India Expresses Guarded Concern Over Israel’s Attack on UN Interim Force in Lebanon; Indian Nazi Propagandist in Hitler’s Germany; Guj Journo Mahesh Langa Sent to Police Custody; Modi Lost His Mojo?
India abstains from UN resolution on monitoring human rights in Russia, India expresses concerns over theft of Kali crown offered by Modi in Bangladesh, Noel Tata becomes chairman of Tata Trusts
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sushant Singh, MK Venu, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Tanweer Alam, Siddharth Varadarajan and Seema Chishti | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
Snapshot of the day
October 11, 2024
Sidharth Bhatia
India, for the second consecutive year, abstained from a United Nations (UN) resolution on Thursday that extended the mandate of the special rapporteur tasked with monitoring the deteriorating human rights situation in Russia. The resolution, which passed with 20 votes in favour, eight against, and 19 abstentions, called attention to the “continued significant deterioration” of human rights under the Russian government.
While countries from the Global South, including India, largely abstained, Western nations overwhelmingly supported the resolution, reflecting a stark divide in global attitudes towards Russia. Notably, China, Cuba, and other states aligned with Mosow opposed the resolution outright. India's decision to abstain is in line with both its close ties with Russia and its traditional squeamishness about the human rights records of countries being probed by the UN.
Israel’s attack on a UNIFIL post on the Israel-Lebanon border has prompted a statement of concern from India – which has 900 soldiers in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon– but a guarded one, which pointedly refrains from identifying the source of the threat: “We are concerned at the deteriorating security situation along the Blue Line. We continue to monitor the situation closely.
Inviolability of UN premises must be respected by all, and appropriate measures taken to ensure the safety of UN peacekeepers and the sanctity of their mandate.”
India has raised strong concerns with Bangladesh over the theft of the crown of goddess Kali at Jeshoreshwari Temple which was offered by Modi during his visit to the neighbouring country in 2021. The Indian High Commission in Dhaka is in touch with the local authorities regarding the matter and have urged them to recover the object and bring the guilty to book. On October 10, the gold-plated crown was discovered by the temple’s cleaning staff as having gone missing. Bangladesh newspaper Prothom Alo reports the temple’s priest Dilip Kumar Mukherjee as having said that he left the temple at 2 pm on the day. “A little later, cleaning staff entered the temple. They informed us after a while that the crown was missing,” he said.
A day after the Samajwadi Party declared six candidates for bypolls in ten Uttar Pradesh seats scheduled to take place later this year, it has said the INDIA bloc is “intact” in the state and that it would fight the election together with the Congress – although Mayank Kumar reports that the grand old party said it was not informed of this decision and that no talks were held with the alliance’s coordinating committee.
Kumar also reports that all six SP candidates are from a PDA – pichda, Dalit and alpsankhyak – community. The party’s focus on PDA candidates was a big part of its general election campaign and messaging, but Omar Rashid notes that the Allahabad high court is currently hearing a petition challenging the legality of an SP candidate’s invoking the PDA idea to gain votes in the May elections. The petitioner, an associate of the BJP’s losing candidate in Mohanlalganj, says the SP candidate’s invoking PDA violated the Representation of the People Act, which bars appeals for votes in the name of caste and community (among other things). The court is scheduled to next hear the matter in November.
Ratan Tata’s half-brother Noel Tata has become the chairman of the powerful Tata Trusts, which is a body composed of philanthropic bodies that control 66 percent of Tata Sons giving it effective control of the vast Tata empire. The low-profile Noel is already on the board of two trusts.
The Union government has released Rs 1,78,173 crore in tax devolution to state governments, with Uttar Pradesh receiving Rs 31,962 crore, more than the combined amount allocated to all five Southern states. Among Southern states, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana together received Rs 28,152 crore – 15.8% of the total funds, compared to Uttar Pradesh’s 17.9%. This disparity has raised concerns, especially as South Indian states have frequently alleged they are not receiving their fair share of the divisible tax pool. Critics argue that the unequal distribution reflects an ongoing North-South divide and raises questions about the fairness of federal resource allocation, despite the Southern states’ significant contributions to the national economy.
The Hindu’s Senior Assistant Editor Mahesh Langa on Wednesday was sent to police custody for ten days in connection with tax fraud allegations. However, his lawyer has said there were no transactions or signatures made in his name. Speaking to The Hindu, Langa’s lawyer Vedanta Rajguru said his client was neither a director nor a promoter of the DA Enterprise company, which has been named in the FIR in the case. DA Enterprise is owned by Langa’s relative Manoj, while Langa’s wife is a silent partner in it, The Hindu noted, adding that the police’s remand application claimed that Langa ran the company in Manoj’s and his wife’s names.
