Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Farooq Arrested and Stopped from Delivering Sermon; Sanatani Vigilantism in UP Along Kanwaria Route; Will RSS Chief Bhagwat and PM Modi Retire When They Turn 75 in September?
Karnataka’s Fake News Bill is too Vague and too Dangerous, Large Companies May be Allowed to Bid for New Banking Licences, Merely Expressing Support for Pakistan is no Offence says Allahabad HC
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable
Snapshot of the day
July 11, 2025
Sidharth Bhatia
As tens of thousands continued their pilgrimage to the holy cave shrine of Amarnath and days ahead of Jammu and Kashmir’s Martyr’s Day, moderate Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was stopped from delivering his weekly sermon at Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid and put under house arrest by authorities on Friday. In a post on X, Mirwaiz, who is also the chief cleric of Kashmir, attributed his detention to the alleged fears of “mention of the martyrs of 13th July 1931” in his sermon. “The sacrifice of these martyrs and all the martyrs since, is etched in the collective memory of Kashmir and cannot not be undone by restrictions and bans. No living nation can forget the supreme sacrifice of life of its martyrs against tyranny and injustice,” he said.
Mirwaiz appealed to the authorities to lift the restrictions and allow people to pay homage to the martyrs. “Inshallah if allowed as per our tradition, we will visit the martyrs graveyard on July 13th after Zuhr prayers and pay homage to the revered martyrs,” the post said. The ruling National Conference (NC) and the lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha’s administration’s disagreements over the former’s plans to commemorate July 13 as Martyr’s Day seem to have reached a boiling point. LG Manoj Sinha controls the top echelons of bureaucracy and the police department which, going by past instances, is unlikely to allow the commemorations this year.
The upcoming Martyr’s Day, which was scrapped as a public holiday in January 2020 after Article 370 was read down in August 2019, is the first after chief minister Omar Abdullah was sworn into office in October 2024. The NC, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), People’s Conference (PC) and J&K Apni Party have demanded restoration of July 13 as a public holiday to honour the 22 Kashmiris who were shot dead in Srinagar in 1931 by the Dogra army while protesting against the rule of Maharaja Hari Singh. The BJP has opposed the July 13 commemoration with senior party face, and leader of opposition in J&K assembly, Sunil Sharma triggering outrage across Kashmir last year after calling those killed by the Dogra army in 1931 as “traitors”.
A sadhu from Uttar Pradesh, Swami Yashveer Maharaj, has turned the Kanwar Yatra route into his personal stage for vigilantism – now armed with the Yogi Adityanath government’s high-tech QR code system meant for security and transparency, reports The Telegraph. On Wednesday, Yashveer and his associates roamed through shops and dhabas in Ghaziabad’s Mohan Nagar, scanning the QR codes meant to identify owners and staff, effectively using a government tool to further a communal agenda. Claiming a mission to “cleanse the Kanwar Yatra routes of non-Sanatanis,” he openly harassed shopkeepers, put pictures of Hindu god Varaha and also the bhagwa (saffron flag) at the shops – all under the guise of “guiding” kanwariyas on where to eat and shop. “I am not conducting any raid, but I am giving the shopkeepers a picture of Varaha and also installing the Hindu flag with ‘Om’ written on it. It is my mission to guide the kanwariyas on where they should take their meals or buy anything during the Yatra,” Yashveer told reporters. “I'll not allow any activities against Sanatan Dharma and will continue to purify the Kanwar routes,” added Yashveer, who receives security cover from the state government in the form of two constables.
A high-level Chinese defence delegation led by Lieutenant General Wang Gang, Chief of Staff of People’s Liberation Army Air Force called on Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmed Baber Sidhu, Chief of the Air Staff, Pakistan Air Force earlier this week at Air Headquarters Islamabad. During the meeting, matters of mutual interest, regional security dynamics and avenues of enhanced bilateral cooperation, particularly in the domain of airpower and operational synergy were discussed. Lieutenant General Wang Gang was given a comprehensive briefing on PAF’s modern force structure, strategic initiatives and the evolution of its operational doctrine. Chief of the Air Staff also reaffirmed the strong bond of friendship between the two Air Forces and reiterated Pakistan Air Force’s commitment to expanding cooperation in training, technology and operational domains. General Wang Gang expressed deep appreciation for the high state of operational readiness and the cutting-edge capabilities of the Pakistan Air Force.
