‘Donkey’ Flight Grounding Exposes Gujarat Network of Traffickers; India Can’t Get Away With Israel’s Apartheid, Assassination Politics
Cong launches campaign with basic income guarantee, caste flourishing in Aussie diaspora, record write-offs improve bank assets, communalism underlies Manipur ethnic violence, remembering JS magazine
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal
Snapshot of the day
December 29, 2023
Pratik Kanjilal
The grounding of a ‘donkey route’ flight carrying Indians to Nicaragua has exposed a network of 17 companies, based mostly in Gujarat, which traffick people to the US and Canada via Europe and South and Central America. “The consultancies help create fake education certificates, identity documents, job letters and even secure high English language tests scores ― helping people receive transit, student or tourist visas for countries along the way to their eventual destination,” says the Hindustan Times. Another ‘donkey’ flight was scheduled to take off today. Its passengers contacted the police when their agents went into hiding after the earlier flight was detained in France. Incidentally, 22 of the passengers who sought asylum in France are from Gujarat.
As reported yesterday, the Court of Appeal in Qatar has commuted the death sentences of eight former Indian Navy men convicted of espionage to jail terms of three to 25 years. The reasoning behind the differential has not been made public but the details of commutation are now out: one of the eight, who had a managerial post in the firm they all worked for, has now been sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, four ex-officers have been given 15 years in prison, two face 10 years, and the one ex-sailor among has had his sentence reduced to three years. It is possible some or all of the eight may get to serve out their sentences in India.
The custodial torture and killing of members of the Bakarwal community in Poonch, whose members have aided the Army in fighting insurgency, has created fear and a sense of betrayal, says Scroll. Naveed Iqbal of the Indian Express visited Topa Pir, the remote hamlet from which the Army had picked up its victims, aged 15 to 85. In Poonch, a inter-faith group of citizens held a ‘naked’ press conference to demand the guilty army men be punished.
China’s embassy in Myanmar has asked its citizens to leave a border district in Myanmar’s northern Shan state immediately due to security risks as armed ethnic minorities battle the junta’s troops. They evacuated the Laukkai area in Kokang as Myanmar’s military government faced its biggest challenge since it seized power in 2021.
The pro-talks faction of ULFA, the former secessionist movement in Assam, has signed a deal with the government and will disband. The Paresh Barua faction of ULFA is not part of the agreemnt.
Kicking off its campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress on Thursday resurrected its promise of implementing the Nyuntam Aay Yojana, or NYAY scheme. Speaking at a Nagpur rally named “Hain taiyyar hum” (“We are ready”), party president Mallikarjun Kharge said that the Congress is “committed to the NYAY scheme”, the minimum income scheme which was one of its major poll promises in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In March 2019, Rahul Gandhi had said that the scheme was named NYAY because it will give justice to the poor. Under the scheme, the party had promised an income support of Rs 72,000 per annum to the poorest 20% families.
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday issued a stay order on former PM Imran Khan’s in camera cipher case trial till January 11, noting “legal errors”. The short order was passed by IHC’s Justice Miangul Hasan Aurangzeb on Imran’s petition challenging the trial — being conducted at Adiala Jail — and subsequent developments, including the framing of charges and a gag order on the media. The written order states that the special court judge was conducting the trial on a daily basis per an earlier direction of the IHC, but this was set aside by the Supreme Court. It added that the special court judge was proceeding with a daily trial despite the apex court order and directed that further hearings be stayed “in order to prevent these proceedings from becoming fait accompli”.
The suspension of Opposition MPs “for the rest of the session” is pathbreaking, in that the phrase is not read as the last sitting of the Houses (they were adjourned sine die), but the day the President prorogues the session (which hasn’t happened, either). Suspended MPs are in limbo even outside Parliament ― those on the Estimates Committee, which is to tour Bengaluru and Tirupati, have been told to stay home, reports The Hindu.
The Delhi and Punjab tableaux have been left out of the Republic Day parade for the second year running, and AAP, which is in office in both states, attributes it to the BJP’s “dirty politics”. The BJP replied with its standard “don’t politicise” statement.
The asset quality of Indian banks is up, but only because of a record write-off of bad loans ― Rs 2.17 lakh crore, much more than Rs 1.79 lakh crore in the previous fiscal. Rs 10.57 lakh crore was written off in the last five fiscal years, of which Rs 5.52 lakh crore was owed by large industries.
