Snapshot of the day

August 4, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

Police officers in Tamil Nadu today turned up at leader of opposition and DMK scion Udhayanidhi Stalin’s home in Chennai, arrested him and drove him over 300 kilometres away to Thanjavur – in connection with his remarks about chief minister Vijay and the actor Trisha that have widely been seen as sexually coloured. The police lodged an FIR against Stalin against the complaint of a Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam office-bearer invoking provisions dealing with insulting the modesty of a woman, uttering obscene words in public, provoking with intent to trigger a riot and promoting enmity – the LoP had made the remarks at an event in Thanjavur yesterday. Amid the high drama, the police informed the Madras high court today that it did not intend to remand Stalin to judicial custody, and the bench directed his release.

In yet another saffronisation push, Indian hockey’s blue has been pushed aside ahead of the World Cup – apparently without even Hockey India’s Executive Board being consulted. Federation president Dilip Tirkey has sought a formal explanation on the ridiculous decision to change the national team’s jersey from blue to saffron. After the backlash, Hockey India said the blue kit blended with the blue synthetic turf used in international hockey and that players and staff had suggested alternatives, including saffron and yellow. The new jersey, it added, carries darker patterns to “celebrate India’s rich cultural heritage” and “embodies the spirit of Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat”. Tirkey has now written to board members and executive director R.K. Srivastava saying the decision was neither placed before the board nor brought to his knowledge.

Veteran player and coach Vasudevan Baskaran has raised the obvious questions: Why now? Why saffron? And were the players ever asked?

The Cockroach Janata Party has announced that its core team will convene for a two-day strategy meeting in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar starting August 5 for discussing the next steps for its youth movement.

Air India flight AI2379, operating from Phuket to Delhi, encountered severe turbulence on Monday, resulting in a “sudden loss” of approximately 300 feet in altitude and leaving ten passengers and four crew members on board injured, according to an unidentified Directorate General of Civil Aviation official.

The incident comes amid wider concerns over aviation safety, with

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Snapshot of the day

August 3, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

The Bharatiya Janata Party lost an important by-election in Bihar today with the Bankipur assembly seat in Patna going to poll strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor and his Jan Suraaj Party. The real signficance of the BJP’s loss lies in the fact that the seat was held by party president Nitin Nabin until he resigned at the end of March this year following his election to the Rajya Sabha. Nabin and the BJP campaigned extensively yet the ruling party’s candidate lost by nearly 20,000 votes. The BJP also lost the Datia assembly by-election in Madhya Pradesh to the Congress but held on to the Manjalpur seat in Gujarat.

Against the backdrop of student and youth disaffection, the election results are a political nightmare for Modi and the BJP. They also led to a lot of ladoos going to waste.

Fresh allegations have surfaced in the Ram temple donations theft case – and, predictably, a parallel outrage over satire. On July 27, Mahipal Singh, the former head of accounts at the temple trust and a whistleblower in the ‘chanda chori’ matter, emailed his statement to the SIT probing the matter. According to journalist Abhishek Upadhyay, Singh has levelled new charges against the temple management, including former trust secretary Champat Rai, who resigned on July 7.

Among Singh’s allegations are that Rs 2,200 crore was spent on temple construction against an estimated cost of Rs 800 crore, and that Rai purchased certain “disputed” properties on behalf of the trust without the purchaser taking possession. Singh has also reiterated his charge against Rai’s former driver, Tinnu Yadav, who was part of the donation-counting staff and allegedly took away cash – every eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth bundle – from the counting room. In his statement mailed to the SIT, Singh has also alleged that “apart from cash, Tinnu Yadav would also take away other materials given as donation from the counting room. Its photograph would be clicked and sent to Champat Rai.”

Meanwhile, the hurt-sentiment machinery has moved faster than the accounting one. “Saffron robes, the image of Hindu saints and the tradition of renunciation are considered highly sacred and revered in sanatan dharma, and were exploited,” says a criminal complaint filed in Varanasi in connection with the Ram Mandir donation theft matter. The complainant wasn’t referring to the scandal itself but to a satirical skit that opposition MPs performed in the parliament premises late last week. “This act prima facie appears to publicly ridicule and disrespect the Hindu saint tradition, Lord Shri Ram and the religious faith of the devotees,” charged priest Jagadguru Devacharya. Of course the local police have gone ahead and lodged an FIR – against Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Faizabad MP Awadhesh Prasad and Purnea MP Pappu Yadav.

Even though the CBI has finished investigating them, 158 recruitment exam irregularity cases – some of them lodged over two decades ago – languish in limbo as the trials in them are yet to begin, PTI reports citing sources. The agency is said to plan to seek the transfer of these cases to the new fast-track courts enabled after the recent youth protests. PTI also notes that “frequent transfers of investigating officers, prosecutors and even presiding judges” tends to complicate cases and risk their collapse.

Speaking of transfers and fast-track courts, Anu Baliga, the special judge presiding over the fast-track court hearing the 2026 NEET-UG leak case, has been transferred to a terrorism-related court. Now judge Ajay Gupta will hear the matter – he was actually presiding over it before the fast-track court was formed, reports Nirbhay Thakur.

Resuming its hearing of a petition seeking a ban on metallic-pellet guns on protesting civilians, the Supreme Court today said it would like to “lay down a protocol on whether [they] can be used or not and if allowed, in what circumstances”. Appearing for the petitioners – two of whom were wounded by the Rapid Action Force’s firing pellets at them during the youth protests in Delhi on the 20th, one of them in his eye – advocate Vrinda Grover reiterated

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Snapshot of the day

July 31, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

Its government failed to suppress the Jantar Mantar protest with brute force and eventually agreed not to prosecute any of the protestors, but a vengeful Bharatiya Janata Party is still looking for ways to get even with Gen Z. On Friday, the Noida police filed a case against a young woman, Ruchika Singh, for using “abusive language against Narendra Modi” and pro-government media has begun the process of demonising her.

The young woman used abusive language but the charges are ridiculous – Sec 352, 353(1), and 356(1) of the BNSS. The first two criminalise ‘intentional insult’ and ‘public mischief’ but require “the intent or knowledge that the provocation will cause a breach of the public peace” or “that cause or are likely to cause fear or alarm to the public, or incite people to commit offences against the state or public tranquility.” None of which apply. The third charge is criminal defamation, but it is the defamed person who surely needs to file such a case and not the police or some third party.

Nevertheless, the intent is clear: To purge from the public domain any evidence or memory of the contempt with which the protesters spoke of Modi. Social media companies have been served takedown notices, their executives are also being threatened with criminal cases, and the publicity Big Media is giving to Ruchika Singh’s case is intended to get young people across India to scrub their feeds of anything critical of the prime minister.

“Every generation invents its own tongue, and Gen Z’s happens to be foul-mouthed, sarcastic,” Anand Teltumbde has noted in a perceptive piece in defence of the protesters’ profanity. In fact, their willing to use abusive language against Modi is “one of the reasons this movement won – because vulgarity, deployed with intent against sacred power, has a much older and much more successful political career than most respectable commentary is willing to admit.” In a nutshell, he notes, “the crude and the political are so often the same weapon: they strip the reverence on which entrenched authority depends.”

That is the reason this irreverence is not being allowed to stand. Late on Friday night, Modi dropped a patronising reel on Instagram, aimed at accomplishing the same goal:

“Hi friends, today I feel like talking only to you. The country and the world witnessed what happened at Jantar Mantar; some mischievous youngsters hurled vile abuses. Words were used that do not behoove civilised society—directed not just at me, but even at my late mother.”

He went on to say it was shocking that “daughters” had used abusive language but that “I want to forgive them” for their youthful indiscretion “and I hope society accepts this”.

This last caveat is what will allow him to have his cake and eat it too: appear personally magnanimous, and blame ‘society’ for filing cases against young protesters. At the time of releasing the India Cable, there is no indication that Noida Police or Delhi Police—which has taken over investigation of Ruchika Singh’s ‘crime’—have moved into ‘forgive’ mode. If Modi is serious, he has to ensure the FIRs against her and others are withdrawn.

A second prong of the BJP’s damage control strategy of rewriting the Jantar Mantar narrative is to get the families of police personnel to address a press conference about the violence of the protesters and demand justice.

Apart from showing the Union home minister’s stewardship of security in poor light – after all, he cannot even ensure the safety of policemen in the national capital – the demand for justice cuts both ways. So far, the Cockroach Janta Party (unlike the Congress) has not foregrounded the demand for the punishment of those in uniform who hit peaceful protesters with lathis and fired pellet guns at them. But the time for that is bound to come.

A third element in the ruling establishment’s strategy is much more sinister. A digital mob of government supporters has doxxed and issued rape threats to a number of women protesters who turned up at Jantar Mantar. Other prominent right-wing handles are openly advocating violence against AISA leader Neha Bora.

Authorities in India have been well aware of the risks of deploying the so-called ‘less lethal’ pellet guns, well before the Rapid Action Force fired them at protesters marching to parliament last week. As early as 2011, reports Praveen Swami, an expert group formed by the Union home ministry had warned that pellet guns “were found to be causing lethal effects” (despite their name) and risked serious injuries to the eyes and head, warranting “urgent replacement with better and modern kinetic energy munitions”. A task force convened by the Bureau of Police Research and Development in 2011 – a year after security forces controversially used pellet guns against Kashmiris – did not name the gun in its list of non-lethal weapons that could be used against protesters, says Swami. “The recommendations have lurched from committee to committee, however, with little on-ground implementation,” he writes.

The deployment of pellet guns in Delhi – notably injuring a 19-year-old in the eye – has also brought back a 2018 study from Kashmir back into focus. Conducted by the Government Medical College in Srinagar on 380 pellet gun victims from the 2016 unrest, it’d found that 260 of them had suffered eye injuries, of which a full 30.4% reported suffering from depression and 11% from PTSD. A majority (65%) of those who sustained grievous pellet injuries too reported having depression. Peerzada Ashiq reports.

The rupee has required another rescue operation. The Reserve Bank of India sold about $7 billion last Friday to defend the currency, Bloomberg reports, in one of its largest direct interventions in months as the rupee neared its record low. The RBI intervened in both onshore and offshore markets and followed up with further dollar sales over the next two sessions, helping pull the currency back from the edge. The rupee traded at 95.50 to the dollar on Thursday.

India’s credit boom is beginning to show its bill. The Indian Express reports that a TransUnion CIBIL study has found rising consumer indebtedness, more financially stretched borrowers, slowing borrower growth and fewer first-time borrowers entering the system. The share of over-leveraged consumers tripled from 5% in FY17 to 18% in FY24, easing only marginally to 15% in FY26 after industry intervention. The Modi government has long sold credit-led consumption as confidence. The data suggests something less triumphant: households borrowing harder in an economy that has not made earning easier.

‘Twenty years of praising India is not a China strategy,’ writes Stephanie Campbell, arguing that an industrially strong India matters more to the West than an obediently aligned one. The flattery economy has done well; the manufacturing one, less so.

New Delhi’s battery recycling push shows why. Nikkei Asia reports that dry-cell makers must collect 60% of batteries sold three years earlier by March 2027, rising to 70% the following year, but actual collection is often below 10%; Panasonic pilots managed just 1%-2% in most cases. If the waste misses formal channels, it will likely be burnt or dumped, poisoning air, soil and water.

Former World Bank chief economist Kaushik Basu, meanwhile, is blunter. After more than six weeks in Delhi studying the economy, he wrote on X that India is in “poor shape”: youth unemployment is “sky high”, education is “in a mess”, global confidence is low, net FDI is at zero and pollution is at record levels “with no action” while “all energy is spent on politics and little on actual policy.”. His only note of hope is the country’s youth, which, he says, has “realized this”.

Nikkei Asia reports that Japanese carmakers are tapping cheaper overseas labour, especially in India and Thailand, to build vehicles for sale back home, pushing “reverse imports” to a record – up 38% to 72,330 units. In 2025, average monthly wages at Japanese-operated plants in India were about Rs 37,073, against roughly 316,000 yen in Japan. Suzuki’s surge has been powered by the made-in-India Jimny Nomade, a reminder that India’s advantage in the global auto chain still rests less on high-value industrial leadership than on cheap factory labour.

The South China Morning Post asks: ‘Can a Brics invite mark a new chapter in India-Bangladesh ties?’

Communal violence broke out in parts of the Madhes, or terai, region of Nepal, “after participants in the annual Bolbam pilgrimage passed through the market playing loud music,” the Kathmandu Post reports. “Members of another community objected to the volume, leading to a verbal altercation that quickly escalated.” So far, three persons have died in police firing. Himal Khabar’s editorial, अतिवाद हटाउन दलहरू अग्रसर होऊ (‘Parties should take the lead in eliminating extremism’), says:

“In Madhesh (Plains), Mukesh Kumar Sah, a pracharak and Koshi Province head of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh; Laxman Yadav, a pracharak and Janakpur division in-charge; Prahlad Regmi, a pracharak and organizational secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad; Nitesh Kumar, a Koshi Province member of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, Nepal; and Krishna Yadav, vice president of the Hindu Samrat Sena, along with others are calling for violence against minority communities under the pretext of ‘protecting religion,’ through social media. Activists of these organizations are also seen on the ground to incite mobs. The Home Administration is well aware of these facts, yet it remains silent because powerful individuals are involved in these extremist organizations. For instance, Purushottam Bhandari, a former Supreme Court justice, is the president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, while Kalyan Timsina, a former AIG of the Nepal Police, is the national sanghchalak (president) of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh Nepal.”

As the Supreme Court yesterday heard challenges to the Modi government’s law on appointing the chief election commissioner, solicitor general Tushar Mehta said that if the prime minister is not to be trusted then an external figure ought to have a say in cabinet appointments as well. To this, Justice Dipankar Datta replied that the question at hand is not about a lack of trust in the PM, but about “justice not only being done, but shown to be done”: “The issue is that the composition of this committee tilts in favour of one side [of the executive],” the judge noted. Though the apex’s court 2023 Anoop Baranwal judgment brought in a panel comprising the PM, the Lok Sabha LoP and the CJI to select the CEC, the Modi government soon afterwards replaced the CJI with a cabinet minister, tilting the balance decisively towards the executive.

Marking an about-turn in its stance, Kerala’s UDF government has said it will go ahead with the PM-SHRI scheme that aims to modernise schools, but which the alliance had vigorously opposed during its tenure in the opposition, citing among other concerns the saffronisation of the state’s schools. UDF convenor Adoor Prakash claimed yesterday that the previous LDF government had already signed an MoU with the Union government and said the state is in need of funds. Now a cabinet subcommittee will see if there are ways to enter the scheme without accepting some of the Union’s conditions, or exit entirely. Meanwhile the issue has already opened up a fissure within the ruling coalition.

Earlier this week the Union government issued its seventh draft notification on declaring areas in the Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive zones where new constructions and industries will be restricted. There have been so many notifications because the governments of the states where the mountain range passes through have refused to reach a consensus over their objections to the restrictions that ESZs would entail.

Bloomberg reports that India’s national grid wasted about 11% of its solar power during the hottest months of the year, even as air-conditioning demand pushed electricity use to record highs. More than 8 billion kilowatt-hours of solar could not be absorbed between April and June, against 63 billion kilowatt-hours that reached the grid, according to renewable energy and power minister Shripad Yesso Naik. Curtailment peaked in May, just as the heat did.

