Category: India

United Nations– India is practicing Mahatma Gandhi’s doctrine of trusteeship in the contemporary world by following “a human-centric global development approach, not a self-centered model”, according to India’s Permanent Representative Ruchira Kamboj.

Speaking on Thursday at a roundtable here on Gandhian Trusteeship, she said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would carry this through during India’s Presidency of the G20, the group of the major industrialized and emerging economies.

She said that according to him India will be the voice of the developing South “whose voices are frequently ignored” and share “India’s experiences, lessons learned and growth models during our G20 Presidency”.

India is guided by the concept of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”, the “world being one large interconnected family”, and has emerged as the “first responder” to the crises around the world showing “altruism of the highest kind” as during the Covid-19 pandemic.

She listed India’s most recent responses to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, and to the crises in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Mozambique, among other countries.

She said that India’s slogan for G20, “One earth, one family, one future”, simply means, “ee may be different nations, but humanity is one”.

The roundtable on Gandhian principles took place as the General Assembly was voting next door on a resolution on the Ukraine-Russia war.

“What I find very, very powerful is that we are talking about peace about non-violence” while the Assembly was seized with the Ukraine crisis.

Norway’s Deputy Permanent Representative Trine Heimerback said that in today’s world Gandhi’s doctrine of trusteeship means “multilateral cooperation and global solutions for global challenges”.

This approach operationalizes the trusteeship doctrine through efforts to realise UN’s sustainable development goals, she said.

The goals are “all about responsibility, equitable trusteeship for a planet and for the common good of humanity, and when countries use their comparative advantages to advance SDG agenda, so much can still be achieved”, she said.

Dean of the University of Peace Jaun Carlos Sainz-Borgo said that as a Latino from the Caribbean, the idea of using the tools of peace to fight against a colonial power made an impression on him.

Recalling his introduction to Gandhi from the 1982 movie starring Ben Kingsley, which he followed up by reading books, he said that popular media can be an important way to communicate ideas to a broader section of people.

The movie “really opened my eyes to the complexities of the role (of Gandhi), even though (there was) the oversimplification of a movie, especially a Hollywood movie”, he said.

“But as an educator and as a representative of a university, it is very important to really take into consideration that we cannot neglect any platform for education. You know, sometimes the type of tools they can make, really open up the interest of many people that you wouldn’t address otherwise.”

Joel Rosenthal, the president of Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, recalled Gandhi’s terse letter to the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “all rights to be deserved and preserved come from duties well done”.

“That’s basically all Gandhi had to say, in terms of his advice to the drafters,” he said.

“Today, empathy and mutuality are losing out due to identity politics, blood and soil nationalism in winner-take-all economics”, but “a return to the idea of human flourishing, echoing Gandhi might help turn the tide”, he added. (IANS)

(IPS) – When countless supporters of the Indian National Congress, the main opposition party, arrive in Srinagar on January 30 to hoist the Indian flag, they would have walked 3,570 kilometers over 150 days.

The Congress Party organized the Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY), a long march to counter what it calls the divisive politics of the ruling party. The exercise was to revive the idea of India as a country united in all its diversity. The BJY is led by senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, 52, who met countless citizens on the way at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not held a single press conference in the last nine years that he has been in power.

Founder and editor of The Citizen Seema Mustafa told the IPS Rahul Gandhi gained by leading the BJY. “He has emerged as a leader of substance with courage and honesty and compassion on display. What the Congress Party has gained will only be known once Congressmen can take it all forward. Other gains and losses will come after that, but for now, the BJY has indeed cut through the prevailing atmosphere of fear and hate,” said Mustafa.

The BJY will culminate in the Himalayan region of Kashmir on January 30 but will it receive the same kind of welcome as it has in the rest of the country, is the question. For nearly half a century, the people of Kashmir have complained of Delhi’s stepmotherly attitude towards them.

Spymaster and former head of India’s Intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), AS Dulat, had a personal invitation to join the BJY. He walked for one hour with Rahul Gandhi, but Dulat did not say whether they talked about the troubled province of Kashmir.

Dulat’s latest book, A Life in the Shadows, is about Kashmir, a place he loves passionately. He was first posted to Kashmir in the late 1980s. As a former Prime Minister’s advisor on Kashmir, he understands the Kashmiri psyche and empathises with the problems in the province. Because he is seen as a problem solver and well-wisher of all the people suffering in Kashmir, including separatists, militants, and Pakistanis, he is called Mr Kashmir.

In the book, he implies that the problem of militancy is no longer about joining Pakistan or seeking independence but resistance to the harsh majoritarian policies of muscular power tactics used against the people of Kashmir by the present government in Delhi.

Dulat told the media that participating in the BJY was a wonderful experience. Gandhi wrote in a letter inviting Dulat to join the march, “We listen to anyone who wants to be heard. We offer no judgment or opinion. We walk to unite every Indian regardless of their gender, caste or religion because we know they are equal citizens. We walk to fight hatred and fear.”

Dulat commented: “I think what this young man is doing is certainly something exceptional… incredible.”’ He doesn’t think that anyone will ever do it again, and nobody is going to walk so many kilometres again.

However, his walk has had its critics – with the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh accusing Gandhi of tarnishing the image of India by creating the impression that only hatred prevails in the country.

The BJY was started last September on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula in Kanyakumari, and it has marched non-stop through 12 provinces. During the march, Gandhi spent time with scores of citizens from different walks of life. After walking about 25 kilometres daily in two shifts, the Congress workers slept in makeshift accommodations at night.

Talking to IPS, a professor at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Zoya Hasan, agreed that the march had succeeded. “If crowds are any indicator, the BJY got an enthusiastic response in all the states it traversed. This shows that there is still space in the country for inclusive politics,” Hasan said.

Many see the march as altering the country’s mood. It has brought hope into the lives of citizens who have been feeling increasingly fearful of their future and security. Largely ignored by (mainly pro-government) mainstream media, the BJY has been streaming live on social media. Watching supporters walk thousands of miles and meet hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths mingling, embracing, shaking hands and making friends has reinforced positive ideas of bonhomie and togetherness amongst citizens.

Ever since the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, the mood in the nation has been grim. Apart from tackling the never-ending scourge of poverty, the country has had to deal with repeated incidents of public violence.

The BJP has been criticized for being communitarian, and commentators say this, at best, ignores and, at worst, encourages violence by citizens against each other and divides Indian society by religious affiliation.

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, in an interview, Sen had told Le Monde, the French daily newspaper, that the Indian government is one of the most appalling in the world because it is communitarian in the narrowest sense of the term. It harms India by attacking Muslims and propagating the idea that Hindus form the nation.

Many consider the BJY march a success as a political protest against the alleged divisive politics of the right-wing ruling party in power.

“I joined the march and walked with Rahul Gandhi not because I am a fan of the Congress Party but because I thought the young man (Rahul Gandhi) has stood up for the right values at the right time, and I support similar values,” filmmaker Saeed Mirza said at the launch of his latest book I Know The Psychology of Rats in Goa recently.

“I believe every Indian who wants love and inclusiveness should be participating in the yatra beyond political identity. Although it is a predominately Congress-organised event, it is not exclusively a Congress event. So every Indian has been welcomed with open arms, and that is how it should be. If political pettiness comes in the way, it will be a self-defeating attitude,” said Tushar Gandhi, who joined the march last November. Tushar is Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson, and Rahul Gandhi is the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India.

The Congress Party says the objective of the BJY is to fight against the politics of fear, bigotry and prejudice and the economics of livelihood destruction, increasing unemployment and growing inequalities.

“What the yatra has achieved is way beyond what the sceptics anticipated. They have been proved wrong, and I include myself in the category. A suffocated nation was waiting for some such happening,” wrote journalist Saeed Naqvi.

Hasan adds that the BJY has refurbished the Congress’s credentials as a party of national unity Lifestyleand social cohesion, upholding the values of secularism, the welfare of the masses and their constitutionally granted rights. This marks an important wedge in a hyper-nationalist narrative of the ruling party’s politics.

Hasan said the impact of the BJY was that the ruling party wasn’t setting the narrative but was forced to react to the Congress Party. While only time will tell whether the march will bring electoral gains to the Congress Party in the general elections to be held in 2024, Hasan says: “It is the necessary first step in building a politics of change.” (IPS UN Bureau Report)

A symbol of new India, the Kartavya Path which was formerly known as Rajpath, hosted its first Republic Day parade in Delhi on January 26, 2023. India showcased its military and its cultural diversity in a colorful parade on Thursday at the revamped colonial avenue in New Delhi to mark Republic Day, the anniversary of the day the country’s secular Constitution came into effect in 1950.

The 74th Republic day celebrations was attended by President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a host of other dignitaries. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was the chief guest at the ceremonial event.

The grand celebration, first in Amrit Kal, was attended by at least 65,000 people. The Delhi Police said about 30,000 people reached the parade venue through the metro this year. The Central Secretariat and Udyog Bhawan metro stations were open for visitors.

The Egyptian President is the first major world leader to visit India in a year the government is eagerly preparing to host the G20 summit for the first time. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chief of defense staff and the three service chiefs were also present at the parade, which featured more women in the military contingents.

“We will move together to fulfil the dreams of the heroes of our freedom movement,” Modi wrote on Twitter to mark the occasion. The country’s rich and diverse heritage was showcased in vibrant tableaux from different states and ministries, highlighting the central theme of ‘nari shakti’ or women power. The army’s tableaux comprised only locally-made weapons, reflecting India’s drive to become more self-reliant in the defense sector.

