After Making Communal Remarks, Allahabad HC Judge Defends Them; Manmohan Singh Steered Foreign Policy in New Directions

Jan 17, 2025

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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable

The India Cable is the most definitive daily news bulletin about all that matters to India. This premium newsletter is delivered to your inbox 5 days a week.
Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Tanweer Alam, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

Snapshot of the day

January 17, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

In a letter to the chief justice of the Allahabad high court, high court Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav has said that his remarks made at a Vishva Hindu Parishad event in the court last month were being distorted by people with vested interests and that members of the judiciary who are not in a position to publicly defend themselves ought to be protected by their seniors, Shyamlal Yadav cites sources as saying. Justice Yadav, who reportedly did not apologise for his statements, also contended that what he said was consistent with constitutional values. The report recalls that the high court chief justice had asked for Justice Yadav’s response after being prompted by the chief justice of India.

Former Supreme Court Justice Arun Mishra has been appointed ombudsman of the BCCI, PTI reports, adding that he will also serve as the cricket board’s ethics officer. Justice Mishra demitted office as chairman of the National Human Rights Commission in June and retired as apex court judge in 2020. His tenure in the top court has been controversial, with critics alleging that his decisions in politically sensitive cases sided with the Union government or helped its leaders in some way. He also gained prominence for calling Prime Minister Modi a “versatile genius” and an “internationally acclaimed visionary”.

Speaking of the BCCI, after India’s 3-1 loss in the Border-Gavaskar trophy, the board has issued fresh guidelines to regulate player conduct. Among other things, learns Indranil Majumdar, the guidelines advise all players to “travel with the team to and from matches and practice sessions”; make it compulsory for players to play domestic games in order to qualify for selection to the national team and for central contracts; bars them from participating in personal shoots during series or tours; and also restricts players from leaving games if they end early: they must stay with their team until the games’ scheduled end.

Days after he alleged there was corruption in West Bengal’s public healthcare system, Dr Asfakulla Naiya’s home in Kolkata was searched by police, reports Joydeep Sarkar. Naiya said: “I don’t know why they searched my house or what the charges are … If I have done anything illegal, the police should call me.” He was served a show cause notice earlier this week after it was alleged that he practiced as an ENT specialist without possessing the necessary qualifications. Naiya was at the forefront of the protests that followed the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in the city’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

The Tibet House organisation that the Dalai Lama founded in 1965 to preserve and spread Tibetan cultural heritage has had its Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act license revoked due to alleged violations of the Act, writes Rahul Tripathi, who is informed of the development by people in the know. Meanwhile, the ministry granted a fresh FCRA license to the ‘His Holiness the Dalai Lama Charitable Trust’ for undertaking a “religious (Buddhist)” as well as cultural, economic and education programmes, Vijaita Singh reports. The NGO is not directly connected to the Dalai Lama but instead with the Tibetan government-in-exile, a Trust official said. It applied for a renewal of its license but received a new one, Singh writes.

The Congress’s intervention application in the Supreme Court defending the Places of Worship Act says the legislation “is essential to safeguard secularism in India” and that the challenges against it seem to “be a motivated and malicious attempt to undermine” established secular principles. The party also said that the top court in its Ram Janmabhoomi verdict had defended the 1991 Act, as per The Telegraph.

As many as 64% of MTech seats in the country’s engineering institutions lay vacant in FY24, Abhinaya Harigovind’s parsing of data collected by the All India Council for Technical Education shows. Council officials said that students do not find much of a difference in pay having done postgraduate courses, and that the postgraduate curriculum tends to focus more on research, which does not align with the generally “application-based” nature of the relevant industries in India.

New Delhi’s recommendation of legal action against an individual – presumably the RAW officer indicted by the US – in the alleged Pannun murder plot is a “really positive first step”, outgoing US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti said in an interview to Sachin Parashar. Garcetti continued:

“We welcome it. It delivered what the private interactions I had with Indian officials promised. We said changes should be made to ensure this doesn’t happen again and people should be held accountable.”

The ambassador however denied any knowledge of Ottawa’s claim that senior Indian government officials including home minister Amit Shah were involved in similar cases the Canadian police were probing. He also said that the US wasn’t trying to lecture India on human rights issues, but that India and the US “have a slight difference” when it comes to the former’s stand that democracies do not comment on each other’s affairs.