Assam land rights activist locked up under NSA after securing bail in questionable case

Right after an Assam court granted bail to land rights activist Pranab Doley, who has agitated against plans to build a five-star hotel near the Kaziranga National Park, the state government yesterday invoked the draconian National Security Act against him in an apparent bid to prevent his release. In its NSA order, the Assam government cited Doley’s alleged assaults on public servants and receipt of allegedly suspicious funds – however the sessions court had already addressed these in its bail order on Wednesday. It had noted that although the police accused him and others of attacking police personnel at the hotel site with deadly weapons, the footage it supplied did not show protesters attacking the police. There also seemed to be nothing wrong with Doley’s receipt of funds, the court said.

The court also had some sage advice for the state government: “In matters where ecological preservation intersects with indigenous survival, the standard apparatus of criminal law cannot be used to suppress local anxieties. True public order is achieved not by silencing the affected, but by listening to them.” Aathira Perinchery has the report.

As death toll of Indian sailors mounts, Jaishankar talks tough. To Ukraine, not US or Russia.

Attacks on commercial shipping in the Black Sea are “absolutely unacceptable” regardless of who perpetrates them, External Affairs minister S. Jaishankar tweeted after speaking to his counterpart in Kyiv, Andrii Sybiha, yesterday, days after New Delhi summoned the Ukrainian ambassador in connection with an attack on a vessel that killed one Indian seafarer.

The language in Jaishankar’s tweet is notably stronger than what he put out after the US Navy killed three Indian sailors in the Persian Gulf in June. “Such lethal actions against commercial shipping are not justified,” Jaishankar posted after speaking to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The Forward Seamen’s Union of India had attributed the attack on the MV Omorfi, to a Ukrainian drone strike but Kyiv has not acknowledged any role in it; Sybiha yesterday spoke of the “consequences of Russian aggression [extending] far beyond Ukraine’s borders”. Four other Indian mariners were killed in the Black Sea in a Russian drone attack, while two others are missing.

These deaths come on top of the Indian casualties in West Asia due to the conflict there. The external affairs ministry said in parliament yesterday that 16 Indians have been killed in West Asia, among whom were ten seafarers. Some of their families are calling on the Modi government to lodge a complaint with the UN, and are demanding $5 million in compensation from both the US and Iran.

E20: Mileage down, heat up

Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari has been in the firing line over E20, with calls for his resignation even as he has told the Bombay High court that the ethanol-blending programme does not fall under his ministry. The Ayushi Kar of the Reporters’ Collective calculates that Indian motorists paid an estimated Rs 88,234 crore in additional fuel costs between April 2023 and March 2026 because of the mileage penalty from E20 petrol; for FY2025-26 alone, the figure is put at Rs 37,843 crore.

Ethanol produces less energy than petrol when burnt – about a third less – which means vehicles consume more fuel for the same distance. The Modi government acknowledged the mileage question in reports, then tried to drown it in green rhetoric, Kar notes.

The Long Cable

From Silent Guardians to Cyber Tigers: How Partisan Veterans Are Eroding the Military's Apolitical Ethos

Rajesh Kalia

In democratic statecraft, few principles are held as sacred as the apolitical character of the armed forces, where institutional credibility relies heavily on maintaining a non-partisan stance. However, the emergence of digital platforms like X and WhatsApp groups has fuelled a troubling shift, giving rise to a new generation of ‘cyber tigers’ among retired brass.

A growing number of military veterans, seeking post-service relevance, have enrolled as commentators to peddle partisan narratives, shifting away from the stoic traditions of the armed forces to engage in polarised online commentary.

The degradation of public discourse among senior military veterans was starkly illustrated in a recent series of viral exchanges on X (formerly Twitter). Rather than reflecting the intellectual rigour and institutional dignity traditionally associated with higher command, these digital interactions exposed a growing inclination towards a particular narrative-building, and public grandstanding.

This shift not only reflects the democratising—and often sensationalising—nature of social media platforms, but it also underscores a broader shift within the veteran community. As former officers increasingly trade quiet, dignified restraint for immediate online visibility, the boundary between professional military critique and populist commentary becomes dangerously blurred.

Gone are the days when distinguished military leaders refused to reinvent themselves as vocal preachers on social media, after hanging up their boots. Having contributed immensely to the armed forces during their active service, they chose to let their legacies speak for themselves, weighing in publicly only during extreme situations that truly warranted their expertise. When they did choose to pen their thoughts, their writings were highly regarded, as their insights consistently focused on the genuine betterment of the armed forces rather than chasing public attention.

In one recent instance, a veteran faced public pushback after tweeting congratulations to a Bollywood actor on his ‘holy’ marriage while wishing him “many more to come,” prompting a fellow veteran to publicly remind him that such behaviour was not becoming of a three-star general of the Army.

Self-promotion among military veterans hit a dangerous low recently when a retired three-star general posted a photograph on ‘X’ revealing the identity of a soldier involved in the Uri surgical strike. The post was probably aimed at driving publicity for his book. However, in his rush to promote his work, the veteran bypassed standard security practices. Protecting the identities of Special Forces operators is a non-negotiable global protocol designed to shield operatives from hostile targeting. Compromising an operator’s anonymity for book sales sets a reckless precedent for retired military leadership.

The public exchange triggered by the controversy around the movie Satluj (formerly ‘Panjab 95’), highlights a growing faultline within veteran military discourse. The sharp clash between a decorated retired major and a prominent three-star general, famed for his catchphrase “Kitne Ghazi Aaye, Kitne Ghazi Gaye” (‘KGAKGG’,) underscores how public commentary by former officers often intersects with hyper-nationalist rhetoric.

By questioning why state-directed operational narratives differ so starkly between conflict zones like Kashmir and the North East, critics point out that while punchy slogans effectively bolster civilian morale, they often act as a substitute for nuanced strategic transparency, packaging complex military realities into simplistic public relations bites.

Beyond social media sparring, defence strategists warn against a far more dangerous institutional fallout: publicising the arbitrary operational deadlines during counter-terrorist operations.

A prime case study is the 100 hour deadline for security forces to eliminate the perpetrators of the 2019 Pulwama attack in the lead-up to the high-profile press briefing where the ‘KGAKGG’ phrase was popularised.

Imposing rigid timeframes on counter-terror operations severely restricts tactical flexibility on the ground. When deadlines demand instant results, field commanders and junior leadership are under immense pressure to rush assaults rather than await optimal conditions. This operational haste drastically elevates the risk of tactical missteps, avoidable fatal or non fatal casualties, compounding collateral damage and risks allegations of fake encounters—ultimately compromising long-term stabilisation for short-term narrative victories.

While serving officers are legally forbidden from political posturing, retirement removes these statutory boundaries. Historically, an unwritten code of ethics dictated that veterans maintain dignity, offering objective strategic critique rather than partisan soundbites. Today, television panels and digital feeds feature retired commanders acting less like defence analysts and more like political spokespersons who uncritically echo political party lines.

This allure of post-retirement rehabilitation—whether through contesting elections, securing gubernatorial roles, or landing think-tank appointments—mirrors the famous observation made by the late Arun Jaitley regarding judges. Warning against the compromise of institutional independence, Jaitley famously stated that “pre-retirement judgements are influenced by a desire for a post-retirement job,” adding that “post-retirement jobs impinge on independence” and pose a direct threat to the integrity of public institutions.

The digital footprint of retired military commanders presents a complex, double-edged dynamic that directly impacts modern civil-military relations and public perceptions. Constructive digital engagement by former officers serves a vital purpose. By leveraging their substantial platforms, veterans can articulate core national security priorities, defend the dignity and morale of active-duty soldiers, and counter viral misinformation regarding ongoing operations. In an era of rapid digital information warfare, these efforts help bridge the widening civil-military divide, providing the public with authentic operational context while bringing attention to critical issues like welfare of troops, veterans and veer naris.

However, this constructive role is increasingly eclipsed by a trend of digital self-aggrandisement, partisan posturing, and public squabbling. When retired military personnel descend into online ‘feuds’, push promotional agendas, or align themselves with hyper-partisan political rhetoric, they compromise the very foundation of military ethics.

The armed forces remain one of the nation’s most trusted public institutions precisely because the uniform stands strictly above the political fray. By converting operational memories into media catchphrases or engaging in public mudslinging, senior veterans risk reducing complex national security challenges to mere entertainment, thereby eroding the institutional dignity and apolitical standing of the armed forces.

The long-term institutional fallout of this trend extends far beyond social media optics. When retired commanders act as political operatives or narrative-chasers, they invite retrospective skepticism regarding their active-duty service—leading citizens to question whether critical command decisions were made out of operational necessity or to signal political compliance for post-retirement careerism.

Even more dangerously, this behaviour sends a corrosive message down the chain of command. Junior and mid-career officers closely observe their former leaders; if post-retirement prestige and media visibility appear to reward political sycophancy over professional integrity, it risks breeding a culture of conformity. In times of national crisis, civilian leadership relies on military commanders who offer candid, unvarnished, and uncomfortable truths. If the incentive structure favours narrative management over hard reality, the quality of strategic decision-making inevitably degrades.

While democratic discourse undoubtedly benefits when seasoned military minds offer sharp, independent, and constructive strategic analysis, senior veterans must recognise the weight of their ‘former’ ranks. From silent guardians to digital provocateurs, institutional dignity in veteran discourse has definitely eroded.

Retired commanders must step back from acting as partisan provocateurs or self-promoting commentators, returning instead to their essential role as mature guardians of professional objectivity, tactical discipline and institutional integrity.

(Rajesh Kalia, a former Colonel in the Indian Army, served as Defence Public Relations Officer in the 3&4 Corps and 14&15 Corps of the Indian Army. His operational background includes service in Siachen, Jammu and Kashmir and Sri Lanka (as part of the Indian Peace Keeping Force). He retired in January 2025.)

Reportedly

Gitanjali J. Angmo, wife of Sonam Wangchuk, once called for the word ‘secular’ to be removed from the Indian constitution. Under fire on social media for promoting the ideological agenda of the very party whose government attacked protesting students and had earlier incarcerated her husband for nearly six months, the educationist has doubled down on her position. The Constitution was secular in substance before the S word was added, she writes. But even if Indira Gandhi’s decision to add the word ‘secular’ to the Preamble of the Constitution in 1976 “was, philosophically, a tautology”, surely she knows that deleting the word now – as the Sangh parivar would like to do – would rob India of more than just seven letters.

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

The Economist writes that Modi’s proposed plans to “fix the system” are “more show than substance” and are unlikely to address the deeper weakness of the education system. The British magazine notes:

“It is in its desire to clamp down on free speech that Mr Modi’s party is most itself. The government initially blocked the protest movement’s X account in May. It then blocked mobile internet around the protest area in central Delhi for several days, as well as a peer-to-peer messaging app. It told social-media networks to take down anti-Modi posts. A parliamentary committee has called a meeting with the main platforms to discuss, among other things, how to ensure “the government’s public order”.

There is, however, one new move in the government’s response. It has realised that Instagram, where the protest movement gathered momentum, is the dominant social-media network of the day. On July 23rd Mr Modi posted his first-ever reel, or short-form video, on the platform. As Indians made mocking memes of the video, pliant media boasted that it had set “a new world record for the most views [of] an Instagram Reel within 24 hours”. Mr Modi has instructed ministers to enhance their presence on the platform. The party wheeled out a 42-year-old MP to give a speech to parliament in which she “borrowed Gen Z language” to say that Mr Modi “clocked” the problem. Young people describe the act of putting visible effort into appearing cool on social media as “aura farming”. It is a guaranteed way to have no aura at all.”

More troubling than the exam-paper leaks themselves is the increasingly central and lasting role these examinations play in young Indians’ lives. Many continue to compete within this unstable system because opportunities in the wider job market are even more limited. As the magazine observes, repairing the examination process alone will therefore not address the deeper problem.

Prime number: 3 months

Opeds you don’t want to miss

• “If you are looking for the point when the protests turned into a national movement it was not when the Cockroach Janata Party called for Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation … [or] when Sonam Wangchuk started a hunger strike,'“ writes Vir Sanghvi. “It was when the police were told by the government to use force to shut the protests down. From that point the police stopped being protectors of citizens and upholders of the rule of law and were transformed into the government’s stormtroopers.”

• India’s Gen-Z protesters taught Narendra Modi a lesson, says Sanjay Ruparelia in the Globe & Mail while in the New York Times, Kapil Komireddi writes that Modi has been “spectacularly humbled” by “young Indians” who have handed “the world’s largest democracy another chance at survival”.

• “It is clear from the overall scheme of these amendments that the state seeks to eliminate organisations active in the educational, cultural, environmental, and charitable sectors on account of certain deep-seated prejudices.” PDT Achary, former Secretary, Lok Sabha, on the ‘sledgehammer’ provisions of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026.

• India’s abstention from the ILO convention on “Decent Work in the Platform Economy” tells lakhs of gig workers exactly where they stand in the Viksit Bharat queue. More than 400 delegates backed the world’s first binding international framework for platform workers’ rights, including China, Brazil, Germany, France, Japan and South Africa whereas India sat it out. Growth may be digital; the protection for those delivering it remains analogue. “Viksit Bharat will remain a distant dream unless economic growth goes hand in hand with the dignity of labour,” reminds the Deccan Herald in an editorial.

• The Union government must be prepared to act if the rains fail this year, writes Santhosh Kumar PK. “For a country that imports more than half its edible oil and a fifth of pulses, a failed season inflates the forex bill. India’s food inflation now lives in perishables, too. It’s a supply problem that monetary tightening can’t solve. We must plan for more such troubled seasons.”

• How ‘eternal’ or ‘timeless’ is the religion many modern day Hindus label as Sanatan Dharma? The modern political imagination of ‘Sanatan Dharma’ emerged not in ancient times, but in the colonial 19th century as a conservative response to reform, modernity, and social change, says Devdutt Pattnaik.

Listen up

‘Is Modi’s time up?’ Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart examine the youth-led protests that swept the country last week on the Rest is Politics.

Watch out

On Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman and Anjali Kamat speak with Neha Bora, a doctoral student at Jawaharlal Nehru University and national president of the All India Students’ Association, and writer and artist Shuddhabrata Sengupta about the Modi government’s “massive crackdown” on the youth-led protest against the education minister.

Over and out

Gen Alpha are busy claiming their rights….

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.

Snapshot of the day

July 30, 2026

Anirudh S.K.

Umar Khalid has not been convicted of anything – and the proceedings against him in the so-called Delhi riots ‘conspiracy’ case have been widely condemned – but that has not prevented the powers that be from invoking his name in order to vilify and harass dissidents. This time, reports Pavneet Chadha, the police in BJP-ruled Goa a few days ago picked up two activists for attending a protest supporting the agitators in Delhi, and then subjected them to a lengthy questionnaire probing their knowledge of Khalid, asking:

“Were you aware of the background relating to Umar Khalid before attending the protest?; Did you shout the slogan ‘Free Umar Khalid’? If yes, how many times did you raise the slogan?; Did others repeat the slogan after you?”

That wasn’t all. Chadha writes that the questionnaire contained at least 240 questions, including on who ‘financed’ their protest, whether they posted photos of themselves protesting on social media, if they participated in group chats related to their demonstration, and if they had deleted data related to the protest. Asked about these intimidatory tactics, North Goa police superintendent Harishchandra Madkaikar said they were administered following a complaint by a group named ‘Citizens of Mapusa’. The police did this immediately after detaining a man for carrying a placard reading ‘Free Umar Khalid’ in Panaji.

In other words, does demanding freedom for a man jailed on specious grounds for close to six years without trial require explaining your group chats, your transport, your placards, your memory, your phone and your understanding of dissent? But hey, we are after all in New India.