The event climaxed with a flypast by 45 aircraft of the Indian Air Force, with French-made Rafales, Russian-made Su-30s and the Indian-made Tejas fighter jets putting on an impressive aeronautical display. But foggy weather spoilt the spectacle, as spectators struggled to catch a glimpse of the aircraft as they roared overhead.

The annul parade is a tightly choreographed spectacle of motorbike stunts, traditional dance and camel-mounted soldiers at a time when the emergent Asian power faces onerous security challenges. India has benefited in recent years from an increasing economic heft and diplomatic clout that has raised its position in global affairs.

Indian Embassy in US celebrates 74th Republic day

The Indian Embassy in Washington D.C. celebrated the 74th Republic Day of India on January 26, 2023, with a flag-hoisting ceremony at India House. US lawmakers, business leaders, members of the media, students, and members of the Indian diaspora were among the friends of India who attended the ceremony.

‌‌Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Ambassador of India, unfurled the tricolor, which was followed by the singing of the National Anthem. On the occasion, a video of the President of India, Droupadi Murmu’s address, on the eve of Republic Day was shown.

The Indian Consulate in New York celebrated India’s 74th Republic Day attended by members of the staff and community in the tri-state area.

The Indian flag was unfurled by Consul General Randhir Jaiswal, accompanied by the singing of the national anthem by artists from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

Consul General Jaiswal welcomed all those present. He read the speech made by the President of India Droupadi Murmu on Jan. 25, 2023, to the nation, on the eve of Republic Day. The Consul General read the speech in Hindi and English. The Consulate General of India, Chicago celebrated the 74th Republic Day of India on Thursday, January 2023. In the morning, the ceremonial unfurling of the Indian flag took place at the Consulate.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, January 13th announced a new ‘Aarogya Maitri’ project under which India will provide essential medical supplies to any developing country affected by natural disasters or humanitarian crisis.

India unveiled three initiatives to assist the Global South in areas ranging from technology to health, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying medical supplies will be provided to any developing country hit by natural disasters under the “Aarogya Maitri” project.

Addressing the concluding session of the virtual Voice of Global South Summit, Modi said India will launch the Global South Science and Technology Initiative to share its expertise in areas such as space technology and nuclear energy, and establish the Global South Center of Excellence for research on development solutions that can be scaled up and implemented around the world.

New Delhi billed the two-day summit as a platform for generating ideas and suggestions from developing countries to be channeled into discussions at the G20 during India’s presidency of the grouping of 20 largest economies. In his televised remarks at the concluding session, Modi described the summit as the “largest-ever virtual gathering of the Global South” as it attracted more than 120 developing countries.

Referring to India’s “Vaccine Maitri” initiative that supplied vaccines to more than 100 countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, Modi announced the “Aarogya Maitri” project whereby the country will provide essential medical supplies to any developing country affected by natural disasters or humanitarian crisis.

He also announced that India will establish the Global South Center of Excellence to carry out research on development solutions or best practices that can be scaled up and implemented in the Global South. In this context, he cited India’s digital public goods in fields such as electronic payments, healthcare, education and e-governance that can be used by other developing countries.

“India has also made great strides in areas like space technology and nuclear energy. We will launch a ‘Global South Science and Technology initiative’ to share our expertise with other developing nations,” he added.

Modi proposed a “Global South Young Diplomats Forum” to connect young officers of foreign ministries for “synergising our diplomatic voice”, and said India will institute the “Global South Scholarships” to allow students from developing states to pursue higher education in the country.

“In its development partnerships, India’s approach has been consultative, outcome oriented, demand driven, people-centric and respectful of the sovereignty of partner countries. I firmly believe that countries of the Global South have a lot to learn from each other’s development experiences,” he said.

The Indian side has sought to differentiate its development initiatives in the Global South from those of China, which experts have said lead to debt traps and projects that are financially unviable.

At the same time, Modi reiterated the Indian side’s message for reforming multilateral bodies such as the United Nations and for “human-centric globalisation” that leads to reliable supply chains without creating a debt crisis.

Without directly referring to the Ukraine crisis, he also highlighted the “increasing fragmentation of the international landscape” and “geopolitical tensions” that are preventing countries from focusing on development priorities.

The developing countries, he said, want globalisation that “does not create climate crisis or debt crisis” and “does not lead to unequal distribution of vaccines or over-concentrated global supply chains”.

The current geopolitical tensions “cause sharp swings” in international prices of food, fuel, fertilizers and other commodities.

“To address this geopolitical fragmentation, we urgently need a fundamental reform of the major international organizations, including the United Nations Security Council and the Bretton Woods institutions,” he said.

Such reforms should give voice to concerns of the developing world and reflect the realities of the 21st century. “India’s G20 Presidency will attempt to voice the views of the Global South on these important issues,” Modi said.

The concluding session was joined by the leaders of seven countries, including Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Suriname President Chandrikapersad Santo

The Indian diaspora, one of the most “vibrant and dynamic”, is the largest in the world, with 18 million people from the country living outside their homeland in 2020, the UN has said.

The Indian diaspora account for roughly 4.9 million Americans who were either born in India or who have Indian heritage or origin, a recently published study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) said.

‌‌According to the study, titled “Spotlight on Indian Immigrants in the US,” the Indian diaspora ranked tenth behind the 5. 4 million-strong Chinese diaspora, which was placed ninth.

The United Arab Emirates, the US and Saudi Arabia host the largest numbers of migrants from India, it said.

“India has the largest transnational population in the world. It has the most migrants abroad — 18 million, which is a significant number and another feature which is very interesting about the Indian migrant population is that they’re really distributed all over the globe,” Population Affairs Officer in the Population Division at UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) Clare Menozzi told PTI in an interview on Friday.

Menozzi said while some transnational populations are really clustered in one country or region, the Indian diaspora is present in all continents and regions — from the Gulf to Northern America to Australia, UK. “It’s a very vibrant” and dynamic diaspora in the world, she said.

The report, ‘International Migration 2020 Highlights’, by the Population Division of UN DESA, released on Friday said in 2020, 18 million persons from India were living outside of their country of birth.

Other countries with a large diaspora included Mexico and Russia (11 million each), China (10 million) and Syria (8 million).

The report said India’s large diaspora is distributed across a number of major countries of destination, with the UAE (3.5 million), the US (2.7 million) and Saudi Arabia (2.5 million) hosting the largest numbers of migrants from India.

Other countries hosting large numbers of migrants from India included Australia, Canada, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar and the UK.

Between 2000 and 2020, the size of the migrant population abroad grew for nearly all countries and areas of the world. India experienced the largest gain during that period at nearly 10 million, followed in order of magnitude by Syria, Venezuela, China and the Philippines.

Migration from India is largely motivated by labour and family reasons, Director of Population Division at UN DESA John Wilmoth told reporters at the launch of the report here, adding that forced displacement is a much smaller category (about 10 per cent) in the total.

Menozzi said the Indian diaspora is comprised predominantly of persons who are working, but also students and people who moved for family reasons.

She said there is a very large presence of migrants who are born in India, in the Gulf countries where they are playing a central role in the economic prosperity of the countries, working in construction, hospitality and care services. The diverse Indian diaspora also includes highly-skilled scientists, engineers and doctors.

The US remained by far the largest country of destination of international migrants with 51 million migrants in 2020, equal to 18 per cent of the world’s total.

Germany hosted the second largest number of migrants worldwide at around 16 million, followed by Saudi Arabia (13 million), Russia (12 million) and the UK (9 million).

The report said preliminary estimates suggest that Covid-19 pandemic may have slowed the growth in the stock of international migrants by around two million by mid-2020, 27 per cent less than the growth expected since mid-2019.

The report said growth in the number of international migrants has been robust over the last two decades, reaching 281 million people living outside their country of origin in 2020, up from 173 million in 2000 and 221 million in 2010.

Currently, international migrants represent about 3.6 per cent of the world’s population.

Between 2000 and 2020, the number of migrants grew in 179 countries or areas. Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the US gained the largest number of migrants during that period. By contrast, in 53 countries or areas, the number of international migrants declined between 2000 and 2020. Armenia, India, Pakistan, Ukraine and Tanzania were among the countries that experienced the most pronounced declines.

In many cases, the declines resulted from the old age of the migrant populations or the return of refugees and asylum seekers to their countries of origin.

In terms of regional migration corridors, between 2000 and 2020, some regional migration corridors grew very rapidly. The corridor Central and Southern Asia to Northern Africa and Western Asia grew the most, with 13 million migrants added between 2000 and 2020; more than tripling in size.

“The majority of that increase resulted from labour migration from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),” the report said.

It noted that while it is too soon to understand the full extent, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 may have slowed the growth of this regional migration corridor.

In many GCC countries, thousands of migrant workers in the construction, hospitality, retail and transportation sectors lost their jobs due to the pandemic and were required to return home.

The report said according to World Bank projections, the Covid-19 pandemic may reduce the volume of remittances sent to low-and middle-income countries from USD 548 billion in 2019 to USD 470 billion in 2021, a decline of 14 per cent.

Menozzi said India is the main country of recipient of remittances worldwide and in 2019 received USD 83 billion in remittances from its diaspora. The World Bank projects that in 2020, the amount will decline by around 9 per cent to about USD 76 billion.

The Indian diaspora account for roughly 4.9 million Americans who were either born in India or who have Indian heritage or origin, a recently published study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) said.

