SC Takes Suo Motu Note of Judge Making Sexist and Communal Remarks; The Crimes Committed in the Name of the Sweet and Innocent Cow
Three FIRs filed against Rahul Gandhi for remarks made in the US, No clarity if Modi will meet Donald Trump, Why does ISKCON make Maneka Gandhi angry
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
September 20, 2024
Siddharth Varadarajan
With the upcoming elections in Haryana, three FIRs have been filed against Leader of Opposition and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in various parts of Chhattisgarh, accusing him of hurting the religious sentiments of the Sikh community with remarks made during his recent visit to the United States, police reported on Friday. Two of the FIRs were registered on Thursday—one at the Civil Lines police station in Raipur and the other at the Bilaspur Civil Lines police station. A third FIR was lodged on Friday at the Kotwali police station in Durg district. These cases were based on complaints from BJP leaders, with similar grievances being reported in other districts across the state. The charges against Gandhi fall under sections 299 (deliberate and malicious acts intended to insult religious beliefs or outrage religious feelings of any class) and 302 (intentionally hurting religious sentiments through words, gestures, or objects) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. In his complaint, state BJP spokesperson Amarjeet Singh Chhabra alleged that Gandhi’s comments—questioning whether Sikhs would be allowed to wear a turban or a ‘kada’ and visit Gurdwaras in India—offended the religious sentiments of the Sikh community.
Speaking of which, Zee Entertainment, the co-producer of BJP MP Kangana Ranaut’s film Emergency, has told the Bombay High Court that the censor clearance is being delayed because the BJP is sceptical that the film may affect its prospects in the upcoming Haryana elections. Appearing for Zee, senior advocate Venkatesh Dhond reportedly said the film is seen as an anti-Sikh film and there is a sizable population of Sikhs in Haryana. He said the co-producer is a BJP MP and “they do not want a film which hurts the sentiments of certain communities by a BJP member”. But the argument did not find favour with the bench of Justices BP Colabawalla and Firdosh Pooniwalla even though they took strong exception to the CBFC delay. The court said the CBFC need not worry about law and order implications while certifying a movie and a movie should not be viewed in the same manner as a documentary lest it curbs creative freedom. It further directed CBFC’s reviewing committee to take a decision on the release of the film by September 25.
A YouTube channel in the Supreme Court’s name was hacked today and used to display content related to the Ripple Labs crypto company and its XRP currency. The channel has since been taken down. The Hindu notes that supporters of a cryptocurrency are known to hack prominent handles to promote the asset.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Friday took cognisance of video clips that have emerged on social media of a Karnataka High Court judge making controversial comments during two separate hearings, Live Law reports. At one of the hearings, the High Court judge, Justice V Srishananda, was heard referring to the Muslim-dominated locality of Gori Palya in Bengaluru as “Pakistan”. In another video, he was heard saying to a woman lawyer that she seemed to know so much about the opposite party in a litigation that she could even reveal the colour of their undergarments. A five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud sought a report from the High Court registrar general on the comments. The Supreme Court said it may lay down basic guidelines about judges making observations in court.
Junior doctors camped in front of the health department headquarters in Kolkata have decided to re-join emergency duty work after the West Bengal government issued directives meant to ensure safe working conditions for doctors and after being on strike for about 40 days since the rape and murder at the RG Kar Hospital. They will, however, continue to stay off out-patient and in-patient work. The directives, issued by the chief secretary to the principal health secretary, involve, among other things, the deployment of security personnel at health facilities and a ‘panic call button’ alarm system in hospitals. It also mentions the appointment of a senior police officer to conduct security audits of medical colleges and hospitals.
And the West Bengal Medical Council has removed the name of former RG Kar principal Sandip Ghosh, citing his not replying to its show cause notice two weeks ago. Ghosh, who is being investigated by the CBI for corruption, will not be able to practice medicine unless the council reinstates him.
There is a controversy brewing around the possibility of adulterants being used to make laddus at the Tirumala temple when the YSR Congress was in power in Andhra Pradesh, and some – including chief minister Chandrababu Naidu – claim that these adulterants include animal fat, causing anger among many Hindus. Amidst this din, Pavan Korada notes that the National Dairy Development Board’s lab report that is circulating online is not conclusive about the presence of animal fat specifically, and that palm oil and rapeseed oil are more common as adulterants. Some in his party maintain that Naidu’s ‘secular credentials’ are unquestionable, but Korada reports that the CM has invoked communal sentiments – including by targeting YSR Congress chief Jagan Mohan Reddy’s Christian faith – in the past.
