Trump Fumes at Russia, India for Ties With China; Lutnick Expects India to Say Sorry; Beyond the Modi-Putin-Xi Photo-Ops, SCO’s Structural Weakness Endures
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Snapshot of the day
September 5, 2025
Siddharth Varadarajan
Rattled by the apparent bonhomie shown by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, United States President Donald Trump on Friday bemoaned India and Russia’s deepening ties to China. “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China,” Trump said sarcastically on Truth Social as he shared an image of Xi, Putin and Modi together at Tianjin. “May they have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump’s jab came less than 48 hours after he wanted that India may soon have to contend with a second and third round of punitive tariffs. The stated US ‘rationale’ is India’s purchase of cheap Russian oil, which Trump says is fuelling Russia’s war in Ukraine, but judging by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s latest remarks, Washingtonhas a long list of things it wants India to do: “India doesn't yet want to open their market, stop buying Russian oil right and stop being a part of BRICS. Right? They're the vowel between Russia and China. If that's who you want to be, go be it. But either support the dollar, support the United States of America, support your biggest client who is the American consumer, or I guess you gonna pay 50% tariff and let's see how long this lasts.”
Lutnick also said, “In a month or two, India will be at the table. They’re going to say they’re sorry and try to make a deal with Donald Trump.”
Unwilling to poke the bear, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) declined to comment on Trump’s latest remarks. “I have no comments to offer on this post at this time,” spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in response to media queries. Nor is there any reaction to Lutnick. In a trenchant response to the US Commerce Secretary, former US State Department official Evan Feigenbaum has said those hoping India will say sorry will have a long wait on their hands:
“Howard Lutnick says "in a month or two India will be at the table and they're going to say sorry." To that, I say this: There may indeed be a TARIFF deal on the table because it is in both countries' interest to do one. But (1) India most certainly will not "say sorry," (2) the administration has tanked 25 years of bipartisan work to depoliticize the U.S.-India relationship, which is now thoroughly politicized in New Delhi, even among those who worked hard to build the relationship; (3) India has little to no reason to trust the United States after the administration made an elective choice to tank the relationship by undoing even the achievements with New Delhi from President Trump's own first term; (4) this is especially true because the administration elected to wield a sanctions-like instrument against India, repeatedly refers to tariffs as "sanctions," and thus has stirred up every conceivable bad historical memory and neuralgia about Washington in India from the past; (5) a tariff deal is a very weak reed for the U.S.-India relationship because, as South Korea especially has learned, the President changes his mind often and so the United States frequently ends up re-litigating the deals it has made; to put that bluntly, a "deal" is not necessarily a deal and no country should assume that a "deal" is the end of the story; (6) the administration's footsie with Pakistan's military hasn't helped and somebody probably should have realized that…
Lutnick is correct that a tariff deal is entirely possible - and he would know because he and his colleagues tried to negotiate one and actually nearly did the deed; but trust is hard to build, harder to sustain, and hardest of all to rebuild once it evaporates in a morass of politicization. And we are THERE…”
The Indian rupee slid to yet another all-time low on Friday, touching 88.36 mark against the US dollar. The depreciation came on the back of persistent foreign portfolio outflows and growing unease over the resurgence of global trade frictions.
India may have entered this year as one of Trump’s strongest international supporters. But that goodwill – both domestically and globally – is now in jeopardy, as Make America Great Again (MAGA)’s culture wars threaten to cast India outside the pale, Axios reports. “For MAGA, which views domestic culture wars as inseparable from foreign policy, the rupture is an opening to reframe US-India relations as a civilisational clash”.
For years, India’s wealthiest families thrived in a geopolitical sweet spot. Now that momentum is under threat as Trump’s 50% tariffs on Indian goods put many of them in the crosshairs. Bloomberg reports on the eight billionaires whose fortunes are most at risk.
However, India finds itself awkwardly straddling worlds – fawning as China’s guest while fumbling as America’s partner, says The Economist. Mark Johnson points out that Modi’s supposed statesmanship looks increasingly hollow, exposed by a soured Trump bromance and a grinning photo-op in Tianjin that left US diplomats seething.