‌‌According to the study, titled “Spotlight on Indian Immigrants in the US,” the Indian diaspora ranked tenth behind the 5. 4 million-strong Chinese diaspora, which was placed ninth.

Demonetisation was a shockingly cruel policy enacted under false pretences, according to an alysts. It did not achieve any of its stated objectives: A cashless economy, a revenue bonanza for the government, cleaning the system of illicit money, or stopping terror finance. It inflicted needless suffering and made fools of citizens, who willingly acquiesced.

Modi Government’s decision six years ago to demonetise currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 passed the Supreme Court’s test in a majority 4-1 verdict. Four of the five-judge Constitution Bench held that the November 8, 2016, notification did not suffer from any flaws in the decision making process.”

A dissenting judge, Justice B V Nagrathna, however, said that the way the noteban was carried out violated the law and highlighted how the RBI didn’t apply an independent mind. She added that the government should have brought a law. In fact, high-level sources told The Indian Express that the Central Board of the RBI was “never in the loop” about the withdrawal of notes.

The Supreme Court on Monday declared the Centre’s demonetisation move of November 2016 legally valid. A Constitution bench held that it appears from the record that there was consultation between the RBI and the central government for a period of six months.

It was a 4-1 judgement from the SC on a batch of 58 petitions, most of which challenging the demonetisation, while some seeking a new window to deposit the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes that could not be deposited back then.

Key issues

• Did the demonetisation scheme abide by the provisions of the RBI Act, 1934?
• Did the limits on withdrawing cash violate the Rights to Equality and Livelihood?
• Was the scheme implemented in an unreasonable manner that violated the Rights to Equality and Livelihood?
• To what extent can the SC review a scheme relating to the fiscal and economic policy of the government?

Judges split

The majority judgement, authored by Justice BR Gavai, said the decision-making process was not flawed merely because the procedure emanated from the government.

Justice SA Nazeer-headed bench said there has to be great restraint in matters of economic policy and the court cannot supplant the wisdom of the executive by a judicial review of its decision.

Dissenting view

Justice BV Nagarathna, bench’s junior-most judge, held that demonetisation had to be done through a legislation and not through a gazette notification, arguing that Parliament cannot be left aloof in a matter of such critical importance.

She said the RBI showed no independent application of mind and that the entire exercise was carried out in 24 hours after the Centre proposed the move. She held that such an opinion given by RBI cannot be construed as a “recommendation” under the RBI Act.

The demonetisation decision pushed the boundaries of constitutionalism to the edge. It can be argued that the legality of the policy need not be entirely judged by its success; it is not unconstitutional to take horrendous policy decisions. But this does not mean that there is no scope for fixing some administrative responsibility. The importance of Justice BV Nagarathna’s powerful dissent is not the conclusion. It is that it tries to affix administrative responsibility and does not let officials hide behind the smokescreen of statutory interpretations. The need for fixing this responsibility is even more if you happen to think that this is a sovereign decision. Her dissent asks the right question: What was the Board of the RBI doing in all this?

According to P NMehta of the Indian Express, “Justice Nagarathna is astutely pointing out that things like consultation or application of mind can’t be proforma exercises where the RBI Board simply ticks off a box by signing a resolution in a few minutes. Ironically, the shoddiness of the majority judgment’s reasoning enacts the very thing Justice Nagarathna is pointing out: The real threat of our democracy is professionals, who are otherwise independent, not doing their professional duty. The lesson from this episode is that independence is never in the letter of the law, it is in the character and conduct of form in the vast chain of accountability in a democracy, from judges to officials, from parliamentarians to citizens.”

A US-based forensic firm on December 7^th has concluded that digital evidence used to arrest Jesuit priest Father Stan Swamy in the Bhima-Koregaon case was “planted” on his computer’s hard drive, similar to two other cases involving human rights defenders Rona Wilson and Surendra Gadling. Swamy, 84, who was an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, died in July 2021, while waiting for interim bail on medical grounds.

As per the new report from a US-based digital forensics company, a hacker planted 22 “incriminating” files in activist Rona Wilson’s computer, days after violence in the Maharashtra town of Bhima-Koregaon in January 2018.

These files have, since November 15, 2018, been cited, initially by the Pune Police and then by the National Investigation Agency, as key evidence. This evidence led to Wilson and 15 others – including lawyers, academics and artistes – being arrested and jailed without bail (except the poet Varavara Rao who is now on bail) or trial for more than two years on charges of conspiring against the Indian state.

The files were never created, opened or used by anyone who directly handled Wilson’s computer, but the hacker used a software to plant them, said the new report from Arsenal Consulting. They analyzed an electronic copy of Wilson’s computer on a request from his lawyers, who got it from the police in November 2019 after court orders.

The new report is a follow-up of Arsenal’s first report in February 2021. That report concluded the computer was hacked using malicious software to plant 10 files, mostly “incriminating” letters, and it faced sustained electronic spying.

The second report, yet to be made public, but reviewed by Article 14, states: “There is no evidence of legitimate interaction with the additional files of interest on Mr. Wilson’s computer, and that 22 of the 24 files are directly connected to the attacker identified in Report I.”

Seeking bail

The additional 24 files largely contain purported correspondence between members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), discussions on fund transfers, how to improve women’s representation in organisations, difficulties party members face in communicating with each other, concerns over state crackdown and some photographs of Maoist guerillas.

Article 14 emailed detailed queries to Jaya Roy, NIA spokesperson and Superintendent of Police. The queries included specific questions related to Arsenal’s findings and reports submitted by government’s forensic labs.

Roy did not reply to the email. She told Article 14 on the phone that, “We do not take cognisance of reports from private labs. There are notified labs for our forensic examination like RFSL [Regional Forensic Science Laboratory] and CFSL [Central Forensic Science Laboratory].”

While the case against the 16 is likely to drag for years, their lawyers’ focus is on getting the activists released on bail. Wilson’s lawyers are likely to use the second Arsenal report to buttress their contention that primary electronic evidence was fabricated and that the tampering of his computer makes all electronic evidence produced from it unusable.

Electronic evidence

The case against the 16 activists centers around Elgaar Parishad, an event held on December 31, 2017, in Bhima-Koregaon, a town of roughly 9,000 inhabitants, 28 km northeast of Pune, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the victory of a largely Dalit-staffed British army over the upper-caste Peshwa army. Violence and arson followed the event, as Dalits clashed with Hindu right-wingers irked by the celebration of a valorous Dalit past.

Soon, a Pune police investigation into the violence changed tack to a Maoist conspiracy and focussed on “urban naxals”, a term popularised around the same time by right-wing supporters and leaders to deride urban intellectuals and activists.

Police raided activists and organisers of the event and seized laptops, hard disks and other devices. According to the charge sheet, the police raided the premises of Rona Wilson and advocate Surendra Gadling because of their alleged communication with Sudhir Dhawale, one of the main organisers of Bhima Koregaon event.

The chargesheet on why Ronal Wilson and why Surendra Gadling were arrested.

The files found on Wilson’s computer were among the evidence submitted against him, lawyer-activist Sudha Bharadwaj, poet Rao and others.

After the NIA took over the probe from the state police in January 2020, soon after the state saw a change in administration from a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government to the Maha Vikas Aghadi currently in power, they filed an additional charge sheet, naming Jesuit priest Stan Swany, Hanybabu Tarayil, a professor of linguistics at the Department of English at Delhi University, Anand Teltumbde, a professor of the Goa Institute of Management and journalist Gautam Navlakha.

They were accused of conspiring with a banned Maoist group against the Indian government and face charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, an anti-terrorism law that overwhelmingly puts the onus of proving innocence on the accused. Arsenal found instances where the hacker renamed files and, in one case, even made a mistake that was later corrected.

Arsenal’s president Mark Spencer explained to Article 14 the significance of the new report: “The process tree involving “mohila meeting jan.pdf” is the most compelling finding in Report II. While there are many “smoking guns” related to the attacker’s activity in Reports I and II, this process tree is one of the most significant”.

The mohila meeting file that Spencer referred to contains the minutes of a purported mohila (women’s) meeting on January 2, 2018. It lists other co-accused activists – Bharadwaj, Shoma Sen and others – as members of MOs or mass organisations.

The process tree that Spencer referred to tracks how and when the attacker hacked and planted files on a victim’s computer. The report said these 22 files were planted using NetWire, malicious software that opens the door to the device for hackers.

The hacker then remotely changed, added or deleted contents and viewed computer activity. The second report detailed how this remote-access electronic Trojan horse was used to deliver multiple files to Wilson’s laptop, in addition to those mentioned in the first report, later used by investigators to incriminate him and others.

Trojan horse

The process tree for the “mohila meeting document” showed NetWire being launched automatically on January 11, 2018, 11 days after the Bhima-Koregaon violence, at 5.04 pm after a login.

The attacker opened a command prompt and unpacked three files between 5.10 pm and 5.12 pm – one of which contained “mohila meeting jan.pdf”. These files were then unpacked into a hidden folder using a temporarily deployed UnRAR, a file archiver like WinZip, renamed to “Adobe.exe”.

“It shows NetWire’s communication with the attacker’s command-and-control server that we recovered from the active Windows hibernation on Rona Wilson’s computer,” said Spencer. “The hibernation occurred on January 14, 2018. The IP address is associated with one of the hostnames that we already released in Report I, but now people can see an example of how we know so many details”.