Speaking of Khalid, he has once again approached the Delhi high court for bail in the ‘conspiracy’ case, challenging the trial court’s decision from earlier this month denying him relief (again). He has also sought interim bail until the Supreme Court makes up its mind on the grant of bail in slow-moving UAPA cases such as his own.

Hearing a plea by two of the Rapid Action Force’s pellet gun victims seeking a ban on the use of metallic pellets against civilians, the Supreme Court today issued an interim order directing the Delhi government to treat the duo and others who suffered such injuries. The bench suggested to the petitioners – who include former IPS officer Yashovardhan Azad – that they challenge specific provisions on the use of pellet guns, but advocate Vrinda Grover submitted that the Delhi police does not seem to have any standing orders governing the issue as far as she can tell.

The petitioners, as have human rights groups, note that once fired, these pellets scatter indiscriminately and can hit their targets in the eyes (as has happened in Kashmir) apart from wounding non-targets as well. One of those whom the RAF hit with pellets during the protest march to parliament on the 20th is 19-year-old Sahil Lochab, who risks losing vision in his right eye due to a pellet injury.

If at all the RAF personnel who fired pellets are to be prosecuted for doing so,

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Snapshot of the day

July 29, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

The Modi government has now found a way to make even widely reported pellet wounds disappear: procedure. Its much-anticipated first parliamentary defence of the brute force unleashed on protesters during the July 20 ‘Chalo Sansad’ march has arrived, and it is denial dressed up as due process. Union minister Jitendra Singh told the Lok Sabha on Wednesday that “utmost restraint” had been exercised by Delhi Police – which falls under the direct jurisdiction of Union home minister Amit Shah – that no shots were fired at student protesters and, therefore, that no order to fire could have been issued. “Jab goli chali hi nai, toh aadesh dene ka sawal paida hi nahi hota (Since no firing took place, the question of issuing an order does not arise),” he said, adding that such orders are issued by the administration, not by a minister.

Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s address in the Lok Sabha was repeatedly disrupted during the discussion on the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, which is “just a rubber stamp on the students” as it fails to address the real problem, adding that if the BJP was serious about reforming education, “the RSS should be removed from the education system”. As Treasury benches erupted, Opposition MPs kept chanting: “Goli kisne chalayi? Jawab do, jawab do (Who authorised the firing? Give answers)”. Shah, meanwhile, was absent from the House as Gandhi said the Modi government had “put pellets into the blood of our students”.

Later, at a press conference after heated exchanges in Parliament, Gandhi demanded Shah’s sacking and a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the July 20 violence, holding him responsible for the alleged police action against peaceful protesters. “The Delhi Police and the RAF both report to Amit Shah. There are only two possibilities – either Amit Shah ordered the violence against innocent protesters or he was so incompetent that he had no idea it was being carried out. Irrespective, he should go,” Gandhi said. He also questioned the presence of unidentified men during the clashes. “Who were these people in civil clothes attacking the protesters? Who were these goons?” and alleged that “Bajrang Dal is being used against our own students.”

The government’s denial sits uneasily beside several widely reported cases of gunshot and pellet-related injuries to protesters. Delhi Police, meanwhile, continues to insist there is no evidence of gunshot injury from the July 20 march. The official line is pretty straightforward: no firing, no order and, of course, no accountability.

Nor is the police crackdown confined to the street. Delhi Police has registered an FIR over social media posts allegedly containing “objectionable and defamatory” content targeting PM Modi during the student-led protests at Jantar Mantar. The IFSO unit of the Special Cell has invoked provisions relating to criminal intimidation, public mischief and defamation, and directed X to remove or disable access to identified posts and accounts, and sought subscriber details, activity logs and other data. The Cockroach Janta Party has, quite rightfully, asked why ordinary citizens should be prevented from questioning the prime minister, arguing that “in a functioning democracy, citizens have every right to demand answers and accountability” from an elected representative.

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Snapshot of the day

July 28, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

Days after the two NEET paper leaks triggered a nationwide youth movement that forced the first resignation from the Modi cabinet under public pressure, the CBI today filed a chargesheet against 13 accused in connection with the medical exam’s leak two months ago. It isn’t immediately clear if the agency has filed its chargesheet before the special fast-track court that the government set up to process the matter in the protests’ wake, and before which the CBI lawyer’s failure to turn up resulted in an adjournment of two bail pleas (see CBI skips first hearing below).

It now appears that the brute force used against peaceful protesters in central Delhi on July 20 may have included pellet guns and much more.

The Hindu’s Ashok Kumar reports that Nutan, a 32-year-old protester who works at a private firm in Millennium City in Gurugram, suffered what Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital records describe as a “trauma to right ear by gunshot” after armed personnel in blue uniforms allegedly fired in her direction near Jantar Mantar, away from the main protest site. “Two people had their guns aimed right at us. They were wearing blue uniforms. The person involved wasn’t wearing a name plate,” she is quoted as having said. “We were all fleeing together when the shot was fired, and it grazed right past my ear.”

The Delhi Police, which reports to the Union home ministry, however, has claimed that Nutan’s Medical Legal Report found that the injuries were caused by a “blunt weapon” and not a firearm.

This denial follows another that has already been contradicted by official records. The police publicly claimed that pellet guns were not used against protesters, but a General Diary entry from Parliament Street Police Station, obtained and analysed by Vijaita Singh, tells a different story. The entry, registered at 1:24 a.m. on July 20, states that, “on the orders of the DCP,” the RAF deputy commandant fired 55 non-electrical shells, 15 electrical shells, five tear-gas grenades and two ballistic cartridges containing plastic pellets from an anti-riot gun. This also comes a day after an investigation by the Central Reserve Police Force revealed that a Rapid Action Force jawan had fired at least seven rounds from a pellet gun, with five rounds hitting peaceful protesters. [See

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Snapshot of the day

July 27, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

Accusing the Modi government of backtracking on the commitment two senior ministers gave on Saturday when the Cockroach Janata Party called off their four-week long protest, CJP’s spokespersons today threatened to resume their agitation if all criminal cases filed against protestors in Delhi and elsewhere are not withdrawn by Tuesday as promised.

The issue is critical because the Bihar and West Bengal governments continued to target students with arrests and cases over the weekend.

On Monday, Neha Bora, head of the All India Students Association – who had joined Sonam Wangchuk’s hunger fast and stayed the course for 20 days along with two other AISA activists – travelled to Patna and managed to secure a statement from the Bihar government withdrawing all cases against protestors in the state. But West Bengal has yet to deliver on Nadda’s assurance – a significant omission given disturbing evidence of the BJP chief minister trying to use the protests to drive a wedge between Hindus and Muslims.

Two victims of the pellet guns used by the Rapid Action Force on protestors in Delhi on July 20 have approached the Supreme Court seeking a ban on the use of the weapon as a crowd control measure against civilians.

On Saturday, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan became Narendra Modi’s first cabinet minister to resign under public pressure – following paper leaks and other irregularities on his watch – but chose to portray this not as a recognition of the accountability principle but as a paternalistic concession offered to ignorant youngsters. In his resignation letter, Pradhan could not bring himself to explicitly address the weeks-long agitation that sought his head. Instead, he said he had resigned to prevent India’s youth from getting “trapped in confusion and deception”:

“Considering the situation at Jantar Mantar and elsewhere in the country, and so that anti-national forces do not take advantage of the circumstances, national unity is maintained, no student’s future gets entangled in legal complications, and our children can focus on their studies and building their careers, I have submitted my resignation to the Honourable Prime Minister.”

In other words, Pradhan did not quit his job to accept responsibility for the NEET-UG’s two-time leak, the compromising of other exams and the CBSE’s chaotic rollout of its on-screen marking system under his watch. If the youth protests really were simply a ‘misunderstanding’ on the part of the youth, why did Pradhan himself not address them before they became a tinderbox for these ever-nebulous anti-national forces to exploit? Instead he had actually called the protesters the ‘B-team of terrorists’.

That is a question whose answer we will hear neither from Pradhan nor his erstwhile colleagues. This latter group has in fact come out and enthusiastically batted for Pradhan, and BJP and NDA MPs today greeted him with shawls, a turban and chants of ‘Dharmendra Pradhan zindabad’, as if to suggest that his resignation is a matter of pride and not an occasion for solemn introspection.

One prominent colleague, though, has not mentioned Pradhan’s resignation at all: Prime Minister Modi. He has instead released a third self-recorded video announcing the formation of a high-powered task force on “revamping examinations by the NTA”. This will be led by former UIDAI founding chairman and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, best known for his championing of Aadhar, and its members are former Intelligence Bureau chief Tapan Deka (education experience nil), former ISRO chairman S. Somanath (education experience nil), IIT Madras director V. Kamakoti (fun fact: he is an advocate for consuming cow urine for medicinal purposes, a cause scientists say is actually harmful), Gujarat cadre IAS officer Anita Karwal (who was education secretary and CBSE chairwoman), and former coal secretary Amrit Lal Meena (education experience nil). Meanwhile, what will happen to the recommendations of the K. Radhakrishnan-led panel that was formed after the 2024 NEET-UG episode?

Parliament may finally debate the examination leak issue on Tuesday, with the government having readied a new law mandating a stiffer – 10 year – maximum penalty for those found guilty of “paper leak and unfair means in exams”.

A day after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi accused the PM Modi-led government of being “murderous” towards students, pointing to reports of bullets being fired, hundreds of arrests and FIRs against protesters, the Bihar

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A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK

Snapshot of the day

July 24, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly asked his ministers to increase their Instagram outreach and post reels to connect with the youth, the governance question kept leaking through the optics. The Union cabinet may have cleared the setting up of fast track courts and tougher penalties for paper leaks that Modi spoke about yesterday, but the political response to the student protests remained as unserious as ever. Asked about the issue at the briefing – despite Modi’s late-night proposal response that the Cabinet would take it up – Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw reportedly laughed and said, “No paper is leaking today.”

Needless to say, the Cockroach Janata Party was not impressed by Modi’s fast-track court idea, calling it mere “eyewash”. A delegation of the outfit today met the government’s representatives in health minister J.P. Nadda and MoS PMO Jitendra Singh at the Constitution Club and presented its three demands – Pradhan’s resignation, compensation for students who died by suicide after the NEET-UG leak and a halt to cases against protesting students. The government, it said, indicated its ‘in-principle’ agreement to the latter two (Nadda had also said by Sonam Wangchuk’s bedside yesterday that it is ‘positive’ about them). As for the CJP’s and thousands of supporters’ central demand that Pradhan put in his papers, the ministers sought time till Saturday.

Wanghchuk has put out a couple of videos where he has responded to critics who have questioned why he broke his fast in the presence of two ministers. First, he said that after 26 days of hunger strike, he did not need to prove his sincerity to anyone. Second, and more significantly, he revealed how he had wanted not just ministers to be present but opposition leaders and student protestors too but none of them were allowed to see him in his hospital room.

Following Modi’s ‘friends’ video on Thursday night – which Gen Z was quick to call it what it was: a red flag – the PM put out a new ‘reel’ to ‘thank’ his newfound ‘friends’ for their ‘positive suggestions’. But was he actually trolling them (since that’s basically what the smart kids on Instagram have been doing to him over the past 24 hours)? A sharp-eyed observer on X has noted that the scarf Modi chose to wear is a Sambhalpuri gamcha – and Sambhalpur just happens to be the constituency of Dharmendra Pradhan, the education minister whose resignation everyone is now demanding.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi today upped the ante with a press conference condemning the Modi government’s decision to use pellet guns on student protestors. Flanked by Sahil Lochab, a 19-year-old Delhi University student who is likely never to recover the use of his wounded right eye, Gandhi said that those who shot him with pellets and lathi-charged students must be prosecuted, and that Modi needs to apologise to students.

While Modi was clearly reading off his phone when he delivered his midnight message yesterday, pointing this out has landed an opposition leader in Takedown Baba’s crosshairs: Bengal CPI(M) leader Shatarup Ghosh’s Facebook post making a suggestion to this effect was removed within minutes of him uploading it. Ghosh was quick to seize the moment: “Good to see the government active on at least some fronts!” he wrote afterwards on his account. Later, he told The Wire: “The effort that goes to prevent the image of Modi’s teleprompter getting leaked, if half of this would go in preventing exam paper leaks, the country would not have seen so many students dying by suicide.” Big Tech may remove the satire. The teleprompter, unfortunately, remains in the [not so] public service.

Three days after videos surfaced on social media showing police using disproportionate force against unarmed men and women during the July 20 march to Parliament – including allegations of pellet-gun use – Delhi Police and the Union home ministry have still not issued a clear statement. PM Modi said yesterday that “a series of steps for safeguarding the interests of students” were being taken. What he did not offer was any assurance of a probe into the “police excesses” against protesters. The government has promised to punish paper leaks. On police violence, it has chosen the safer route: silence.

Manik Gupta, a Delhi-based advocate has said he was a victom of custodial violence at the Nizamuddin police station after he went there late Thursday night to seek the release of students detained while travelling to join the Jantar Mantar protest. The allegation adds another entry to a widening ledger: students beaten on the street, injured protesters followed into hospitals, and now a lawyer allegedly assaulted inside a police station for trying to secure detainees’ release.

Meanwhile, after much criticism on social media, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear two petitions alleging excessive use of police force against students protesting across the country on Monday. The matter was mentioned before a Bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant by senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, who sought urgent intervention. The court has found time at last. The videos, and the wounded, were always there.

Just as the student-led protests are turning the heat up on the government, the National Testing Agency is said to have let go of 47 employees as part of a reported (and vague) ‘restructuring’ exercise, with newspapers citing official sources as saying some staffers will face ‘legal and criminal action’ (though for what exactly is unclear). The education ministry was also asked for some details of the highly controversial testing agency in parliament: it revealed that 15 of the body’s 39 posts are vacant. Its income went up by 121.5% between 2019-20 and 2023-24, while its expenditure grew by 136.5% over the same period.

But not all of the NTA’s financial data seems to check out. The education ministry has offered varying expenditure figures for the agency for 2019-20 and 2020-21 to two MPs who asked for it, Basant Kumar Mohanty reports: to the Congress’s Vivek Tankha back in July 2024 and to the CPI(M)’s V. Sivadasan on Wednesday. This has prompted Sivadasan to move a privilege motion against junior education minister Sukanta Majumdar.

The Internet Freedom Foundation has condemned the Modi government’s reported order directing GitHub to disable access to the code repositories of the open-source messaging application BitChat, calling the move “unconstitutional and authoritarian” as it violates constitutional safeguards governing online content regulation. According to IFF, the order directed GitHub to remove three BitChat repositories over concerns of ‘misuse’, including the Android application and its release files, within three hours, while warning the platform of the loss of safe harbour protections and possible criminal prosecution for non-compliance. It said the government had not published the takedown order, adding that its existence became public only after Dorsey shared it on social media. BitChat allows proximity chatting via Bluetooth if the internet is down.

“In an instagram revolt of the young, India’s ‘WhatsApp Uncles’ are at a loss,” says The New York Times, noting how young protesters with phones in hand have outmanoeuvred the jaded government machinery. Al Jazeera calls it ‘televising our revolution’, reporting how Gen Z has flipped the BJP’s own social media game back at it. “Hating Modi is cool on the internet now, after years of criminalising dissent,” a 19-year-old protester told the network, before the crowd took up the chant: “Uncle Modi, go back, go back.”

