Ram Temple & Advani’s Sour Grapes of Rath; Punia to Return Padma Shri; Macron Says 'Oui' to R-Day, After Rafale-Marine Bid, Biden 'No'
LOC in Manipur, Houthi attacks to raise inflation, lower exports, Indian polishers brace for Russian diamond ban, all metros have low ridership, women struggle to be heard in Indian media, Imroz dead
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 22, 2023
Pratik Kanjilal
After US President Joe Biden pulled out, following the Pannun fracas, France’s President will be the chief guest for Republic Day. Emmanuel Macron would be the sixth French chief guest, making France the top invitee. This would also be the second time under the Modi government. The last time the French President was here for Republic Day, he was trying to sell Rafale jets to the IAF. Now, will it be the marine version, for the Indian Navy?
After wrestler Sakshi Malik announced her retirement because a close associate of former Wrestling Federation chief Brij Bhushan Singh succeeded him, Bajrang Punia has announced that he will return his Padma Shri award in protest.
Some Hindutva groups which see themselves as the originators of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement are incensed because they think that Modi has hijacked the religious project and turned it to political use, Abhik Deb reports.
Days after Narendra Modi and a senior functionary of the RSS spoke against a nationwide caste census, the RSS has course-corrected. Its publicity chief Anand Ambedkar clarified yesterday that the “Sangh is not against caste census, but such an exercise should be used to achieve overall development of society while ensuring that no harm is caused to social harmony and unity.” Modi’s stand is not in line with that of Ambedkar or Home Minister Amit Shah, who had said in the run-up to the Chhattisgarh Assembly elections that the party has “never opposed the idea of caste census”. Shah’s statement was to counter the Opposition Congress’s promise to carry out a caste census if it returns to power. The current contradictory statements by the BJP and its ideological fount is an attempt to keep the issue ambivalent, pending the 2024 parliamentary elections.
As shipping lines avoid the Suez Canal route due to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, Indian exporters expect freight rates to rise 25%, along with insurance premiums, at the expense of trade. Exports, already in decline, would suffer, and the cost of capital goods and raw materials could rise.
The Ministry of External Affairs has said that Indian embassy officials extended consular access three times to Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national awaiting extradition in the Czech Republic to the US, charged with attempting to eliminate a Sikh separatist on the instructions from an Indian government official. Gupta’s family had filed a habeas corpus petition in the Indian Supreme Court, urging the Indian government to intervene in extradition. His lawyer Rohini Musa says that Gupta had only received one consular meeting, on July 19. Another appointment was made but it didn’t happen because Gupta was transferred to another prison.
Retail borrowing is surging as Indians use it to fund discretionary purchases. It is an indicator of distress in an aspirational society, in which people must depend on cheap credit to fund non-essentials. It is also raising the risk of defaults.
A hacker claims to have the details of 2.9 million fibre and landline subscribers of BSNL and is hawking them on the Dark Web.
After six Nepalese recruits fighting on the Russian side were killed in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Kathmandu is waking up to the fact that its nationals have enlisted on both sides as career soldiers, due to poor prospects for the youth at home. Only India and the UK have the right to enlist soldiers from Nepal, under the Tripartite Agreement of 1947.
Australia batter Usman Khawaja was reprimanded by the ICC for wearing a black armband during the Test match against Pakistan. The rules don't allow players to display “personal messages” without prior approval from the cricket council, though Khawaja contested this, citing past instances of players sporting stickers or shoes with writing without approval or consequences. Unlike the message he sported on his shoes during training, which he has said was an apolitical reference to the carnage in Gaza, Cricinfo quoted him as saying that the armband was for a “personal bereavement”. Khawaja will contest his reprimand.
After Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir’s first official visit to Washington, India yesterday remarked pointedly that New Delhi hoped that other countries would treat counter-terrorism with due seriousness. Munir met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defence General Lloyd Austin, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q Brown and others.
At least five soldiers were killed and two others injured when terrorists ambushed two Army vehicles passing through Dera Ki Gali in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir. The Army had been conducting an operation in the area. A Gypsy and a mini truck en route from Bufliaz in Surankote to Thanamandi in Rajouri was ambushed by terrorists.