Nirupama Subramanian points to the damage wrought on Indian foreign poliy by Modi and writes that his “failure to read Trump and Xi has proved costly”:
“Prime Minister Modi’s style of personalised diplomacy was once believed to be a big winner. In reality, it led to complacency in India’s diplomacy with both Trump and Xi.
“Modi’s supposed chemistry with several world leaders has not given him the tools to make a correct or true assessment of their own political imperatives, and how this influences their own policies, including their foreign policies.
“India’s diplomatic missions meanwhile are caught up in endless diaspora matters and ensuring crowds for Yoga day and various other events orchestrated from Delhi. Recall Modi’s generous tweets and phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing unconditional solidarity and support for Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack on October 13, 2023? It tied the MEA in knots from which it took days to emerge and put out a statement reiterating its official position on the long Israel-Palestine conflict.”
Loan accounts of Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom) and its former promoter Anil Ambani have been classified as “fraud” by the Bank of Baroda, adding to the troubles of the debt-laden telecom operator that has been under insolvency proceedings since 2019. Rcom said in an exchange filing on Thursday that it had received a communication dated September 2 from the bank, reports Business Standard. The notice cited the Reserve Bank of India’s Master Directions on Fraud Risk Management in Commercial Banks and Financial Institutions, 2024, as the basis for the classification. Earlier, similar actions were taken by the State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of India (BoI), which last month flagged RCom’s loan account and Ambani’s name, alleging diversion of funds in 2016.
A criminal complaint has been filed in a Delhi court alleging that chairperson of Congress parliamentary party and Rajya Sabha member Sonia Gandhi used forged documents to add her name in the electoral rolls three years before she got Indian citizenship. The complaint, filed by one Vikas Tripathi, seeks the registration of a First Information Report (FIR) against Gandhi, reports The Hindu. Advocate Pawan Narang, who appeared for Tripathi, argued before additional chief judicial magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasia of the Rouse Avenue Courts that if Gandhi’s application for the citizenship is of April 1983 then how did her name get included in the electoral rolls in the New Delhi constituency in 1980. Tripathi added that Gandhi’s name was deleted from the electoral rolls in 1982 but it was re-entered in 1983. The court posted the matter for September 10 but didn’t issue formal notice to either the Delhi police or to Gandhi.
A row has broken out over the addition of the Government of India emblem to a signboad at the Hazratbal shrine. An angry crowd scratched out the emblem today. And a National Conference MLA tweeted, “Placing a sculpted figure, at the revered Hazratbal Dargah goes against this very belief. Sacred spaces must reflect only the purity of Tawheed, nothing else.” On her part, Waqf board chairperson and senior BJP leader Darakhshan Andrabi has demanded the MLA’s arrest.
Meanwhile, eleven years after Kashmir’s worst flood disaster, the Valley once again stood on edge this week as the Jhelum and its tributaries roared past danger marks, breaching embankments at several places and forcing thousands to flee low-lying neighbourhoods. As per the authorities, around 1500 families with nearly 9000 people were evacuated from vulnerable areas of Srinagar and Budgam after midnight on Wednesday. Dal Lake dwellers also faced uncertainty. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader and MLA Kulgam Muhammad Yusuf Tarigami said, “The rescue measures were up to the mark, but we need to devise a strategy and counter-measures to save Kulgam from a 2014-like deluge.” He recalled proposing in the assembly that the Vaishaw – the highest discharge tributary of Jhelum – be treated as a priority because of the destruction it triggered in September 2014.”
Apprehensions among activist Hamid Dabholkar, journalist Nikhil Wagle and others that their safety would be endangered if they participated in the Hindu extremist outfit Sanatan Sanstha's defamation suits against them in a court in Goa – the Sanstha's backyard – “cannot be said to be unreasonable” in the “totality of circumstances” in the case, the Bombay high court ruled yesterday, transferring the suits to Kolhapur in Maharashtra. The ‘circumstances’ the high court mentioned include the fact that the Sanstha is accused of involvement in the killings of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar – Hamid's father – Govind Pansare and MM Kalburgi.
