accelerated promotions? How did that become a right accelerated promotions with consequential seniority? How did that become a right to have the prescribed standards diluted -to the point of being waived altogether? Even in educational institutions. Is this any way to become a knowledge super- power? As there has been no caste-wise enumeration and tabulation since the 1931 Census, where does this mythical figure --OBCs are 52 per cent of the population come from? And what did the 1931 Census itself say about its cast -wise figures?

An Essay on Reservations, and on Judicial Populism

Falling Over Backwards

This Book Introduces Us To The World Of Fatwas Or Islamic Decrees As Issued In India And Their Impact On The Body-Politic.

The World of Fatwas, Or, The Shariah in Action

The book which has reopened questions. Did Ambedkar coordinate his opposition to the freedom struggle with the British? How does his approach to social return contrast with that of those who actually wrought revolutions - Gandhiji, Narayan Guru? Did the Constitution spring from him or did it grow as a living organism?

Worshipping False Gods

The life of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa 'enables us to see God face to face', Gandhiji wrote. Similarly, when someone in his circle was distraught, the Mahatma sent him to spend time at the Ashram of Ramana Maharshi. The Paramahamsa and the Maharshi have been among the greatest spiritual figures of our country. They have transformed the lives of and have been a solace to millions. Their peak, mystic experience is what we yearn to have. But what if several of the experiences they had occur in other circumstances also? With the rigour and painstaking research that mark all his work, Shourie probes the lives of two of India's greatest spiritual masters in the light of the breath-taking advances in neuroscience as well as psychology and sociology. The result is a book of remarkable vigour: an examination - and ultimately reconciliation - of science and faith as also of seemingly antagonistic, irreconcilable worldviews.

Speculations Around and about Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharshi

Two Saints

The Failure Of Other Institutions To Discharge Their Duty Has Compelled Courts To Step Far Outside Their Traditional Role In Recent Times. This Book Chronicles The Changing Face Of Judiciary And The Court.

Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

Courts and Their Judgments

The judiciary has been the one sturdy dyke that has saved us from the excesses of rulers. But recent events remind us of the cracks that have formed: the quality of individuals apart, even the institutional arrangements that had been put in place to preserve the purity and independence of the institution--the collegium, conventions governing the way cases are to be assigned among judges--have frayed. These cracks provide a dangerous opportunity to political rulers to suborn this institution also.Through actual cases and judgments--of subordinate courts, High Courts, the Supreme Court--Arun Shourie enables us to see how frail and vulnerable this 'last pillar standing' has become. A judge who by a brazen manipulation of facts lets a prominent politician off ... Events and a judgment that let the convicted choose the prosecutor who is to conduct the case against them ... Courts that turn a blind eye to life-and-death reforms even as they preoccupy themselves with trivia ... Courts that deliver ringing judgments and then do not care to look if their directions are being implemented ... Courts that disregard their own judgments on penalizing persons for perjury, for dragging out cases ... Courts that do not think through the consequences, even the predictable consequences of their judgments ... Judges who prevaricate, who look the other way when some of their own fraternity come under a cloud ... A judge who is manifestly unbalanced, judges whose knowledge of the most elementary facts of science is laughable, a judge whose prose even the Supreme Court is unable to comprehend--all of them continue to hand down rulings that affect the fortunes and lives of thousands ... Judges who disregard well-settled principles to such an extent that their colleagues are compelled to make their grave misgivings public...And the non-bailable warrants that are issued for the arrest of Anita, Arun Shourie's ailing wife, for evading summons that were never served, summons that were ostensibly issued for their having built a house that was never built, on a plot they did not own... Through the meticulous examination that is a hallmark of his writing, Arun Shourie leads us through judgments and instances--some hilarious, so many infuriating--and points to things that each of us--judges, lawyers, laypersons like us--can do to retrieve this most vital of institutions.

What are Our Courts Doing? What Should We Do about Them?

Anita Gets Bail

Self-Deception 

Essays on Religion in Politics

Indian Controversies

For Saving Our Country, for Welding it

A Secular Agenda

Communists, "Quit India", and the Soviet Union

"The Only Fatherland"

How can extreme suffering be so commonplace if there is a God who knows everything, who is all-powerful and also compassionate? How do the scriptures of our religions explain the existence of suffering? Do these explanations stand up to examination? Does our experience testify to a God? Or do the two demons - time and chance - explain all that we have to go through? In a devastating dissection of the scriptures - laced with accounts of the suffering and pain that he has seen at first-hand - Arun Shourie tells us why he has eventually gravitated to the teachings of the Buddha. And what lessons these teachings hold for our daily lives.

Does He Know A Mother's Heart? How Suffering Refutes Religions

How Suffering Refutes Religions

Does He Know a Mother's Heart?

