India’s Russian Oil Imports in Troubled Waters as Gatik Set to Lose Certification; Protesting Women Wrestlers Facing Institutional Betrayal

Manipur CM claims 40 ‘terrorists’ killed, expert sees bleak future for cheetah project, ‘sengol’ myths exposed, abysmally low wages at India’s largest vegetable mandi,

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Tanweer Alam and Pratik Kanjilal | With inputs from Kalrav Joshi | Editor: Vinay Pandey

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Snapshot of the day

May 29, 2023

Vinay Pandey

The Delhi high court on Monday issued notice to Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik in a plea by the National Investigation Agency seeking the death penalty for the separatist leader in a terror funding case, Bar and Bench reported. During the hearing, Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh said that the NIA’s comparison of Malik to dreaded terrorist Osama bin Laden might not be correct. “We can’t compare this gentleman with bin Laden because bin Laden never stood trial anywhere,” the bench told solicitor general Tushar Mehta.

An uneasy calm prevailed in conflict-hit Manipur, a day after a sudden spurt in clashes and firing between militants and security forces, officials said on Monday. Union home minister Amit Shah is to reach Imphal on Monday; he is likely to conduct a security review meeting and also bring representatives of the Meiteis and Kukis together for a discussion over ways to resolve the ongoing ethnic turmoil.

The death toll in Manipur from clashes a day before rose to five on Monday as three more people who were undergoing treatment in hospitals succumbed to their injuries, PTI reported, quoting officials. Chief Minister N Biren Singh told reporters on Sunday that the security forces have been conducting encounters against armed insurgents and “40 terrorists” have been shot dead. The Manipur police on Saturday detained three security officials, including one of inspector rank, belonging to the 103 battalion of the Rapid Action Force for allegedly trying to set fire to a meat shop in Imphal.

India’s imports of Russian oil are in trouble as Lloyd’s Register has told the Mumbai-based Gatik Ship Management company, which has become a major carrier of Russian oil since the Ukraine war, that it will withdraw certification of 21 of its vessels by June 3, reports Reuters. It is the latest setback for Gatik, which has also been forced to find new flags for 36 of its ships after they were deflagged by the St Kitts & Nevis International Ship Registry.

The Indian Space Research Organisation on Monday successfully placed NVS-01 – a second-generation navigation satellite – into the intended Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), using a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket with a cryogenic upper stage to do the job. At the end of a 27.5 hour countdown, the 51.7 metre tall, 3-stage GSLV lifted off at a prefixed time of 10.42 a.m. This was the GSLV’s 15th flight.

Hard data from 2022-23 does not justify the gung-ho optimism of talking heads in the media on the economy. While consumer goods sales for higher income groups are growing rapidly, at the lower end conditions are not much better than on the eve of the pandemic, indicating stretched conditions, says Vivek Kaul.

Writing in Le Monde, Christophe Jaffrelot wonders whether it was necessary for France to make Narendra Modi the guest of honour on Bastille Day (July 14) when India has turned its back on international law and respect for democracy. 

“Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party not only receives unprecedented media coverage during election campaigns, but also record-breaking funding. The BJP’s 2019 campaign budget is estimated at more than €3 billion, money that has allowed it to flood the public space through television and social media. This spending was made possible by new rules for political funding that make donations from individuals and companies very opaque.

“Above all, Indian democracy is literally put on hold between elections. Parliament is just a rubber stamp, judges are reduced to nominating Supreme Court candidates who are acceptable to the government, which otherwise blocks their appointment. The electoral commission, which organises the polls, formulates its decisions in line with government expectations, anti-corruption agencies, such as the one responsible for enforcing the laws on information, are headed exclusively by BJP loyalists, and the same goes for the Central Bureau of Investigation.”

On Sunday, Prime Minister Modi inaugurated the new parliament building – under construction for more than three years – in an elaborate ceremony packed with Hindu rituals and ‘all-faith prayers’ as an also-ran. The inauguration was boycotted by opposition parties, which said the President, not the PM, should have inaugurated the building. 

Modi installed a monarchical symbol of power, a “sengol” (sceptre), near the speaker’s high chair. He prostrated himself before the golden sceptre before it was handed over to him by the Adheenams, priests of Saivaite mutts in Tamil Nadu. He invoked democratic structures of early India like “ganas” and “sanghas” to claim that India is the “mother of democracies”, and that democracy for Indians was not only “a system” but “a tradition, a belief”.

