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Behind
Pakistan's Defeat
A
secret inquiry into Pakistan's debacle in the 1971 war held army atrocities,
widespread corruption, cowardice and the moral laxity of its generals
as prime reasons for the defeat in East Pakistan. The explosive Hamoodur
report has never been disclosed-until now.
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The
Nation
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Peace
Takes a Knock
The
Hizb has resumed battle, the killings continue and the Hurriyat is in
a quandary but the Government feels these are temporary roadblocks to
peace.
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AS
Good As It Gets?
The
economy has been chugging along well this year. Will it pick up speed
or lose steam in the coming months? Right now there is more optimism than
unease about the future.
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BOOKS
Jungle Ethic
Thrilling
encounters with tigers recounted by the 'Jim Corbett of the South'
By
Vijay Jung THAPA
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The
Kenneth Anderson Omnibus I & II
Rupa
Price: Rs. 390
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Kenneth Anderson
is the epitome of the "gentleman shikari" -- a creature now sadly
extinct in the forests of India. These shikaris -- usually Englishmen
or Indian royalty -- scoured the forests in the early part of the previous
century, dressed in smartly ironed jodhpurs and sola topis, at a time
when hunting was not only legal but a sport reserved for the brave. They
lived by a code that couldn't be tampered with and ensured that the jungle
became a "level-playing field" for the hunter and the hunted. Of course,
one of the rules was -- "sun down means gun down". It would make all the
hunters gather around smoky campfires where, amidst the crackle of flames,
they would talk animatedly about their experiences. Before you knew it,
a whole genre of jungle writing had been born.
Anderson,
a Scotsman who lived in Bangalore, has often been called the Jim Corbett
of the South -- and a pioneer of the shikari-tales genre. His writings
have since sustained generations of young nature lovers because of his
incredible knack of being able to describe his trysts with tigers with
all the tautness of a thriller. Both volumes are replete with his experiences
of stalking, outwitting and finally shooting down maneating tigers and
leopards. More importantly, the stories are also full of tales of the
lesser denizens of the forest -- the wolf, the sambar, the hyena -- with
astute observations on their social behaviour and pecking orders.
Finally
though, the readability factor of these stories lies in the hair-raising
situations that Anderson gets into, relying almost completely, like his
adversary, on jungle skills. There is nothing more fascinating than reading
about a hunter crouching in the foliage alone, a single, self-loading
rifle in hand, sensing that the animal is out there just beyond the deepest
shadows waiting to charge.
In these
politically correct times, some activists might criticise a book that
"glorifies" hunting. But that simply isn't so. Anderson, again like Corbett,
follows the tradition of shikari conservationists. He could see
that he was becoming a dinosaur in depleting jungles that faced an uncertain
future, "For the sportsmen of the future I strongly recommend the camera,
instead of the rifle. It can give you every bit as much fun -- clean fun,
unstained by the smell of blood, the sight of death, and pricking conscience
of regret." Amen.
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 Web
Exclusives |
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COLUMN |
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 Don't
ask for more funds, demand the right to collect, INDIA TODAY Associate
Editor V. Shankar Aiyar writes to Chandrababu Naidu in Au
ContrAiyar.
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CHAT |
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 Read
the transcript
of
Wednesday's live chat with Vasudevan Bhaskaran, Chief Coach of
Indian hockey.
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BEAT
STREET |
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The
Mercenary Journalist
Pressures of meeting deadlines have always been
nerve-wracking in Kashmir. But never before has there been such desperation
to be the first to break news, writes India Today Special Correspondent
Ramesh Vinayak who has covered militancy for over a decade.
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TALKING
POINT |
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"May be Veerappan should be given a chance
to reform," Karnataka
CM S.M. Krishna tells INDIA TODAY Principal Correspondent Stephen
David as one of the options being considered to secure the release of
superstar Rajkumar.
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DESPATCHES |
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In
the eerie world of superstition that still exists in Andhra Pradesh's
Telengana region, four women and a man are brutally burned to death allegedly
for practising black magic. INDIA TODAY Associate Editor Amarnath K.
Menon says in Despatches
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Full coverages
with columns, infographics, audio reports.
»1971:
The Untold Story
This is a story not
told in Pakistan. A secret inquiry into the splintering of Pakistan
in 1971 held army atrocities, widespread corruption, cowardice,
even loose morals, among its generals in East Pakistan as prime
reasons in losing the war. The explosive Hamoodur Rahman report,
obtained exclusively by NEWS TODAY's Samar Halarnkar, has never
seen the light of day—until now.
»
Veerappan
Strikes Again
Kannada filmdom's top
star Dr Rajkumar at his rural farmhouse was rudely interrupted when
one of India's deadliest killers, Koose Muniswamy Veerappan,50,
burst in a half hour before midnight. .
»
The
Tiger Catastrophe
India's
national animal is in crisis in the hands of its keepers. The death
toll at Nandan Kanan Zoo in Orissa is now 12, nine of these rare
white tigers.
»
The
SriLankan crisis
Exclusive interviews, columns and infographics that track the battle
for Jaffna.
» The
Kashmir jigsaw
With both the governments and militants taking strong
positions, talks on autonomy could be heading for
a major showdown.
»
The
Nepal Gameplan
'secret'
new report obtained by INDIA TODAY lays bare the ISI's infiltration
in Nepal.
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