The Delhi High Court has ordered the Centre and the Delhi Government to consider representation within three months in a PIL filed seeking direction to link movable and immovable property documents of all citizens with their Aadhaar numbers to curb corruption, black money generation and benami transactions. The Delhi High Court refused to pass any order because it is a policy matter, but told the Union government to weigh in.
A Line of Control within an Indian state: a Manipur MLA’s son says that he cannot travel from Churachandpur to the capital, Imphal.
India may miss the WHO’s 2030 cervical cancer mitigation strategy, finds IndiaSpend. Delay in including the HPV vaccine in India’s immunisation programme (the vaccine is expensive otherwise) and a lack of awareness about vaccination, other preventive measures or common symptoms are important obstacles.
Gaza is facing a “catastrophic” and unprecedented hunger crisis. The UN says that the entire population may face acute food insecurity in the coming weeks. Hopes of a temporary pause in fighting to allow another prisoner exchange receded as Hamas rejected talks until Israel halted its military onslaught. A UN resolution to increase aid flows is stalled, with the US demanding changes. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has said that Meta has been systematically silencing voices in support of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook. More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, including a huge number of children.
Excerpts from and stories about former Army chief MM Naravane’s memoir are out, but the government is yet to clear the content, which it does for all publications by people who have held sensitive positions. The book is to be released in January.
A single tweet illustrates how fast the house of Hyderabad has fallen.
The painter and poet Imroz, who shared a life with celebrated Punjabi writer Amrita Pritam, has died aged 97 in Mumbai.
Indian polishers brace for Russian diamond ban
India’s diamond polishing industry is steeling itself after the announcement of a ban on Russian diamond imports. The G7 and the EU said they would ban non-industrial diamonds from Russia on Jan 1 and then block third-country imports of diamonds originating from Russia in March, and implement a tracing system in September. An old friend of Russia, India has 90% of the world’s diamond cutting and polishing industry. In talks with G7 leaders, it has sought more clarity.
All Indian metros have low ridership
In keeping with the august tradition of Indian Railways, not a single metro system earns enough to cover costs. What explains the reluctance of commuters to hop aboard their shiny new, delightfully air-conditioned metro carriages, asks The Economist. “Not one of India’s metro rail systems has achieved even half its projected ridership, according to a study by Geetam Tiwari and Deepty Jain of IIT-Delhi. Only their own city’s network, which is the longest and most expansive in India, comes close, at 47%. In Mumbai and Kolkata ridership is a third of what was projected. In most other cities it is in single or low double digits. In gridlocked Bangalore, India’s tech-and-traffic capital, a much ballyhooed metro’s first line attracts just 6% of its projected ridership. That is despite the fact that the average speed for cars during Bangalore’s rush hour is 18 kmph, the slowest of any major city bar London, according to TomTom, a navigation-software firm.”
Women struggling to be heard in Indian media
After years of reporting in India, Emily Schmall of the New York Times says that women have to fight to be heard in Indian news media, whether they’re journalists or their sources. The right does not brook criticism, particularly from women, and women journalists face maximum trolling and threats, and are weighed down by SLAPP suits. And it is difficult to interview a rural woman without her menfolk and the community weighing in. In what is called the ‘godi media’, a woman in authority tends not to be concerned about women’s problems, especially if they show the government in bad light.
Foreign care workers exploited in UK
The BBC reveals the shocking exploitation of overseas care workers at a care home in northeast England. Nurses and care workers from overseas are eligible for skilled worker visas in the UK and must be sponsored by an employer. If they quit, they must find another post within 60 days or leave.
Balakrishnan Balagopal’s BBC Panorama investigation reveals their rampant exploitation, under contracts preventing them from leaving. Balagopal took the job of care assistant at Addison Court in Crawcrook – one of 15 care homes in the northeast owned by Prestwick Care – and worked there from September to November. It came out that care workers are being charged thousands of pounds by an Indian recruitment agency and that nurses are locked into lengthy contracts with care homes, with large financial penalties if they leave early. Earlier this month, the UK also announced changes to skilled worker visa regulations, which will come into effect next spring. According to the new rules, overseas care workers will no longer be able to bring families with them to the UK.