India may soon see a fresh round of banking licences being issued after nearly a decade, as officials from the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are discussing ways to expand the banking sector to support long-term growth. These discussions are still at an early stage and no final decision has been made, the report said. According to Bloomberg, options being considered include allowing large companies to apply for banking licences with restrictions on shareholding, encouraging non-bank finance companies (NBFCs) to convert into full-service banks, and making it easier for foreign investors to raise stakes in state-owned banks. There has been no official comment yet from the Finance Ministry or the RBI. However, market reaction was visible. Key benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty declined for the third session in a row on Friday, dropping nearly 1%, dragged by heavy selling in IT, auto and energy stocks. Meanwhile, the rupee depreciated 19 paise to 85.89 against the US dollar in early trade on Friday.
Gautam Bhatia, acclaimed constitutional law scholar, writes on the ‘judicial order’ of yesterday’s hearing in the Supreme Court regarding Bihar’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. While noting the piece of abstract art that the SC produced, Bhatia writes,
“Ambiguity plays a vital role in art, where proliferating meanings and open endings can enrich the process of interpretation. But in a case of a judicial order, where the voting rights of masses of individuals turn upon words, ambiguity is the most profound exemplar of judicial abdication, of a court failing to do its job. And ambiguity is not neutral: it favours the party that holds power, the party that can shape ambiguity to its own ends – in this case, the Election Commission.
And finally, evasion completes the trinity of ambiguity, deferral and evasion: the Court gives no reason for its observations on these three documents (leading, once again, to civil rights becoming the gift of judicial patronage and negotiations rather than enforceable rights, as I’ve previously written), and does not engage with any of the other issues raised in the petitions (what, one might then ask, was this four-hour hearing for?). In short, the Court does not do its primary job, which is to pass a reasoned, judicial order on an important and urgent constitutional case brought before it. One may ask: if the Court is unwilling or unable to pass a reasoned order in this case – which goes to the heart of the democratic process – when will it ever do so?”
Yet another Indian team is going to visit the United States to continue the saga of trade negotiations and seek clarity on the new announcements made by President Trump’s latest stunt: a proposed 10% tariff on imports from BRICS countries. Despite a recent round of negotiations (June 26–July 2) led by Rajesh Agrawal showing “progress,” key issues in agriculture and automotives remain unresolved. Apparently, all these meetings still cannot seal even an interim deal.
Speaking of the India-US trade deal, in The Economist’s Essential India Newsletter, Emma Hogan touches on a bigger and important question:
“how will India fare now that America has a president who seems keen to strike deals with anyone—including, potentially, China? Under Mr Trump’s first administration, and then Joe Biden’s, India seemed destined to benefit from cooling ties between China and America. In a messier, multipolar world—with an American president who wants to be remembered both as a great dealmaker and a great peacemaker—it would lose some of that advantage. But as we’ve all seen in the past year, a lot can change in 12 months.”
Earlier this week a Delhi court sentenced one Lokesh Solanki to three years in prison for promoting enmity during the 2020 Delhi riots. Additional sessions judge Parveen Singh found that Solanki “added fuel to the already simmering tensions by spreading messages which were intended to promote enmity and hatred for [the] Muslim community”. Since he has already spent more time in jail as an undertrial, he was ordered freed subject to paying a fine of Rs 25,000.
A court in Gurugram on Friday sent Deepak Yadav, arrested for killing – at the family’s double-storey home in the upscale Sushant Lok area – his daughter and state-level tennis player Radhika Yadav, to police custody for a day. Deeepak Yadav has confessed to the crime. Outside the court, a police official told reporters that they had sought a two-day remand of the accused. Police said they were investigating all possible angles in the murder, including what the player’s mother was doing when the incident occurred. According to an FIR registered based on the complaint of the deceased’s uncle, Kuldeep Yadav, Radhika’s mother Manju Yadav was present on the first floor of the house when the shooting took place.