Did Savarkar battle a stormy sea when he attempted his legendary escape at Marseilles? Did Gandhiji and he stay together ‘as friends’ in London as Savarkar claimed during Gandhiji’s assassination trial? Did he turn against Muslims because of the cruelty of jailers in the Andamans? What is one to make of his ‘mercy petitions’ to the British? Did he pledge to be ‘politically useful’ to the British and accept conditions for his release that even the British had not demanded? During the Quit India movement, did Savarkar promise ‘whole-hearted cooperation’ to the British? What did he seek from the British? Was Savarkar the one who showed Subhas Bose the path that Netaji then followed? What did Savarkar think of Hinduism, about our beliefs and ‘holy cows’, about the texts Hindus hold to be sacred? Have our people been suffused with Hindutva as Savarkar maintained? What sort of a State did he envisage? Is Savarkar being resurrected today to erase the one great inconvenience—Gandhiji? In The New Icon, Arun Shourie delves deep into Savarkar’s books, essays, speeches, statements to answer these and other questions. He exhumes archives of the British government. He takes us through contemporary records. And unearths facts that will surprise you.

Savarkar and the Facts

The New Icon

Arun Shourie`s writtings in The Indian Express packed with evidence, uncompromising, prophetic - on the issues that are consuming the country today: evaporation of governance and what it spells for internal security; developments in Pakistan, the breathing time they give us; what the achievements of China spell for us, and what we must do to face up to them; how the present Government has sown trouble with the nuclear deal for our security as well as relations with the US; the need for reforms and the real record of leftists and others who are blocking them; the CBI inquiry that was instituted against him, and an inquiry that should have been instituted against a Congress-I Government but was killed by the Central Government; the falsehoods with which budgets to which industrialists have been giving scores of 9 out of 10 ; how rulers try to dodge revelations in the media, and how those very dodges nail them; how their responses - to hide, to shield contrast with those of Gandhiji, and the consequences of that contrast; how today idealism in the only practical politics; the way leftists bury inconvenient facts under an avalanche of abuse; the vital similarity between and the vital difference between Hinduism and Islamic fundamentalism; the new journalism and how it is jeopardizing the interests of the country... A must for our times. A must for saving the country.

Denial, Disunity, Disarray

Where Will All this Take Us?

New Opportunities, New Challenges

Arun Shourie on the Current Situation

The work done by Arun Shourie and his colleagues rocked institutions and governments: the freeing of 40,000 undertrials; revealing the Bhagalpur blindings; purchasing Kamla; dislodging a 'Sultan'; foiling 'strikes'; controverting Judges; battling privilege motions; courting contempt of court charges; nailing corruption, forgeries, lies, and the opportunism of rulers; uncovering suppressed reports... What lay behind these and the consequences that followed? A comprehensive account of dramatic incidents like getting governments to swallow legislation against the press, unseating of chief ministers, a prime minister unspooling himself even as manoeuvres to unseat him are scotched, a deputy prime minister trying to dislodge colleagues with fabricated documents, people's movements ending up as rivulets in the sand, The Commissioner for Lost Causes discusses Shourie's innings, the calumny hurled at him, his dismissal, and his being recalled and removed again. Delicious tales of characters from the noble to the colourful to the short-sighted to outright bounders: from JP, to a president, to prime ministers, a deputy prime minister, chief ministers, a conman, indignant editors, and of course a great warrior, the press baron, feature in this honest retelling of the life of Arun Shourie, the writer, former editor and minister who was acclaimed as one of the fifty 'World Press Freedom Heroes'.

The Commissioner For Lost Causes

The State As Charade

Are ideologies a pair of binoculars that enable us to see far? Or are they a pair of blinkers that keep us from seeing even that which is at hand? How is it that communists; equipped as they are with the one great Theory that explains everything; fumble ever so often in seeing the obvious? How did the Theory lead them to declare the Second World War as an 'Imperialist War' one day; and a 'People's War' the next? How did it lead them to undertake to sabotage the Quit India Movement for the British? How did it lead them to trumpet the demand for Pakistan 'better than the Muslim League'? To declare in 1947 that India had not really become independent? To insist that Pandit Nehru was just "a running dog of imperialism"? To launch an insurrection in 1949 on the premise that India was ripe for an armed revolution? To fumble so much in their response to the end of the communist bloc? Arun Shourie; one of the most respected commentators on current affairs in India today; illustrates the malady by reconstructing what the communists did during the Quit India Movement. In the process he uncovers the secret negotiations they conducted and the secret understanding they struck with the British; the reports they submitted to the imperial rulers about the work they were doing to subvert the movement Mahatma Gandhi had launched. He concludes with a review of the reactions of Indian communists to the break-up of the Soviet empire; showing how their mental make-up and habits have not changed in the six decades since independence.

The Only Fatherland

On the assassination of Indira Gandhi, b. 1917, former prime minister of India, political events, and the 1985 election; contributed articles.

Arun Shourie

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