Krishn Kaushik’s report yesterday saying Indian artillery shells had reached the Ukrainian military is “speculative and misleading”, the external affairs ministry has said in response. It added: “It implies violations by India, where none exist and, hence, is inaccurate and mischievous.” The report said citing sources that the government did not do anything to ‘throttle’ munitions supply to European countries, from where the shells seem to have been diverted to Ukraine.
There is outrage in Odisha over the police’s alleged beating and sexual harassment of a lawyer who, with her army captain fiancee, sought their help upon being chased by road ragers in Bhubaneswar on Sunday. The lawyer offered more details while speaking to the media yesterday after being released from hospital. The National Commission for Women has also become involved, taking suo motu cognisance of the incident and seeking a report from the state’s director general of police. Ashuotsh Mishra has the report.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in its mutual evaluation report has pulled up the Indian government on the risk of abuse that the non-profit sector faces in India, says Amnesty International. This report by the French agency AFP has appeared in the media, both Indian and international. India is using anti-money laundering laws to harass NGOs, says Amnesty.
Acknowledging a recent uptick in high-level meetings between India and China, Beijing’s representative to New Delhi Xu Feihong said at an event yesterday that “at present, China-India relations are at a crucial stage of improvement and development”. His remarks have fuelled speculation that Modi and Xi Jinping may have a conversation, even if brief, at the BRICS summit in Russia this year.
At a special briefing yesterday, foreign secretary Vikram Misri did not indicate whether Modi will meet Donald Trump as the latter has claimed he will during his US visit that begins on Saturday. He did outline what they said was confirmed of the prime minister’s schedule in America, which will involve the finalisation of bilateral agreements.
Customer data stolen from Chennai-based health insurer Star Health have been made available via chatbots on Telegram, Christopher Bing and Munsif Vengattil find. Using these bots, they were able to download policy and claims documents containing names, numbers, addresses, test results and diagnoses. A security researcher they spoke to said a hacker claimed to have access to data related to more than 31 million Star customers. Telegram said it took down some bots, but others have since popped up offering Star data. Bing and Vengattil contacted some customers whose data they found leaked, finding they were not notified of a breach.
(Credit: Sanitary Panels.)
An art gallery in Mumbai’s Colaba, Aequo, is featuring an exhibit by Chamar, whose founder Sudheer Rajbhar “has been working … to recontextualise the casteist term ‘Chamar’ from being derogatory to being rightfully associated with the intricate skilled leather work of the community”, Fathima Abdul Kader writes.
Canadian Intelligence Report accuses India, China of ‘Heavy Interference’ in Domestic Politics
A Canadian intelligence agency report has flagged Indian and Chinese attempts to interfere in Canada’s domestic politics by influencing diaspora communities and trying to get favourable individuals elected through illicit funding and disinformation campaigns. The report submitted by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) at a public inquiry into foreign interference alleged how the Indian government is “heavily involved” in undermining support for the Khalistan movement that seeks an independent Sikh state in Punjab, the Globe and Mail reports.
“Gol proxy agents may have attempted to interfere in democratic processes, reportedly including through the clandestine provision of illicit financial support to various Canadian politicians as a means of attempting to secure the election of pro-Gol candidates or gaining influence over candidates who take office,” the report said, adding that in some instances candidate may be unaware that their campaign received illicit funding. It said that both India and China promote disinformation campaigns to “spread false narratives regarding certain elected officials”. The report also alleged that India carries out foreign-interference activities against Canadians who hold prominent positions. “These activities undertaken by GoI have included clandestine, deceptive and coercive activity to achieve the strategic objections of GoI,” it said.
100-Day Satyagraha by Gandhians against BJP Government Move
A group of Gandhians have launched a 100-day ‘satyagraha’, demanding that the BJP hand back a six-decade old Akhil Bharat Sarva Sewa Sangh in Varanasi, reports The Telegraph. The Gandhian research institution was taken over by the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government of Uttar Pradesh in July last year. A dozen buildings in its premises were thereafter demolished with bulldozers.
“The Varanasi administration took over the Sewa Sangh forcibly on July 22 last year and arrested us. We proved before them with the help of documents that the institution was started by JP (Jaya Prakash Narayan) with the help of Vinoba Bhave and Lal Bahadur Shastri and approved by Rajendra Prasad, then the President of India,” Ram Dhiraj, a member of the Sewa Sangh, said at the protest site in Rajghat. The Gandhians of the Sewa Sangh say that it had a land deal with the railways and the matter is presently in court. “Although we had all the (land ownership) papers, the government forced us out of the compound with the help of the police,” said Surya Narayan Nath, convener of the Odisha branch of the Rashtriya Yuva Sangathan, a Gandhian body, said while addressing the protesters.
