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OPINION China’s recent outcry over the alleged breach of ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ with the Philippines reveals a profound irony, given the history of its coercion and deceit There is a huge amount of insincerity and gall involved in the Chinese complaint that the Philippines had torn up the bilateral ‘Gentleman’s Agreement,’ between Beijing and Manila. While the term ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ has an implicit assumption of ‘trust’ as a fundamental tenet besting a relationship, which may otherwise not be legally binding -- to even imagine that there has been any element of ‘trust’ between these two sparing countries, is to put oneself...

India need not have had to make desperate efforts now to get membership of elite NSG had former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru accepted the then US President John F Kennedy’s offer of helping the country detonate a nuclear device much before China did in 1964, according to former Foreign Secretary Maharajakrishna Rasgotra. He also said that if Nehru had accepted the offer, not only would have India tested the nuclear device first in Asia, before China, but it also “would have deterred China from launching its war of 1962 and even imparted a note of caution to (Pakistan’s) Field Marshal...

Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had sought American assistance and wrote to the then US president John F Kennedy to provide India jet fighters to stem the Chinese tide of aggression during the 1962 Sino-India war, according to a new book. The main objective of Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, to attack India in 1962 was to “humiliate” Nehru who was emerging as a leader of the third world, it said. “India’s implementation of the Forward Policy served as a major provocation to China in September 1962,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official, wrote...

Commemorating the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel ahead of India's 69th Independence Day, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said India has stood as a beacon for the world. - John Kerry AFP photo Washington - Commemorating the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel ahead of India's 69th Independence Day, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said India has stood as a beacon for the world. "Since 1947, India has stood as a beacon for the world, as an economic power that prides innovation, as a resilient...

US wanted India to pip China to N-test: Report 1 Sep 2007, 0121 hrs IST,Srinivas Laxman ,TNN TARAPUR: The US may now want India not to conduct nuclear tests, having built it in as a condition in the 123 agreement. But more than 40 years ago, a number of US state department officials were keen that India carry out a nuclear test before communists China did. This is revealed in a September 13, 1961 memo from a US state department official, George McGhee, to then secretary of state Dean Rusk. According to the memo, many state department officials seriously wanted...

New Delhi - In revelations that could jar improving India-China relations, recently declassified CIA documents detail what the US saw as Chinese deception and Indian naivete that led to the 1962 war between the Asian giants, Indian media reported Thursday. CIA documents on the India-China border dispute that were declassified on Tuesday offer insights on how the US intelligence agency viewed the former Soviet Union and China in the darkest days of the Cold War. In three chapters dealing with the 1962 border war that India lost, CIA analysts suggested that the Chinese government under Premier Chou En Lai deceived...

On midnight 14th August 1947, Great Britain ceded soverignity over the Indian subcontinent to its native people. The struggle for Independence was led by Mohandas K Gandhi and boasted stalwarts like Nehru. The day also marked the birth in blood of 2 new nations - India and Pakistan - in one ancient land .

Referred to by the Dalai Lama as his 'little sister' this Burmese freedom fighter has tirelessly worked for democracy in her country for the last 16 years... Danubyu, Myanmar. 5 April, 1989: two months before the Tiananmen Square massacre in nearby China. A woman walks down the middle of the street, accompanied by several men. Six soldiers of the State Law and Order Restoration Council - the junta which has crushed the democracy movement and killed thousands of people in Rangoon - order the group to stop. The group pays no heed. A young army captain whips out his revolver...

NEW DELHI, May 13 — When the cameras caught up to Rahul Gandhi in his rural constituency on Thursday, Mr. Gandhi, the descendant of three Indian prime ministers — and possibly soon a fourth — could barely contain his dimpled grin. It was a good day to be the latest star of the Nehru-Gandhi family dynasty. Written off as calcified, out-of-touch, visionless and nepotistic, that dynasty is poised once again to lead the world's most populous democracy. On Thursday, the Indian National Congress, which the family has controlled in fact or in spirit since before independence, emerged from elections as...