The Economist is blunter still: ‘Modi’s party discovers the limits of propaganda’. India’s biggest protest in years, the British magazine notes, has produced shocking videos and angry young people – and a problem the BJP’s old playbook cannot easily solve. “The government tried every tactic to get a grip on the narrative … as control of the media environment can help hide the state’s failures. But it works only when propaganda has some basis in reality.”

The Financial Times also underlines why this protest is different. For four straight days, despite batons and tear gas, the protest only grew stronger; it is, Veena Venugopal writes, an unmistakably Gen Z affair, with meme placards, superhero costumes and “an Instagram reel for everything”. More significantly, she notes, the chants have now turned directly against Modi. More than twelve years after he first took office, “Modi must resign” is no longer a whispered private frustration or a risky online aside. It is being shouted in Delhi, full-throatedly, before cameras and witnesses. Fear, as Al Jazeera notes, has begun to switch sides.

Meanwhile, the otherwise absent Godi media has finally been forced to cover the student protests – not because it has discovered public interest, but because the public became impossible to ignore.

Mumbai Police suspended a police driver and launched an inquiry after a viral video allegedly showed him threatening student protesters with a fake drug case if they returned to demonstrations. In the clip, he warns he would “put 50 grams of powder” in their bags and ruin their lives.

Dharmendra Pradhan today met the young man who stood second in the (re-administered) NEET exam this year, Panshul Bansal. Bansal earlier spoke to NDTV where he said he preferred to study instead of going to the protest. Pradhan has yet to meet Aryan Gupta, who stood first, and who told PTI that ‘protests and dissent are an essential part of democracy’.

Shrey Gupta, a 28-year-old software engineer in Ahmedabad, built a digital vault to document the violence inflicted by Delhi Police during the July 20 ‘Sansad Chalo’ march. Then the Gujarat Police came for him.

The rupee today closed at 96.5625 to the dollar, avoiding a record low due to likely intervention by the RBI via state-owned banks amid volatility in oil prices due to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea among other factors. This morning the RBI appeared to intervene more strongly than earlier in the week in a bid to ward off speculation, “but fundamental pressures point to further depreciation”, a trader told Reuters.

India’s private sector growth slowed down to its lowest rate in four years this month on the back of lagging activity in the services sector, even as growing export orders and hiring buttressed growth to some extent, per HSBC’s India Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index. Notes Reuters: “A sharper ​slowdown in ⁠services, which have powered much of India’s recent growth, leaves the economy increasingly reliant on manufacturing, a ​sector that has yet to show signs of ​accelerating.”

How did a Jewish community – the Bnei Menashe – come to be in Manipur and Mizoram? Tracing an arc from the past to the future, the scholar Sanjib Baruah first locates their origins to a ‘Judaising movement’ in the predominantly Kuki-Zo hills in the Mizo hills at a time of Christian revivalism and insurgent violence. And looking ahead, he writes that our choices in defining the Bnei Menashe will have important consequences for Kukis and Mizos living both in India and in Israel.

Plan for ‘special courts’ for Manipur

Citing the “inordinate delay” in investigation of criminal cases pertaining to Manipur’s ethnic strife, the Supreme Court ‘tentatively proposed’ setting up special courts to hear these cases on a daily basis. The bench recorded the CBI’s submission that it has faced numerous challenges, including the relocation of witnesses, the state’s prolonged internet clampdown and an atmosphere of distrust. Special investigation teams are investigating some 3,020 cases and have filed chargesheets in just 301 of them, while trials have begun in merely ten. More than 38 months have passed now since the state’s Meitei-Kuki strife erupted; now a second, Kuki-Naga conflict has worn on, claiming more lives and displacing more villagers.

No plan to start airline says Adani group

Is Adani evaluating proposals to enter the airline industry? The conglomerate has denied doing so, a day after Reuters’s Abhijith Ganapavaram and Aditya Kalra reported that it is weighing its options in this regard. They write that the government has privately suggested to some corporates, including Adani, that they enter the airlines space after Air India came under increasing scrutiny following the flight 171 crash and IndiGo stranded thousands of passengers with its scheduling foul-up last year. Jagriti Chandra of The Hindu also reported that Adani had approached the government asking that cross-ownership rules be eased (it operates eight airports, so its entry into airlines raises a glaring conflict of interest question).

The Long Cable

Russia’s Shadow over India-US Defence Ties

Rahul Bedi

For years, India has carefully balanced its longstanding military and energy relationship with Russia, while steadily deepening its strategic and defence partnership with the United States.

That delicate equilibrium enabled New Delhi to strengthen defence, intelligence and technology cooperation with Washington while continuing to rely on Russian weaponry and, more recently, discounted Russian crude oil. But the arrangement was never entirely free of friction.

The clearest point of contention emerged over India’s decision to acquire the Russian S-400 ‘Triumf’ air-defence system, prompting President Donald Trump’s first administration to repeatedly warn that the purchase could invite punitive measures under the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), enacted specifically to deter major purchases of Russian military equipment and diminish Moscow’s defence exports and geopolitical influence.

Yet, those warnings never translated into action. The Biden administration effectively gave India a CAATSA pass, concluding that Delhi’s overall strategic value as a counterweight to an increasingly assertive China outweighed Washington’s continuing unease over its enduring defence relationship with Moscow.

But that equation may now be changing and, ironically, the clearest indication comes not from Delhi but from Ankara, where Turkey is reportedly trying to rid itself of the very Russian S-400 Triumf air-defence system whose numbers India is preparing to double, in the hope of regaining entry into the US-led F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme. If confirmed, Ankara’s negotiations would offer a revealing glimpse of where American policy towards countries operating major Russian weapons systems may now be headed.

Turkey’s difficulties stem from its US$2.5 billion acquisition in 2017 of two S-400 batteries, the first components of which were delivered in July 2019. The purchase triggered Ankara’s expulsion from the US-led multinational F-35 programme and, a year later, the imposition of CAATSA sanctions. Washington’s objections centred on the risks of operating America’s most advanced stealth fighter alongside Russia’s premier long-range air-defence system, potentially allowing sensitive electronic intelligence on the F-35’s stealth characteristics to be collected.

The attempt to undo those consequences resurfaced earlier this month when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used the NATO Summit in Ankara and a meeting with Trump on its side-lines to press for readmission to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme.

It is against this backdrop that, according to recent Wall Street Journal and other Western media reports, Ankara is now exploring ways of divesting itself of the S-400—including, reportedly, a possible transfer to the United Arab Emirates—as part of a wider bargain with Washington on the F-35s. These reports remain unconfirmed, and any such transfer would require Moscow’s consent and would correspondingly necessitate overcoming formidable political, legal, and regulatory hurdles within the US government, especially in Congress.

Whether Turkey ultimately succeeds in persuading Washington to overlook its acquisition of the Russian S-400 system and restore defence ties, including a return to the F-35 programme, remains uncertain. But the negotiations themselves are revealing.

They serve to underscore a broader reality: operating and retaining the S-400 continues to cast a long shadow over defence relations with the US, particularly under Trump’s administration, and demonstrates that major Russian-origin weapon systems can carry enduring strategic and political costs in Washington.

Against that backdrop, Delhi’s current trajectory appears all the more striking as on March 27, the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, accorded Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) approval for the procurement of five additional S-400 regiments as part of a ₹2.38 lakh crore package.

The Indian Air Force has already inducted three of five S-400 regiments acquired in 2018 for $5.43 billion, of which the fourth system is presently on its way by sea to India following extended delivery delays caused by the Ukraine war, while the fifth is expected by the year-end. And, should the proposed follow-on S-400 purchase be concluded, India will effectively double its S-400 inventory from five to ten regiments.

Simultaneously, industry and security sources said the IAF is examining the possible acquisition of at least two squadrons of Russian Sukhoi Su-57 fighters—or around 40 platforms—as an interim solution until India’s indigenous Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), intended to deliver a similar fifth-generation capability, enters service in the mid-2030s.

While neither the IAF nor the government has formally confirmed that such a proposal is under consideration, official sources said it was being driven largely by Pakistan’s expected induction of China’s J-35A stealth fighter over the next two to three years, creating what the IAF fears could be a significant capability gap unless ‘bridged’ by a comparable platform. Viewed alongside the planned acquisition of five additional S-400 regiments, however, the possible Su-57 procurement points not towards a significant expansion in India’s dependence on Russian military hardware.

Furthermore, these developments are unfolding at a juncture when Washington’s tolerance for countries maintaining major economic ties with Moscow is visibly wearing thin. India and China—the world’s two largest buyers of Russian crude—have come under pressure, with Trump publicly threatening secondary tariffs of up to 100% if Moscow fails to meet US demands over ending the Ukraine war.

A bipartisan sanctions bill before Congress would further strengthen that approach by giving the US President clearer authority to impose similar penalties. Neither measure has yet become law, but together they indicate a growing willingness in Washington to use economic pressure against countries that continue maintaining significant economic ties with Moscow.

That broader hardening of policy is also extending beyond defence equipment and energy.

Additional duties on Indian pharmaceutical exports have also entered Washington’s policy debate, adding another potential pressure point in an already strained economic relationship. Given India’s central role as a supplier of generic medicines to the US market, any escalation in this area would further complicate bilateral ties. Consequently, defence industry officials in Delhi and Bengaluru are questioning whether Russian military procurement can realistically remain insulated from a wider deterioration in bilateral economic relations between Delhi and Washington.

“From Washington’s perspective, India’s expanding economic and military engagement with Moscow is becoming increasingly difficult to treat as separate issues,” said a senior defence industry executive, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of this issue. Continued purchases of discounted Russian crude, additional S-400 regiments, a possible Su-57 acquisition and expanding defence-industrial cooperation with Moscow, he cautioned, risk eroding the political willingness in Washington to continue shielding India from action under CAATSA.

Until now, Delhi has consistently argued that its dependence on Russian military equipment was the consequence of decades of Soviet-era defence ties and inherited platforms—the accumulated ‘burdens of history’—rather than a reflection of a present-day strategic preference for Moscow. That explanation carried considerable weight in Washington, given that nearly two-thirds of India’s in-service military equipment originated in the former Soviet Union or Russia, making rapid diversification neither financially nor operationally feasible. Washington largely accepted this reality as penalising India under CAATSA would have weakened, rather than strengthened, its own Indo-Pacific strategy of balancing an increasingly assertive and militarist China.

But CAATSA waivers are political judgments, not permanent guarantees.

A cross-section of security analysts and defence industry executives warned that every fresh major military purchase from Russia made it ‘politically harder’ for Washington to continue looking the other way. Moreover, the cumulative effect of an expanded S-400 inventory, a possible Su-57 acquisition and sustained purchases of discounted Russian crude would reinforce the view within sections of the US administration and Congress that India’s dependence on Moscow no longer reflected inherited military realities, but had evolved into an active strategic choice. Consequently, the political argument for continuing to shield India from action under CAATSA could become difficult to sustain.

None of this, however, means sanctions are inevitable.

Washington still has compelling strategic reasons to exercise restraint, and few serious policymakers in the US wish to push Delhi back towards Moscow. But one of the principal strategic rationales that has underpinned that restraint is itself beginning to weaken.

The Indo-Pacific construct—which for more than a decade elevated India to a pivotal position in American strategic thinking—has lost some of its earlier prominence as Washington’s focus increasingly shifts towards the Western Pacific and the intensifying military competition with China.

The erosion of that framework has also been reflected in the changing fortunes of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad)—the grouping of India, the United States, Japan and Australia, first established in 2007, allowed to lapse in 2008, and revived in 2017 in response to China’s growing military assertiveness.

Once promoted as the diplomatic centrepiece of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy, the Quad has lost some of its earlier momentum, with fewer high-profile initiatives and a noticeably lower political profile in recent months. That evolving geopolitical landscape could make it progressively more difficult for the Trump administration to justify repeated political exemptions under CAATSA if India’s military and economic engagement with Russia continues to expand.

India’s long-practised policy of strategic autonomy and multi-alignment has allowed it to balance Washington and Moscow, while extracting advantages from both relationships, but that balancing act may now be approaching its limits. The question is no longer whether Washington is prepared to keep overlooking India’s expanding defence relationship with Russia, but whether Delhi is willing to jeopardise access to advanced American weaponry, technology and industrial partnerships to deepen its materiel dependence on Moscow.

Reportedly

Amidst the growing clamour for his ouster, Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan posted photographs today of a meeting with the BJP’s Odisha MPs, ostensibly to discuss the state’s development. As @mxtaverse notes, was this a reminder from him that he “effectively has the support of 20 MPs, which makes him as crucial for the coalition as Naidu or Nitish”?

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

Kanniyakumari resident S. Sabari Varman’s killing is the latest custodial death to take place in Tamil Nadu. The police initially told the disabled Sabari Varman’s family he suddenly ‘fell sick’ and was admitted to hospital before dying there, but his post-mortem report revealed 19 injuries on his body and later the authorities arrested prison staff and other inmates for allegedly attacking him. Sabari Varman’s family also had to sit on a dharna to get partial access to his body, which is only one of various due process violations that took place after his death. Akshara Sanal shines a light on this discomfiting story and puts the pieces together.

Prime number: 1 in 4

Opeds you don’t want to miss

• The Carney administration’s stance on its predecessor’s allegations of Indian official involvement in crimes in Canada, and the Modi government’s response to it, suggests that Ottawa “is allowing the Indian government to use Canadian diplomatic silence as proof of innocence, with India using Carney’s desire for normalised relations to rewrite the narrative of the assassination”, Sushant Singh perceptively points out. But that leaves a key question unresolved:

“… Whether a foreign state used criminal proxies to kill a person on Canadian soil and what that means for the safety of Canadian citizens. Until that question is answered, the Nijjar case will remain a diplomatic ghost, haunting India–Canada relations long after the trade deals are signed.”

• Can the same pattern of public mobilisation that the BJP rode to power 12 years ago become its own undoing? Varghese George argues that the CJP-led protesters’ belonging to a different generation altogether opens up this possibility. However: “What is clear … is that the cockroach protesters alone have no capacity to achieve that. That is where the role of the opposition, particularly the Congress, becomes critical.”

• And Vir Sanghvi reckons that the BJP-run government’s response to the protests have probably only widened the gap between that generation and those in power. “It will never wipe away the perception that, when confronted with its failures not just to find jobs for young people but also to conduct exams properly, its response was not to listen but to attack, assault and abase.”

• Vivek Kaul on the economics behind Gen-Z’s rage: “India promised its youth jobs. Instead, it delivered gig work, disguised unemployment, and broken dreams.”

• There are many problems underlying India-China tensions - historically formed (and inaccurate) perceptions of each other and an asymmetry in priority (China looms much larger in the Indian imagination than vice versa) but allowing journalists from each side to properly cover the two countries is a necessary first step in erasing the history of mutual suspicion, writes Pallavi Aiyar.

• Two important personalities from the Bombay film industry, Amol Palekar and Mahesh Bhatt, have written moving pieces on the student protest.

Listen up

Digitisation and the RTI Act raised hopes of more transparent governance but today – as protesters across the country seek accountability for repeated NEET paper leaks – corruption remains a key problem. If it hasn’t become less of a problem, is it in fact the biggest threat to this country’s future? Shailesh Gandhi and Anjali Bhardwaj ponder that question on Parley.

Watch out

Raghu Karnad reminds us about a 1974 speech on the important of student protest which has great contemporary relevance…

Over and out

There is no end to the creativity of Gen Z…

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.

Snapshot of the day

July 23, 2026

Kalrav Joshi & Anirudh S.K.

The 56-inch dear leader has been reduced to kneeling, sorry, reel-ing.