Before the Madhya Pradesh polls, former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had promised women a subsidy of Rs 450 for gas cylinders, and it was paid into their bank accounts. After the polls, Chouhan is on the back burner, and so is his subsidy, reports NDTV.
Fourteen years after the death of a Special Forces jawan on duty in Kashmir, his aged mother is receiving a pension ― thanks to the intervention of the Armed Forces Tribunal.
PM Modi’s pet project of connecting 30,000 villages in 500 days under the BharatNet project has not taken off in most Gram Panchayats. Now, 514 days have passed, says Hindu Businessline.
The BBC says that parading women naked to settle scores has become normalised in India, where women are no longer safe. It’s a public spectacle, it’s on the record, and it’s about voyeurism.
A board meeting of the Shamli Municipal Council in UP turned into a fight club. Projects worth Rs 4 crore were at stake.
Communal politics underlies ethnic violence in Manipur
Though the conflict in Manipur is ethnic, communal forces are also at play, write Makepeace Sitlhou and Greeshma Kuthar in New Lines magazine. Since the violence began in May, 249 Meitei churches have been attacked. An RSS-backed campaign pressures Christians to convert to Sanamahism, the older faith of the region. At least two public personalities were summoned to meet the chief minister in 2022. There have been attempts to downplay or deny the role of extremist Sanamahi groups in the attacks against Meitei Christians, and to blame them on the Kuki-Zos.
Meanwhile, Justice Golmei Gaiphulshillu reserved the judgment on a review petition for inclusion of Meiteis in the Scheduled Tribes status order. There have been no written submissions from either side on the petition to review the controversial March 27 order on inclusion of Meitei in the ST list. Authored by former Acting Chief Justice MV Muralidharan, it had directed the state government to send a proposal on inclusion of Meiteis in the ST list to the Union government. It led to widespread protests from existing ST communities in the state
PM to lead Ram idol installation, not President Murmu
Five people will be present in the sanctum sanctorum of the Ram Temple when the idol is consecrated ― the chief minister and governor of UP, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, a priest and the PM, who will conduct all the Vedic rituals. The camera count is not disclosed. However, it is clear that President Droupadi Murmu will not be present. When the Somnath Temple was restored in 1951, after a mosque at the site was moved, Rajendra Prasad, India’s first president, was invited by KM Munshi to conduct the installation ceremony.
China irritated by India-Philippines naval exercises
China expressed discontent over joint naval exercises between India and the Philippines in the South China Sea, stating that defence cooperation should not harm third party interests or regional peace. Senior Col Wu Qian, spokesperson for the Chinese Defense Ministry, emphasised the need for cooperation to respect the sovereignty of involved nations. China, increasingly uneasy about external military partnerships with the Philippines, warned against interference in the maritime dispute. INS Kadmatt of the Indian Navy engaged in joint exercises with a Philippine vessel in the disputed region. China dismissed allegations that its coast guard used water cannons, and said that the Philippines’ intrusion was unwarranted. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague to adjudicate the South China Dispute decisively ruled in favour of the Philippines.
Caste flourishing in diaspora Down Under
Australia is home to a million South Asians, who have taken the caste system with them, says the South China Morning Post. Caste discrimination is not recognised by Australian law, officials don’t understand the phenomenon, and it flourishes across the sites of everyday life, “from the workplace to social gatherings and places of worship”. Apart from social discrimination, denial of living space and jobs on the ground of caste has been observed. The phenomenon is so pervasive that practitioners can comfortably deny its existence.
The Long Cable
India can’t emulate Israel’s apartheid and assassination politics and get away with it
MK Bhadrakumar
Indian diplomacy is ending 2023 with a momentous turnaround. What began as a course correction necessitated by the torrential flow of events in West Asia is assuming strategic overtones.
The aberration in India’s policies can be traced to UPA rule (2004-2014) but after 2014, it was accentuated phenomenally and began creating contradictions undermining national interests. This aberration also led to a serious erosion of India’s strategic autonomy in a transformative international environment.
India’s voting pattern in the UN on the Israel-Palestine conflict is lately marked by a calibrated distancing from Israel. Only a few weeks ago, Israel’s ambassador in Delhi bullishly described the Indian stance as “100% support”. That is no longer the case.