The controversy around the blocking of Reuters handles in India has reignited concerns about the opaque online censorship of journalists and social media accounts in the country. This week, in another standoff with the Modi government, X said it had blocked access to Reuters and over 2,300 other accounts on orders from the IT Ministry – a claim later denied by the government. This came months after X pointed out that the government had similarly ordered the blocking of over 8,000 accounts after Operation Sindoor. Among those temporarily blocked online included news portals like The Kashmiriyat, Free Press Kashmir, Maktoob Media, and BBC Urdu, as well as those of several journalists. Now, replies to an RTI application again point to the government’s refusal to share details of these blocking orders, citing “national security”.
The Supreme Court will hear cartoonist Hemant Malviya’s petition against a Madhya Pradesh High Court order denying him anticipatory bail on Monday, reports LiveLaw. Malviya was reportedly booked last month under various sections of the Bhartiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita and section 67(a) of the Information Technology Act over a complaint that alleged his cartoon tarnished the image of the RSS, incited violence, and hurt Hindu religious sentiments. The complainant reportedly identified himself as a member of the RSS and the Hindu community.
The Allahabad High Court reportedly observed that merely expressing support for Pakistan without referencing any specific incident or mentioning India by name does not prima facie constitute an offence under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). According to Bar and Bench, a bench of Justice Arun Kumar Singh Deshwal noted, “Merely showing support to Pakistan without referring to any incident or mentioning the name of India, will not prima facie attract the offence under Section 152 BNS...” It further stressed that spoken words or social media posts fall under the right to free speech and should not be narrowly interpreted unless they clearly threaten the nation's sovereignty or promote separatism. “…before invoking the Section 152 BNS, reasonable care and standards of reasonable person should be adopted as spoken words or posts on social media is also covered by the liberty of freedom of speech and expression, which should not be narrowly construed unless it is of such nature which affect the sovereignty and integrity of a country or encourages separatism,” the bench was quoted as saying.
Udaipur Files was scheduled to hit the cinemas today but the Delhi high court yesterday stayed its release, giving the petitioners – who argue that the film vilifies Muslims and amounts to hate speech – two days' time to seek the cancellation of the film's censor board certificate. The makers of the movie, which is about the 2022 murder of a Hindu tailor in Udaipur by two Muslim men, claim that it is actually about attempts by ‘external influences to sow seeds of hatred in India’, reports Shruti Kakkar.
RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra appeared before the parliamentary finance committee yesterday where, according to Animesh Singh, he brought the panel's attention to the central bank's finding that the number of counterfeit Rs 500 notes in the banking system in FY25 increased by 37% year-on-year to 1,17,722 banknotes; the total number of counterfeit notes of any denomination detected decreased by 2%. Singh also reports that MPs suggested the RBI not expand its remit and avoid conflict of interest; and discussed the declining number of banking mitras in rural areas.
The Calcutta high court sought a response from the Delhi government regarding the alleged detention of a migrant family from Bengal and their reported deportation to Bangladesh. The matter was heard by a division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra, reports LiveLaw. “We have had a similar matter yesterday, in that we said that before issuing a rule, we can seek a response from the state, so we will do the same in this case,” the bench observed during the hearing. The court also directed the Union home ministry to submit a report by Wednesday on the alleged deportation of six individuals, including minors, by the Delhi police, according to The New Indian Express.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said that if people write Bengali instead of Assamese as their mother tongue in the census, the government will be able to identify the number of “foreigners” in the state, reports The Hindu. “Nobody is affected by the threats ahead of every census about listing this or that language,” the chief minister told reporters. “They were made to believe that if more people do not speak Assamese, the language will become extinct. But the Assamese language will remain where it is.” He claimed that writing Bengali in census entries would “quantify the number of foreigners in the state”, not threaten the standing of the Assamese language. His remark came following a statement by student leader Mainuddin Ali who, during a protest against the state’s eviction drives, urged Bengali-origin Muslims not to list Assamese in census documents.
Buldhana MLA Sanjay Gaikwad has not only justified his beating a canteen employee in Mumbai earlier this week, he has tried to give the incident a Maharashtra-versus-South India hue. The Shiv Sena legislator told India Today TV: “Why was a contractor named Shetty given the contract? Give it to a Marathi person … South Indians run dance bars, ladies' bars and spoil Maharashtra's culture.” He also said: “My method [beating the employee on the grounds that he was served stale food] may have been wrong, but the goal was right. I will hit again if someone repeats such an act.”