The Long Cable
The Ram Temple and LK Advani’s (sour) grapes of Rath
Sidharth Bhatia
The Ram Temple Trust has ‘requested’ veteran BJP leaders LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi not to come to the inauguration of Maryada Purshottam Shri Ram Janambhoomi Mandir on January 22. They are “elders” of the family, a Trust official said and because of their age and health they were advised to stay away. Advani is 96 and and Joshi will turn 90 next month.
This touching concern for their health was apparently not shared by the VHP, which promptly invited both to come. So now the decision lies with these two elders. Will they show up?
What a downfall it has been for both, especially Advani, the architect of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, whose yatra in 1990 paved the way for next month’s inauguration. Setting out in his Toyota converted into a rath, a chariot, he toured the country campaigning for a Ram temple in place of the Masjid which had stood there for 400 years, leaving death and destruction in his wake, mainly of Muslims.
In December 1992, the Masjid was brought down — a telling image then is of Murli Manohar Joshi hugging Uma Bharati — and more violence against Muslims followed, which engulfed Mumbai.
The political gains became clear soon after — the first Shiv Sena-BJP government was formed in 1995, followed by a BJP-led coalition in Delhi, headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1996. He remained in power till 2004. Ten years later, Narendra Modi took office. It is during his term that the Supreme Court awarded the Babri Masjid site to a gaggle of indivduals and groups linked politically to those who brought the mosque down, thereby legally endorsing what the vandals were demanding — and now the temple is ready to be inaugurated.
It is obvious therefore that Advani can be credited — if that is the word — for not just Narendra Modi’s rise but also the temple. To be not invited to its opening therefore must hurt.
Not just that — Advani supported Modi, under whose rule Gujarat had seen brutal violence against Muslims in 2002, at a time when the BJP leadership wanted to remove him. And when Modi became PM, he did not acknowledge Advani’s debt. Modi and his senior colleagues were relegated to the ‘Margadarshak Mandal’, a bogus body of elders who would guide the party, which has never been heard of again. Putting them out to pasture meant that they have simply disappeared from public life. An entire generation has no clue who Advani or Joshi are. For them, Modi rises above everyone else, and he can do what he likes.
But reading about the treatment meted out to the elders of BJP — in a society which is supposed to respect senior citizens — a question emerges: How should we react when Messrs Advani and Joshi are treated so disrespectfully? Should we feel bad? Should they have been invited to see the results of their hard work? Or is this just genuine concern about their age and health?
Many journalists and others who have met Advani say he is extremely courteous and polite. Indeed, this is said of several BJP leaders of that era. Yet, somehow, it is very difficult to muster up any sympathy or righteous indignation at their plight. Anyone who was around at the time will recall India was riven by the rath yatra and what came after, how it brought out the ugliest in our society, how the country’s secular ethos was shattered in the worst possible way. That was the beginning of the emergence of a virulent strain of communalism, which manifested itself not only as violence on the streets, but also showed up among urban, educated types who suddenly discovered their Hindu roots. In polite drawing rooms, urban sophisticates started talking about why Hindus needed to assert themselves in ‘their country’. Anti-minority sentiment was expressed freely.
The virulent communalism seen in family WhatsApp groups now had its beginnings then. Twenty five years after LK Advani’s cynical rath yatra, the BJP came to power and we have all seen what has happened since.
At this moment, watching what we have become and where we are heading, we may fall into the trap of thinking those were simpler, more innocent days. They were not. The rath yatra too was a grab for power using religion, but it succeeded only up to a point. The Vajpayee government was in a coalition where the partners acted as a brake to the more nefarious plans of the BJP (though even then there was interference in education, history and culture). The institutions held steadfast — the media was not so craven, the judiciary was independent and Parliament asked questions. And the Indian public, unconvinced by the tall claims of India Shining, threw out Vajpayee and his government in 2004.