Besides laptops, files in hard disks and pen drives too, were helpful in tightening the screws on Wilson and others. The attacker ensured that files were automatically transferred from Wilson’s computer to the external hard drive when hooked up.

“Please keep in mind that ultimately you do not need to take our word for anything we have shared in Reports I or II, as our findings can be replicated by competent digital forensics practitioners with access to the same electronic evidence,” said Spencer.

“The process tree has effectively caught the attacker red-handed,” said Spencer. “It very clearly demonstrates how the attacker delivered incriminating files to Rona Wilson’s computer.”

“It’s the kind of finding that should make technical people lean back in their chairs and say, whoa,” said Spencer, who has examined computers related to the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon and a Turkish journalist falsely framed for terrorism in 2014.

‘Not authenticated’

The NIA, in a special court, in response to a bail plea moved by Anand Teltumbde’s lawyers based on the first report by Arsenal said that the findings cannot be relied upon since it is “not authenticated”. Several charge sheets filed by the state police and NIA running into hundreds of pages hinge on the evidence recovered from the electronic devices of Wilson and others, the credibility of which has now been debunked by the independent forensic expert.

In a statement on February 10, the NIA had indirectly discredited Arsenal’s first report. “The forensics reports that are cited in the charge sheet filed in the court are from an accredited lab, accepted by the Indian courts,” NIA spokesperson Roy said. “In this case, it was done by the Regional Forensic Science Laboratory in Pune. According to their report no such malware was found,”“Rest all (sic) is distortion of facts.

“We reviewed the documents submitted by the prosecution in the court. They show the investigating officer in the case did ask the government forensic lab on October 13, 2018 to state that the electronic devices of the accused were not tampered with. The government lab made no comment. The prosecution then stated that more forensic reports were awaited, noting in a NIA report, part of the chargesheet, “certain FSL (Forensic Science Laboratory) reports are yet to be received.”

Asked for comment by Article 14, NIA spokesperson Roy said: “NIA has already filed chargesheet in the case and the case is currently sub judice. I would not be commenting on any of the court matters.” Article 14 had raised a specific query about the fact that Regional Forensic Science Laboratory did not respond to questions of evidence tam

(CNN)  At the Bhalswa landfill in northwest Delhi, a steady flow of jeeps zigzag up the trash heap to dump more garbage on a pile now over 62 meters (203 feet) high.

Fires caused by heat and methane gas sporadically break out – the Delhi Fire Service Department has responded to 14 fires so far this year – and some deep beneath the pile can smolder for weeks or months, while men, women and children work nearby, sifting through the rubbish to find items to sell.

Some of the 200,000 residents who live in Bhalswa say the area is uninhabitable, but they can’t afford to move and have no choice but to breathe the toxic air and bathe in its contaminated water.

Bhalswa is not Delhi’s largest landfill. It’s about three meters lower than the biggest, Ghazipur, and both contribute to the country’s total output of methane gas.

Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, but a more potent contributor to the climate crisis because methane traps more heat. India creates more methane from landfill sites than any other country, according to GHGSat, which monitors methane via satellites.

And India comes second only to China for total methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Global Methane Tracker.

As part of his “Clean India” initiative, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said efforts are being made to remove these mountains of garbage and convert them into green zones. That goal, if achieved, could relieve some of the suffering of those residents living in the shadows of these dump sites – and help the world lower its greenhouse gas emissions.

India wants to lower its methane output, but it hasn’t joined the 130 countries who have signed up to the Global Methane Pledge, a pact to collectively cut global methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. Scientists estimate the reduction could cut global temperature rise by 0.2% – and help the world reach its target of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

India says it won’t join because most of its methane emissions come from farming – some 74% from farm animals and paddy fields versus less than 15% from landfill.

In a statement last year, Minister of State for Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change Ashwini Choubey said pledging to reduce India’s total methane output could threaten the livelihood of farmers and affect India’s trade and economic prospects.

But it’s also facing challenges in reducing methane from its steaming mounds of trash.  ‘Here we are, with no relief’

When Narayan Choudhary, 72, moved to Bhalswa in 1982, he said it was a “beautiful place,” but that all changed 12 years later when the first rubbish began arriving at the local landfill.

In the years since, the Bhalswa dump has grown nearly as tall as the historic Taj Mahal, becoming a landmark in its own right and an eyesore that towers over surrounding homes, affecting the health of people who live there.

Choudhary suffers from chronic asthma. He said he nearly died when a large fire broke out at Bhalswa in April that burned for days. “I was in terrible shape. My face and nose were swollen. I was on my death bed,” he said.

“Two years ago we protested … a lot of residents from this area protested (to get rid of the waste),” Choudhary said. “But the municipality didn’t cooperate with us. They assured us that things will get better in two years but here we are, with no relief.”

The dump site exhausted its capacity in 2002, according to a 2020 report on India’s landfills from the Center for Science and Environment (CSE), a nonprofit research agency in New Delhi, but without government standardization in recycling systems and greater industry efforts to reduce plastic consumption and production, tonnes of garbage continue to arrive at the site daily.

Bhalswa isn’t the only dump causing distress to residents nearby – it is one of three landfills in Delhi, overflowing with decaying waste and emitting toxic gases into the air.

Across the country, there are more than 3,100 landfills. Ghazipur is the biggest in Delhi, standing at 65 meters (213 feet), and like Bhalswa, it surpassed its waste capacity in 2002 and currently produces huge amounts of methane.

According to GHGSat, on a single day in March, more than two metric tons of methane gas leaked from the site every hour.

“If sustained for a year, the methane leak from this landfill would have the same climate impact as annual emissions from 350,000 US cars,” said GHGSat CEO Stephane Germain.

Dangerous toxins in groundwater

Methane emissions aren’t the only hazard that stem from landfills like Bhalswa and Ghazipur. Over decades, dangerous toxins have seeped into the ground, polluting the water supply for thousands of residents living nearby.

In May, CNN commissioned two accredited labs to test the ground water around the Bhalswa landfill. And according to the results, ground water within at least a 500-meter (1,600-foot) radius around the waste site is contaminated.

In the first lab report, levels of ammonia and sulphate were significantly higher than acceptable limits mandated by the Indian government.

Results from the second lab report showed levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) – the amount of inorganic salts and organic matter dissolved in the water – detected in one of the samples was almost 19 times the acceptable limit, making it unsafe for human drinking.

The Bureau of Indian Standards sets the acceptable limit of TDS at 500 milligrams/liter, a figure roughly seen as “good” by the World Health Organization (WHO). Anything over 900 mg/l is considered “poor” by the WHO, and over 1,200 mg/l is “unacceptable.”

According to Richa Singh from the Center for Science and Environment (CSE), the TDS of water taken near the Bhalswa site was between 3,000 and 4,000 mg/l. “This water is not only unfit for drinking but also unfit for skin contact,” she said. “So it can’t be used for purposes like bathing or cleaning of the utensils or cleaning of the clothes.”

Dr. Nitesh Rohatgi, the senior director of medical oncology at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram, urged the government to study the health of the local population and compare it to other areas of the city, “so that in 15 to 20 years’ time, we are not looking back and regretting that we had a higher cancer incidence, higher health hazards, higher health issues and we didn’t look back and correct them in time.”

Most people in Bhalswa rely on bottled water for drinking, but they use local water for other purposes – many say they have no choice.  “The water we get is contaminated, but we have to helplessly store it and use it for washing utensils, bathing and at times drinking too,” said resident Sonia Bibi, whose legs are covered in a thick, red rash.

Jwala Prashad, 87, who lives in a small hut in an alleyway near the landfill, said the pile of putrid trash had made his life “a living hell.”

“The water we use is pale red in color. My skin burns after bathing,” he said, as he tried to soothe red gashes on his face and neck.  “But I can’t afford to ever leave this place,” he added.

Waste target in doubt

More than 2,300 tonnes of Municipal Solid Waste arrive at Delhi’s largest dump in Ghazipur every day, according to a report released in July by a joint committee formed to find a way to reduce the number of fires at the site.

That’s the bulk of the waste from the surrounding area – only 300 tonnes is processed and disposed of by other means, the report said. And less than 7% of legacy waste had been bio-mined, which involves excavating, treating and potentially reusing old rubbish.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi deploys drones every three months to monitor the size of the trash heap and is experimenting with ways to extract methane from the trash mountain, the report said.

But too much rubbish is arriving every day to keep up. The committee said bio-mining had been “slow and tardy” and it was “highly unlikely” the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (which has now merged with North and South Delhi Municipal Corporations) would achieve its target of “flattening the garbage mountain” by 2024.

“No effective plans to reduce the height of the garbage mountain have been made,” the report said. Furthermore, “it should have proposed a long time ago that future dumping of garbage in them would pollute the groundwater systems,” the report added.

CNN sent a series of questions along with the data from the water testing questionnaire to India’s Environment and Health Ministries. There has been no response from the ministries.

In a 2019 report, the Indian government recommended ways to improve the country’s solid waste management, including formalizing the recycling sector and installing more compost plants in the country.

While some improvements have been made, such as better door-to-door garbage collection and processing of waste, Delhi’s landfills continue to accumulate waste.

In October, the National Green Tribunal fined the state government more than $100 million for failing to dispose of more than 30 million metric tonnes of waste across its three landfill sites.