Outside in the streets, world champion wrestlers and their supporters got a taste of Modi’s democracy when the police brutally broke up their demonstration. The wrestlers have been protesting against the alleged sexual harassment of seven female wrestlers, including a minor, by the Wrestling Federation of India chief who is a BJP MP. Ironically, Singh was inside Parliament listening to his leader extol the virtues of Indian democracy.

This short video clip provides a fair idea of how much respect Modi has for democracy.

Top wrestlers Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia, Vinesh Phogat and others were dragged, lifted off the road and put into police vans when they tried to cross security barricades. They were released late in the night. In an FIR against them, the Delhi police have accused them of rioting. The police said they stopped the protesters at Jantar Mantar because the new parliament building was being inaugurated and its security could not be “compromised”. Police are adamant they will not allow the wrestlers to resume their protest at Jantar Mantar. If they apply for permission to continue their protests, they will be allowed to do so at “a suitable place other than Jantar Mantar”. 

A group of more than 1,150 rights activists, former civil servants, lawyers, writers and others have issued a statement condemning the Delhi police action on protesting wrestlers on Sunday. They have demanded the immediate arrest of Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and the immediate release of all detained wrestlers and activists.

“At a time when the institution of parliament is seriously imperilled, there are perhaps two things that are more important than the politicking over who gets to inaugurate the new building. The first is the new building itself – how and why it was conceived and what it symbolises. Second, the choice of Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar’s birth anniversary as the date of the inauguration,” writes Ronojoy Sen.

To the venom that Savarkar was, we only find an antidote in Gandhi, writes Tamil writer Jeyamohan.

“Who will stage the inaugural walkout?” Cartoonists chuckle over India’s new parliament building.

In 1947, CN Annadurai, future chief minister of Tamil Nadu, wrote: “This sengol sent to Pandit Nehru is no gift offering. Or a symbol of love. Or for that matter, an expression of patriotism. It is a request to the future rulers of India that they spare the Aadheenams and not take away their wealth and glory … by offering this to our rulers, the Aadheenam is seeking their friendship … so that their fame and domination do not wither away.”

Contrary to reports that the “sengol”, installed in Parliament on Sunday, was “mislabelled” as Jawaharlal Nehru’s walking stick, a retired curator of Allahabad Museum, Dr Onkar Anand Rao Wankhede, said that the item on display at the museum was simply titled “Golden Stick”. There was no mention of either Nehru or “walking stick” as the BJP has been claiming.

India should fence two to three habitats for cheetahs as there has never been a successful reintroduction into an unfenced reserve in recorded history, South African wildlife expert Vincent van der Merwe said in an interview with PTI. He cautioned that the reintroduction project is going to see even higher mortalities in the next few months when cheetahs try to establish territories and come face to face with leopards and tigers in the Kuno National Park.

Despite demands from several communities to be counted as a separate religion, the next census will only count Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain as distinct religion options, reports the Hindu. Adivasis in Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, and Odisha have been demanding the inclusion of their Sarna faith as a separate religion, as have Karnataka’s Lingayats. Though individuals can write the name of any other religion in the census form, no separate numerical code will be provided, which means they would be counted merely as ‘others’ or even as Hindus.

The monsoon is likely to be below normal over northwest India this year, the IMD has said. It has also said that the rain in June would be below normal over the country.

Despite the slogans of “Act East” and “Neighbourhood First”, the Modi government is unable to counter what is going on between Bhutan and China, reports Suhasini Haidar. A land deal between the two involving Doklam directly affects India’s security.

Delhi University’s academic council, the apex decision-making body on academic matters, approved several changes to the undergraduate syllabi on Friday, including removal of a unit on Muhammad Iqbal and introduction of a new course on VD Savarkar. While the content on Iqbal, the poet who penned “Saare Jahan se Achha” and was later designated the national poet of Pakistan, has been removed from a course titled “Modern Indian Thinkers” taught to BA students, the new course on Savarkar will be offered as an elective to students who opt for a BA with Political Science as one of the subjects.

The chief ministers of 10 states – Bihar, Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal (all ruled by non-BJP parties) – skipped the eighth meeting of the governing council of NITI Aayog, chaired by Prime Minister Modi on Saturday.

The south Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Karnataka have the strongest state economies in India, accounting for over 30% of India’s GDP; Tamil Nadu, with a GSDP of ₹24.8 lakh crore at current prices, is the biggest economy in south India.

Source: @Paul_Koshy/Twitter

Most “savarna” professors consider themselves above casteism, but tacitly exclude Dalit Bahujan students with abstract theory, alien pedagogy and gatekeeping. Read about embedded casteism of academia in India to find out how research methods/academic dense-speak by foreign-educated “savarna” professors “other” Dalit Bahujan students in elite classrooms and more.