Meanwhile, those associated with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena have been attacking people from north India in recent weeks. Now that its leader Raj Thackeray has publicly reconciled with Uddhav Thackeray, whose Shiv Sena faction is in the INDIA bloc, will the opposition alliance's prospects as the Mahagathbandhan face a setback in Bihar, migrants from where are victims of such attacks? Speaking to Anant Gupta, some opposition leaders in Bihar soft-pedalled the issue, but the Congress's Kaukab Quadri admitted that it was a big deal in his state.
Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann during a press conference yesterday mocked Modi's visit to a number of countries over the last week, suggesting that these nations were obscure and that Modi should have instead been in India, where (as per Mann) the same number of people gather to watch bulldozers in action as the entire population of those individual countries. The ministry of external affairs, although not naming Mann directly, said that his “irresponsible” and “regrettable” statements “undermine India's ties with friendly countries” of the Global South.
The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) sparked a controversy by cutting a 33-second kissing scene between Superman (David Corenswet) and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) from James Gunn’s ‘Superman’, set for release today. According to media reports, the CBFC found the kissing scene, sensual and inappropriate for the U/A 13+ rating. The move aligns with the CBFC’s history of trimming intimate scenes in Hollywood films to cater to Indian sensibilities, but it has drawn criticism from fans and viewers who argue that the board applies double standards.
After the rescheduling of India’s tour of Bangladesh, Cricbuzz reports that Sri Lanka want to play a white-ball series with the Men in Blue in the same window. Notably, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) recently postponed India’s upcoming white-ball tour to Bangladesh, which was originally scheduled for next month. In light of this schedule change, it has been known that at least two cricket boards, one of them being Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), have put forward proposals to host a limited-overs series to fill the newly created void in India’s calendar.
As Modi turns 75 in September, RSS chief’s remarks stir discussion on retirement
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat’s remark on stepping aside at the age of 75 has sparked a sharp debate on if these words were actually meant for Modi, who, along with Bhagwat, turns 75 this September. Speaking at a book release dedicated to late RSS ideologue Moropant Pingle in Nagpur on Wednesday evening, Bhagwat said, “Moropant Pingle once said that if you are honoured with a shawl after turning 75, it means that you should stop now, you are old, step aside and let others come in … This was his (Pingle’s) lesson. Moropant Pingle taught the RSS to work without any propaganda and to retire after seventy-five years,” Bhagwat said.
Bhagwat will turn 75 on September 11 this year, just six days ahead of Modi, who the Opposition has been speculating will retire after getting there. Following Bhagwat’s comment, the Congress’ communications chief Jairam Ramesh said on Friday that Modi had been reminded by Bhagwat that he will turn 75 in September. Ramesh added: “But the prime minister could also tell the RSS chief that he too will turn 75 on September 11, 2025! One arrow, two targets!” Congress MP Abhishek Singhvi said that “preaching without practice is always dangerous”. Meanwhile, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi told ANI that it was a “clear message” that was “directed at the person who is going to celebrate his 75th birthday in September...”
Air India crash probe zeroes in on pilot actions, fuel control switches
Investigators probing the fatal June 12 crash of an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Ahmedabad are focusing on the actions of the flight’s pilots, with preliminary assessments not indicating any fault with the aircraft, reports The Wall Street Journal. According to the report, preliminary findings suggest the switches controlling fuel flow to the plane’s two engines were turned off, resulting in a sudden and complete loss of thrust. The switches in question are normally kept on throughout the flight. Pilots use them to start the engines, shut them down or reset them during certain emergencies. It remains unclear how or why these switches were turned off or whether there was an attempt to turn them back on before the crash occurred.
The Air Current, an industry publication, earlier reported that the investigation had narrowed its focus to the engine fuel control switches. While early assessments offer valuable leads, they can often be contradicted as new data and interpretations emerge over time. Some of those familiar with the matter have expressed concerns about the slow pace of analyzing and sharing data from the aircraft’s black boxes. As the aviation world awaits the preliminary report from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), questions remain about the circumstances that led to the catastrophic crash.