The Press Club of India, Delhi Union of Journalists, Indian Women’s Press Corps, and the Press Association on Thursday expressed concern over the arrest and 10-day custody of Langa, a “well-known and fearless” journalist whose “reports on developments related to Gujarat have been widely appreciated.” “Even as we feel the law should be allowed to take its own course, we feel that a custodial interrogation of Mahesh Langa is a procedural overreach and perhaps a means to harass an individual whose name doesn’t feature in the primary FIR,” the statement from the media groups read.
The silence in the media about the arrest of Langa is deafening. The Telegraph’s Editor at Large R Rajagopal writes on the multiple concerns that this development has evoked in him.
When asked for the number of citizenship applications it received under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the number of applicants who received citizenship and the number of pending applications, the Union home ministry said the information was not readily available and that the central public information officer was “not required to create or compile the information” for supplying it under the RTI Act, reports Vijaita Singh. The journalist Praveen Swami observes that it is “an impressive technological feat to design an online application system that keeps no record of the number of applications it receives”.
Has Narendra Modi lost his mojo? asks The Economist, which also has some key pointers. After the results of the Haryana and J&K Assembly elections, the sobering takeaway for Modi is that the BJP seems to be growing less reliant on him to win votes. It says,
“… his party appears to be growing less dependent on him to win votes. In Haryana, he held just four rallies during the election campaign, compared with ten in 2014 and six in 2019. In Jammu & Kashmir, he held four. And BJP candidates in both polls focused more on local issues than on his image as a muscular, infallible leader. That could spell trouble for him if rivals in the BJP launch a leadership bid in the future. The big question now is how the results will affect the next state elections, especially one in Maharashtra due by November 26th. Regional factors will probably dominate there, too, but the results from Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir could strengthen the BJP’s hand in seat-sharing talks with coalition partners while weakening Congress’s bargaining power. The outcome in Maharashtra will determine whether the BJP can consolidate its apparent comeback from the general-election upset.”
The Maharashtra cabinet, led by Eknath Shinde, has urged centre to raise the income threshold for the “non-creamy layer” category. The proposal seeks to increase the current limit from Rs 8 lakh to Rs 15 lakh per year, thereby expanding reservation benefits to more individuals within the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. This decision comes as the state approaches the Maharashtra Assembly elections, expected to be held later this year. The Cabinet also approved a draft ordinance to accord constitutional status to the Maharashtra State Scheduled Caste Commission. The ordinance would be tabled in the next session of the legislature and 27 posts have been approved for the commission, the statement said.
In July, the BJP government in Haryana had also increased the non-creamy layer ceiling for the Other Backward Classes from Rs 6 lakh per annum to Rs 8 lakh per annum. The decision was taken ahead of the Assembly polls in the state in which BJP won the Haryana election.
Meanwhile, spot the winners.
(Credit: Sandeep Adhwaryu in The Times of India)
Both the ruling Left Democratic Front and the main opposition United Democratic Front in Kerala passed a resolution in the state assembly yesterday urging the Union government to withdraw its one nation, one election plan, saying it indicated the RSS and BJP’s desire to centralise power and is detrimental to parliamentary democracy and federalism.
Writer and activist Arundhati Roy has been awarded the PEN Pinter Prize 2024, an annual award set up by English PEN in the memory of playwright Harold Pinter. Shortly after having been named for the prize, Roy announced that her share of the prize money will be donated to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. She named Alaa Abd el-Fattah, British-Egyptian writer and activist, a ‘Writer of Courage’ who she would share her award with. Read her acceptance speech for the prize, delivered yesterday evening at the British Library, London.
Lokniti reveals what J&K voters think about statehood, Article 370
A large majority of respondents living in Jammu and Kashmir (81%) believe they will have a better future if their territory becomes a state, and well over half (66%) thought statehood will aid better governance, the Lokniti program’s survey shows. Majorities of respondents also said that upon J&K’s becoming a Union territory, electricity supply, prices of essentials and corruption went up, while terrorism, employment and the security of common people went down. However, majorities did not think the abrogation of Article 370 brought about a deterioration in development, law and order, tourism or efficiency. Lokniti also found that unemployment figured as the most prominent issue for voters in both Jammu and Kashmir, and that a good chunk of people felt the Union government was discriminating against the people of either division to at least some extent.