CBSE snubs Urdu schools, restricts board exams to English and Hindi
The Central Board of Secondary Education’s decision to restrict students from writing board examinations in any language other than English and Hindi has raised concerns for three Urdu-medium schools affiliated with the Maulana Azad National Urdu University, located in Hyderabad, Haryana’s Nuh, and Bihar’s Darbhanga districts. An unnamed official from the university told The Telegraph that no prior notice was given by the board before discontinuing Urdu-language question papers. “Our students are facing difficulty in understanding the questions since they are not in Urdu…The board has not resolved the problem yet,” the official said.
Afroz Alam, a political science professor at the university, stated that the board’s decision contradicts the National Education Policy, which promotes education in the student’s mother tongue. “Once the students start learning in Urdu, they should be allowed to appear for examinations in that medium,” he said. “It would be unfair to ask them to write in English or Hindi.”
The Long Cable
The kiss of death
Palash Krishna Mehrotra
The photograph of PM Modi kissing his pet calf, Deepjyoti, is no doubt very cute. It’s an aww moment. That said, the babies of all creatures are sweet-looking, from baby elephants to baby lizards, not to mention feather-light baby cockroaches and piglets with soft tendril tails.
But this is no ordinary calf. As the prime minister’s official X handle announced to the nation: “the beloved mother cow” had given birth to DJ, “It is said in our scriptures – ‘Gaavh Sarvasukh Pradaah’”. Given the holy underpin, it’s safe to assume that this was an immaculate conception. No bull was involved.
It’s not unusual to see single people develop OTT affection for animals and plants, in order to deal with their maternal/paternal instinct. If Vance can talk about unmarried cat ladies, why not unmarried calf dudes? Except that this is no ordinary animal. As Al Jazeera reports: “Since 2014, when Modi first came to power, nearly 50 cow-related lynchings of Muslim men have been reported – most victims are poor farmers or daily wage workers, who left behind grieving families staring at an uncertain future. In nearly all such incidents, no cow meat was found, only the battered and tortured – and often lifeless – bodies of the victims.” Even homes are bulldozed on the suspicion there is beef in the fridge inside.
What about the optics of the act? Modi is kissing an animal considered sacred by Hindus, over which assaults, at times deadly, at others horribly humiliating for the victim, have taken place. In the context of the forthcoming assembly elections, this ostensibly harmless act of kissing a calf can only be seen as an act to shore up the Hindutva vote base. For Muslims, this is the kiss of death.
On August 27, a 26-year-old Muslim ragpicker, Sabir Malik was fatally lynched in the town of Charkhi Dadri, near Faridabad. A migrant from Bengal, he leaves behind his wife and a two-year-old toddler. Malik was killed over suspicion that he had consumed beef.
On September 3, a 72-year-old Muslim man was brutally thrashed by Hindu fellow travellers for allegedly carrying beef. He repeatedly insisted it was buffalo meat, categorically not on any ban list. Tibetan restaurants freely serve “buff”.
Then on September 6, there was the biryani-in-a-tiffin row in Amroha, where a school principal went after a seven-year-old boy for bringing biryani as his packed lunch to school. The problem here was not beef, but non-veg food in general. The hapless Muslim must be really confused: is the problem with eating cow, oxen, or buffalo, or chicken, goat and fish in general?
According to data from the National Family and Health Survey-V (2019-2021), meat consumption in India is actually rising. 45.1% women and 57% men said they consume fish, chicken or meat at least once a week.
And what about the Hindus who, in North India, after loading up on whisky and beer in their cars, uniformly head to the part of town where Muslim eateries remain open till after midnight. For most, the only day they turn vegetarian is Tuesday. On Saturday night they are avid non-vegetarians. By Sunday night, they may well have turned into cow vigilantes.
Whatever it is, it’s difficult to see the cow only as a gentle soul, who chews cud, moos gently and uncomplainingly gives us buckets of milk. The cow, in the hands of the vigilante, has been transformed into a deadly beast, a weapon of mass destruction. It’s not the poor cow’s fault though, that its image is now hemmed in by arms. The insignia of the Gau Rakshak Dal (Cow Protection Association) features the head of the cow sandwiched in between two protective rifles.
But what happened on August 24 might just mark the beginning of a turning point of sorts. At midnight, Aryan Mishra, a class 12 student, was out for a midnight snack with his Hindu landlord’s sons. The SUV they were travelling in was chased by cow vigilantes in another car, this one sporting a revolving beacon.
The vigilantes suspected Mishra and friends to be cattle smugglers. A bullet was fired which hit Mishra in the shoulder. When, after a 40 km chase, Mishra’s car finally pulled over, one of the vigilantes, reports Al Jazeera, “walked up to the car and pumped another bullet into Mishra’s neck from close range.” Mishra died; a Hindu had killed a Hindu.
When the slain boy’s father met the shooter, who was in police custody by now, he expressed regret for killing “a brother”. He thought he was killing a Muslim.