Allocations for Modi-heavy Pariksha pe Charcha rise as other schemes see declining funds
Expenditure on the Pariksha pe Charcha initiative, the centrepiece of which is programmes where the prime minister interacts with students, teachers and parents, has increased by 522% over the last seven years – from an allocation of Rs 3.67 crore in its inaugural year in 2018 to Rs 18.82 crore this year. Allocations under this initiative typically go towards managing events, producing broadcast content, digital promotion as well as setting up ‘selfie points’ featuring cutouts of Modi. This increase in allocation comes even as a number of other schemes, such as those of the Department of School Education and Literacy, as well as scholarships for minority students or overseas studies, have suffered tightening purse strings, writes Ankit Raj.
The Long Cable
Karnataka’s fake news Bill is too vague and too dangerous
Shreiya Maheshwari
When the draft of Karnataka’s Misinformation and Fake News (Prohibition) Bill, 2025 quietly surfaced online last week, it immediately exposed the fault lines in India’s struggle with the perils of a digital age. While ostensibly framed as a bold plan to rein in rampant online disinformation, the details of the proposal deeply unsettled digital rights and civil liberty advocates. Behind the language of public interest lies a framework that risks criminalising speech, granting those in power unchecked authority to decide what is true and punishing those who disagree.
At first glance, the bill’s objectives appear hard to dispute. Its statement of objects and reasons recognises that India, with over 600 million active users, has become a fertile ground for misinformation. At The London Story, we have documented how doctored images, communal dog whistles, and outright lies, often circulated by politicians, right-wing influencers, and troll networks, have flooded online spaces, fuelling violence.
The consequences are tangible. During the India–Pakistan conflict in April-May 2025, coordinated disinformation campaigns erupted on both sides. A report by CSOH found that social media platforms, particularly X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, became battlegrounds for virality, where AI-generated fabrications and false war narratives shaped public perception and our report Escalate traces how this digital propaganda became a catalyst for real-world violence following the Pahalgam terror attack.
However, legislation that grants sweeping powers to criminalise speech without clear definitions, independent oversight, or meaningful safeguards risks turning a legitimate effort to combat disinformation into an instrument of repression.
Too Much, Too Vague, Too Dangerous
The bill begins by laying out an unusually broad definition of “fake news,” including misquotations, edited clips that alter context, and fabrications, potentially sweeping in AI-generated content. It then introduces an even wider category of “misinformation,” where a partially inaccurate statement made “knowingly or recklessly” becomes a criminal offence. While it excludes satire, opinion, or artistic expression, those protections hinge on how a “reasonable person” would interpret the content; an inherently subjective standard.
The penalties are significant: a minimum of two years and up to five years in prison for misinformation, plus fines. These are harsher than many existing provisions on defamation or incitement, raising concerns about proportionality.
Enforcement would lie with a new “Fake News on Social Media Regulatory Authority,” chaired by the Information Minister and staffed by legislators and government-appointed ‘social media representatives’. There is no inclusion of subject matter experts, fact checkers, lawyers, or civil society. This Authority would be empowered to label posts as false, order takedowns, and block accounts. The potential for selective targeting of dissenting speech is significant when the same actors who are subject to scrutiny also retain the power to decide what qualifies as misinformation.
In Kunal Kamra v. Union of India, the Bombay High Court recently warned against allowing the government to act as the final arbiter of truth online, emphasising the need for checks on executive power to protect the guarantee of free expression under Article 19(1)(a) and prevent censorship masquerading as factual correction. The Karnataka bill ignores that warning entirely.
Its scope is also disturbingly broad. The Authority is tasked not only with curbing fake news but also content deemed “anti-feminist,” obscene, unscientific, or disrespectful of “Sanatan” symbols. This term, left undefined in the draft, carries deep political weight. While Sanatan Dharma has traditionally referred to core Hindu values, as noted by the Madras High Court in Kishore Kumar v. P.K. Shekar Babu (2024), it is increasingly used by right-wing groups to assert Hindu nationalist ideologies. Our research has found that a substantial portion of violent Islamophobic content has originated from networks, influencers, and vigilante groups using ‘Sanatani’ as a unifying label, including cow protection militias.