Arun Shourie’s new book The New Icon Savarkar And The Facts is not something the members of the Sangh parivar will like. It draws on ‘550 sources’ to purportedly demolish Savarkar’s myths, including those about Indian history, the Hindu identity and Savarkar himself

Experts have used machine learning techniques to unearth patterns from the enigmatic ‘writing’ system of the Indus Valley Civilisation, but they have a feeling there aren’t going to be any breakthroughs – and thus no claimants for the Tamil Nadu chief minister’s $1 million reward – anytime soon. Soutik Biswas reports on what recent advancements have suggested about the nature of the script and the challenges that stand in the way of deciphering it.

If one extrapolates data from the PM Gram Sadak Yojana’s dashboard – which was last updated in December – to the end of the ongoing fiscal, the scheme will have seen the construction of around 13,000 kilometres of rural roads in FY25. This would be half of FY24’s roughly 26,000 kilometres constructed and in line with a declining trend that began in FY23. The reason behind this appears to be that the scheme is nearing its target of 8.17 lakh kilometres of rural roads; it has so far gotten 94% of the way there, Jayant Pankaj writes.

Draft digital personal data protection rules are like ‘surveillance for surveillance's sake’

There’s a lot wrong with the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, say Rubayya Tasneem and Injila Muslim Zaidi. For starters, the kind of grounds upon which they allow the government to demand data or withhold information are overly vague; they do not require the authorities to put in formal, written requests for data; they do not mandate that an independent mechanism review the government’s data requests and they do not provide for an adequate way to challenge the government’s requests. Rule 22 in particular seems to sidestep Supreme Court guidelines and has an ominous portent for privacy, they write.

Colombo secures largest-ever FDI to date from Chinese state-run refiner

Sri Lanka will receive a $3.7 billion investment from Chinese state-run refiner Sinopec, Colombo announced yesterday during President Anura Dissanayake’s state visit to Beijing. A press release said the amount – which it termed the country’s largest FDI to date – will fund a refinery in the area around Hambantota. Neither side made mention of the fact that Colombo’s moratorium on permissions to foreign research vessels to visit its waters ends this month – a topic that has caused consternation in New Delhi – but a joint statement said they shared the desire “to continue maritime cooperation”. It also said Lanka will “never allow its territory to be used for any anti-China, separatist activities”.

Similarly during his state visit to New Delhi, Dissanayake said he’d assured Prime Minister Modi that Colombo “will not allow our land to be used in any way in a manner that is detrimental to the interests of India”. Both India and China are vying for influence in Sri Lanka, and the latter needs the goodwill of both countries to get through its IMF bailout program.

Dhruv helicopter’s Porbandar crash latest in long series of concern-provoking accidents

The fatal crash of a Hindustan Aeronautics Limited-made Dhruv helicopter operated by the coast guard in Porbandar has once again rung alarm bells regarding its safety and reliability. It has also led to a grounding of all 330 Dhruvs developed by HAL, and now there is doubt about the advanced light helicopter’s customary participation in the Republic Day fly-past. While army chief General Upendra Dwivedi has said the forces are 100% confident in the platform, many of his former colleagues, including those who have operated or supervised Dhruvs, do not see eye-to-eye with that assessment, reports Rahul Bedi. He also notes that Dhruv’s accident record – totalling 23 incidents in India – extends beyond the domestic front as well.

The Long Cable

Manmohan Singh Steered Indian Defence and Foreign Policy To New Heights

Praveen Davar

The phrase 'gentle colossus' was used by Communist leader Hiren Mukheriee in Parliament while paying tribute to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first, and most popular ever, Prime Minister in 1964. Six decades later the epithet fully fits the persona of the country's 13th Prime Minister who was at the helm of affairs for seven years less than Nehru.

After his passing on December 26, 2024 much has been written, and will continue to be written on Dr Manmohan Singh's monumental contribution in transforming the nation's economy both as Finance Minister and later as Prime Minister from 2004-2014. But barring a few exceptions not much has been said on how brilliantly he handled the country's Defence and Foreign Affairs, reminiscent of the Rajiv Gandhi era for generations born after independence.