The Cockroach Janta Party has declared that its protest at Jantar Mantar will continue until Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigns; it has also called for a nationwide peaceful protest on Friday to “stand in solidarity with victims of police brutality across India”. The outfit has welcomed inventor-activist Sonam Wangchuk’s decision to end his 25-day hunger strike, but it has refused to call off the peoples’ movement even as there are no signs of protestors budging at Jantar Mantar. That distinction matters.

Speaking to reporters at Jantar Mantar, CJP spokesperson Saurav Das says that the NDA-led Modi government has agreed to meet them for a discussion at the ‘neutral’ Constitution Club, while noting that their demands remain the same and the protests will continue till they are met.

Alongside three leaders of the All India Students’ Association, Wangchuk’s hunger strike had helped rejuvenate the CJP’s protest and transform it into the largest mobilisation of its kind Delhi has seen in recent years (and for perspective, M.K. Gandhi’s longest fast had lasted 21 days). Accepting a cup from Union ministers J.P. Nadda and Jitendra Singh at Medanta Hospital, Wangchuk said in a statement late Thursday that he is ending his fast “after long negotiations on various conditions” – which he did not specify – and, more dubiously, “in view of possible violence in the country”. His original demand, that Pradhan step down, remains unfulfilled.

Standing next to Wangchuk in hospital, Nadda read out a statement on behalf of the government, saying it is “positive on not registering cases against those protesting peacefully at Jantar Mantar in Delhi and those participating in the march to parliament on July 20”. The government is also “positively considering suitable compensations for the suicide victims of recent NEET paper leaks [sic]”.

But “people coming here are not just coming for one person,” said Danish Ali of AISA to Anant Gupta at Jantar Mantar. “We want some action, and it begins with Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation.” The point could hardly be clearer: this protest is bigger than any one person, organisation or stage.

Elsewhere, in a rather unusual move – and far from his customary 8 pm live addresses – PM Modi was compelled to issue a message to protesting students nearly at midnight. He did so without acknowledging the tens of thousands of protesters, their grievances, the students who died by suicide, or any of the movement’s core demands – the resignation of Pradhan and Modi himself, as well as reform of the education system alongside.

After he broke his silence

Read more

Snapshot of the day

July 22, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

The crowds at Jantar Mantar continue to swell, the students may be bruised and battered but they say they will not end their protest till Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigns, and there is now a new demand they are making: All police officials involved in committing atrocities against peaceful protestors must be prosecuted.

Environmental activist and educationist Sonam Wangchuk, now on the 25th day of his hunger strike, has also laid down a simple condition for giving up his fast:

“I respectfully request an unequivocal assurance from the Government that none of the young protesters will face any punitive or retaliatory legal action for participating in this movement. Their only “offence” has been to raise their voice for a fair and accountable education system.

“If such an assurance is given, I shall end my fast with faith that the Government has heard not only my appeal but also the aspirations of lakhs of young Indians. In the absence of such an assurance, I will be forced to continue my fast indefinitely. I also hope that there will be no further use of excessive police force to repress the movement.”

There is talk of the government bringing in 20 more companies of the CRPF to Delhi in order to bring a swift – and brutal – end to the protest but one thing is already clear: Fear has broken the barricades and along with it the 56-inch strongman’s reputation is in tatters.

When a panicky regime shut down 17 metro stations in the centre of Delhi on Wednesday – a working day – the response of stranded commuters said it all:

‘Jab jab Modi darta hai, police ko aage karta hai’ (‘Whenever Modi's in fear, the police soon appear’) has emerged as an almost universal slogan of protestors in multiple cities – though the police themselves have not taken kindly to this chant. In Mumbai, they spent the day arresting protestors peacefully demanding Pradhan’s resignation. Among those held was Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma and a former Central Information Commissioner.

Late at night, in the face of widespread criticism and backlash, the Mumbai police released everyone it had detained.

In Patna, the Left’s student wing held a demonstration. The BJP government fired tear gas shells and also resorted to lathi charges.

Udupi in Karnataka – a stronghold of Hindutva – joined the protest against NEET paper leaks and police brutality unleashed on protestors in Delhi on July 20. Students from local colleges today joined, monsoon rain

Read more

Snapshot of the day

July 21, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

What’s The Fear.

It has been an unprecedented day.

As Prime Minister Modi might put it, ‘70 saal mein pehli baar’: government sources claimed that no Leader of the Opposition had ever protested outside the PM’s official residence before. That, apparently, made a peaceful protest a “security threat”. In the ‘mother of democracy’, the threat was not Delhi Police’s violence against students, nor a broken examination system, nor a government refusing accountability. It was Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi – alongside two sitting chief ministers, MPs and several political party leaders – standing outside the PM’s house and asking questions about the “brutality” inflicted on young protesters during their peaceful march to Parliament yesterday by the mighty state.

Delhi Police, which operates under the direct authority of the Union home minister Amit Shah, forcibly evicted and detained several opposition leaders who had been protesting at Lok Kalyan Marg. Some of them were brought to Mandir Marg police station a short while later, where Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi also arrived. Dramatic visuals from the evening showed Congress leaders holding on to one another as police tried to prise them apart, including by pulling at Gandhi’s legs, even as he emphasised: “Democracy in India is happening right now”. Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was also taken away in a police bus, resisting as police forced her into the van.

But this image of Rahul Gandhi bleeding from nose would be yet another nightmare for the Modi regime as history is a testament to how the bleeding pictures of Indira Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee have done before.

Back at the protest site in Jantar Mantar, where Delhi Police had brutally dismantled the protest stage yesterday, the crowd reportedly has multiplied in tens of thousands within hours this evening as India Cable goes to press.

One thing is clear: the tens of thousands who took to the streets have punctured Modi’s carefully varnished aura of invulnerability. The teflon reputation, polished for years by message managers and obedient media, met the one thing it cannot fully control – a citizenry that is no longer afraid.

Meanwhile, Modi himself,

Read more

Snapshot of the day

July 20, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

Today will not be easily forgotten. Even as the government listed a Bill in parliament to criminalise “disrespect” to Vande Mantram, citizens on the streets of Delhi - and across India - paid the highest respect to the national anthem by living its spirit in the face of police violence.

As The Wire notes in its analysis of the seven reasons why the student protest has rattled the Modi government,

“What began as online outrage over exam leaks has rapidly evolved into an offline generational revolt against a system that treats young Indians as disposable. By forcing the question of accountability all the way up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, these students have turned Delhi’s streets into the one arena where power can no longer avert its gaze or hide behind procedure.”

More importantly, there has been a collective shattering of the enforced culture of fear, by a cohort that the BJP is unable to dismiss in communal, casteist or other identity based terms.

As tens of thousands peacefully sought to march towards Parliament, located just over a kilometre from the protest site at Jantar Mantar, the Delhi police which operates under the direct authority of the Union home ministry, lobbed tear gas shells and used batons to disperse the protestors who have been demanding the government take responsibility for the mess it has created in various national exams and sack education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Overwhelmingly young, and from a wide range of cities and towns across India, the protestors gathered peacefully in the streets around Jantar Mantar as they sought to make their way towards parliament. The police was jamming cell phone signals so there was virtually no mobile internet connectivity near parliament and Connaught Place from around 10 am till late afternoon. Many metro stations were also shut to prevent people from travelling to Jantar Mantar.

There were the usual calls for Pradhan’s resignation, slogans of Inquilab Zindabad, Jai Bhim and Vande Mataram but many directly targeted Modi and his government for a wide array of failures. As groups of protestors managed to get closer to parliament, the police attacked them with lathis and tear gas. By the evening, the police forcibly sought to dismantle the stage that the Cockroach Janata Party had erected at Jantar Mantar. There were also reports of lathis being used against protesors at RK Ashram metro station.

A delegation of the CJP met Union health minister and former BJP president JP Nadda at his bungalow today reiterating the movement’s demands that Pradhan either step down or be fired; that Wangchuk be released from Safdarjung Hospital; and that the police quit using force on protesters in the capital. CJP spokesperson Saurav Das said that Nadda promised to “discuss this at the appropriate level”. For his part the minister claimed this was ‘the first time the protesters proposed to hold talks with the government’ – in fact, the CJP had said last month itself that it is open to dialogue with the government – and said he requested agitators to end their sit-in.

Earlier in the day, the three hunger strikers from the All India Students Asociation gave up their fast after surviving without food for three weeks. Whisked away from his hunger strike site at Jantar Mantar on Saturday in scenes resembling an abduction and taken to Safdarjung Hospital eight kilometres away, Wangchuk has said he will continue fasting in light of the way the police treated protesters today. The inventor-activist said he will

Read more

Snapshot of the day

July 17, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

It has been a difficult day for the Republic when Inquilab Zindabad – ‘Long Live Revolution’, the iconic slogan first raised by Maulana Hasrat Mohani in 1921 before becoming a rallying cry of India’s freedom struggle against British rule – can be treated as suspect at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.

The offence, apparently, is now the slogan, at least according to the Godi media. There, the Cockroach Janata Party protest has entered its 28th day and the hunger strike its 20th. Protesters, led in large part by young people, are demanding reform of the education system over alleged irregularities in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test and also the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The Godi media ecosystem, having already embarrassed itself by airing and then quietly deleting claims of China links to the CJP, has now found another objection: to the iconic freedom-struggle slogan that remains one of the loudest cries against power and the system.

Instead of asking why the Modi government remains impervious to national outrage, or why the education minister has still not spoken, an ABP News reporter – in what will be a first for the country – chose to question the expression itself, in yet another ridiculous attempt to discredit a protest it has been forced to cover because the narrative is slipping out of Modi government’s control with growing nation-wide support.

Sonam Wangchuk, meanwhile, is making no retreat. Doctors have warned that his prolonged fast has entered a dangerous phase, with possible organ damage if it continues, but the educator and climate activist says his resolve remains intact after nearly three weeks of indefinite hunger strike. “I am weak from the outside but very strong inside,” he said, urging people to gather for the July 20 peaceful march to Parliament, where the protesters plan to place their plea before what he called the “temple of democracy”. Then, with the grim humour of a man bargaining with his own body, he added that “I will stay alive till 20 July at any cost. If you don’t come and 20 July is not successful, I will come back as a ghost.”

Alongside the Magsaysay awardee, three student activists – Neha, Manish and Aameen – associated with the All India Students’ Association have also completed 20 days of an indefinite hunger strike, with doctors warning that their health has deteriorated significantly as they continue protesting. At one ‘referendum’ booth on whether Pradhan should resign, one protester told Rohit Kumar, tongue firmly in cheek, “Here at least people can vote without having to worry whether they are on a list or not.”

Why does India still turn to the hunger strike, asks BBC. “In a world of self-interested politics, they stand out as acts of self-sacrifice. As the protester’s body weakens, the moral and political pressure on those in power grows,” Sayantan Saha Roy, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut told Soutik Biswas.

Earlier today, Congress leader Pawan Khera met Wangchuk and urged him to end his indefinite hunger strike, citing concerns over his deteriorating health, while accusing the Centre of being “insensitive” to democratic protests. Khera said he was concerned not only about Wangchuk but also about the three student activists on hunger strike. His visit came a day after Sonia Gandhi reminded Congress MPs at the party’s parliamentary meeting that Indira Gandhi had flown to Leh in 1984 to persuade Wangchuk’s father, Sonam Wangyal, to end his hunger strike demanding Scheduled Tribe status for Ladakh.

Opposition parties across the spectrum, including the Left parties active at Jantar Mantar, have expressed concern over the deteriorating health of the protesters – whether by visiting the site or speaking out online. The protest, meanwhile, appears to be spreading beyond the capital, even as pages such as AntiCJP continue to spread misleading, out-of-context clips to discredit the mobilisation that refuses to die on command.

Even as the Modi government refuses accountability, Leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi is trying to build a pan-India grassroots movement around examination scams. At the second “Chhatron Ki Goonj” rally in Dehradun on Friday, the Congress leader attacked the lack of action over paper leaks, saying that “not a single person has been punished” so far. Gandhi claimed that 7.5 crore students had been affected, with 152 cases but no convictions, and argued that India needed to move from a “government-centric examination system” to one that is student-centric, flexible, secure and insulated from political influence.

Even as anxiety mounts over deteriorating health of the protestors, academics, including retired professors from Jawaharlal Nehru University, artists and public figures have in a “heartfelt” appeal urged to Wangchuk to end his fast, calling him “too precious to lose”, and pressed the Modi government to open dialogue to “honour the spirit of public service that Sonam Wangchuk represents”. Among the signatories are Abhijit Banerjee, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Zoya Akhtar, Mira Nair, Kiran Rao, Vikramaditya Motwane, Payal Kapadia, Nandita Das, Freida Pinto and Jim Sarbh.

The echo of solidarity has also travelled 640 km from the capital. Wangchuk has found support in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur, where activist Amit Bhatnagar is on the 16th day of his own fast in support of people affected by the Ken-Betwa river-linking project. “Our struggles are the same, and we stand with him completely,” Bhatnagar told Khabar Lahariya.

Delhi Police, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Home Affairs, has received its own message from above. In a sudden move, it removed commissioner Satish Golcha and appointed Anurag Kumar in his place. The Indian Express reports that the handling of the CJP protest at Jantar Mantar was among the factors that had upset home minister Amit Shah, along with corruption cases and other law-and-order concerns. Golcha’s exit, then, has the look of an unceremonious boot out the door.

Speaking for the first time on the ongoing hunger strike by climate activist and educationist Wangchuk, actor Aamir Khan has said that while he, like everyone is also concerned about Wangchuk’s health and life, but has bluntly denied any link between Wangchuk and the engineering-student figure in 3 Idiots. But an archival video from a 2008 CNN-IBN event shows, as told by Wangchuk – a full year before the film’s 2009 release. The clip does not merely revive an old inspiration debate; it raises the more awkward question of what now compels Khan’s silence.

And where is Prime Minister Narendra Modi in all this? Travelling, inaugurating, campaigning and ofcourse, attacking opponents. Modi was in Haryana, Chandigarh and Punjab earlier today, rolling out projects worth thousands of crores before Punjab goes to polls next year in February.

America struck Iran’s Chabahar again today, razing what seems to be a maritime control tower in the city. The external affairs ministry said that the Shahid Beheshti terminal of the Chabahar port did not suffer any damage. India began developing the port in 2018 but did not make any budgetary allocation for the project this year, having expedited the completion of its $120 million investment commitment amid the threat of sanctions by the Trump administration.

After Iran and the US signed their interim peace deal, India was among the top applicants for permits from Iran to transit the Strait of Hormuz through its designated routes. Sukalp Sharma reports that it accounted for 20% of requests to exit the Persian Gulf via the strait (second only to China’s 21%) and for 21% of requests to enter it (India is the top country in this regard). The data underlines the strait’s importance for India – during peacetime, 90% of its LPG imports and over half of its crude oil and LNG inflows came through it.

A 21-year-old construction worker from Jharkhand was killed yesterday after a block of concrete fell off the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarakhand in which he was working. Notably this is the same tunnel where 41 workers became trapped three years ago after a portion of its ceiling collapsed and blocked their only way out. All of them were rescued after a 17-day effort that enlisted an Australian expert and a number of ‘rat miners’.

Uttar Pradesh’s police have submitted to the Supreme Court that they found no evidence to substantiate the allegation that former Union minister Ajay Mishra ‘Teni’ and his son Ashish intimidated a witness in which the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence case, where the younger Mishra is the main man accused of mowing down protesting farmers. Baljinder Singh, a witness in that case, has alleged that Ashish tried to bribe and threaten him to get him not to depose in court; last year the apex court had pulled up the state police for not acting on Singh’s complaint on the dubious grounds that he did not come to the police station to record his complaint in person.