“The problem is Delhi doesn’t have a concrete solid waste action plan in place,” said Singh from the CSE. “So we are talking here about dump site remediation and the treatment of legacy waste, but imagine the fresh waste which is generated on a regular basis. All of that is getting dumped everyday into these landfills.”

“(So) let’s say you are treating 1,000 tons of legacy (waste) and then you are dumping 2,000 tons of fresh waste every day it will become a vicious cycle. It will be a never ending process,” Singh said.

“Management of legacy waste, of course, is mandated by the government and is very, very important. But you just can’t start the process without having an alternative facility of fresh waste. So that’s the biggest challenge.”

The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) joined 14 civil rights and faith-based organizations in co-signing a letter to the US Senators, Representatives, State Governor, and other elected officials demanding the FBI, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Department of Justice investigation into Texas-based organization Global Hindu Heritage Foundation (GHHF), a Hindu supremacist group that recently organized a fundraiser, among other causes, for demolishing churches in India.

Co-signed by Federation of Indian American Christian Organization in North  America (FIACONA), North American Church of God, Southern Methodist University (SMU) Human Rights Program, Amnesty International – Dallas, World Without Genocide, Center for Pluralism, Genocide Watch,  IAMC, Limitless Church, Justice for All, Hindu for Human Rights, North Texas Peace Advocates, Good Citizens of DFW, North Texas Islamic Council, the letter was sent to Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz; Representatives Michael C. Burgess, Pat Fallon, Van Taylor, Terry Meza, Collin Allred, Marc Veasey, Jake Ellzey, Michael Cloud; Governor Gregg Abbott and Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney.

GHHF, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, recently circulated a flier for a fundraising event, listing one of the causes as demolishing what they call “illegal churches” in Tirupati, a city in India’s Andhra Pradesh state. 

“We find it extremely disturbing and dangerous that GHHF would so openly advertise their goal to cause such great harm to Indian Christians, who already face enormous persecution on a daily basis,” said the letter. 

GHHF has a history of demonizing Christians. In 2014, the organization wrote a letter to India’s Minister of Education urging her to revise the educational curriculum and teach children about the “heroism” of Nathuram Godse, the Hindu supremacist and member of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a fascist paramilitary group, who murdered Gandhi. The letter further accused Christians of “stabbing the nation,” converting Hindus with “deception and allurement,” and putting Hindus in danger of becoming “sacrificial lambs.”

In 2020, GHHF hosted an event in Plano, Texas to support discriminatory anti-minority legislation passed in India, advocating that Muslims and Christians be stripped of their minority status. The group also funds a number of religious conversion programs in India to convert Christians and Muslims to Hinduism. 

With a population of nearly 28 million, Christians are India’s second-largest minority group. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, Christians have been subjected to extreme violence. Discriminatory legislations like anti-conversion laws have enabled Hindu extremists to shut down churches and physically assault Christians with impunity. In 2021 alone, Hindu extremists carried out 800 hate crimes against Christians. 

“We urge you to use your platform as elected officials to forcefully condemn this blatant and brazen display of anti-Christian hate and bigotry. We also urge you to… [seek] immediate investigative and legal action against the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation for violating its 501c3 status by funding hate and enabling violence against religious minorities in India,” the letter adds.

India does not need to be told what to do on democracy, the country’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj has asserted. India has assumed Presidency of the 15-nation UN Security Council for the month of December, during which it will host signature events on countering terrorism and reformed multilateralism. The Presidency will bring the curtains down on India’s two-year tenure as elected non-permanent member of the powerful UN organ. 

Kamboj, India’s first woman Permanent Representative to the UN, will sit in the President’s seat at the horse-shoe table. On the first day of India’s presidency, she addressed reporters in the UN headquarters on the monthly program of work.

Responding to a question on democracy and freedom of press in India, she said “We don’t need to be told what to do on democracy.” And, she added that “India is perhaps the most ancient civilization in the world as all of you know. In India, democracy had roots going back to 2500 years, we were always a democracy. Coming down to very recent times, we have all the pillars of democracy that are intact – legislature, executive, judiciary and the fourth estate, the press. And a very vibrant social media. So the country is the world’s largest democracy.” 

“Every five years we conduct the world’s largest democratic exercise. Everyone is free to say as they wish and please and that is how our country functions. It’s rapidly reforming, transforming and changing. And the trajectory has been very impressive. And I don’t have to say this, you don’t have to listen to me. Others are saying this,” Kamboj said.

and contribute positively to the global agenda, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ruchira Kamboj has said.

India is ready to take its place at the global top table as a country that is willing to bring solutions India on Thursday assumed the monthly rotating Presidency of the Security Council, the second time after August 2021 that India is presiding over the 15-member Council during its two-year tenure as an elected UNSC member.

India’s 2021-2022 term on the Council ends December 31. In the past two years, as the world went through various crises, “India has always been there as a solution provider”, Kamboj told reporters. India is speaking to both sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Kamboj said, asserting that New Delhi’s position has not been “passive” on the war.

To a question on whether the UNSC reform is moving forward, Kamboj said, “I wish I could say yes, yes and yes, but I will definitely say that this is one of the most complex processes in the UN system. But there is a ray of hope.” She pointed out that during the high-level 77th session of the General Assembly, 76 countries favoured UNSC reforms and 73 spoke for UN reforms.

India, Brazil, Germany and Japan – members of the G4 grouping – have been at the forefront of efforts calling for urgent reform of the Security Council, which has remained deeply divisive in dealing with current challenges.

Indian missions across the globe on Tuesday celebrated the 70 years of adoption of the Constitution as several world leaders congratulated Indians on the occasion, calling it a “landmark” document that reflects the country’s unique culture and history.

The Constitution of India was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949 and came into force on January 26, 1950.

In Australia, celebrations were held at the premises of the High Commission in Canberra, where Professor Benedict Sheehy of the University of Canberra gave an insightful presentation on the Indian Constitution. Events were also organised in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne to mark the day.

In Perth, Premier of Western Australia Mark McGowan delivered a special message on the occasion.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated India on the 70th anniversary of adopting the Constitution, calling it a “landmark” document that reflects the country’s unique culture and history.

“Congratulations to my dear friend Prime Minister @Narendra Modi? and the people of India on the 70th anniversary of India’s Constitution Day”, Netanyahu tweeted.

Several other Israeli leaders, including President Rivlin, also released video messages congratulating India on the Constitution Day.

“Dear Friends all over India, Congratulations! Congratulations on your Constitution Day marking 70 years of a strong democracy, in the biggest democracy in the world,” Rivlin said.

In Sri Lanka, High Commissioner of India Taranjit Singh Sandhu led the reading of the Preamble of the Constitution on the occasion in Colombo.

India’s High Commissioner to Singapore Jawed Ashraf and the mission staff read the Preamble. A photo exhibition on the Constitution of India was also organised on the occasion.

In Bhutan, Indian mission staff pledged allegiance to the Constitution.

“On the occasion of Indian Constitution Day, the Preamble of the Constitution was read out by the Ambassador and all officials of the Embassy today,” Indian Mission in Indonesia tweeted.

A special photo exhibition on Dr. B R Ambedkar was also showcased at the Embassy premises on the occasion, it said.

In Thailand, Indian Embassy staff in Bangkok read the Preamble of the Constitution. President of the Thai National Assembly Chuan Leekpai greeted the Indian people in a video message on the occasion.

In Kathmandu, a special programme to celebrate India’s Constitution day was attended by around 600 people including many from the Indian diaspora in Nepal. The programme began with taking oath of the Indian Constitution by the embassy staff and students who were present on the occasion.

In Islamabad, the Indian mission staff read the preamble and spoke about the salient features of the Constitution of India, the bedrock of the world’s largest democracy.

“Celebrating the spirit of #WeThePeople. Today, we pay homage to the framers of the #ConstitutionofIndia which guides the destiny of 1.3 billion people of India!” the Indian High Commission in Pakistan tweeted.

In London, the High Commission extended greetings to all Indians in the UK. The day was also celebrated in Paris, where French Member of Parliament and President of India-France Friendship Group of National Assembly spoke about India’s democratic traditions and the Indian Constitution.

Congratulating India on the occasion, the President of the UN General Assembly said the country’s Constitution is a “seminal document” which marked its emergence from the shadows of colonialism to the light of independence.

“This year we celebrate 150 years since the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, a figure most regarded for his contributions to the idea of non-violence and respect for human beings,” President of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly Tijjani Muhammad-Bande said.

“We also celebrate and mark the occasion of the 70th Constitution Day of India,” Muhammad-Bande said in a special video message congratulatory message to Indians on the occasion of the 70th Constitution Day of India.

Celebrations were also held at the Indian missions in Scotland, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Bangladesh, Japan, Fiji, Cyprus, Myanmar, Iraq, Lebanon, Kenya, Mongolia, Russia and Turkey. (Courtesy: Business Standard

Washington, D.C. (November 9, 2022) – As India will undergo the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) to examine its human rights record on Thursday, November 10, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) Executive Director Rasheed Ahmed said:

“The current UPR of India comes at a time when human rights in India are dangerously ignored, minorities face discrimination, fundamental rights such as freedom of religion and freedom of the press are under attack, and hate speeches calling for the genocide of Muslims are at an all-time high. It is an excellent opportunity for the member states of the UN to formally recognize the gross human rights abuses India’s religious minorities face at the hands of the ruling Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Each member state must hold India accountable for failing to uphold basic human rights for minority citizens, whether that be targeting Muslims through discriminatory legislations such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) or Indian Christians who are being persecuted by the enaction of anti-conversion Laws.