If, for a moment, we recall the Black Lives Matter movement in America, it’s easier for a White policeman there to spot and kill an innocent Black person – the races are colour coded. But Hindus and Muslims, they look the same. Seen this way, it’s not the vigilante’s fault really that he shot a Brahmin; this could easily be passed off as collateral damage, his contrition notwithstanding.
Let’s for a moment imagine a darkly comic dystopian future, which, anyway, is partially already here. The Muslim smartens up to what’s going around; the survivor’s instinct kicks in. Unlike the old man on the Mumbai train, he doesn’t sport a beard or sherwani anymore, but a t-shirt. He transports meat hidden inside cantaloupes and pumpkins. Better still, the Muslim quits eating meat altogether, is clean-shaven, and starts travelling with a couple of snake gourds tucked under each arm. He will look no different from Mishra. There will be more mistaken identity killings.
The crux of the Hindu Right’s argument against cow slaughter, which is anyway banned, stems from two paranoid assertions: “Hindu khatre mein hai ” (the Hindu is in grave danger) and “Hindu jaag gaya hai” (the Hindu has finally risen after centuries of slumber). I reckon that, at the pace we are going, there will come a time when there will be more and more cases like Mishra’s.
Once the tipping point is reached, the Hindu will realise that the Hindu is in khatra, danger, from Hindus themselves. This will lead to a second awakening – Hindu phir se jagega, the Hindu will awaken again: that killing people over food is wrong. The chickens would have finally come home to roost. On a Tuesday.
The writer is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth, and the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India.
Reportedly
Speaking of cows, Maneka Gandhi, always on the warpath to identify and name those who mistreat animals, has come out strongly against the ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) for allegedly selling calves and cattle that do not give milk any more. And then they go on the streets and chant Hare Rama Hare Krishna, she says. Gandhi, who is with the BJP, also points out that the society gets a lot of benefits, including land, from the government, which is supposed to be cow-friendly. This cannot possibly go down well with the BJP leadership.
Deep dive
“Despite the apparent separation of these projects, technocracy and Hindutva operate in tandem and continually threaten to leak into one another.” Mila Samdub on the architecture of governance in New India under which “maximum governance enables managerially-oriented architects, software engineers, the Indian corporate elite, and the international community to maintain a calculated innocence while collaborating with nationalist power in India today.”
Prime number: 11 days and countingSamsung workers at the company’s factory in Sriperumbudur continue to strike for the 11th day today over demands for better pay and working conditions. Meanwhile, it has come to light that Samsung has sued top officials of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, which is leading the strike. Praveen Paramasivam, Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil report that the lawsuit was filed last week and a local judge yesterday told Samsung and protesting workers to find a resolution soon.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
The idea that Hindi is the mother tongue of various peoples in north India is leading to its being taken for granted in the education system, with worrying consequences for students of the language, Apoorvanand writes.
As for the country’s other official language, English, Ra. Shhiva and Sabur Ali M say that its neglect by policies including the 2020 National Education Policy is not doing Indians any good either – its role as a neutral connector language is undermined and marginalised peoples are left without a good shot at climbing up the socio-economic ladder.
Xenophobia and paranoia over “outsiders” seem to be at the root of conflicts in the Northeast, writes Sudipta Bhattacharjee. There are unending border-related issues among states that were once a part of Assam and states bordering Bangladesh and Myanmar see a regular influx.
Retired top cop Julio Rebeiro says it is unfair to criticise the Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud for the invitation to prime minister Narendra Modi to attend the Ganpati puja and his home especially if there was no agenda. Rebeiro recalls his own personal connection with the Chandrachud family which goes back several decades. “I see no harm in the gesture”, Rebeiro says.
Surbhi Gupta writes that a month after the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata, India continues to grapple with the realities of gender-based violence.
Listen up
Tune in to Mid-day’s Mumbai Cricket Podcast with Clayton Murzello as Hemant Kenkre, who represented Sassanian CC and Cricket Club of India (CCI) on the club scene, reflects on his cricket journey, from captaining a young Sachin Tendulkar in the Kanga League to playing alongside Mumbai's finest cricketers in the 1970s to 1990s.
Watch out
Modi’s One Election Plan will turn India into a unitary state, violating the constitution’s basic structure, says senior advocate Kapil Sibal in an interview with Karan Thapar explaining how the plan could violate the federal structure and impact federalism.
Over and out
Today 100 years ago the existence of the Indus valley civilisation was formally announced. The archeologist Rakhal Das Banerji, who excavated Mohenjo daro in 1921, was an important figure in the discovery of the civilisation – but he also came to be caught up in an idol theft incident, Nayanjot Lahiri recalls in her book, Finding Forgotten Cities. Here is an excerpt.
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.