If these rationalists were alive today they would likely have fumed at the developments at one ‘Gau Mahakumbh’ taking place in Jaipur as we speak. Here participants are selling products made from gobar as well as gaumutra; medicines based on the latter are touted as able to cure all sorts of diseases including cancer. One speaker named Niranjan Verma denounced science as an “axis of destruction” – as opposed to ‘sanatan’, which he called an “axis of development” – claimed that the periodic table isn't advanced enough to identify all the elements in gaumutra, and that declared that gaumutra can make polluted drain water fit for drinking within 24 hours. Deep Mukherjee reports from Jaipur.
Taking cognisance of a Dainik Bhaskar report pointing to 11 custodial deaths so far this year, the Supreme Court yesterday registered a suo motu PIL titled ‘lack of functional CCTVs in police stations’. A few years ago the apex court had directed that CCTV cameras be set up in all police stations, including those of Union government investigation agencies, and that their footage be retained for at least a year in order to deter custodial violence.
The death toll from the eastern Afghanistan earthquake has surpassed 2,200, according to the Taliban government. Aid work has been hobbled by the region's rugged terrain and by global funding cuts, while a fresh spell of rain has added to locals' woes. One estimate has it that some 98% of buildings in the principally hit Kunar province have been either destroyed or damaged.
Even as the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region is especially vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather, the flow of logs along with floodwaters in the Himalayas points to the prevalence of illegal tree felling there anyway, the Supreme Court remarked during a hearing yesterday. Krishnadas Rajagopal quotes Chief Justice BR Gavai as saying: “If this goes on, we will not have any forests left … Development is needed, but not at the cost of the environment and lives.”
And with a warming Arabian Sea alongside the possibility of more frequent confluences between monsoonal winds and Western disturbances due to global warming, the mountainous region could face even greater risk of extreme weather in the future, Vaishnavi Rathore reports.
One warning sign of imbalance between development on the one hand and the environment and human lives on the other in the Kashmir Himalaya has been provided by Kishtwar's disaster management authority, which specifically points to four under-construction hydel projects in the district as being at “high risk” from glacial lake outburst flood events. The projects cost a total of around Rs 22,000 crore, Jehangir Ali notes.
The New York Times speaks to Kiran Desai on why it took her 20 years to write her latest novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.
Border dispute with China ‘biggest challenge’ for India
Even as India and China have claimed to have made significant progress toward the normalisation of bilateral ties, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan, said that the boundary dispute with China is India’s biggest challenge and will continue to remain so. His remarks come a few days after Prime Minister Modi and Chinese President Xi agreed to work towards a “fair, reasonable and mutually-acceptable” solution to the India-China border issue during the meeting on the sidelines of the SCO summit.
The second major challenge, according to the CDS, is Pakistan’s proxy war against India, with a strategy of ‘bleed India by a thousand cuts.’ Regional instability is also a concern, as almost all of India’s neighbours face social, political, and economic unrest, the CDS noted. Yet, while soldiers face the heat on the borders, Modi prefers photo-ops with Xi over hard answers at home.
Delay in forming JPC on bills targeting detained CMs leaves opposition split
The Lok Sabha had decided to refer the government's three bombshell Bills – allowing for the removal of chief ministers and their cabinet ministers if they are detained (not convicted) for a month on accusations of committing serious crimes – to a joint parliamentary committee, but that panel is yet to be constituted some 15 days after the monsoon session of parliament ended, Sobhana Nair notes. A number of opposition parties have decided not to join the panel when it is formed, while some others, including the Congress, are yet to make up their mind. However, some have made the ‘counter-argument’ that if the opposition participates in the panel, its objections will be recorded and this may aid its case in court, Nair writes.
Despite papers, land and midwife’s testimony, this West Bengal woman was still deported to Bangladesh
When Anant Gupta travelled to the Birbhum, West Bengal village of 25-year-old Delhi resident Sunali Khatun – who, along with her husband and her eight-year-old son was apparently summarily deported to Bangladesh after the police suspected they are undocumented immigrants – he found that her parents are registered as voters, land titles indicating that their family has lived in India for many generations, and even the midwife who said she delivered Sunali. Gupta reports that while records of the Delhi police and the Foreigners' Regional Registration Office claim that the trio ‘confessed’ they are from Bangladesh, a neighbour alleged that the cops faked this after the three did not provide them with a bribe. Meanwhile, a pregnant Sunali remains stranded in Bangladesh.