Nations must also make recommendations that will help prevent the continuation of anti-minority discrimination pervasive in legislative, executive, and judiciary. We urge member states to provide recommendations that will encompass ignored recommendations from the previous sessions, such as the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment, which India is yet to ratify. This session provides member states with the opportunity to continue their ongoing dialogues with India regarding these issues, and to work to enable the Indian government to guarantee the fundamental rights of each Indian citizen, regardless of their faith.”

Tomorrow, a coalition of 18 American civil rights groups is holding a special congressional briefing, where prominent American and Indian civil society members, global human rights defenders and experts will analyze the human rights situation in India, examine the UPR, and the recommendations made by the member states.

Justice P.B. Pardiwala, who also formed the majority which upheld EWS quota, says real solution lies in eliminating causes that have led to the social, educational and economic backwardness of the weaker sections of the community

Three judges on the Constitution Bench, in views which formed both the majority and minority opinions, said the policy of reservation in education and employment cannot continue for an indefinite period.

Justice Bela M. Trivedi, who was part of the majority judgment, said reservation policy must have a time span. “At the end of 75 years of our Independence, we need to revisit the system of reservation in the larger interest of the society as a whole, as a step forward towards transformative constitutionalism,” Justice Trivedi said.

She pointed out that quota for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the House of the People and in State Legislative Assemblies would cease 80 years from the commencement of the Constitution. The representation of Anglo-Indian communities in Parliament and Assemblies has already stopped by virtue of the 104th Constitutional Amendment from January 25, 2020.

“Therefore, a similar time limit, if prescribed, for the special provisions in respect of the reservations and representations provided in Article 15 and Article 16 of the Constitution, it could be a way forward leading to an egalitarian, casteless and classless society,” Justice Trivedi observed.

Though not expressly said, Justice Trivedi’s view on stopping quota under Articles 15 and 16 would also encompass EWS reservation.

Justice P.B. Pardiwala, who also formed the majority which upheld the EWS quota, said “reservation is not an end but a means — a means to secure social and economic justice. Reservation should not be allowed to become a vested interest. Real solution, however, lies in eliminating the causes that have led to the social, educational and economic backwardness of the weaker sections of the community”.

He said “longstanding development and the spread of education” had resulted in tapering the gap between the classes to a considerable extent. Large percentages of Backward Class members attain acceptable standards of education and employment. They should be removed from the Backward categories so that attention could be paid toward those genuinely in need of help.

“It is very much necessary to take into review the method of identification and the ways of determination of Backward Classes, and also, ascertain whether the criteria adopted or applied for the classification of Backward is relevant for today’s conditions,” Justice Pardiwala said.

India’s main opposition Congress party voted to elect a new president Monday, with members of its dominant Nehru-Gandhi dynasty staying out of the race.

Sonia Gandhi, the interim party president, was among the nearly 9,000 party delegates who were entitled to vote on the matter.  “I have been waiting for this for a long time,″ she said after voting in the party’s New Delhi office.

Although the party has historically been led by the family, Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, decided to bring in a new face after suffering crushing defeats in national and state elections since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party came to power in 2014. 

Eighty-year-old Mallikarjun Kharge from southern Karnataka state appears to be the frontrunner with the party’s top leaders backing him during campaigning ahead of the vote. He has been described by Indian media as the “official candidate.” His main challenger is Shashi Tharoor, 66, who spent nearly 30 years at the United Nations before joining the Congress party in 2009.

As voting for the Congress presidential election is underway Monday, one of the candidates and party MP from Kerala Shashi Tharoor said the future of the Congress is in the hands of the party workers who will vote for the day’s electoral process.

After casting his vote at the party state committee office in Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor, 66, told the media the Congress workers would decide on the next leadership. This election would only benefit the Congress party, he added. “Like the Bharat Jodo Yatra, this presidential election was also meant to revitalise the party. New energy is required to fight the BJP as well as to face the next Lok Sabha elections. We are going to face a big challenge from BJP in the next elections. I hope this presidential election has served that purpose,” he said.

Tharoor also said Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had messaged him Monday morning to say the election to choose the Congress president has benefited the party and that she also thanked him. “That is what we want to know. Now, people have a feeling that there is some mobility in the party. With regard to the stand of the Gandhi family, I have been told right from the beginning that they are impartial in the presidential elections,’’ he said.

“It has been 22 years since the presidential election was held in the party. Hence, the election has got its own problems. I think within the last 16 days I could take my message to the maximum number of party workers,” he added.

This will be the sixth time in its nearly 137-year-old history that an electoral contest would decide who would take up the mantle of the party’s president. Tharoor has faced an uphill task in his home state Kerala, where most of the senior leaders stood with Kharge. The result of the Congress presidential polls will be declared on Wednesday, October 19.

Strengthening multilateral institutions will be a priority for India in the year-long presidency of the G-20 group of the developed and developing nations that it assumes in coming December, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said at the US think tank on Tuesday.

The minister, who is in Washington DC for the annual meetings of the World Bank Group, spoke on a wide-range of issues including India’s growth, whose robustness was testified in an IMF report released earlier in the day, the future of reforms and challenges and risks facing India, primarily, in her telling, energy prices and the supply of fertilizers.

“Multi-lateral institutions need to be strengthened, their capacity to deal with pandemics or any such future stressful global developments will have to be battered,” Sitharaman said. India takes over the rotational presidency from Indonesia.

In the last few decades, she added, “institutions existed but problems remain and solutions are not coming through them”.

Asked if she would like to see newer institutions instead, Sitharaman said that she is not against new institutions but she would like to see the improvement of the effectiveness of the existing bodies based on lessons learnt.

India has been calling for the reform of the global multilateral platforms such at the UN Security Council, the IMF and the World Bank to accord more authority and importance to emerging powers. India is seeking a permanent membership in a reformed and expanded UNSC, for instance.

The minister also stressed the need, in the context of the G-20 presidency, for finance to deal with natural disasters that are “far more frequent than we could imagine”. She brought the issue of climate finance, which required developed countries to contribute to the fund that will help developing and less developed countries deal with carbon gas emissions.

Sitharaman said that the climate finance “has not been smooth” despite many meetings. She was referring to the Green Climate Fund, which was created at the Cancun COP (Conference of the Parties) in 2016. But the developed countries have been slow to honour their commitments.

The G-20 group had proven effective in the past. She cited the two-pillar solution to global taxation of multinational companies as an example. (IANS)

The United Nations Security Council and the United Nations Human Rights Council must both step up and investigate the widespread religious persecution and human rights violations in India just as they did with Syria, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Minority Rights Fernand de Varennes have said.
“Nothing short of an international investigative mechanism – as has been done by the UN Security Council, and Human Rights Council for countries such as Syria, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia – may be necessary,” to reverse the trend of violence against minorities in India, de Varennes said at an international webinar this week.

“The international community needs to step up to the task if we’re serious about reversing the trend – a trend of a systemic pattern where certain minorities are targeted, marginalized, demonized,” he added.

Citing several of India’s most alarming human rights violations, de Varennes criticized Hindu extremists for engaging in increasingly violent hate speech, using legislation “to shut down and shut up critics,” sexually harassing Muslim women through mock auction apps, celebrating 11 Hindu men convicted of gang-raping a Muslim woman in 2002, policing religious belief through anti-conversion laws, and stripping Kashmir of its semi-autonomy in 2019.

De Varennes also slammed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP) Assam state for its National Register of Citizens (NRC) as well as the nationally-implemented Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), which he described as “excluding mainly Muslims” and creating the risk of “statelessness for millions and millions.”

“The scale of denial of the human rights of these minorities, even through legislation and its application in the judicial system, is systemic and national,” de Varennes said.. “[There is the] refusal of authorities to engage fully with global human rights mechanisms, including Special Procedures. The rising brutality and incitement of hatred and violence against minorities are of such gravity and magnitude.”

The webinar, held Monday, was organized by an interfaith coalition of six human rights organizations: Open Doors International, The World Evangelical Alliance, International Commission for Dalit Rights, Hindus for Human Rights, Indian American Muslim Council, and Justice for All. It was held in conjunction with the 51st Session of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, and ahead of India’s upcoming Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

Andrea Benzo, Italy’s Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief, Protection, and Interreligious Dialogue, said that at India’s last UPR in 2017, “Italy formulated a recommendation on abolishing anticonversion laws and granting access to justice to victims of religious violence and discrimination. Five years later, there are still challenges that need to be addressed to ensure all persons can fully enjoy all their rights under the law, irrespective of their religion or belief.”
Benzo said the term ‘minority’ “should not be misused to claim that members of a certain community are not fully part of the nation of its history and its culture. When it comes to religious intolerance, the distance between words and deeds – that is, between hate speech and physical violence – is very short. Therefore, we need to tackle the former before it rapidly evolves into the labs.”

Sunita Viswanath, the Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights, said “Modi’s strategic silence allows him to deny the well-documented fact that the Indian government persecutes these minorities.”
“The Indian government must be forced to denounce, on the record, the political movement that drove it to power and the anti-minority violence we all know that it encourages,” Viswanath said. “Member states should ask the Indian government as well to repeal the many laws that restrict the abilities of minorities to exercise their full rights as Indian citizens.”

