Deafening Silence on India's attendance at Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony

While most of our criticisms of The Hindu are normally about items in the paper, sometimes it is worth commenting on something that does not find mention in it. I refer, of course, to the paper's deafening silence on the question of India's attendance of the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony this year to dissident activist Liu Xiaobo in the face of China's call asking countries to boycott it. Several newspapers across the country have called upon the government to grow a spine, ignore the call and go ahead with its attendance. This publication which is usually at the forefront of providing unsolicited advice to the government in foreign affairs particularly where it concerns relations with the United States has been sitting it out editorially on this question. Even the op-ed columns have not mentioned anything about the matter. It is quite remarkable that a paper which regularly dishes out shrill rhetoric about the need for India to pursue an "independent" foreign policy and not back down before American pressure has chosen to stay quiet when the country is facing real pressure from a certain other powerful nation. No guesses why that might be so but I would still like to hear what the folks at the paper have to say.