Food inflation + static midday meal budgets = cutbacks in healthy ingredients
Sixteen of 21 government school teachers from across four states that Reuters spoke to said that food inflation combined with the state of the budget for midday meals was making it hard for schools to provide nutritious meals to students. The news agency notes that while food inflation has averaged 6.3% between June 2020 and June 2024, the minimum midday meal budget per primary and upper primary school student has not been increased since October 2022. The economist Dipa Sinha points out that cuts in nutritious midday meal ingredients occur in a country where roughly 50% of people do not have access to a healthy diet.
Fisherwomen in Karaikkal struggle against patriarchal panchayats
Informal village panchayats in coastal Tamil Nadu’s Karaikkal have considerable control over the social and economic lives of villagers. And not one of the 51 across Puducherry – of which Karaikkal is a part – have women members, and there was a time when women weren’t even allowed to be present at their meetings. In this special report for The Wire, Shamsheer Yousaf, Monica Jha and Sriram Vittalamurthy document how these patriarchal panchayats – which can enforce boycotts if they do not get their way – have affected local women’s lives and how the latter have organised themselves into sangams with aid from an NGO to navigate the system.
The Long Cable
‘Pandit’ Bhatta: From scholarship holder to Nazi publicist
Baijayanti Roy
In May 1939, Walther Wüst, professor of ‘Aryan Studies’ at the University of Munich and an upwardly mobile officer of the notorious Nazi paramilitary organisation, the SS, appealed to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, to provide financial assistance to send an Indian man to India as an agent of Nazi Germany. This agent was to conduct “cultural politics,” which denoted, in this context, both propaganda and espionage. Along with this appeal, Wüst submitted a positive “evaluation” of the person in question. The Sicherheitsdienst or SD, Nazi party`s powerful and sinister secret service controlled by the SS, also sent a favourable report of this prospective agent to Himmler, who then agreed to Wüst`s proposal. However, the scheme was stalled due to the onset of the Second World War.
The agent in question was Koodavuru Anantrama Bhatta (b. 1908), who represented, like few other Indians living in Nazi Germany, the convergence between knowledge of India and Nazi politics. “Pandit” Bhatta, as he came to be known, studied Sanskrit and Pali in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). From 1929 to 1932, he taught Sanskrit at Vidyalankar College near Colombo. Bhatta arrived in Germany in 1932 with a scholarship provided jointly by the India Institute of the Deutsche Akademie (German Academy) and the Humboldt Foundation. He started a dissertation on “Shaivism in Sanskrit dramas” under Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, professor of Religious Studies and Indology at the University of Tübingen. Hauer, like Wüst, was an ardent Nazi and a member of the SS. Though it is not clear whether Bhatta ever completed his PhD, Hauer considered him to be his “most capable student,” while Bhatta referred to Hauer as “my dear, revered Guru” in their correspondence. By 1944, Bhatta was passing on information on contemporary India to Hauer who used them to compose secret reports for the SS which developed an interest in this British colony.
Bhatta, who mastered German well, regularly delivered public lectures on behalf of the Nazi organisation, “Strength through joy” (Kraft durch Freude) which sought to make ordinary Germans appreciate National Socialist ideals. Bhatta also lectured at meetings organised by the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) for boosting the morale of the soldiers. He was considered an “exceptionally reliable” Indian by Alfred Rosenberg`s department which watched over the “spiritual and ideological indoctrination and education” of the Nazi party. Alfred Rosenberg was a member of the Nazi ruling elite and the chief ideologue of the Nazi party. His department gave permission to the Nazi party to deploy Bhatta occasionally for the German Volksbildungswerk, which also aimed to spread Nazi worldviews through public lectures.
During the war, probably through the mediation of the Karl Haushofer, professor of Geography at the University of Munich whose geopolitical views found acceptance among German right-wing circles, Bhatta published three articles in the Journal for Geopolitics (Zeitschrift für Geopolitik) which Haushofer edited. After 1933, this prestigious journal had become increasingly responsive to the demands and interests of Nazi politics. The three articles by Bhatta dealt with aspects of contemporary India that were considered important by the Nazi regime. The essays were on: (i) Internal problems of India (July-December, 1939). (ii) British defence politics in India (January-June, 1940), (iii) Political scopes of different parties in India (July-December, 1940).
