Daily Hindu Editorials

💥The Supreme Court finally ends unjustified curbs on Hadiya’s personal freedom Hadiya has at last won her freedom. The curious aspect of her case is that it took such a long time for the courts to acknowledge that the 25-year-old woman from Kerala enjoys as much freedom of choice in her marriage as in her religious belief. The Kerala High Court had caused quite a muddle when it annulled her marriage solely on the suspicion that it was a ruse to scuttle habeas corpus proceedings before it. On her father’s complaint that she had been indoctrinated and brainwashed into embracing Islam, and his fear that she was a victim of a movement to convert Hindu women and send them to overseas battle zones, the high court ordered her confinement in her parents’ home. The Supreme Court’s categorical ruling that the high court was wrong in invalidating a marriage under its writ jurisdiction constitutes a welcome end to the unjustified curtailment of her freedom of movement and her life choices. The...

💥Given the deal to evacuate one militant group, Syria should reach out to the rest The agreement reached between armed groups in Eastern Ghouta and a UN delegation to evacuate some militants from the besieged enclave is the first major concession the rebels have made since Syrian government attacks began a month ago. Under the deal, the Jaish al-Islam, the main rebel group, will evacuate militants linked to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly an al-Qaeda front, from Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus. HTS militants will go to Idlib, a province in northwestern Syria run by the rebels, mainly the HTS. Over the past month, the rebels had refused to strike any deal with the regime even after repeated bombardment. At least 1,000 people have been killed in one month, with the UN warning of an “apocalypse” in Syria. The regime’s argument was that it was seeking to liberate Eastern Ghouta from terrorist occupation. But about 400,000 people are stuck in the enclave; some reports say t...

💢Now that talks between the U.S. and North Korea are on, it is worth testing Pyongyang’s sincerity The remarkable announcement of a personal meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appears welcome news. It points the way out of a crisis that seemed last year to be spiralling out of control, after the exchange of personal and nuclear threats. But the history of talks with North Korea is a story of recurring disappointment and duplicity. A summit meeting without adequate diplomatic groundwork risks emboldening North Korea while setting the stage for a bad deal which sells out American allies, or dashed expectations and a slide to catastrophe. 👉The fine print On the face of it, North Korea’s offer — unusually conveyed from the White House, by three South Korean officials — is attractive. We are told that Mr. Kim has promised to discuss giving up his nuclear arsenal if his country’s security is assured; to hold off from missile or nuclea...

💢It’s misleading to blame the 14th Finance Commission for not according special category status to States The bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has left a troubled legacy. The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement of six paragraphs in Parliament on February 20, 2014 contained the promise of according special category status to the successor State of Andhra Pradesh. This has stirred up a hornets’ nest, with both the ruling party and the Opposition in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly upping their ante and demanding that the Union government honour the commitment. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has pleaded inability and has instead agreed to give a generous package. He has placed the blame at the door of the Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC). This is not the first time that the Commission has been blamed for special category status not being given. There were newspaper reports about Venkaiah Naidu, when he was Union Minister f...

💥The what, why and how of Donald Trump’s victory A little more than a year since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a considerable volume of literature has emerged that seeks to disambiguate the what, why and how of Donald Trump’s surprise victory, and disentangle the complex web of contradictions that his presidency has entailed. At the vanguard of that wave of analytical narratives is the plainly titled What Happened, by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival and former Secretary of State. Her deeply reflective account paints a canvas of American politics that raises troubling questions about the political and economic prognosis for the country. While in part the book is one long justification of her defeat, it is nevertheless a self-critical account that outlines the extent to which the American polity is bitterly polarised, rife with misogyny, infiltrated by Russian propaganda, and in the thrall of a hateful conservative class that might stoop to any low to stay in power. Wh...