Today we have no such respite, no checks and balances. Much of the media lies prostrate, the judiciary has decided to fall in place, the Opposition parties can’t seem to get their act together and most frightening of all, the Indian public is in full Bhakti mode, supporting the government and Narendra Modi in everything, even when its own interests are being hurt. All this is a result of that rath yatra.
So when an “elder”, the progenitor of today’s India, is humiliated by his successors, it is difficult to feel bad for him. He is merely paying his dues.
Prime Number: 83 in 78
The next year will be the biggest election year in history, with 83 national elections in 78 countries around the world, and highlighting the rise of right-wing parties amid heightened anti-media populism. News organisations face challenges and smaller journalistic and fact-checking ventures will play a crucial role in bridging divides. Internationally, challenges persist in conflict zones like Ukraine, the Middle East, and East Africa. Critical issues include climate action, migration, economic security and navigating a shifting global order. The year 2024 will also see rapid acceleration in artificial intelligence, which will raise ethical and security issues.
Deep Dive
Hamish McDonald on Narendra Modi and the Indian diaspora: “Hindutva has wide support among Hindus living outside India, who simultaneously favour a chauvinistic, majoritarian ideology in India while negotiating recognition and rights in their new homes as a “model minority”. The era of the good Indian immigrant is over and after according Modi a tumultuous welcome as an alternative to Beijing, democracies uncomfortable about Hindutva are distancing themselves from him.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
Missed target: Sushant Singh on the Army’s bizarre quest for a weapon which never existed.
The young intruders who made their way into the Lok Sabha were fearless and knew the consequences of their action, writes Neera Chandhoke. Think of their profound disappointment when they realised that the people they had elected to parliament… were supremely indifferent to the needs of their own people. They might well have said-we asked for jobs, we got temples instead. They reacted in the only way they could – with courage.”
If, as is said, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, writes Jug Suraiya, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar should applaud Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee’s mimicry of him instead of being affronted.
Harris Amjad writes that India’s anti-China electricity trade rules could backfire. Efforts to freeze out Chinese investment in power projects in South Asia will do little to improve India’s economic or soft power in the region.
“The CBI and the ED have absolute freedom to do what is not authorised under the judgments of the Supreme Court,” says Dushyant Dave about the string of misadventurous searches that the agencies have been used in.
“We assume that temples were always part of Hindu culture. But historians present a far more complex story. The early dharma-sutras, composed in the Mauryan times, do not refer to temples,” writes Devdutt Pattanaik on how Hindu temples have evolved.
Listen up
As the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases ― though the per capita rate is low ― should India set a higher bar to mitigate and adapt to climate change? On The Hindu’s ‘Parley Podcast’, Karthik Ganesan and Harjeet Singh discuss with Kunal Shankar.
Watch out
Broken is a powerful black and white photo essay on the Dalits of India. Asha Thadani has been chronicling the lives of Dalits for seven years, travelling the country to discover men and women in roles that are no longer visible, unless you look for them, or are seen in the movies ― goat head burner and professional mourner, for instance. She also depicts lives that are visual acts of defiance, like the Ramnamis, who wear the name of god, like a chant made flesh and drapery. This is the true face of a country that projects itself as a world-teacher, but does not believe in social justice.
Over and out
Nandita Das on raising her son Vihaan, the special skills that our times require of parents, and the experience of raising a child in film city. An excerpt from Rashmi Uchil’s Raising Stars in Scroll.
Revival: Diya Kohli writes for Condé Nast Traveller on the people reclaiming Kolkata’s heritage, from restaurants to restorations, jazz clubs to heritage homes. A range of people from Ezara Parikh to Malavika Banerjee are helping an old city adapt to the new.
An art gallery from the remote past is not firmly dateable because almost no organic dyes were used, but murals discovered in the Andriamamelo cave in western Madagascar may have been drawn in the time of Cleopatra, and they shares motifs and characteristics with cave art in Borneo, almost 5,000 miles away access the Indian Ocean. Like Socotra, Madagascar is yet another island connection between Asia and Africa.
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.