The India-US nuclear deal signed in 2008 was the culmination of a laborious process that started with a meeting of Dr Manmohan Singh with then US President George Bush in New York in 2004. The deal, which went through many difficult obstacles like the waiver on nuclear issues by the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA) and the 123 Agreement, would not have been possible without the dogged determination of the Prime Minister . As MK Narayanan, his National Security Advisor (NSA) has recently written in an obituary piece:

"His gentle mien concealed a steely resolve to achieve what he believed was in the best interest of the nation... I can say, without fear of contradiction, that there would not have been no nuclear deal, without Manmohan Singh. The role of US President George Bush was no less in this regard.”

The former NSA also recalled how in his first meeting with Manmohan Singh, Barack Obama, the successor of George Bush, paid obeisance to India's PM by his remark ‘Dr. Singh, you are my Guru.’

However, despite improving India-US relations as never before in the last two decades, Singh, like Rajiv Gandhi in the mid-eighties, ensured that India - Russia ties were not adversely affected and Russia ( like the erstwhile Soviet Union) remained India's biggest supplier of arms and military hardware. However it was his neighbourhood policy, especially with Pakistan, that was perhaps the crowning achievement of his successful foreign policy. Unlike the present incumbent, Manmohan Singh built upon the strengths of his predecessors without at anytime flaying their perceived shortcomings. In a recent cover story the editor of The Week wrote: "Never finding fault with Nehruvian non-alignment, Indira's Soviet leaning, Rajiv's muscular militarism, Rao's Look East. he counted all these as blessings and would build upon the strengths of all!”

The line dividing the foreign policy of the nation from its defence policy becomes thin when it comes to dealing with Pakistan and China. While the diplomatic situation arising out of the Mumbai attack on 26/11 was handled with great caution and maturity, the commandos of the Indian Army carried out a number of surgical strikes across the LoC, a fact that was never publicised to maintain secrecy of the operations. The decision not to bomb interior places in Pakistan was taken by the Prime Minister after he had taken the chief of all the three services into confidence. It was an extremely courageous decision keeping in mind the tremendous pressure from many political parties and the media.

In 2008 when China started upgrading its highways and building new roads connecting Tibetan towns with its military stations and depots. that Manmohan Singh took no time to approve the proposal of Defence Minister AK Antony to order the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to build and upgrade roads linking corps and divisional headquarters in Arunachal Pradesh and other parts of the Northeast. From 2009 to 2012 over 8500 km of roads were built anew or double-laned to facilitate movement of tanks, artillery and heavy duty transporters. Responding quickly to the build up of Chinese air capability Singh also agreed with his self-effacing defence minister to move the deep strike Su-30 aircraft to Tezpur in June 2009 and Su-30 MKI aircraft to Chhabua in March 2001.

After a gap of 29 years the Army raised two mountain infantry divisions under the Dimapur based 3 Corps and4 Corps in Tezpur. The UPA - 2 govt also gave a nod in 2013 for raising the Army's first mountain strike Corps to provide a decisive, lightning reaction offensive capability at a cost of Rs 65,000 cr. Unfortunately, in 2014 the moment the Modi government took over it shelved the plan, and as can be seen from the situation arising out of Chinese incursions at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the country has had to pay a very heavy price.

However, more than the Army and the Air Force, it was the Navy that perhaps received the maximum focus of modernisation towards its goal of acquiring a blue water capability. The Indian Navy inducted its second aircraft carrier, the 44,500 tonne INS Vikramaditya which was commissioned by Antony at a Russian shipyard on November 16, 2013. This was preceded by the launching of India's first indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant in September 2013 (commissioned ten years later) at Cochin Shipyard placing India amongst the group of select countries which can design and build their own aircraft carriers. Indian naval aviation also received a major fillip with the arrival of the first Boeing P-81 long range maritime reconnaissance and anti- submarine warfare aircraft. A total of 28 warships were inducted/acquired during the 10 year tenure of Dr Manmohan Singh, and other 45 ships were in the pipeline in various shipyards when he stepped down in May 2014.

No one, before or later, has done more for the welfare of Ex- servicemen than the Manmohan Singh government. Initially accepting One Rank One Pension ( OROP) scheme for personnel below officer rank ( PBOR) in 2004 ( officers were added later), the government announced full OROP to be effective from April 1, 2004. But on change of the government a month later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi dragged his feet for one year before announcing, half-heartedly, a half-baked OROP which is nowhere near the principle of OROP accepted by the Parliament. Lest it be forgotten, the UPA- 1 and UPA 2- governments sanctioned Rs 4,500 crores in 2010 and 2012 to narrow the gap between old and new pensioners which was a giant stride towards OROP being finally sanctioned in 2015 but not fully.