A senior external affairs ministry official’s explanation for why PM Modi avoids press conferences – namely that he simply prefers to speak directly to voters – is “deeply flawed” and amounts to little more than “glib platitudes”, the Editors’ Guild of India has said. “Scripted, one-way communications, largely through social media channels, are not a substitute for public interaction with independent media,” the guild pointed out, writing that statements like those of the MEA official “only serve to have a further chilling effect on free speech and media freedom”.

While hearing petitions alleging violations of the Supreme Court’s 2024 judgment against the arbitrary and retributive demolition of buildings, the top court yesterday issued a ‘standard order’ transferring the pleas to the relevant high courts. “Whether there is contempt or not would itself be a disputed question … Besides, if there is a violation of this judgment throughout the country, as you allege, can everybody come directly to the Supreme Court?” Justice V. Mohana asked.

Forty-four-year-old Assam resident Mumtaz Begum was expelled to Bangladesh last month – but on what basis? Rokibuz Zaman reports Begum’s lawyer alleges that one of the state’s foreigners’ tribunals ordered her arrested in May even though it does not have the power to do so. Before this, the tribunal had heard her case again after being pulled up by the Gauhati high court, and even in this second instance failed to consider her claims as directed by the bench, Zaman writes. The consequence is that Begum, whose ordeal with the state’s controversial tribunal system began in 1998, is now missing in a foreign land she was ‘pushed’ into.

Noida violence: Plagiarised tweets, pro-Palestine protest figure in police’s bid to detain scribe

On what grounds did the Noida police bid to preventively detain journalist Satyam Verma for the violent labour protests of April? Akanksha Kumar finds that one annexure the cops submitted contained material plagiarised off of a far-right X account. One of these in turn attempts to draw a link between the labour agitation and a pro-Palestine protest attended by the CPI(M)’s Sitaram Yechury and Brinda Karat, Kumar reports. The police also seemed to suggest that Verma’s background in Marxism, which per its report “instead of directly inciting for violence [creates a mindset] so aggressive that an individual becomes violent”. Ultimately Gautam Buddha Nagar (i.e. Noida) magistrate and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s daughter Medha Roopam approved Verma’s detention under the draconian National Security Act.

Japanese minister accuses India of ‘sheer recklessness’ over bullet train project; MEA responds

Though the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project that is funded in significant part by Japan was once touted as having a 2023 due date, it has still not been inaugurated. Against this backdrop, a former Japanese vice minister named Hideki Makihara earlier this week had some unflattering things to say about his Indian partners. “What stood out in international meetings and negotiations,” he wrote on X, “was the sheer recklessness of the Indian side,” accusing Indian officials of reneging on their promises and relentlessly pursuing their own self-interest. “I feel 100% that the reason this hasn’t moved forward is entirely on the Indian side,” Makihara declared.

This prompted a rejoinder by the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi today, which deemed Makihara’s remarks to be “at considerable variance with facts”. India will proceed with an indigenous train on select sections of the line because Japan’s E10 bullet train will be ready only by the early 2030s, spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.

How an antibiotic was fully discovered in India and got US FDA approval

Menaka Doshi interviews Wockhardt founder-chairperson Habil Khorakiwala on Zaynich, India’s first domestically discovered antibiotic to secure US FDA approval. The drug, built to treat complex urinary tract infections, is the result of a 15-year, roughly $300 million bet that many companies would have walked away from. Khorakiwala says he managed the risk “like cricket” - not by chasing a century, but by playing “one ball at a time”.

The Long Cable

Aspiring to Ramarajya? The Valmiki Ramayana Has Some Insights For Our Times

Naina Dayal

I have turned to the Ramayana of Valmiki in difficult times for over 40 years. When I was unable to sleep for months after the 1984 anti-Sikh violence, waking up in a sweat every night on hearing gunshots in my nightmares, my father’s aunt, a Sanskrit scholar and tennis player who played and won a match or two at Wimbledon in the 1930s, taught me half a verse from the Ramayana which, she told me, had been the mantra she recited before matches, during phases of debilitating illness, and indeed, every day. She assured me it would help me fight fear. Since then, yatra ramo bhayam natra nasti tatra parabhavah (where there is Rama, there is neither fear nor defeat) has been my mantra, too.

The Ramayana’s poetry has captivated me, and I have a quote from the text for all occasions – even earthquakes, for those occur, the Ramayana tells us, when the mighty elephants Virupaksha, Mahapadma, Saumanasa and Bhadra, who support the earth, get tired and shake their heads for a moment to relieve their weariness.

So, does the Valmiki Ramayana contain insights on the burning issues of our time – the dharma of those who rule a realm and the character of those who lead religious establishments? It does.

For these insights, we need to turn to the Uttarakanda, the seventh and last book of the Valmiki Ramayana. The sixth book, the Yuddhakanda, culminates in Rama’s long-delayed ascension to the throne of Kosala, and contains a few verses about the perfection of Rama’s reign. We are told that there was no fear of disease or poisonous snakes, the old never had to perform the funeral rites of their children. No one heard the wailing of widows. Everyone lived for a thousand years. Everyone was content. Trees yielded fruit and flowers all year. The rains always came at the right time, and the touch of the wind was always pleasant. Everyone was devoted to dharma. Rama’s subjects adhered to their own occupations and were satisfied with their own duties. People followed Rama’s example and did not harm one other. But we learn virtually nothing of what Rama actually did as ruler. What, for instance, were his judicial acts as king that make us long for the re-establishment of Ramarajya?

We learn something about the administration of justice during Rama’s rule in the Uttarakanda. This book contains the controversial Shambuka-vadha episode. When a brahman boy died in childhood during Rama’s reign, the boy’s grieving father accused the king of a transgression that resulted in his son’s untimely death. When the sage Narada informed Rama that the child’s death was the result of a shudra performing austerities, Rama immediately swung into action – he went in search of the culprit, located Shambuka and cut off his head. Shudras were not entitled to practise austerities, and Shambuka’s tapas was a threat to the dharma of Rama’s kingdom. The beheading of Shambuka restored dharma and the brahman boy came back to life. This episode has shaped the reception of the Uttarakanda, and indeed, the Valmiki Ramayana as a whole, from pre-modern times, and its story has been repeatedly challenged by low-caste groups who have criticised the upper-caste ethics that allow Rama to kill Shambuka. Justice for the brahman and maintenance of the varna hierarchy trump Shambuka getting a full and fair hearing.

But another episode of the Valmiki Ramayana suggests that even the lowliest creature was treated fairly during Rama’s reign. Two prakshipta sargas or interpolated cantos of the Uttarakanda can be cited here. The two sargas do not appear in some editions of the text or are explicitly marked in them as interpolations, but they are well known, and versions of the episode they recount feature in later Ramayanas, such as the medieval Sanskrit Ananda Ramayana. In these prakshipta sargas of the Valmiki Ramayana, the absence of grievances among Rama’s subjects is highlighted, for Ramarajya meant that there was no adharma anywhere, and no one was discontent. People did not suffer from mental and physical ailments. Everyone lived long, happy lives. Everything was governed in accordance with dharma, so the king had no complaints to deal with. Rama sent Lakshmana again and again to find someone, anyone, with a matter that needed adjudication by the king. Finally, Lakshmana located a crying, injured dog with a grievance -- he had been beaten without reason by a brahman mendicant. The dog entered Rama’s assembly hall hesitantly, for dogs are degraded creatures and he did not wish to do anything above his station. Once in the assembly hall, he spoke eloquently of the duties of the king – protection of his subjects and protection of dharma. Then he told Rama that he had been thrashed mercilessly by a brahman named Sarvarthasiddha. Sarvarthasiddha was summoned and admitted that he had committed an offence. The aggrieved dog suggested that the culprit be made the head of a religious establishment in Kalanjara as punishment, and Rama appointed Sarvarthasiddha to the position. Sarvarthasiddha was delighted, and Rama’s ministers were astonished by the judgement, which seemed like an honour rather than a punishment. The dog then explained that leadership of a religious establishment is a curse rather than a boon. In his past life, he had headed one. He had been righteous, pious and devoted to the welfare of all beings, he had guarded the wealth of the gods scrupulously, yet he had been reborn as a dog. Sarvarthasiddha, on the other hand, had already abandoned dharma, was cruel and violent, and his conduct would surely lead several generations of his family to hell. The dog concluded that a position of authority with respect to gods, cows and brahmans has dire consequences. And whoever siphons off donations to gods falls into hell after hell. The wise dog, who had been defiled merely by leading a religious sect, then fasted unto death in Varanasi.

In Rama’s realm, therefore, a dog got a fair hearing, though a shudra did not. Heading a religious establishment resulted in a low birth. Misappropriating the property of deities could keep one in hell indefinitely. But that was the Tretayuga.

What of the Kaliyuga? Who is entitled to justice in our times? Humans of all kinds? Dogs and other creatures? And which Rama should we choose? The one who helps us fight fear, or one whose name instills fear?

(Naina Dayal teaches history at St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi.)

Reportedly

No sooner than there is something that deserves to be made fun of, some memester steps forward and creates memes that quickly go viral. One such is a series of conversations between Donald Trump and Nitin Gadkari — pronounced Gadakari — mainly about Ethanol being added to Petrol. In one, Trump asks Gadkari about the “space technology” the latter uses to build roads. Gadakari gives an answer that floors Trump — literally. There are many similar ones, which we leave for readers to check out, but they are all uniformly funny and sharp.

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

Accusations of sacrilege have become common in Punjab today. These, explains Prabhjot Kaur Jossan, have deep roots in grievances against the state, and the spectre of sacrilege allegations is “making rural society more suspicious and on the edge”.

Prime number: >9,900

Over that number of schools in Maharashtra do not have functioning toilets for boys and girls, according to the latest UDISE data (the lack of functioning toilets for girls is a major reason why some of them drop out of school). More than one lakh schools are connected to the electricity grid but 930 of them do not have a functional power supply. Ardhra Nair reports.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

• The Modi government’s silence on Sonam Wangchuk’s fast reflects an apathy worse than that of the British themselves, says S.N. Sahu.

• We live in a world where bad things like war, paper leaks and air pollution simply ‘happen’ – who made them happen is not named and, therefore, never called to account, Pratap Bhanu Mehta observes. “Perhaps this is why Wangchuk’s demand is important,” he writes. “His insistence on a resignation is not simply about one minister or one examination … Before institutions can be repaired, we must acknowledge who specifically broke them.”

• Gautam Bhatia argues that the Supreme Court’s recently concluded adjudication of challenges against the SIR lies “at the confluence of a number of modern-day judicial trends in India”, namely “judicial evasion, executive constitutionalism, stealth overruling” and what he calls “Franken constitutionalism”.

• Bharat Bhushan explains why and how the Ram Mandir embezzlement scandal can reshape Uttar Pradesh’s political map ahead of the assembly elections next year. “Since the Ayodhya temple was central to the RSS and the BJP’s rise to political power, it is doubtful people will accept that the breach was merely local and routine,” as the saffron party has argued, he writes.

• Globally, Indian migrant workers are being recruited for insecure, low-paid and dangerous jobs, write Ashok Danavath and Praveen Kolluguri. One needs to look within India at its “caste structures, landlessness, and the systematic informalisation of work.”

Listen up

Is there any merit to the contention that south Indian artists are overlooked in the grant of national awards? Historian A.R. Venkatachalapathy and musician T.M. Krishna put forth their views.

Watch out

What’s up with the Modi government’s silence over Wangchuk’s indefinite fast? The answer, this viral animated video argues drawing from a Bob Dylan song, is blowing in the wind for us all to hear.

Over and out

We know about the arrival in India of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th and current Dalai Lama, but his predecessor Thubsten Gyatso had also travelled here seeking asylum 49 years prior in 1910. Pursued by the Qing Dynasty, he’d come to Darjeeling and then to Calcutta, where he attempted to press his case with the British while his connections lobbied the Russians for help. Ajay Kamalakaran shines a light on how this lesser-known exile played out before ending with the Lama’s return to Tibet in 1911.

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.

Snapshot of the day

July 16, 2026

Anirudh S.K.

If it wasn’t for the Modi government assuring the Delhi high court today that its doctors will regularly monitor the health of a hunger-striking Sonam Wangchuk, there would have been virtually no official acknowledgment of the inventor-activist’s protest – let alone any calls for dialogue. Those remain elusive even as Wangchuk’s indefinite fast, undertaken to press his demand for Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation in view of the NEET paper leaks among other issues, completed its 18th day today. Many have called on Wangchuk to give up his fast but he has indicated he will keep at it. After a lawyer approached the high court seeking that the government be directed to aid Wangchuk – including by ‘force-feeding’ him – the bench recorded the solicitor general’s assurance that ‘government doctors/experts’ will monitor the activist’s health every day and ‘intervene’ if they deem it necessary.

Pradhan’s misplaced priorities have become a feature, not a bug. He has not deigned to respond to Wangchuk and neither has his government (the activist had previously suggested that those on high floated feelers for talks when he announced his strike, but said he rejected the move as reactionary), even as the minister found time to celebrate the ‘Sanatan tradition’ of the Rath Yatra and pray for everyone’s “well-being”. Everyone, apparently, is a carefully edited category. It does not seem to include a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee who has been on hunger strike over the collapse of trust in India’s examination system. The hypocrisy is not subtle: piety for the public, prayers for the timeline and not one serious word for the protest at the door.

Given the Modi government’s continued silence on dialogue, it is worth recalling how Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded when another environmental activist, G.D. Agarwal, went on an indefinite hunger strike to protest the ill-health of the Ganga (the basis of one of Modi’s poll-time promises). Agarwal, who ultimately died of hunger in October 2018 after four months of fasting, is not known to have heard back from the PM despite writing to him multiple times.

Meanwhile the Congress has issued its first official acknowledgment of Wangchuk’s strike. Party MP and general secretary K.C. Venugopal said that the Congress shares Wangchuk’s ‘anguish and outrage’ but called on him to stop fasting in view of his weakening health.

Rinchen Norbu Wangchuk, meanwhile, has turned the mirror back on to the Cockroach Janta Party itself, asking what the movement that Wangchuk has put his body behind has actually done to make his sacrifice matter.

Two people were killed and many others injured today in a crowd crush during a rath yatra procession at the Puri Jagannath temple in Odisha. The incident occurred when the crowd was pushed aside to make way for an ambulance, reports Satyasundar Barik. A stampede at the Gundicha temple in the same city last year had killed at least three people.

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Snapshot of the day

July 15, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

Gautam Adani has admitted before a US court under oath that his lawyers “suggested that my publicly stated intent to invest $10 billion in the United States might be part of a resolution” to the bribery case and suit against him, “if that was what the DOJ or SEC wanted”. His submission comes after judge Nicholas Garaufis, who has declined to approve the Trump administration’s decision to dismiss the case just yet, had asked the tycoon if he was aware of anything promised or sought in connection with the move to dismiss.

Adani also said, as has the Justice Department, that the administration did not factor in the investment angle while deciding to drop the case – where he, his nephew Sagar and others are accused of bribing Indian officials to buy their solar power and then lying to American investors about it. Though Adani admitted to his lawyers’ suggestion, he said he was not aware of anything being offered or sought or any agreement being made in connection with the DOJ’s move. Devirupa Mitra reports.