This raises serious questions about what qualifies as a “Sanatan symbol.” While Om or traditional deities may seem obvious, the definition could easily extend to the saffron flag or militant Hanuman imagery, symbols increasingly tied to Hindutva pride. The bill offers no clarity, leaving satire, critique, or analysis of such symbols vulnerable to criminalisation. It risks shielding not just religious belief but majoritarian ideology from scrutiny, blurring the line between faith and majoritarian assertion.
The bill’s bail provisions compound the risk. If opposed by the Special Public Prosecutor, it requires the judge to be satisfied of the accused’s innocence, reversing the presumption of innocence and making prolonged pre-trial detention likely. As with many judicial processes in India, the process becomes the punishment, with a possibility of legal harassment and reputational damage, all before any guilt is proven.
This vagueness is not a trivial flaw. As the Supreme Court warned in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India nearly a decade ago, laws that rely on broad and subjective categories become tools to chill legitimate expression. The result is a climate of self-censorship, where critical views and satire are not shared due to fear that a stray complaint could trigger arrest.
International Disinformation Regimes
Supporters may point to Europe as proof that democracies can regulate disinformation, but successful international models are different, both in design and oversight.
France’s Law Against the Manipulation of Information targets deliberate disinformation during elections. It requires transparency in political ads and allows courts, not political appointees, to order takedowns. The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in 2024, takes a structural approach. It avoids criminalising misinformation altogether and does not attempt to define it in law. Instead, it requires platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks from disinformation to democracy, public safety, and health.
Rather than define “truth,” the DSA promotes accountability through transparency and systemic reform. Platforms must adjust algorithms, demote manipulative content, and label high-risk material, without policing individual speech. It also establishes a network of Trusted Flaggers: independent, expert entities designated by regulators, whose takedown notices must be prioritised. These flaggers must meet strict standards of independence, accuracy, and transparency. Crucially, none of Europe’s frameworks criminalises contested speech or hands governments unchecked power to decide what counts as truth. In India, where expression is already under siege, the consequences of poor legislation are amplified. According to the Status of Policing in India Report 2023, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they were afraid to express political opinions online. In BJP-ruled states, that fear is acute. If Karnataka enacts this bill, it risks joining jurisdictions where the right to speak survives in name, but is rationed in practice.
It’s true that India faces a disinformation crisis and platforms have often failed to stem the tide. But the solution cannot be to criminalise questionable posts or hand sweeping censorship powers to politicians. Public outcry has already prompted Karnataka’s IT Minister to concede that “a lot of misinformation” clouded the draft and to promise broader consultation. This is a crucial opportunity to rethink the approach. Instead of criminalisation, the state should invest in independent fact-checking and impose proportionate obligations on platforms to address demonstrable harms. Any regulatory body must be politically independent, transparent, and offer clear avenues for appeal.
Ultimately, the fight against disinformation must empower citizens and not police them. If Karnataka is serious about defending democracy, it must scrap this bill and build a model that protects both public safety and the right to think, question, and speak without fear.
(Shreiya Maheshwari is a senior researcher at The London Story Foundation and a New Delhi-based lawyer.)
Reportedly
The incident in which a Shiv Sena (Shinde) MLA Sanjay Gaekwad slapped a canteen employee and attacked ‘south Indians” for allegedly running dance bars brings back memories of the very early days of the Shiv Sena in the 1960s when the party founder Bal Thackeray exhorted his hordes to go after ‘lungi wearers’. Should Gaekwad’s actions be seen in the light of the two Thackeray cousins coming together? It is an intriguing thought, since Raj Thackeray’s party activists have been beating up Bihari migrants and others for not speaking Marathi. Will this lead to competitive goon-like behaviour? Given that such violence runs in the very life-blood of Shiv Sainiks and the crucial civic elections are coming up in Mumbai, this cannot be ruled out.
Pen vs sword
Deep dive
Important and useful piece from Aashish Gupta and Murad Banaji on what the pandemic years’ death registration data reveal of the scale of India’s Covid-18 tragedy. They write:
“We see that nationally there were around nine times as many excess deaths as reported Covid-19 deaths. But the variations are huge. At one end of the spectrum, Kerala appears to have captured the great majority of its excess deaths as official Covid-19 deaths. At the other end, states such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Bihar saw eye-watering disparities between reported Covid-19 deaths and excess deaths, with more than 20 times as many excess deaths as reported Covid-19 deaths.
