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Daily English Vocab Gauging The Status Quo The Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa grouping (BRICS) has since long ceased to be of material significance as multilateral institutions go. The recent BRICS Summit in Xiamen (China) only seemed to confirm this. It suggests that BRICS may be going the way of quite a few other organisations. Inconsequential declaration Little of consequence appears to have happened, or to have emerged, from the latest summit. The Xiamen Declaration is proof of this. Considering that this meeting was taking place in the shadow of significant global events, notably North Korea’s nuclear  provocations (abetment)  and the U.S. response, other serious developments in Asia, including Afghanistan and West Asia, apart from issues of consequence elsewhere, the absence of any reference to these events in the Summit Declaration suggests that BRICS is clearly out of sync with current realities. Much has been made by the media about the   inclusi

Daily English Vocab The New Face of Ideological Violence In 1598 a group of Vaishnava clergy sought the King’s permission to install an idol of Vishnu at Chidambaram, the site probably of the most sacred of Shiva temples in the subcontinent. Horrified Shaiva priests responded by a threat to commit mass suicide to protest this. Indeed, twenty of them jumped to their death from the gopuram. This telling detail from a recent book on pluralism by a young American scholar, Elaine Fischer,  vividly (in an intensely deep or bright manner.)  illustrates the nature of religious violence in early modern India. Worshippers would rather give up their own life than take the life of others with different beliefs and practices. Killing someone from another sect was simply  inconceivable (unbelievable)! In the light of this, what is happening today is  cataclysmic ((of a natural event) large-scale and violent.).)  India has had many faults but eliminating people for holding different belie