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Lessons from around the world. One of them that anyone who marries Imran Khan can expect to be ex-spouse. Second: Imran Khan swings both ways. Third: Trump’s marriage with Kim is vague. Four: War-games are like bedroom-games. They provoke, help balance the balance!

Twenty-five years ago, as grapevine had it, when the then general secretary of Communist Party of India Indrajit Gupta was reportedly approached to write a forward for the first comprehensive English version of Karl Marx’s Mathematical Manuscripts from the Russian text, the CPI leader declined confessing that he couldn’t write anything about a work which he wasn’t aware of, let alone having read it. However, the translator, Pradip Baksi, a Kolkata-based- Marx scholar and a rare strain of polymath, is not aware of this. But the maverick CPI(M) leader Subhas Chakraborty ensured that the then CPI(M) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet would write the forward Baksi confirms. CPI and CPI(M) leaders were expected to be abreast of the fact the Moscow-publisher ‘Nauka’ had published it in 1968 in Russian. And it’s not that no Indian communist leader or ‘ideologue’ , including Gupta and Surjeet , had read the voluminous text which was already discussed among historians of mathematics abroad. Marx prepared the manuscript at the fag end of his life.

It was no Reagan-Gorbachev moment, nor was it some earth-shaking leap toward permanent peace. But contrary to what you might be hearing or reading, the Trump-Kim summit did achieve some net positives…or, at least, potential ones. Many liberal commentators and media personalities are so eager to oppose whatever Donald Trump says or does, however, that they are rushing to declare the summit an essential failure, or worse, as a cave to Kim Jong Un.

Those who say Modi and Shah failed big-time in post-poll machinations in Karnataka wait! Post-government formation, trouble is dogging the ruling Congress-Janata Dal (S) alliance. The slip is showing. The ladders on the Congress-JD (S) stockings are unravelling. Like silk usually does under stress.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh says that one unfortuate fallout of the Emergency was to bring the RSS into the national mainstream via its fraternal outfit, the Jan Sangh, the BJP’s predecessor, which resisted Indira Gandhi’s draconian rule and later merged into the ruling Janata Party.

Only a month has passed since the results of the Karnataka assembly elections were out on May 12, but for the Congress Party, this has been the period of great learning about the dynamics of coalition politics. Congress led by Rahul Gandhi has become more sober and practical in dealing with the regional parties as also the smaller parties whom the Congress leadership did not take into account earlier. Rahul Gandhi is certainly a changed man now and he has come to the conclusion that the Congress has to enter into alliance with the maximum number of anti-BJP parties to take on the might of saffrons led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the coming 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The summit of the century and all over the world it’s ‘We are live in Singapore’, TV news channels streaming pictures of Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump. Images of Kim and Trump shaking hands and sitting side by side, priceless additions to the world picture library. The only grouse some have is that Kim shouldn’t be treated like a celebrity, a rock-star! Of the two, Trump is the established celeb, a TV star who became President.

Lynching is mob action. A ‘group of people’ lynch. So the term ‘mob lynching’ is an oxymoron. Lynching is mostly out in the open. In town and village square. In the Wild West of America it was stringing from the nearest tree. A couple or more people cook up a lie over a rumour spread like wildfire. And the falsely accused is killed by the group without trial. The choice of weapons is left to the moron: Scythe, machete, club and spear. The long rope!

Fareed Zakaria’s documentary ‘Two Faces of Kim Jong Un’ was telecast Sunday night on CNN and being the Indian that he is/was, Zakaria wished, before the programme aired, that “hope President Trump watches so that he gets a better understanding of who he is going to talk to.” Needless to say, an Indian, even one who has taken American citizenship, is an arrogant dude.

The momentous victory of the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha election was neither the success of Hindutva nor a defeat of secularism. Consolidating their gains, the saffron brigade used the expansion to broad base its Hindutva outreach and agenda. They were in a mad rush to reach their goal.