I must end this with a personal note. In 2012 the three living recipients of PVC (Param Vir Chakra) came to see me at the AICC headquarters as I was looking after Ex. Servicemen affairs. They asked for enhancement of their monthly gallantry allowance. When the matter was placed before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he took only a couple of days to increase their allowance to more than three times of what they were drawing then. Capt Bana Singh, the senior most PVC amongst them rang me up from Jammu and said (in chaste Punjabi) : 'Sir, this is unbelievable. We have never ever experienced this kind of lightning action in our civil life. That was Dr Manmohan Singh - 'The Gentle Colossus'.

(The writer, an ex-Army officer, is a columnist and author of Freedom Struggle and Beyond.)

Reportedly

The grapevine, which in these times means the WhatsApp University, is full of theories about the stabbing of Saif Ali Khan. Many of them have taken a blatantly communal hue and linked him up with Salman Khan and they are so downright obscene that they cannot be mentioned. But for those who believe in what appears on WhatsApp University, they are gospel. That it could just be a robbery that went horribly wrong just does not strike them.

Deep dive

The fact that India only recognises clinical psychologists – who are only a section of psychologists as a whole – and the resulting lack of recognition for the rest of the field is leading to “confusion among the public about the professional qualifications required for an individual to practice as a therapist or counsellor” and people running the risk of consulting underqualified practitioners, counselling psychologist Rupa Chaubal tells Nolina Minj for the latter’s report on the “murky, unregulated world” of counselling in India.

Prime number: Rs 40,000 crore plus

The RBI yesterday infused a little more than Rs 40,000 crore into the banking system – whose liquidity has been in the red since last month and whose liquidity gap reached Rs 2 lakh crore a day prior – through a variable rate repo auction and a government securities buyback window, the Economic Times reports.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

SN Subrahmanyan’s remarks on a 90-hour work week have “touched a nerve because India’s hard-working professionals are feeling the pinch from persistent inflation and stagnating wages”, observes John Reed. He adds: “These in turn feed often-voiced fears that India – no matter how hard or long people work – is heading for a ‘middle income trap’.”
Mohan Bhagwat’s “blow hot and cold shenanigans seem to be a result of a self-assumed role as oracle of the Hindu community”, says Bharat Bhushan – at any rate, he writes, while the “Congress and the opposition may engage with him polemically, … for the rest Bhagwat is better ignored”.
Andy Mukherjee uses the example of an entrepreneur who ran similar industrial-parts factories in India and in Thailand to illustrate the “great unease of doing business in India”. He finds: “No ordinary Thai businessmen fears bankruptcy because of something his government may do; in India, such a prospect is very real.”
As the Chinese navy’s “blue-water proficiency would take a decade to manifest, India should exploit more imaginatively China's Malacca dilemma to alter the adverse balance along the LAC,” argues retired Major General Ashok K Mehta.
Retired top cop Julio Rebeiro says all that ‘Nehru bashing’ is not good for India. He writes that he and his generation grew up admiring and idolising Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. “These brainwashed men and women in saffron want Nehru’s contribution to getting his countrymen free from the colonial yoke to be obliterated from our history books,” he says in this excellent piece.

Listen up

Sidharth Bhatia talks to Pankaj Mishra about his new book The World After Gaza where Mishra shows how the memory of the Holocaust was used by the founding fathers to create the newly born nation of Israel. A vast proportion of early settlers in Israel were from Arab nations and had no connection with the Holocaust. He also says after Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza, has ‘made a bonfire of international norms.

Watch out

Retired professor of economics at JNU Arun Kumar speaks about the economic issues India faces as the government prepares its budget for the next fiscal.

Over and out

Bananas are no longer allowed at a 7th-century Shiva temple in Hampi. A temple endowment officer explained why to PTI:

“We saw that the devotees get overzealous in their attempts to feed the elephant, which is not only harmful to the elephant concerned, but it also makes the place very dirty. The devotees leave behind banana peels and even the plastic bags that they bring the bananas in.”

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.

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