Bhatta also published texts on India in German newspapers including the Nazi party`s mouthpiece, Völkischer Beobachter (‘The People’s Observer’) a rare feat for an Indian. A similar “achievement” of Bhatta was to publish an article in 1942 on “The youth movement in India” in the magazine “Will and Power” (Wille und Macht), the propaganda organ for Nazi youth edited by the “Reich Youth leader,” Baldur von Schirach. Bhatta also propagated the virtues of Nazism in India, as evidenced in a long article written in Kannada and published in a south Indian journal, the date of publication of which is lost. The article, titled ‘Youth and Young women’s movement in today’s Germany,” glorified the Hitler Youth Movement.
Due to his reputation as a publicist approved by the Nazi regime, Bhatta was named the editor of the bilingual (English/German) Azad Hind magazine, which was published in Berlin from 1942 to 1944. It was the journal of the Free India Centre (FIC), established in Berlin jointly by the German Foreign Ministry and Subhas Chandra Bose, who had landed in the German capital in April 1941, seeking Germany’s help to drive the British from India. Bhatta`s role as an editor of Azad Hind was largely representational, as the actual editing was done by other anti-colonial Indians from the FIC.
Notable among the few articles written by Bhatta for Azad Hind is one titled ‘Loyal India’ (9/10, 1942). This pro-German essay blamed the Indian “princes ruling their nominally independent states, as well as their less regal counterparts—the landholders and indigenous capitalists —for betraying their own people and their motherland in supporting Britain and fighting Germany.” Another article, “Subhas Chandra Bose and his struggle,” published in 1943 (Issue 5/6) expressed reservations about the “compromising politics” of Gandhi and the right wing politics of the Indian National Congress and criticised them for failing to mobilise the masses for a violent overthrow of British rule. It is doubtful whether Bhatta actually wrote this article, which went against German wartime policy of praising both Gandhi and Bose.
Bhatta`s articles advocating Bose and his politics that appeared in the Nazified German press are likely to have been actually penned by him. In May 1942, for example, he wrote an article titled “Fighter for India: Subhas Chandra Bose`s path” for the Pariser Zeitung, an organ of the Nazi occupying authorities in France. This article scrupulously followed the parameters set by Nazi politics.
Similarly, Bhatta`s article on the celebration of Gandhi’s birthday by Bose and the FIC, published in the Völkischer Beobachter in October 1942, toed the German line. This event and such articles reflected the change in Germany’s propaganda policy towards India after Joachim von Ribbentrop became Germany`s Foreign Minister in February 1938. Ribbentrop was keen to use Indian nationalist aspirations for Germany’s benefit as war with Britain looked inevitable. Under his influence German propaganda began to express its strategic support for the Indian anti-colonial movement led by Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. The aim was to destabilize the British Empire by stirring up political disturbances in its most profitable colony. Supporting Subhas Chandra Bose was another manifestation of this policy.
In 1943, a book titled Indien im Britischen Weltreich (India in the British Empire) appeared under Bhatta`s name as a part of a book series on India, published by the ‘Special Department India’ (Sonderreferat Indien or SRI) of the German Foreign Ministry. The SRI was set up in 1941 in response to the demands of Subhas Chandra Bose. Publication of a series of books on India, both as a propaganda venture and to provide utilisable knowledge to German policy makers and press representatives, figured at the top of the SRI`s work plan. The eight books of the series were ostensibly authored by four Germans and four Indians. Actually, however, the manuscripts of the Indians were rejected by the editor of the series, the Indophile Franz Josef Furtwängler, on the advice of the Indologist Ludwig Alsdorf. The manuscripts by the Indians were rewritten by Furtwängler, Alsdorf and the Indologist Hermann Beythan. This distrust was largely due to Alsdorf`s (and Furtwängler`s) racialized prejudices against Indians.
Nevertheless, it is a testimony of Bhatta`s political acumen that he capitalised on “his book” by sending a copy to Franz Alfred Six, high-ranking SS officer (Oberführer) and important functionary of the SD, in 1943. In the same year, Six had become the head of the “Cultural Political Section” of the Foreign Ministry which controlled the SRI. Bhatta had met Six in 1939 through the mediation of Hauer. In his answer to Bhatta, Six claimed that he would read the book as soon as he could find time, adding that he had heard from his staff that “your book represents an especially valuable contribution to German-Indian collaboration,” thereby acknowledging the propagandistic worth of such politically useful knowledge.
Bhatta`s last archival trace is an undated letter that he wrote from a farm in the French zone of occupation in south Germany to Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947. In this letter, Bhatta requested the prime minister of independent India to include him in the Indian Embassy that was soon to open in Switzerland. Through the letter, Bhatta presented a highly manipulated version of his time in Germany. He claimed that he consistently defended India in the German press, for which he was imprisoned by the Nazi authorities for two weeks in 1939. Only the threat of a hunger strike could induce the SS to release him. Bhatta`s letter makes it clear that the British knew about his collusion with various Nazi organisations and were searching for him. The Indian External Affairs Department replied tersely in a letter dated 1st April, 1947, that there was no vacancy in the Indian Embassy in Zurich.