Delhi has rejected repeated Israeli entreaties to declare Hamas a terrorist organisation, marking its independent opinion regarding the ecosystem of resistance movements. This is a highly significant distinction that Delhi is making vis-a-vis the Israeli and Western narrative about Hamas. Although India has not hesitated to condemn the violence directed against Israel on October 7, it refused to name Hamas.
Considering that Hamas has a chequered past of receiving patronage from Israel, Tel Aviv has no right to expect Delhi to dance to its tune. Equally, Hamas’s future is far from certain. The fact that Sinn Fein and Irish opinion have shown empathy towards Hamas, or that South Africa, a victim of apartheid, has recalled its ambassador and diplomatic mission to Israel, calling the horrific Gaza killings “genocide,” go to show that the embers of national liberation struggles are still burning.
Although India expressed “solidarity” with the Israeli people over the brutal violence on October 7, it finds itself unable to condone the vastly disproportionate Israeli retaliation, blithely called Israel’s “right to self-defence”. On December 13, India finally voted in favour of a resolution in the UN General Assembly that demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
This was the first time India supported such a resolution since war broke out more than two months ago. It puts India on the right side of history, as the 193-member UNGA overwhelmingly adopted the resolution at an emergency special session, with 153 nations voting in its favour.
A third aspect is that from a geopolitical perspective, Delhi has marked its distance from the US-Israeli campaign branding Iran as the instigator of extremist groups acting against Israel. Interestingly, on December 19, India was one of only 30 states — along with Russia and China — who voted against a UN resolution on “the human rights situation in Iran.”
The running thread here is that India has reverted to its traditional stance on the Palestine problem and jettisoned the tilt supportive of Israeli interests. Unprecedented unity among the Arab countries, close coordination between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the huge groundswell of opinion in the Arab world against Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank — all this has created a new momentum in Middle East politics that has pitchforked the Palestine problem to centre stage, which India cannot afford to ignore.
Nor can Delhi be oblivious of the new reality that something has fundamentally changed in the dynamics of the Palestine problem after October 7. The Israeli ploys of dissimulation and evasiveness and the deliberate wrecking of dialogue and negotiations may no longer work. Indeed, Israel’s overwhelming military superiority over its Arab neighbours has lost its relevance. Coupled with the US’s loss of influence and America’s waning global hegemony, alongside the sharp polarisation of opinion within Israel, create grave uncertainties regarding the future of the state of Israel as it exists today.
India feels the need to adapt to the new conditions in West Asia, whose countries prefer to settle their issues by themselves, which in turn undermines the rationale behind the creation of Israel as a cockpit of Western strategic interests. The way out of this impasse lies in Israel reinventing itself. But the near civil war conditions in the country won’t permit that to happen.
An immediate fallout: India is unlikely to join the US-led alliance in the Red Sea, gearing up to wage a war on terror against the Houthis of Yemen. This is despite US efforts to involve the Quad countries in the Red Sea operations. By the way, Japan and Australia have dissociated themselves from joining the US-led coalition of the willing. Once again, Delhi will be guided by the consideration that the US’s ill-fated move to use military power against the Houthis has no takers among the regional states.
The US naval enterprise in the Red Sea is struggling to be born. The well-known ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson has written: “On paper, it would appear that Yemen is outnumbered and seriously outgunned. A sure loser? Not so fast. The US Navy, which constitutes the majority of the fleet sailing against Yemen, has some real vulnerabilities that will limit its actions.”
Johnson cites the expert opinion of Cdr Anthony Cowden, a US Naval Reserve officer, that given the current configuration of the US Navy as a ‘forward-based navy’ — as distinct from an ‘expeditionary navy’ — the “US Navy no longer has sufficient capability for sustaining expeditionary operations.”
Chief of Staff of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Mohammad Reza Naqdi was not far off the mark when he warned last week that the US and its allies are “trapped” in the Red Sea and should prepare for the closure of waterways stretching all the way to the western gates of the Mediterranean.