The Long Cable
Beyond the Modi-Putin-Xi Photo-Ops, the SCO’s Structural Weakness Endures
Manoj Joshi
A lot of the commentary on the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Beijing – both pro and con – has bordered on the breathless. Pictures of Prime Minister Modi, President Putin and President Xi Jinping in animated discussions have been seen around the world, and by their intended target, President Donald Trump.
Indeed, Trump should take the bow for making this happen.
All we have to do is to recall that in 2023, when India was to host the SCO summit, it made an unexplained last-minute change in May and decided to hold it virtually. That was the year in which, while visiting Washington DC, Modi recounted his advice to Putin that “this is not an era of war.” In December 2022, he did not attend the annual India-Russia summit hosted by Moscow because of unspecified “scheduling issues.” India was represented in the SCO summits in Astana and Islamabad in 2024 by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
Why Modi went in 2025 is not difficult to understand. India’s foreign policy was turned upside down by Donald Trump within six months of his assuming the presidency of the United States. He had believed that Donald was his “friend”, but despite an early visit in February 2025 to offer fealty to him in Washington DC, India soon found itself out in the cold.
Initially, there were expectations of a quick trade deal between the two countries, with India offering to lower if not eliminate tariffs on most products (except agricultural and dairy). That did not happen and India landed up on the list with 25% reciprocal tariffs, soon raised to 50% on account of its Russian oil purchases.
Just why things went haywire is not clear, but many suspect it was the mishandling of Trump’s claims to have helped bring about a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in their short war of May 2025. Seizing the initiative, Pakistan proposed Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize and had its Field Marshal Munir invited to the White House for lunch.
The Modi-Xi bilateral summit held on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Taijin lent special significance to it. This was Modi’s first visit to China in seven years and the meeting’s confirmation of re-engagement between New Delhi and Beijing lent it some heft.
Scott Bessent, the US Secretary of Treasury, has termed the SCO summit as “performative.” He’s not wrong. But performative activity is very much part of international diplomacy. Another facet of this was the public Modi-Putin interaction, including their unscheduled meeting in the latter’s limousine – which shows how far Modi has traveled since 2022 when he was advising Putin on the issue of war. A great deal of commentary on the summit, including Trump’s tweet today, is based on the visuals of Xi, Modi, Putin and not on the substance of the remarks or the decisions taken there, many of which are not public and known only to the principals.
The Chinese performance was perfect. The ten SCO member states and the SCO Plus summit with the attendance of 14 dialogue partners and observers, was dovetailed into the 3rd September military parade to commemorate the victory over Japan in World War II. And it came along with a summit with Modi that is seeking to rebuild ties between China and India.
Xi’s messaging, too, was timely. He spoke of a more “just and equitable” world order at a time when the US was demolishing the one it had constructed in the wake of World War II. He called for a clear stand against “hegemonism and power politics” and framed new proposals for countering the US without really naming it. He unveiled a new Global Governance Initiative to promote a multi-polar world and positioned China as an alternative and powerful force for development.
Trump has been watching and first charged Russia, North Korea and China of conspiring against the US. Later he declared “It was very, very impressive…I understood the reason why they were doing it.”
At one level, the SCO is a talk shop whose effectiveness is hampered by the fact that it needs the consensus of its dozen or so members to take action on issues. This leads to watered down outcomes or an inability to address issues. For example, the SCO said and did nothing when Israel and the US bombed Iran (India did not want to even criticise the attacks at the time), though it finally came around to issuing a condemnation at Tianjin.
Another problem is that some its members like India and China have deep seated border disputes and there is a great deal of hostility between India and Pakistan and this can block consensus.
More important perhaps is the fact that the SCO lacks mechanisms to effect its policy decisions and enforce its agreements. So its economic and connectivity schemes remain poorly executed.
Many of these issues have ensured that even though it has states with strong economies like China and India, the organization has not been able to advance economic integration amongst each other.
There is a limited value in the SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS) that facilitates some intelligence sharing, joint military exercises and coordination in combating terrorism and separatism.