After igniting a firestorm with its remark, made by an official off the record, that the passport is not proof of citizenship but a travel document, the Ministry of External Affairs yesterday declined to repeat this formulation. Addressing the media during his weekly briefing, ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal instead stuck to the wording of the Passports Act of 1967. An Indian passport, he said, “is issued by the Government of India to regulate the departure from India of citizens of India” and that the “issue of passports to Indian citizens or any other individual is governed by the Passports Act, 1967 and the Passport Rules, 1980”.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought responses from the Centre and the Delhi government on a petition seeking urgent intervention to end activist Sonam Wangchuk’s hunger strike, reports Bar and Bench and posted the PIL for Thursday. The petition, filed by lawyer and activist Rakesh Kumar Saini, stated that Wangchuk’s health had deteriorated rapidly and that he had lost 8.5 kg during the demonstration. If the hunger strike continued, he could lose his life within two days, it added. [See Reportedly below]

US senators, both Republican and Democratic, have introduced a Bill that seeks to impose tariffs on the top five buyers of Russian oil and gas. Under the Bill, the top five – which in the case of Russian crude includes India at #2 – can face tariffs of up to 100%. The Bill is an updated version of late senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham’s original proposal of a blanket 500% tariff on those buying Russian oil and gas. Trump yesterday appeared sanguine that the legislation, which per Reuters has 26 co-sponsors at the moment, could become law. “This is in honour of Lindsey … You know how he felt, and there’s ​a good chance that it gets done,” the president said.

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Snapshot of the day

July 14, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Australia and was feted by Anthony Albanese, the BJP government in Odisha is getting ready to release Dara Singh – the main convict in the brutal murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two children in Odisha 27 years ago. Singh was initially sentenced to death for the heinous crime but the Supreme Court commuted it to a life sentence. Now, the state sentence review board has recommended remitting his life sentence on grounds of ‘good behaviour’. Bajrang Dal leader Singh and others had set fire to a van in which Staines, along with his 11 and seven-year-old sons, were sleeping and beat them back as they tried to escape. Notably chief minister Mohan Majhi, who has a background in the RSS, had campaigned for Singh’s release before he ascended to office.

Legendary actor Zeenat Aman and Omi Vaidya – who acted in a film inspired by the life of Sonam Wangchuk – have posted messages on social media in support of the educationist and activist who is on the 17th day of his hunger strike, along with others, at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. The protest, under the umbrella of the Cockroach Janata Party, is demanding the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the irregularities in the NEET exam. As the condition of the hunger strikers grows increasingly critical, more than 1,800 prominent citizens have urged them to end their fast — with the bleak reminder that the present “government does not have a heart or a conscience” and that society must not sit back and watch “one of its greatest minds be sacrificed”.

As questions are raised about the Congress’s response to the CJP protest, Dalit youth leader and party MLA Jignesh Mevani has pushed back, saying the Congress has offered “consistent solidarity without turning grief into spectacle”. But the larger question is not whether the opposition has done enough; it is why the Modi government has allowed a protest over students, exams and accountability to reach this point at all.

India summoned a senior Iranian diplomat to the foreign office on Tuesday to register “a strong protest” against attacks on two commercial vessels – MT Al Bahiyah and MT Mombasa – during their transit through the Strait of Hormuz that killed an Indian seafarer and wounded several others. The two vessels had a total of 46 crew members, including 30 Indian seafarers, one of whom “tragically lost his life”, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement while calling for an immediate cessation of violence and a return to dialogue and diplomacy “in keeping with international law”. The Iranian embassy has not yet commented as India Cable goes to press. The fresh attack comes after another commercial vessel with 11 Indians on board was attacked off the coast of Oman on Sunday; ten Indians were rescued, while one remains missing.

Tuesday’s attacks came after the US launched a fresh salvo of strikes against Tehran, marking a new escalation in the resumption of hostilities in the war in West Asia.

The larger bill from the conflict is also arriving. India’s merchandise trade deficit widened to $30.43 billion last month as exports fell faster than imports, with shipping disruptions in Hormuz adding to the drag and traffic through the strait has already fallen to a two-month low.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has added his own surcharge to the crisis, proposing a 20% charge on cargo moving through the Strait of Hormuz – a move the UN shipping agency has opposed, saying fees on international straits have no legal basis. Meanwhile, Dubai-based DP World is reportedly planning a new port and container terminal on the UAE’s east coast, around Fujairah, to reduce dependence on Jebel Ali and bypass the Strait of Hormuz altogether.

The Indian government on Tuesday said that the country remains “committed to working with our partners in combating terrorism and transnational organised crime” through close law enforcement and security cooperation after the US indicted Lawrence Bishnoi, his gang members and other transnational criminal networks, including charges linked to the killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. Responding to the US Department of Justice’s action, the MEA said India and the US share a strong and expanding partnership in tackling terrorism and organised crime. The MEA also commented “on the Nijjar issue”, saying:

“We have noted the remarks made by RCMP Deputy Commissioner. These remarks are consistent with the recently unsealed US indictment which attributes responsibility to the members of the Lawrence Bishnoi organised crime group.”

In fact, as Devirupa Mitra has earlier reported, the RCMP Deputy Commissioner’s words were not as comforting as the MEA is suggesting. “There’s current people in Canada that are facing charges on that, so I can’t comment in relation to that investigation”, the official had said, indicating that while the latest indictments do not allege any involvement by Indian government officials, the Nijjar murder case was on a separate track. (Note: Mitra’s reminder has not gone down well with the establishment: the government has used the IT Rules to get Meta to delete a video version of her story from Facebook/Instagram.

A US investigation into forced labour practices in 60 countries, including India, appears to have done what domestic concern often does not: move policy. With several countries facing proposed American tariffs of up to 12.5% over failure to block goods made with forced labour, New Delhi was forced to

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Snapshot of the day

July 13, 2026

Sidharth Bhatia

Educator and climate activist Sonam Wangchuk is now in medically alarming territory at Jantar Mantar. On the 16th day of his hunger strike, he is down 8.2 kg and his blood glucose has dropped to 67 mg/dL, according to the Cockroach Janata Party. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, has urged the Centre to address the agitation over NEET irregularities, demanding education reform and seeking Union education minister Dharemedra Pradhan’s resignation, warning that “lives are at stake”. [See Drawn and quartered]

CPI(M) MP Amra Ram, along with senior party leaders from Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, visited the site and backed the demands. Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray also supported the agitation over alleged NEET irregularities, saying opposition parties should join without foregrounding their political affiliations. He urged Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi to support the protest and appealed to Wangchuk to withdraw his fast, saying his life was precious while the Centre remained unconcerned and insensitive about his protest.

Congress, meanwhile, has the language but not the momentum. Ahead of his second “Chhatron Ki Goonj” interaction, Gandhi called India’s education system a “dishonest extortion mechanism” and said it was time for a revolution. Yet less than a month after Congress announced a nationwide student outreach campaign, the drive has slowed, with Gandhi’s foreign travel forcing deferments. So far, only one major rally with him has taken place, in Kota.

The rupee slid to a one-month low on Monday, closing at 95.62 to the dollar as oil jumped after US and Iran traded strikes and Tehran claimed it had closed the Strait of Hormuz.

In the second part of his deep dive into the energy scene in India, M. Rajshekhar looks at how, over the past 12 years, the Modi government has locked India into expensive imported natural gas instead of investing in renewables.

Over the weekend, India also

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Snapshot of the day

July 10, 2026

Anirudh S.K.

India’s mainstream media, especially the Godi media, continues to present Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the tireless 24×7 leader, turning routine governance into a round-the-clock personality cult. However, New Zealand’s press, not under the ‘control’ of the Modi government, has supplied a more prosaic – rather revealing – picture.

Ahead of Modi’s visit to Auckland today, Stuff reported that the PM’s age – 75 – has created “extra complexities, with requests for his schedule to allow for nap times” as well as a preference for locations without stairs, with this one apparently having to do with his tripping over a staircase six years ago (after which the errant steps were slated for demolition). The website’s Isaac Davison also writes that Modi’s security arrangements – complete with snipers and bomb-sniffing canines – are based on assessments flagging “significantly higher risk than when Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited in 2024”.

Modi’s age has already been a political irritant since he turned 75 on September 17 last year. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat, now 75 himself, said last July that leaders pushing that age should think of retiring and making way for younger colleagues, before later insisting he had not said anyone must retire.

Back to the media – and Modi’s antipathy for it. During the PM’s Melbourne visit, 7News reporter Blake Johnson offered a neat summary of the choreography as Modi walked several feet away in the background: “This is about as close as you would get to Narendra Modi on his trip to Melbourne. He famously avoids unscripted news conferences, preferring instead more stage-managed appearances.” It sat well with the New Zealand logistics file: the leader may travel with heavy security, nap-time planning and no-stairs preferences, but unscripted questions remain the hardest terrain.

Speaking of which, Modi continues, quite rightly, to meet opposition leaders during his foreign visits, including Australia’s leader of opposition Angus Taylor, with whom he discussed the “growing strength” of India-Australia ties. The curiosity is that the courtesy rarely seems to be reciprocated in New Delhi, where visiting dignitaries no longer meet India’s own opposition leaders with the same ease at the behest of the Modi government. Bipartisanship, it seems, is encouraged abroad but rationed at home.

In Melbourne Modi also praised Australia’s ban on social media access for minors – this, notes Aroon Deep, is the clearest hint yet that New Delhi may be eyeing similar curbs at home. “I have followed you closely, and the way you have legislated and worked to protect society in IT and social media is inspiring the world,” he told Anthony Albanese. The alarm is obvious. With this regime, “protection” is often the polite word for control, and every child-safety law risks becoming another leash on the internet.

The Ram temple donations theft case is now headed to the Supreme Court. LiveLaw reports that on Monday, a bench led by CJI Surya Kant, with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, will hear petitions seeking an independent probe into the alleged theft of donations at the temple, in addition to a forensic audit of the temple trust’s finances. Two parallel inquiries are already under way – one by a three-member SIT appointed by the Uttar Pradesh government and another by the UP police. Do check out this translated copy of the SIT’s nine-page interim report to hear from the horse’s own mouth what lapses have been unearthed so far.

The complaints, meanwhile, keep coming. An eighth police complaint has now been filed in Ayodhya, this time by Uttar Pradesh Youth Congress vice-president Sharad Shukla, who has sought an impartial inquiry into a security pass being allegedly given in the name of former trust invitee Gopal Rao to a vehicle associated with him, but bearing someone else’s photograph.

Now even the counting room is thinning out. Twenty-three employees tasked with counting Ram Mandir donations have reportedly resigned together, saying that after the theft allegations surfaced, devotees have begun offering far more Rs 10 and Rs 20 notes, slowing the counting process sharply. Earlier, they said, 70-80 bundles of Rs 500 notes could be prepared quickly; now barely 15 such bundles are counted. The shift system has also changed from six-hour shifts to a nine-hour-long 9 am-6 pm stretch, with no commensurate increase in salary. Only 13 counting staff now remain with the bank.

Fifty film journalists and film critics have written to information and broadcasting minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, expressing alarm at the withdrawal of the film Satluj, earlier popularised as Panjab 95, from Zee5, where it was being hosted, shortly after its release. “No law in India requires a film releasing directly on OTT platforms to hold CBFC certification,” the signatories say, drawing attention to the extraordinary silencing of the film. The New York Times has also taken note, asking in its headline ‘why India has spent years blocking the release’ of the film.

Speaking of film censorship, the CBFC has reportedly granted an ‘A’ certificate to Tamil Nadu chief minister Vijay’s film Jana Nayagan, which is expected to screen in theatres starting on the 24th. Among the changes the board has directed, per PTI, are modification of the words ‘TVK’ (Vijay’s party), deletion of visuals showing the national flag falling to the ground, and removal of the words ‘New India’.

Set in motion by Centre for the Study of Developing Societies professor Sanjay Kumar making – and then suo motu removing – a calculation error last year in the context of the Maharashtra assembly polls, an enquiry committee constituted by the Indian Council of Social Science Research has now recommended ‘action’ against the highly regarded institution, alleging ‘irregularities’ in its appointments and finances, reports Vikas Pathak. That action could entail the suspension of ICSSR grants that account for more than 83% of CSDS’s income.

A joint team of the Manipur police, the NIA and the CRPF today arrested a couple for their alleged involvement in the killing by Kuki groups of their six Naga captives during the state’s hostage crisis two months ago.

Recently the Assam Rifles conducted a meeting in Guwahati titled ‘Indo-Myanmar Frontier Issues and Way Forward’ that was co-hosted, curiously, by an RSS affiliate named the Seemanta Chetana Mancha Purvottar. Angana Chakrabarti of The Reporters’ Collective attended the seminar and heard from Sangh members about the ‘original Hinduness’ of the northeast’s scheduled tribes as well as how Myanmar ‘was once part of Bharat but is now a weak, independent country’. People from the security establishment, she writes, were “uncommonly candid” in their presentations.

Abhishek Kumar Sinha, the BJP candidate for the Bankipur assembly seat that went vacant with party president Nitin Nabin’s move to the Rajya Sabha, has suddenly quit the race citing family reasons. His exit has set off much speculation given the high profile of this contest – with Prashant Kishor also joining the fray – and the energetic start he’d given the saffron party’s campaign. He stands replaced by Neeraj Kumar Sinha.

What is going on in the Union environment ministry, which last week fired four close aides of minister Bhupender Yadav all in one day? Yadav’s predecessor and current Congress MP Jairam Ramesh asserts that the unusual development must be viewed in the context of the government’s attempts to change the boundaries of the Sariska Tiger Reserve and the definition of the Aravallis, both allegedly to facilitate mining at the environment’s expense.

Mongabay reports on a proposed solar project in Kutch’s Banni grassland – India’s largest – that has triggered a conflict between renewable energy development and conservation, affecting migratory birds, other wildlife and the local ecology.

The 2023 Silkyara tunnel rescue in Uttarakhand is headed for the big screen. Silkyara 41, a feature film co-production between Aamir Khan Productions, the Australia-based Mind Blowing Films and Kabir Khan Films, will be directed by Kabir Khan and written by Australian screenwriter Andrew Anastasios. The film will recount the operation that rescued 41 workers trapped for over two weeks, including the role of Australian tunnelling expert Arnold Dix.

NDA states and Union-run varsities lodge objections over VBSA Bill’s over-centralising provisions

Three NDA-ruled states – Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya – and a number of Union-run universities have written to the joint parliamentary committee examining the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, objecting to various provisions in the legislation that would over-centralise the higher education system, Sobhana Nair and Abhinay Lakshman report. Andhra’s TDP-led government in particular raised strong warnings and demanded consultation; Banaras Hindu University as well as the Congress-run Telangana government both pointed to clause 45, which allows the Union government to issue binding directions to the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhisthan that the legislation proposes to replace the UGC, AICTE and NCTE with.

That IAS stuff can come later, first learn to be a mother, says UP governor and former Guj CM

Uttar Pradesh’s governor and former BJP chief minister of Gujarat Anandiben Patel yesterday exhorted her audience of newly minted women graduates in Kanpur to first master becoming a mother before becoming IAS officers or teachers or whatever other hors d’oeuvre they have in mind. “Everyone,” she added, “should know how to cook the food prepared at home.” A couple days prior, she berated youths at another convocation ceremony for abandoning their babies – the idea being that this is what youngsters do after refusing their families’ sage relationship advice. And not very long ago she warned young women of that perturbing phenomenon – the live-in relationship – by advising them to “go and see in the orphanages … 15- and 20-year-old daughters are standing, carrying one-year-old babies.”