The Indian defence and security establishments have been unabashed votaries of India’s strategic ties with Israel. Such excessive adulation of the Israeli model as worthy of emulation by India was built on sheer naïveté, completely overlooking the fact that the two countries operate under vastly different conditions and national ethos. Whatever right-wing analysts in India may choose to believe, it is patently absurd to believe New Delhi can emulate Israeli methods of brutal repression or assassination as part of statecraft, apartheid policies and so on, and get away with it.
The incidents of October 7 have been an eye opener for Indians, which has exposed not only Israel’s frailties as a modern state but also its military’s bluster and intelligence failure. The acolytes of Israel in the Indian strategic community feel utterly disillusioned. Simply put, an influential constituency in India and the interest groups that it spawned are no longer calling the shots in Delhi. This is going to be consequential.
At the same time, the entire ideological underpinning of the present government’s tilt towards the Israeli leadership under Benjamin Netanyahu is unravelling. In a brilliant essay, Christophe Jaffrelot and Kalrav Joshi wrote that the emerging India-Israel alliance of recent years was anchored not only on the two ruling elites’ hostility to Islam but also on affinities between Hindutva and Zionism, characterised by “ethno-nationalist ideologies that prioritise factors like race, territory and nativism.”
Going forward, such affinities are going to be hard for the Indian elite to sustain, leave alone openly flaunt, as Israel turns into an apartheid state and gets battered by the forces of history.
(Excerpted from Indianpunchline.com. MK Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat.)
Reportedly
The prolonged delay in constituting a cabinet in Rajasthan has left BJP members, especially younger ones, baffled. CM Bhajan Lal Sharma has twice visited senior leaders in Delhi, but there is no clarity about the cabinet’s status or a swearing-in date. It’s difficult for young BJP MLAs who were hopeful of ministerial roles ― because the CM is a first-time MLA. But the BJP is disciplined and there’s no real protest.
Prime Number: 22K+
Over the past nine years (2014-22), over 22,000 people from Gujarat have renounced their Indian citizenship. This came to light when Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar Modi asked for the figures on August 10. Some 22,300 in Gujarat had surrendered their passports, making the ‘model state’ the third highest source of exits. Despite the hardships of illegal immigration, Gujarat’s village population remains committed to leaving.
Deep Dive
Soutik Biswas of the BBC explores the near-defunct archives of JS (Junior Statesman), the magazine in which a generation of India’s most interesting writers, from Khalid Mohamed and CY Gopinath to Shashi Tharoor and Jug Suraiya earned their spurs. Published from Calcutta, the magazine literally invented the urban Indian youth counterculture and invested it with depth, wit and cool, covering issues as diverse as Amitabh’s Zanjeer-era stardom, Paul McCartney’s life with Wings and India’s first metro excavations, right outside the Statesman office. Also read Al Jazeera’s 2021 story on the thousands of pages of the JS archive which surfaced in Mumbai.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
Ex-Army Chief Gen Naravane’s book Four Stars of Destiny spills the beans about the Agniveer scheme. It was thrust on the three services by the PMO and NSA to cut back on salaries and pensions, writes Maj Gen Ashok K Mehta (Retd).
“Does this government really need such a law [to oversee all of the media], given that most of the mainstream media rarely questions and is always ready to distract from real issues?” Kalpana Sharma looks back on a depressing year in the press.
An editorial in The Hindu says that the farm crisis is forcing young people to migrate illegally.
Deccan Herald says that the vandalisation of English signboards by the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike in Bengaluru has nothing to do with protecting or supporting the Kannada language.
Newslaundry minds the gap between the words and deeds of CJI DY Chandrachud in 2023.
Listen up
On the India Independent Films (iiF) podcast, film critics Rahul Desai, Uday Bhatia and Ishita Sengupta do a year-ender for Hindi cinema — featuring everything from Pathaan to Animal, Lakadbaggha to Goldfish.
Watch out
In the first edition of ‘Women Talking’, Emmy-nominated filmmaker Juhi Sharma speaks with Konkona Sen Sharma about her films, and the place of the much-overused ‘gaze’ in an industry that is all about the lens.
Over and out
Twenty-eight years after he vanished from Tamil Nadu, a murderer has been brought to justice by a special police team with the help of an old black and white photograph, cellphone tracking and clues provided by a retired postmaster, revenue officers, e-court records and a schoolmate.
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on January 2, 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.
Good job! Excellent news coverage. Inifite blessings.