That official Covid-19 data from these states almost entirely failed to capture the pandemic toll was the backdrop to propaganda dressed up as science. For example, the 2021 Economic Survey included bold statements such as “Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Bihar have restricted the case spread the best”, a statement entirely at odds with both seroprevalence and mortality data. Meanwhile, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur released a highly publicised report praising the Uttar Pradesh government’s stellar management of the pandemic resulting in low pandemic mortality. On the other hand, our own extrapolations from local reports suggested there could have been a quarter to half a million second-wave Covid-19 deaths in Uttar Pradesh, consistent with the civil registration system data now available.”
Prime number: almost $1 million
Tesla announced on Tuesday that it will open its first showroom in India, in Mumbai's Bandra Kurla complex. Dhwani Pandya and Aditi Shah report that between January and June this year the company has imported close to $1 million in cars, chargers and accessories, largely from China and the US. Among the cars are five Model Ys with a shipment value of $32,500 (~Rs 28 lakh) each. The Elon Musk-run firm will need to pay a roughly 70% import tariff on these imported cars as well as other duties.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
Ashok Lavasa, former Election Commissioner of India, who was hounded out for his independence explains why the EC’s manner of intensive revision of electoral rolls, just prior to Bihar elections is “unprecedented, illegal and will end up disenfranchising many voters”.
Why are India and China doing business in spite of the way Beijing supported Pakistan during the Sindoor operation? Christophe Jaffrelot writes.
General Zamir Uddin Shah, who served in the Indian army for 40 years, shares his angst at being trolled as ‘anti-national’. He says that when he is asked to “go to Pakistan” his retort is “I have already been to Pakistan (Sindh) and camped there for six months, after the Battle of Longewala (December 1971-and that too without a passport or visa.” Yet he refuses to live under “constant suspicion or fear.”
Brics began as a grouping of 'emerging market heavyweights’ Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but now is a ‘diffuse and contradictory cluster’ of 11 countries ranging from the west-friendly Saudi Arabia and ‘entrenched foes’ such as Iran. “The enlargement also upset what was a delicate balance between democracies and autocracies", comments the editorial board of the Financial Times. If it does not want to fade into irrelevance like the G77, it should focus on issues such as global governance.
Bhutan expelled around 100,000 Nepali speaking Bhutanese citizens in the 1980s and ‘90s and rendered them stateless. Many of them found their way, after rigorous vetting, to the United States. Now the Trump administration is rounding up Bhutanese refugees and sending them back to Bhutan, “the very nation that tried to erase us”, writes Lok Darjee, founder of Refugee Civic Action. More than two dozen legal refugees in the United States have been deported, and this has “shattered the fragile sense of safety we once believed America guaranteed.”
Listen up
“To shift the onus of establishing identity or citizenship on the voter,” as the Election Commission seems to be doing in Bihar, is “fraught on principle in a democratic country”, says Ashwani Kumar, a senior advocate and former law and justice minister in the Union government. Against the backdrop of some distrust developing against the EC in recent years, the commission “now has the duty to dispel to the satisfaction of all concerned that its … SIR [special intensive revision] will not be exclusionary”, he tells Sidharth Bhatia.
Watch out
The issue of the Dalai Lama's succession once he passes is “not going to be easy to deal with”, but at any rate India must “keep dealing with whoever the Tibetan people choose, as we have done so far”, says former national security adviser and ambassador to Beijing Shivshankar Menon. And how would the Chinese government respond to such a stance? It “could make it a big issue or it may choose not to do so. At the moment, we don’t know”.
Over and out
Producers Sugandhi Gadadhar and Rana Belur initially set out to make a short film introducing the otter, but when they got to shooting along the Kaveri river in Karnataka, the scope of their film, My Otter Diary, expanded to the challenges that the animals face, including increasing conflict with humans. One pernicious problem is the decrease in the quantity of fish in the river, amid which a number of otters have resorted to stealing from already-desperate fisherfolk, prompting some of them to retaliate. Rana points out that “the conflict is because of what we are doing to the river”. Aisiri Amin reports.
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