Sheikh Hasina declares she will go back to Bangladesh later this year and turn herself in

Sheikh Hasina has in an interview to Reuters claimed that she plans to return to Bangladesh around December and surrender to the authorities there, marking the first time she has given a timeline for her return or spoken about turning herself in. Convicted and sentenced to death for her alleged role in the deadly crackdown on student-led protesters in July-August 2024 before her violent ouster – in a much-criticised trial in absentia – Hasina’s return, notes Krishna N. Das, could exacerbate divisions within Bangladesh but also improve ties with India. “If death comes, I want it to come on my own soil,” she declared, adding that she intends for her return to make “clear to the people how farcical the court is”.

The Long Cable

The MEA’s passport take is incorrect, illogical and inconsistent with global norms

P.D.T. Achary

A few days ago, the Supreme Court of the United States declared that anyone born in the US is a citizen of that country. Such a clear statement of law on a fundamental issue like citizenship is yet to come from India’s Supreme Court, although that issue came before it in the context of the special intensive revision (SIR), where the question of the citizenship of Indian voters was an issue.

A curious situation exists in India where the voters’ list is being revised intensively and voters are being asked to produce documents to prove their citizenship, but the Ministry of Home Affairs, the administrative ministry, has not so far spelt out the documents that citizens are required to produce as proof of their citizenship.

The Election Commission (EC) has made it clear that Aadhaar cards, ration cards, voter ID, passports, etc will not be accepted as proof of citizenship. Then what is exactly the document that should be produced for this purpose? These are the documents that people generally possess, but they are of no use in this case.

It is in this context that a recent statement of an official of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) that the passport is just a travel document and not proof of citizenship has attracted a great amount of public attention. The EC has already made it clear that it would not accept the passport as a proof of citizenship, and now the MEA official has endorsed it by terming the passport as a mere travel document.

However, the Passports Act of 1967 presents a different picture. This Act does not treat the passport as a travel document – on the contrary it treats the passport as different from travel documents.

Under section 2(b) of the Passports Act, a passport is defined as follows: “passport means a passport issued or deemed to have been issued under this Act”. Under section 2(e), a travel document is defined as follows: “travel document means a travel document issued or deemed to have been issued under this Act”.

Thereafter, the Act classifies passports and travel documents under section 4 as follows – 4(1)(a) an ordinary passport, (b) an official passport, and (c) a diplomatic passport.

In 4(2), travel documents are classified as follows:

1. Emergency certificate authorising a person to enter India

2. Certificate of identity for the purpose of establishing the identity of person

3. Such other certificate or document as may be prescribed.

It should be clear from the above provisions of the Act that the passport is not a travel document as defined in the Act. Travel documents are in the nature of certificates which are different from passports.

The MEA official’s further assertion that the passport is not a proof of citizenship flies in the face of facts and logic. This assertion has the potential of causing serious problems for Indian citizens who go abroad on the strength of an Indian passport.

An Indian passport specifies the nationality of its holder, which is Indian, and it contains a request to other countries to allow the bearer “to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford him or her every assistance and protection of which he or she may need”. This request is made by the order of the President of the Republic of India.

Nationality, according to the New Oxford English Dictionary, means the status of belonging to a particular nation. According to the Collins Cobuild English language dictionary, citizenship is “the particular nationality that you have and the official status, rights and duties that you have because of it”.

By this definition nationality can be the proof of citizenship. So, when an Indian national holds a passport, the Indian authorities are announcing to the rest of the world that he is a citizen of India and the world recognises him as such. So, if the whole world recognises an Indian passport holder as a citizen of India, how can we assert that the passport is not a proof of citizenship? It simply defies logic.

A five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court in Satwant Singh Sawhney vs D. Ramarathnam (AIR 1967 SC 1836) has elaborately dealt with the legal status of the passport in the context of nationality or citizenship. This judgement quotes certain authors who have defined the passport.

For instance, P. Weis says “in essence a passport is a document which identifies the holder and provides evidence of his nationality”. Author Kenneth Diplock has been quoted as saying, “they [passports] are in the same category as any other evidence of the national status of an individual”.

The above judgement also quotes the Ballentine’s Law Dictionary, which says a passport “is a document issued on behalf of a citizen of the United States by the secretary of state … it is to be considered as a political document by which the bearer is recognised in foreign countries as an American citizen”.

Further, the US Supreme Court has been quoted in the judgement. In Kent vs Dulles, the US Supreme Court has said: “a passport not only is of great value … abroad; it is also an aid in establishing citizenship for purposes of re-entry into the United States.”

Thus, the Supreme Court of India was clear that the passport proves the nationality or citizenship of a person. This is the position in almost all countries. Therefore it is difficult to understand why the MEA has taken a view that the passport is just a travel document and not a proof of citizenship.

Perhaps the MEA did not want to take a position which is at variance with that of the EC, which had refused to accept the passport as a proof of citizenship while conducting the SIR. But it is not in consonance with law, the Supreme Court’s decisions and international practices.

The law on citizenship is a little complex in India. Article 5 of the Constitution starts with a simple and straightforward provision relating to the citizenship of people who were born in India at the commencement of the Constitution. It says that at the commencement of the Constitution, every person who has his domicile in the territory of India and who was born in India shall be a citizen of India.

Subsequent Articles and the Citizenship Act and Rules made thereunder have made it more and more complex. But the most crucial provision is contained in Article 11, which has conferred on parliament unfettered power to make any provision with respect to the acquisition of citizenship.

Thus, from a purely secular base like domicile and birth at the beginning of the Republic, citizenship in India can now be determined on religious grounds also. This transformation is the direct consequence of the untrammelled and unguided powers vested in parliament by the constitution.

When the state displaces a proclivity for excluding people from the electoral list, documents that proclaim the status of citizens like the passport become crucially important. Thoughtless assertions that the passport is just a travel document can create serious problems for Indian citizens within and outside the country. This can now be settled only by judicial intervention.

(P.D.T. Achary is a former secretary-general of the Lok Sabha.)

Reportedly

Yesterday officials of the Enforcement Directorate conducted searches in Mumbai against Kalanee Impex Private Limited, one of whose directors is Dharmesh Sangani, a close associate of actor Shekhar Suman. It just so happens that Suman has been hosting a political satire show and is an advocate of free speech in India — we ought to have “the latitude to talk about anybody”, the one-time BJP member told the Indian Express). In that same interview he cited Atal Bihari Vajpayee as once telling him about his old Movers and Shakers talk show: “This show must go on. When you take on me, I laugh out the loudest!”

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

Bangladesh has been in the throes of a measles outbreak, with close to a thousand cases and multiple deaths still being reported every day. The BBC in this heartbreaking report writes that “public health experts are warning the outbreak in Bangladesh is proof of the dangers of any interruption in vaccine coverage”.

Prime number: 31% 🥵

Almost a third of single people – 31% – in India surveyed by the dating app happn said they pulled up their stumps for all of this summer because it was just too hot to be outside, while another 21% said they flamed out before their date could even begin. But many others turned to the night among other options to keep things moving. Theres Sudeep reports.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

• It is inexplicable that the SIR is taking place in Manipur right now, Gautam Mukhopadhaya says. Tens of thousands of people remain displaced, and among them many Kukis, who have borne the brunt of the violence, will not be able to produce their documents. “… By 2029 we may see a pathway to statelessness not only for the Kuki-Zo but also for other tribal communities in the Northeast, with their plight obscured amid the broader exclusion and disenfranchisement of Muslims …”

• What happened with R. Rajagopal (and others) during the SIR, on top of the MEA’s remarks on the passport, raises the uncomfortable question of whether “the Republic trusts its citizens at all”, writes Manoj Jha. Yes, verification is required to maintain the integrity of public institutions, but “documentation serves democracy only when it generates certainty”.

• Here is former Navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash’s advice to those on Raisina Hill as the situation in West Asia deteriorates again: “Given its cordial relations with all three belligerents … India must remonstrate strongly with all parties to abandon reckless brinkmanship, cease actions that threaten regional stability and world peace, and return to the negotiating table. The Global South is watching us.”

• Between their network providers, UPI platforms, e-commerce choices and ride-hailing services, Indians are surrounded by duopolies. Such systems can and do deliver efficiency but when markets settle into them, note Vasant Hegde and Rati Chandra, “competition becomes a formality. The system works, but less dynamically than it should.” They have some ideas on what the government should do about that.

• On South Asia’s water wars, The Economist says:

“Increased diplomacy is all the more urgent because South Asia’s environment is becoming more fragile. Glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate … That can make river flows more erratic, destabilise the rock on which dams and houses are built and increase the risk of flooding. Monsoon rains are becoming less predictable. Rather than suspending or abandoning water accords, countries need to strengthen and update them to reflect this.”

Listen up

Has the time come for India and Pakistan to resume official talks? Kallol Bhattacherjee in this episode of InFocus sounds out Mani Shankar Aiyar and Tara Kartha on the question.

Watch out

A group of blind people in Ranchi has built up an informal settlement in the city and found strength in living together, but their project is under threat by plans to expand the bus stand next to their colony, Nolina Minj and Raghav Kakkar report.

Over and out

• Kalki Koechlin and theatre director Sheena Khalid have adapted the former’s book The Elephant in the Womb into a new play entitled Belly of the Beast, which explores the side of motherhood that isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, including postpartum depression and miscarriages. Koechlin noted to the BBC that while “the conversation in India is all about the gift of motherhood … there is a certain part of you that’s also grieving and losing identity, that’s losing who you were before”.

• The Economist looks at what Indians are reading, and ‘what that reveals about the self’, noting:

  “The observant commuter will spot something else. In a country where only a small minority has any facility with the language, and an infinitesimally tiny one speaks it natively, all the books sold at red lights are in English. So are most of those at roadside second-hand-book dealers, in bookshops and in the top 100 on Amazon India. English-language books make up about half of (non-educational) official sales. For a country as linguistically and culturally kaleidoscopic as India, that makes English books a rare example of common ground. What Indians read offers a glimpse of their hopes and dreams.”

That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.

Snapshot of the day

July 9, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

The Centre is yet to respond – let alone act – but the Cockroach Janta Party has announced a peaceful march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament on July 20, the first day of the Monsoon Session. The youth-led outfit says activist Sonam Wangchuk, now on the 12th day of his hunger strike amid heavy rain and down more than 7 kg, will lead the march to demand education reform and in memory of students who lost their lives due to repeated failures of India’s examination system. The CJP, which has been seeking Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation over alleged exam irregularities, has also accused Delhi Police of stopping protesters from bringing tarpaulins despite the heavy downpour. Students, parents and citizens from across the country have been requested to join the march for a transparent and credible examination system and to press for Pradhan’s resignation.

More than a decade after signing a civil nuclear agreement, India and Australia on July 9 finalised the arrangements needed to begin Australian uranium exports. “Today, we can confirm the signing of the Administrative Arrangement to enable uranium exports to India for peaceful purposes under the 2015 Australia-India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement,” Anthony Albanese told reporters at a joint press conference with Narendra Modi. While an administrative arrangement had been concluded earlier, “it had not been possible to operationalise it because there was not agreement fully on reporting-related issues” governing safeguarded uranium transfers, Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri told reporters.

India is among the 60 countries US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invited to a conference in Washington next week to discuss the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism,” the Washington Post reports. There is no word yet on whether India will attend the event – which is seen as being driven by the Trump adminstration’s domestic political agenda rather than by any actual resurgence in the US or the world.

The jailed Indian gangster Lawrence Bishnoi ran a ‘decentralised syndicate’ from behind bars, and wanted ‘S.K.’ killed to instil fear, the US Department of Justice notes. SK is the actor Salman Khan.

Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail reports that Ottawa is refusing to comment on whether its earlier accusation against the Indian government of involvement in the Hardeep Singh Nijjar murder still stands:

“Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree’s office on Wednesday declined to say whether there has been any change to the working theory that the Indian government ordered the assassination as part of a larger campaign of transnational repression, and whether the Canadian government still believes New Delhi was ultimately behind the killing…

Simon Lafortune, press secretary to Mr. Anandasangaree, declined to discuss the investigation.

“At this stage, it would be inappropriate to speculate or comment on investigative theories while the RCMP’s work continues. The focus remains on ensuring accountability for those responsible for Nijjar’s death and supporting a thorough and independent process,” he said in a statement.

“Canadian law enforcement continues to pursue this investigation with great care and diligence, guided by evidence and the rule of law. As the RCMP has indicated, the investigation remains active and ongoing.”

The Ministry of External Affairs has confirmed that the Modi government had a fourth round of talks with the Taliban, but the militant group made no concrete commitments. The meeting was co-chaired by M Anand Prakash,

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Snapshot of the day

July 8, 2026

Siddharth Varadarajan

The Modi government may see a silver lining in Tuesday’s US indictment of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, insisting it has always sought US-Canadian action against transnational criminal gangs, but how far is New Delhi prepared to go in taking this indictment to its logical conclusion? As the India Cable noted yesterday, Canadian officials have long linked Bishnoi to the Indian government. Even now, they are at pains to stress the Canadian end of the Hardeep Singh Nijjar murder investigation is continuing and that the latest indictments should not be seen as having any bearing on what Ottawa had publicly alleged earlier, when Justin Trudeau was prime minister. [See Reportedly]

While the Mark Carney government has consciously sought a reset with New Delhi and sees little need to publicly repeat that charge, the Indian side knows the spectre of Nijjar has not gone away. Officially, the Modi government can say the US claim that Bishnoi got Nijjar killed means this was a classic gangland hit rather than an example of ‘transnational repression’ as Canadian officials had earlier alleged. But given the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s view that Bishnoi has been “acting on behalf of the Indian government”, the political leadership in New Delhi will not be keen for Bishnoi to end up in American custody.

Asked by CBC how the latest charges would stop Bishnoi from orchestrating his organisation’s activities from an Indian prison where he is currently held, Lisa Morland, RCMP Deputy Commissioner, said:

“So what I think is that the charges that were brought forward today, obviously under the RICO laws in the United States, it brings through that, as stated today, that they will bring him forward for extradition to get him moved forward into face charges in the United States… By removing Bishnoi and his senior leadership from there, we believe it’s going to have a direct impact on public safety here in Canada and abroad.”

US officials have also spoken of the need to bring Bishnoi from India to a US supermax prison but how will the extradition process play out? V Venkatesan looks at the complexities involved:

“Can a man already lodged in an Indian prison be taken to an American courtroom to face trial? The answer is: legally, yes, but practically, it’s complicated.”

West Bengal police early today killed Prabhas Mondal, a key accused in the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Baruipur, saying they shot him after he snatched a pistol from an officer and fired one round at them before trying to flee. That fits the textbook template of an ‘encounter’, many instances of which are suspected to have been staged by the police in a bid to dish out instant punishment in unsavoury cases.

The ruling BJP has celebrated Mondal’s killing as ‘divine justice’ but questions abound over what the police have done. Apart from the fact that fake encounters are patently illegal, Mondal was reportedly seen walking with the girl shortly before she disappeared, and is since alleged to have said he lured the girl to a particular location after being promised Rs 10,000 by another accused, Ananda Sardar. His statement “strongly points to a pre-planned abduction”, but his encounter “just as the investigation was poised to unravel this broader network” severs its most important link, Aparna Bhattacharya notes. As for the police, they have not explained why they were reconstructing the scene of the crime with Mondal in the middle of the night, and are yet to release any footage showing Mondal trying to flee.

‘Human rights protests’ are set to greet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Australia, the Guardian reports, as he begins his first visit to the country in three years from today. Modi is scheduled to attend the Australia-India Annual Leaders’ Summit in Melbourne and a community event later this

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