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Snapshot of the day
September 22, 2026
Anirudh S.K., Kalrav Joshi
Donald Trump addressed the UN General Assembly on Tuesday at a tumultuous moment for the world – and for his presidency. He dredged up familiar grievances against the institution, alongside offering a striking description of himself: a peacemaker prosecuting a war. Trump defended the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran and said he now faces a “big decision” between striking a deal with Tehran and “annihilating” the Islamic Republic, while predicting a deal after the midterm elections in November and urging other countries to isolate Iran economically in the meantime.
For India, the speech had another familiar refrain. Trump again claimed that he ended eight wars, including by brokering a truce between India and Pakistan last year, despite New Delhi firmly denying this. He attributed his ability to broker the settlements to his “very special relationships”, trade, the use and threat of tariffs and other factors depending on the country. “Almost every one of these countries wrote me a letter of ‘thank you’. The prime minister of Pakistan, terrific man, said that ‘Donald Trump was responsible for saving 30 million lives and probably many more than that’.”
Trump’s address comes about a day after a new grouping reiterated the need for middle and smaller powers to join hands while under pressure from major powers (read the US). This is the ‘Partners for Multilateralism’ or P4M Initiative that Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, India, Kenya and the European Union are co-sponsoring. Its founding declaration warns of “growing polarisation, the spread of conflict, violations of international law and the increasing resort to power politics, protectionism, coercion and the threat or use of force”, echoing Canadian PM Mark Carney’s acclaimed ‘rupture’ remarks from earlier this year. P4M is batting for reform and wider representation but – given its varying views on what that would entail – is yet to chart out a plan.
External affairs minister S. Jaishankar represented India at the P4M’s summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session. His remarks, the mildest at the event, did not dwell on any particular countries or instances of the breakdown of the international order. He only said that the grouping meets “at a time when the global order is under stress” from “extreme competition, geopolitical tensions and actual conflicts”.
No one who conscientiously objects to singing Vande Mataram ‘would be subjected to penal action’, the Supreme Court said today. It told the petitioner, the Carnatic musician T.M. Krishna, that it will look into whether the government’s recent actions impinge on the rights of such objectors. These actions are (i) its amendment of the 1971 Prevention of Insults Act, which now criminalises ‘causing a disturbance’ to recitations of Vande Mataram, and (ii) requiring recitation of not just the standard two but all six stanzas of Vande Mataram, which contain Hindu overtones, at certain official functions. Justice Joymalya Bagchi said:
“It is for the democratically elected state to decide and give aspiration to the nation as to what is the national song, two stanzas or four stanzas[, is]. But nobody who feels an infraction of Article 25, 26 rights [to religious freedom] or a conscientious objector would be subjected [to penal consequences].”
But senior advocate (and former chief justice of the Orissa high court) S. Muralidhar, who appeared for Krishna, argued that the Modi government’s six-stanza order is unbecoming of a decision involving nationwide implications as with Vande Mataram. “This is why when you use the term ‘national’, there has to be some building of a public opinion. It has to be by consensus. You can’t thrust it and you cannot have penal consequences,” he had told the bench.
Speaking of unbecoming actions,
