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FROM
THE EDITOR IN CHIEF
On the occasion of
India Today's 25-year celebrations last December, we framed 701 miniature
covers of the magazine for display at our corporate office. Last week,
I had a visitor from overseas who was very intrigued by them and and made
an interesting observation: "I wonder how many of the issues have
remained the same." Come to think of it, there are quite a few-corruption,
powerful PMOs, faltering governments, stock market scams, and so on. But
on top of the list would be Kashmir and Indo-Pak relations.
Over the years, India Today has peeled away the
layers of peculiar politics that blind as well as bind India and Pakistan,
and in the process we have published 31 cover stories on Indo-Pak relations
and Pakistan. These include an article by former US secretary of state
Henry Kissinger ("Exclusive: Kissinger on Indo-Pak War '71",
1979), Zia-ul Haq's ground-breaking statement ("No War Pact: Blowing
Hot, Blowing Cold"; "Exclusive interview with Zia-ul Haq",
1982), recent peace overtures ("India-Pakistan: Can We Be Friends?",
1997) and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's historic bus trip to Lahore
("Breaking Barriers", 1999). This, along with 19 cover stories
on Kashmir, signal both how important Indo-Pak relations are as well as
our commitment to provide clarity with expert, exclusive features and
analyses about this most vexing of problems to our readers. So when Vajpayee
turned his previous policy on its head to invite General Pervez Musharraf
for talks, it was time again to take a look at Indo-Pak relations in the
context of Kashmir.
Our team didn't miss a beat as it went about
putting together the cover story on talks between India and Pakistan this
week. Deputy Editor Raj Chengappa, our foreign policy expert, Pakistan
and Kashmir hand Associate Editor Harinder Baweja, Assistant Editor Shishir
Gupta who tracks India's defence establishment, and our man in Srinagar,
Surinder Singh Oberoi, talked to key players and ferreted out information
to assess Vajpayee's announcement and its realistic implications.
Hope and cynicism spring again. And we add one
more cover to the issues that don't change.
(Aroon
Purie)
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