The SCO is really an institutional expression of the desire of the world for a multipolar world order. In this way it is being pushed by its key member China to offset the influence of the United States. The Chinese also offered $280 million in grants and $ 1.4 billion in loans to an SCO banking consortium and proposed the creation of an SCO development bank. This is part of the systematic Chinese effort to give the SCO some heft in the face of the US retreat from its global obligations.
Not surprisingly, the outcome of the Tianjin summit emphasized the strong stand against terrorism and it condemned terrorist incidents in India (Pahalgam) and Pakistan (Jaffar Express). It emphasised support for a multilateral trading system which goes against the current American approach of levying tariffs on friends and foe.
India’s approach towards the SCO is in line with its approach towards multi-alignment, which is an updated version of the old non-alignment. Non-alignment was largely defensive, multi-alignment stresses a more transactional and proactive approach and, in this case, New Delhi wanted to send a signal to the US that it was not without options in the international system in the face of the US barracking.
There is little doubt that global governance is in desperate need of reform, but neither the US nor China have the remedy for it. Neither of the two really back multi-alignment. The US seeks to shore up its global hegemony, while China is really looking for a G-2 formula. It barely conceals its desire to be seen as a global power, and to be taken as such by the United States. The performance in Tianjin is very much part of its tactics towards that end.
(The writer is a distinguished fellow with the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.)
Reportedly
The BJP has tried so hard to gin up public outrage over the crude insult an unknown speaker at an Opposition event in Bihar recently delivered to Narendra Modi that former external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha is having a good laugh. “I think the issue of abuse of PM's respected mother should now be taken to the UN with a request to the Security Council to take action against the guilty,” he tweeted. “Nothing less will do.”
Pen vs sword
Deep dive
The Archaeological Survey of India has conducted excavations at a brisker pace over the last decade but “many key reports are still in limbo … hinder[ing] the dissemination of valuable information to researchers, scholars and the public”, reports Krishan Murari. The issue seems to be a combination of a lack of printing capacity as well as, per a former regional director in the survey, “the continuous transfer of archaeologists, [excess burden of] administrative work, absence of a monitoring policy [and] no separate time given to archaeologists for report writing”.
Prime number: 📈900
On the back of expectations that the US Federal Reserve could cut interest rates at its next meeting later this month, gold in Delhi today spiked by Rs 900 to reach a near-record price of Rs 1,06,970 per ten grams. PTI quotes an analyst as saying that “pessimism regarding the peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, due to a lack of progress, has also heightened demand for safe-haven asset”.Opeds you don’t want to miss
“If Umar is in jail for saying the CAA was anti-Muslim, I should be too. If Khalid is in jail for coordinating local protests against the CAA, I should be too”. Yogendra Yadav on why the trial of the nine accused in the Delhi Riots Conspiracy case is a trial of India’s criminal justice system.
While denying bail to Gulfisha Fatima, the Delhi High Court turned to the theatre of the absurd, writes Gautam Bhatia. However, bail under the UAPA will remain a mirage: promised in theory, impossible in practice, contends senior advocate Sanjay Hegde. He writes,
“The high court's order chooses suspicion over liberty and delay over fairness. History will ask why courts, the guardians of liberty, let political prisoners languish without trial. History will also ask other citizens who kept a prudent silence what fight they put up against the dying of the light.”
Instead of pushing India away, the United States should reinvent and strengthen the US-Indian relationship, argue Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan. “Failing to do so risks squandering a major strategic opportunity.”
Ashok K Kantha gets straight to the point on the India-China tango which seems unlikely at the present: “The answer to India’s current predicament vis-à-vis the US does not lie in revising its assessment of China as its primary strategic challenge, unless facts suggest otherwise. That is why it is surprising that the rhetoric of India and China being “development partners and not rivals”, much favoured by Beijing, has been resurrected by us.”
Calls for India to retaliate on trade may be politically tempting but would raise costs, erode competitiveness, and slow exports, writes D. Subba Rao. Despite asymmetries, the US runs a quiet surplus through services, education, and arms sales. India’s leverage lies in its market and global supply role—favouring diplomacy over brinkmanship.
