Fifty years after Jawaharlal Nehru’s death India has a new charismatic, strong and controversial Prime Minister. The journalist John Elliott in his blog Riding the Elephant gives an interesting commentary and the latest news about Narendra Modi’s 23 cabinet members. This is worth a look.

I mentioned below the importance of Kashmir’s relationship with Pakistan and India. Just a month ago The Hindustan Times published a report of a ‘war of words‘ between Modi and Kashmir’s Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah. It was OA’s grandfather who chose the secularism of India rather than Muslim Pakistan and suffered twenty years of incarceration. So there are tensions here still and no invitation was sent to Omar to attend today’s ceremony until the last moment. Strange.

Numbers interest me and it is odd that No. 26 marks significant events in India. Republic Day is on 26 January (1950 was the first), on 26 January 2001 Kutch in Gujarat suffered the massive earthquake, 26 November 2008, the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and today the first Prime Minister to win with an outright majority for 30 years.