Ajit Sahi, Advocacy Director, Indian American Muslim Council, warned that India faced a “collapse of democracy,” and that the nation’s backsliding on democratic values had already been noted by global watchdogs, Sweden-based V-Dem Institute, and the US-based Freedom House.
“You are looking at a completely authoritarian country that is being shaped into existence under the leadership of Narendra Modi, India’s current prime minister. It is absolutely of great significance to all Western countries. If you do not stop India right now, India will destroy peace and democracy in the rest of the world,” he said.

Hena Zubairi, Washington DC Director of Justice For All, expressed concern over the ongoing threats of violence against Muslim women from Hindu supremacists across India: “Combine this with the threats of sexual violence coming from genocidal conferences being held by people who lead temples, not one, not to the lead of this genocidal conference that took place in December. Yati Narsinghanand, [one of the hate speakers at the event,] leads 4000 temples. That is not fringe, that’s mainstream.”
She added that India was at risk of sparking another wide-scale refugee crisis. “As the Holocaust Museums Early Warning project predicts the mass killings in India, what will happen? Where will these refugees go? Bangladesh? Pakistan, when one-third of Pakistan is underwater? There’s too much at stake.”

Reverend Gideon Gibamani, representing the International Commission for Dalit Rights, pointed out the “intersectional vulnerabilities” faced by Muslims and Christian Dalits, who suffer from discrimination by the state, society, and their own faith groups due to being excluded from protections offered to Dalit Hindus.

“This discriminates Dalit Christians and Muslims from access to education, development, and political representation, thereby discriminating further on the basis of religion,” he said. “This protection given through the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act is denied in its application for Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims, thereby denying access to justice.”

Senior Congress leaders Shashi Tharoor and Mallikarjun Kharge are now all set to fight for the post of Indian National Congress Party President, after they filed the nominations at the party HQ in New Delhi on Sept. 30, 2022. The elections are scheduled for October 17, and the results would be announced two days later.

The forms submitted by the candidates have been scrutinized, Madhusudan Mistry, senior Congress leader and the returning officer for the election of the party president, said at a press conference.

“Of the 20 forms received, four forms have been rejected due to variations in signatures. The Jharkhand candidate’s form has also been rejected due to the repetition of signatures and signatures not matching,” he added.

“Malikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor are the two candidates. October 8 is the date for withdrawal of candidacy. The picture will be clear on that day – if no one withdraws, then the voting process will take place,” Mistry added.

Mallikarjun Kharge’s candidature was proposed by party leaders including Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, Digvijaya Singh, AK Antony, Mukul Wasnik etc. 

After filing the nomination for the Congress president poll, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said, “I’ve a vision for Congress which I’ll be sending to all delegates. We’re going to seek their support… I’m here to be the voice of all party workers.

After the official announcement, Shashi Tharoor tweeted: “Delighted to learn that, following scrutiny, Mallikarjun Kharge and I will be squaring off in the friendly contest for President of Congress. May the party and all our colleagues benefit from this democratic process!”

On Saturday, Tharoor began his campaign from Maharashtra’s Nagpur. In a tweet, he wrote: “I present my 60 nominees. 12 states, all levels of leadership but all proud @INCIndia workers. I thank them & the thousands of workers they represent for the faith they have placed in me. Thanks, my Parliamentary colleagues, for your unwavering support.”

Karti P Chidambaram is among the proposers of Tharoor, who is using “#ThinkTharoorThinkTomorrow” as his campaign hashtag on social media in reiteration of his message that he represents change. “Colleagues from far and wide, thank you for your support for my candidacy,” he wrote in another tweet.

On Saturday, speaking to news agency ANI, the 66-year-old leader had insisted that his contest with Kharge was “not a battle”. “But for those who are satisfied with the party functioning should choose Kharge Sahab, and those who want change should choose me.”

Tharoor, a prominent Indian diplomat and politician who, after long service in the international diplomatic corps, became an official in the government of India. He was also a highly regarded author of both nonfiction and fiction books.

Tharoor was born into an Indian expatriate family living in London, which returned to India after his birth. He completed a bachelor’s degree at the University of Delhi in New Delhi, and in 1978, at age 22, he was awarded a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. At that time Tharoor was the youngest person ever to earn a doctorate from the Fletcher School. Later that year he became a staff member in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, Switzerland.

During his subsequent 23-year career as a diplomat in the United Nations, Tharoor served in various capacities, including deputy chief of the UNHCR Secretariat (1985–89), special assistant for the United States and UN for peacekeeping (1989–96), executive assistant to the secretary-general (1997–2000), and under-secretary-general for communications and public information (2001–07). In 2006 Tharoor was chosen as India’s official candidate for the post of secretary-general. He finished second out of the seven candidates in the 2007 election, which was won by former South Korean diplomat and politician Ban Ki-moon. Following his defeat, Tharoor resigned from the UN and became the chairman of an investment company based in the emirate of Dubai.

Congress veteran and leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, 80-year-old Mapanna Mallikarjuna Kharge is likely to be elected the next party president. If Kharge does bag the post, he will be the first non-Nehru-Gandhi family member to hold the position in 25 years, after Sitaram Kesari. 

The Kharge family hails from Warawatti in Bhalki taluk of Bidar district, which falls in the old Hyderabad–Karnataka region, which was formerly ruled by the Nizams. When he was just seven, the Kharge family was forced to move to neighbouring Kalburgi (formerly Gulbarga) district, after an outbreak communal violence, in which several members of his immediate family, including his mother, lost their lives. This event is said to have shaped his views on communalism and inter-faith relations, making him staunchly ‘secular.’ 

Of the 12 elections he has contested, Kharge lost only once – in 2019. He was elected to the Karnataka assembly nine times consecutively, between 1972 and 2008. Eight of the victories came from the Gurmitkal constitutency, when it was reserved for Scheduled Castes, and once from Chitapur. He also won from the Gulbarga Lok Sabha constituency in 2009 and 2014, earning him the sobriquet of Solilada Sardara. 

If he wins, Kharge would be the second president of the Congress party from Karnataka, after S Nijalingappa in the mid-1960’s. Also, it would mean that two senior positions at the highest echelons of the Congress party would be occupied by Kannadigas. B V Srinivas already heads the Youth Congress and if Kharge wins the presidency, it would be an additional feather in the cap for the party in Karnataka, which goes to the polls in the next six months.

All people living in India are Hindus in terms of identity, said Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on Wednesday, September 21st explaining his organization’s philosophy. Elaborating the RSS’ philosophy, Bhagwat said that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life.

Bhagwat was speaking on the third day of his lecture series in Delhi when he explained the RSS’s views on Hinduism, education and caste. “It’s Indian culture and Hindutva which believe in working with other schools of thought. All people living in India are Hindu in terms of identity and nationality,” Bhagwat said.

“Hinduism is a wrong word—“ism” is a closed concept. Hindutva, Hinduness is not any “ism” but a dynamic process. Gandhi ji has said the endless search for truth is called Hindutva. S Radhakrishnan has said Hindutva is a continuous process,” Bhagwat was quoted by the RSS’s Twitter handle as saying.

“We think everyone must abide by the Constitution…The RSS has never gone against the Constitution. (Sure), The words secular and socialist were added later, but now they are there,” he said. 

Bhagwat said the concept of a Hindu Rashtra or Hindu nation does not rest on segregation or rejection of any community or faith. “Hindu Rashtra doesn’t mean there’s no place for Muslims. The day it becomes so, it won’t be Hindutva. Hindutva talks about one world family,” Bhagwat said. The RSS is the ideological parent of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Addressing a gathering in Shillong, the RSS chief said all are Hindus as all Indians are the inhabitants of Hindustan, which, he said is in the south of the Himalayas, north of Indian Ocean, on the bank of the Indus River. “The habitants of this area are traditionally called Hindus. This is also called Bharat,” said Bhagwat, who arrived here on Saturday on a two-day visit.

He said that even before the Mughals who have spread Islam and the British rulers who spread Christianity, Hindus were already in existence. Highlighting the ideology of RSS, Bhagwat said the term ‘Hindu’ covers all those who are the sons of ‘Bharat Mata’, descendants of Indian ancestors and who live in accordance with Indian culture.

Ruling out the fear of religious conversion, the RSS supremo said to become Hindu one does not have to change since everyone here is Hindu. “India is not a country with a western concept. It has been a cultural country since time immemorial; in fact, it is such a country, which has taught the world the lesson of humanity.”

Since Saturday, he has attended a series of events, including the meeting of RSS functionaries and workers across the hill state. Several BJP leaders, members of Hindu organisations attended the events organised by the Meghalaya unit of RSS.

Bhagwat’s visit to Meghalaya — a Christian majority state, assumes significance as Assembly elections are scheduled to be held there in February next year. Elaborate security arrangements were made in the state in view of the visit of Bhagwat, who has a ‘Z Plus’ security cover. (IANS)

All people living in India are Hindus in terms of identity, said Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on Wednesday, September 21^st explaining his organization’s philosophy. Elaborating the RSS’ philosophy, Bhagwat said that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life.

Bhagwat was speaking on the third day of his lecture series in Delhi when he explained the RSS’s views on Hinduism, education and caste. “It’s Indian culture and Hindutva which believe in working with other schools of thought. All people living in India are Hindu in terms of identity and nationality,” Bhagwat said.

“Hinduism is a wrong word—“ism” is a closed concept. Hindutva, Hinduness is not any “ism” but a dynamic process. Gandhi ji has said the endless search for truth is called Hindutva. S Radhakrishnan has said Hindutva is a continuous process,” Bhagwat was quoted by the RSS’s Twitter handle as saying.