(This is an essay based on The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism: Knowledge Providers and Propagandists in the ‘Third Reich’, by Baijayanti Roy, published by Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2024.)
Reportedly
As his retirement in November approaches, Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud is in a reflective mood. "As my tenure is coming to an end, my mind has been heavily preoccupied with fears and anxieties about the future and the past."
"Did I achieve everything I set out to do? How will history judge my tenure? Could I have done things differently? What legacy will I leave for future generations of judges and legal professionals?" , he was quoted as saying in a lecture in a law school in Bhutan. Many people have suggestions on what he could have done differently. Advocate Sanjoy Ghose’s list includes-judgements on Ayodhya, Article 370, Pegasus, Electoral bonds, Justice Loya death investigation, etc.
Deep dive
“Indian economic and strategic involvement in the Middle East has seen a transformation over the past two decades. This development has happened as many observers remark a gradual decline of US influence juxtaposed with China’s growing presence in the region. This article aims to assess how India has managed its bilateral relations with China within this region of increasing economic and strategic interest. Despite a growing literature on the China-India rivalry in Southeast Asia, South Asia or Central Asia, there is a notable dearth of scholarship on the China–India rivalry and its implications in the Middle East.” Filling this gap, Nicolas Blarel “focuses on explaining how India has adapted its policies towards China’s rising influence in Middle Eastern politics” arguing that “India’s strategy has been shaped by both a perception of declining US’ engagement in the Middle East and by opportunities created by new strategic hedging strategies from key regional players such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran.” Wade into the academic paper here.
Prime number: 1,000+ Despite India banning child marriages under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, over 1,000 cases of illegal child marriages were reported in 2022, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) revealed. Karnataka recorded the highest with 215 cases, followed by Assam with 163. These alarming figures highlight the persistent failure of authorities to enforce laws and protect vulnerable children.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
After roaring growth in recent years, India’s economy is losing momentum, writes The Economist. “Its GDP growth rate eased to 6.7% between April and June, the slowest expansion in more than a year. More recent data suggest that the slowdown has continued”.
Bharat Bhushan says that the Haryana victory has emboldened Modi to gaslight Congress. Modi has accused the Congress of being “the largest factory of hate,” writes Bharat Bhushan, which he says, is “absurd”.
Read an excerpt from Ramachandra Guha’s Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism on naturalist M Krishnan, who wanted to make cities hospitable to nature.
The Congress’s loss in Haryana isn’t all bad for the Maha Vikas Aghadi as far as the Maharashtra polls are concerned: it will strengthen Sharad Pawar’s leadership of the alliance, “thus making it a more cohesive unit and a fighting force”, Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari argue. They add, however: “Things will settle for the MVA only if it sees the Congress defeat in Haryana as a blessing.”
Ratan Tata's Global Vision Should Still Be India's writes columnist Mihir Sharma, arguing that India should benchmark itself with the world, like the industrialist did.
Listen up
The number system we use today, often called Arabic numerals, actually originated in India. While the West relied on Roman numerals, India used the numerals 1 through 9. In the 7th century, Brahmagupta revolutionised mathematics by inventing zero in its modern form - transforming it into a number that could express any value, from nothing to infinity. This groundbreaking concept spread along trade routes to Baghdad, where scholars embraced and expanded India's mathematical system. For more on this history, listen to Empire Podcast, where William Dalrymple and Anita Anand discuss India’s Empire of Numbers.
(Credit: @DalrympleWill)
Watch out
This powerful short film captures the remarkable rejuvenation of Hauz I Shamsi, one of Delhi’s most historic water reservoirs. Nestled in Mehrauli, the site of Delhi’s first capital complex, Hauz I Shamsi was constructed in 1230 CE under the visionary guidance of Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, Delhi’s first Sufi saint, and the Sultan of the Slave Dynasty, Iltutmish. Once a vital lifeline for the city, this 800-year-old water body has suffered decades of neglect and urban expansion, falling prey to encroachment, waste dumping, and environmental degradation.
Over and out
Ratan Tata is gone but his legacy permeates so many aspects of our daily lives: from the tea we drink, the buses we commute in and the steel buckets we carry water in to the cool air that blows in our homes in the summer. The AP’s Ashwini Bhatia has a photo feature commemorating this legacy.
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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