Julio Ribeiro writes that he “strongly disagrees” with Amit Shah’s criticisism of Justice (Retd) Sudershan Reddy’s judgment disbanding the Salwa Judum – the vigilante movement used by the state to fight the Maoists in Chhattisgarh:
“A similar experiment was introduced by KPS Gill in Punjab after he succeeded me as the head of the state police force, which was fighting Khalistani terrorists at that timeThere is an innate danger in arming civilians without legal authority. Even unleashing vigilantes on the doubtful pretext of aiding the police in their duties, like the cow vigilantes active in some Hindi-speaking states are doing, is an illegal and highly dangerous move. Lack of responsibility for their actions leads them into the arena of criminality.”
Shikha Mukerjee says the combined Opposition, including the Left, is not paying attention to the dangerous course that the RSS chief has charted in his recent landmark speech. The BJP-RSS codes on worship, dress, food and babies makes it clear that the Sangh intends to target not just the minorities but also Hindus who don’t conform to its absurd norms. She cites as an example his statement, “If your home doesn’t have a puja room, you are not practising Hinduism” :
“This one statement can be read in two ways: bait to bhakts to go looking for prayer rooms in other peoples’ homes and switch to attacking the Indian identity of anyone who doesn’t have a prayer room. Practising Hinduism in a prayer room is an open invitation to single out communities that are congregational in the practice of religion, such as Muslims… The call to peek and pry into peoples’ homes is obnoxious, assuming that all Indians have homes large enough to allocate space for a “prayer room”.”
This Teachers' Day, writes Manoj Jha, let us bring back the idea that education must not be used as an instrument of producing obedient subjects, but fearless citizens:
“The central role of education in a democracy is to cultivate critical consciousness among citizens. By equipping learners with the ability to interrogate power structures, challenge dominant ideologies and articulate alternative visions of society, education functions as a safeguard against hegemony and authoritarianism. When education fails in this role, it risks being an instrument of indoctrination.
Marketing a book in today's times requires authors to “transform into a nine-headed Hydra – a marketer, a PR rep, a hot-take machine, a personal essayist, an influencer” – in order to effectively chase readers, who with our fracturing attention spans are “a steadily shrinking pool”, sighs Sabah Gurmat. Still, she notes, there are a couple silver linings: “social media has allowed authors” from less-heard communities “to bypass literary gatekeepers”, while there are still signs that someone with, say “2,000 genuinely engaged followers might have the upper hand over someone with 1 million followers”.
Listen up
Last month, the Supreme Court asked the Union government to draft guidelines for regulating social media, noting that influencers often monetise free speech in ways that may offend vulnerable groups. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said the rules should be framed with the National Broadcasters and Digital Association. But should commercial speech online be regulated? Apar Gupta, advocate and founder-director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, and Jay Vinayak Ojha, senior resident fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, discuss this with Aaratrika Bhaumik on The Hindu’s In Focus podcast.
Watch out
Watch this conversation between Dr SQR Iliyas, father of Umar Khalid and senior journalist Nidheesh Tyagi. The conversation is in Hindi but you can use YouTube’s auto-translated captions to generated subtitles in your preferred language].
Among the questions Ilyas answers:
What was the family’s first reaction when the bail plea was rejected?
What does he mean by “the process itself is the punishment”?
How are Umar Khalid’s days in jail passing? Has his spirit been broken?
What pain has he endured over these five years as a father?
Over and out
Arundhati Roy is everywhere thanks to her new memoir (see this piece in the Economist about the book) but her interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro for the New York Times delves not only into the theme of Mother Mary Comes for Me but also segues into wider themes related to the ‘culture of fear’ spawned by rising authoritarianism in India and the United States.
The Madras Courier carries a useful snapshot on the history of indentured labour based on the 1845 voyage of the Fatel Razack, which transported 231 Indians from Calcutta to Trinidad as the first "indentured labourers" following slavery's abolition. The piece details how British colonial authorities rebranded exploitation – promising wages, land ownership, and return tickets to India while delivering a 90-day nightmare voyage in disease-ridden conditions. Survivors were immediately sent to sugar plantations where they faced debt bondage through company scrip and overcrowded housing. The voyage was start of a system that would transport over 140,000 Indians to British colonies for indentured labour – essentially slavery with legal documentation.
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.