AsiaScoop   India

After a narrow escape from a fatal form of cancer, New York writer Katherine Russell Rich spent a year in India learning Hindi. She had no idea just how radically the language would change her life, her mind, her very being.

The Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan has long transcended regional boundaries. But since 9/11, and especially since the 2008 Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the Kashmiri ‘Paradise on Earth’ has become much less geopolitically important than the West’s war against Islamic extremism. To win that battle, Pakistan must not no longer be allowed to use Kashmir as a weapon of regional terrorism.

What does Louisiana’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, have in common with the Democratic U.S. Surgeon General-designate Sanjay Gupta? They’re both Americans of Indian descent.

Tibetans and their supporters worldwide have taken to the streets in record numbers lately to protest human rights abuses in China and the 58-year-old Chinese occupation of Tibet. Over the years, a lot of things have stood between Beijing’s dictatorial rule and Tibet’s freedom — but you’d never guess the most formidable barrier: The Dalai Lama himself.

Tibet has been a thorn in China’s side ever since Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army invaded the Roof of the World in 1950. The recent unrest in Lhasa resulted in a Chinese crackdown that has effectively transformed the Beijing Olympics into what some are calling the “Human Rights Games.”

Call it by its well-known colonial name or the postcolonial P.C. “Kolkata,” the place that Mother Teresa did most to popularize is a City of Joy and cultural powerhouse like no other. AsiaScoop Contributing Photographer Dev Nayak offers an eclectic glimpse of India’s most marvelous metropolis.

Long before Europe’s enlightenment and centuries before Gautama Buddha renounced his princely life and set out to solve the riddle of human suffering, a band of ascetics in India offered hope and redemption to the masses.