“We think everyone must abide by the Constitution…The RSS has never gone against the Constitution. (Sure), The words secular and socialist were added later, but now they are there,” he said.

Bhagwat said the concept of a Hindu Rashtra or Hindu nation does not rest on segregation or rejection of any community or faith. “Hindu Rashtra doesn’t mean there’s no place for Muslims. The day it becomes so, it won’t be Hindutva. Hindutva talks about one world family,” Bhagwat said. The RSS is the ideological parent of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Addressing a gathering in Shillong, the RSS chief said all are Hindus as all Indians are the inhabitants of Hindustan, which, he said is in the south of the Himalayas, north of Indian Ocean, on the bank of the Indus River. “The habitants of this area are traditionally called Hindus. This is also called Bharat,” said Bhagwat, who arrived here on Saturday on a two-day visit.

He said that even before the Mughals who have spread Islam and the British rulers who spread Christianity, Hindus were already in existence. Highlighting the ideology of RSS, Bhagwat said the term ‘Hindu’ covers all those who are the sons of ‘Bharat Mata’, descendants of Indian ancestors and who live in accordance with Indian culture.

Ruling out the fear of religious conversion, the RSS supremo said to become Hindu one does not have to change since everyone here is Hindu. “India is not a country with a western concept. It has been a cultural country since time immemorial; in fact, it is such a country, which has taught the world the lesson of humanity.”

Since Saturday, he has attended a series of events, including the meeting of RSS functionaries and workers across the hill state. Several BJP leaders, members of Hindu organisations attended the events organised by the Meghalaya unit of RSS.

Bhagwat’s visit to Meghalaya — a Christian majority state, assumes significance as Assembly elections are scheduled to be held there in February next year. Elaborate security arrangements were made in the state in view of the visit of Bhagwat, who has a ‘Z Plus’ security cover. (IANS)

Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, who retired on August 26, took over the reins of the Supreme Court in difficult times when the fundamental rights and civil liberties of the citizens were under threat as never before.

His predecessors, former CJIs Ranjan Gogoi and SA Bobde, had left behind disappointing legacies, with one adjudicating a case that was against his own self, among other disappointing decisions, and the other refusing to take the Centre to task for its many failures in handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Justice Ramana – with his order against the Internet ban in Kashmir, vocal defense of fundamental rights and civil liberties and the very fact that he was part of the five judge bench that held that the office of the Chief Justice of India comes under the purview of the Right to Information Act – was going to be different.

Speaking against the government or its policies was treated as equivalent to speaking against the Indian state. People of all hues, including political opponents of the present dispensation, journalists, social activists, artists, and comedians, irrespective of their age or standing in life, were booked under the sedition law or the draconian Unlawful Activities and Prevention Act (UAPA), making it difficult — almost impossible — for them to obtain bail.

From putting the sedition law on hold to reviewing the money laundering verdict, and ordering probes into Pegasus snooping and Lakhimpur Kheri cases to ensuring appointments of record 11 judges in the top court and over 220 in high courts, Chief Justice of India N V Ramana took significant judicial and administrative decisions in his 16-month tenure.

Proceedings live-streamed

On his last day in the office, the 48th CJI ensured live-streaming of SC proceedings of the ceremonial bench headed by him, a first in the history of the apex court. In 2018, the top court had allowed such webcasts, but it was not implemented until Friday.

Tears and tributes

Senior advocate Dushyant Dave broke into tears while bidding adieu to the outgoing CJI, saying he maintained checks and balances between the judiciary, executive and the parliament and did so “with a spine”.

While Dave described Ramana as citizens’ judge, his colleague, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, said the court will remember him for “maintaining balance even in turbulent times”.

Attorney General K K Venugopal termed as “remarkable” the efforts of CJI Ramana in filling up vacancies in higher judiciary and tribunals, saying that for the first time, the Supreme Court worked at full strength of 34 judges during his tenure as head of the institution.

CJI Ramana said the only way out was to reform the functioning of the system. “We need to deploy modern technology tools and artificial intelligence to find a lasting solution,” he said.

“Unfortunately, during the past 16 months, my tenure as CJI, full-fledged hearing was possible only about 50 days,” said CJI Ramana.

He said he was demitting office after being part of the judiciary for 22 years “with utmost content” and added that he had done his bit for the judiciary to the best of his ability.

“People may come and go, but the institution remains forever. Of course, each one has to make our own contribution. I have done my bit to the best of my ability”, said CJI Ramana.

However, criticism has mounted against the Court after he and his colleagues let go free the 11 convicts in the 2002 Gujarat riots case on India’s 75^th Independence day. Bilkis Bano was gang-raped in 2002 during post-Godhra riots in Gujarat. Her three-year-old daughter was among the 14 members of her family who were killed. The accused were found guilty of gang rape and murders, and sentenced to life sentence.

The Supreme Court, however, has said on it did not order release of the people convicted for gang rape and murder during the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the remission granted to the 11 convicts a week after they were released from a Gujarat jail, Chief Justice of India NV Ramana’s bench said, “We have to see whether there was an application of mind or not. This court didn’t order for their release but only asked the state to consider remission as per the policy.”

In spite the failings, Raanna has been praised by most for his adept handling of the situation, especially with the pressure on the Judiciary by the executive branches of the government to bend law in factor of the ruling party.

Former Delhi High Court Judge Rekha Sharma writes on NV Ramana’s tenure as Chief Justice of India: “Justice Ramana faced the onerous task of restoring the people’s faith in the judiciary. To his credit, by and large, he lived up to what was expected of him — though he could have done much more.”

For much of the two thousand years of the Common Era, India was the largest economy contributing a third of the global output. Archaeological evidence traces the origins of ancient India’s Indus Valley Civilization to the 5th millennium before the Common Era. During medieval times too India witnessed several glorious empires and great civilizations spread across millions of miles under enlightened emperors.

Towards the last quarter of the last millennium, India came under the influence of East India Company for almost a century during 18th and 19th centuries. Thereafter the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857 compelled the British to place India directly under the British Crown for another ninety years. For almost two centuries, therefore, India was anchored to Great

Britain serving the interests of only the British Empire. Of all the colonies the British conquered, controlled and immensely benefited from it was India that was by far the biggest and the wealthiest and was often referred to as the Jewel in the (British) Crown. Before finally leaving India the British divided the Indian subcontinent into two countries in three parcels – India, Pakistan West and Pakistan East. India’s population then was 330 million and the GDP was INR 2.7 trillion – a paltry 3% of the global GDP. A country which accounted for a third of the global output for much of two millennia before had thus been bled bone dry by the colonial masters.

Independent India

India has come a long way since it attained freedom on August 15^th, 1947. India was primarily an agrarian economy in 1947. The contributions to Indian GDP by agriculture, industry and services sectors were 56%, 15% and 29% respectively. Agriculture employed the largest work-force of 72% with Manufacturing and Services providing 10% and 18% jobs respectively.

Today, the service sector accounts for 54% of Indian GDP. The Industry and agriculture follow with 25.92% and 20.19% respectively. Life expectancy on the eve of independence was 32 years. It has now gone up to 70 years.

In 1950, infant mortality rate in India was 145.6/1000 live births and maternal mortality ratio in the 1940s was 2000/100,000 live births which declined to 1000 in the 1950s. There were just 50,000 doctors across the entire country and the number of primary healthcare centres was 725. Today, infant mortality is 27.7 per 1000 births and maternal mortality rate is 103 per 100,000. India now has more than 1.2 million doctors. There are 54,618 Sub-Health Centres (SHC), 21,898 Primary Health Centres (PHC) and 4,155 Urban Primary

Health Centres (UPHC), as on December 8, 2021. There are as many as 70,000 public and private hospitals. As of April 5, 2022 there were 117,771 Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWCs) are operational in India apart from 748 e-Hospitals established across the country as part of the ‘Digital India’ initiative of the government.

The India we see and are proud of is a result of decades of conscious planning, benefitting millions of rural and urban population. Quoting Ambassador A. R. Ghanshyam, who wrote in a previous edition of theunn.com, who pointed to the vibrancy of Indian democracy. He wrote: “Independent India has witnessed seventeen free and fair Parliamentary Elections with fifteen Prime Ministers at the helm – each contributing his/her mite to the growth, stability and development of the Indian Nation, its society and economy. How individual Prime Ministers of India tried to build a modern India from the debris of two centuries’ rule by the British Empire is in itself a great story and has been narrated by many authors, Indian and foreign.”

And this India, where people of different faiths, social strata and

In the seventy five years since independence, India has negotiated a difficult, at times treacherous, journey replete with five wars (1948, 1962, 1965, 1971 and 1999) and facing frequent occurrence of natural calamities i.e. floods, famines, droughts and epidemics. Two of its elected Prime Ministers were brutally assassinated and a third died mysteriously after signing the Ceasefire Agreement in the Soviet city of Tashkent post the India-Pakistan 1965 War. A stretch of 21 months during 1975-77 remains an aberration in India’s otherwise uninterrupted democracy when fundamental rights of Indian citizens were suspended during the period of national emergency.

Progress achieved

Much water has flown in the Ganga since India attained her independence. During 1950-51 the contributions to Indian GDP by agriculture, industry and services sectors were 56%, 15% and 29% respectively. Agriculture employed the largest work-force of 72% with Manufacturing and Services providing 10% and 18% jobs respectively.

Today the service sector accounts for 54% of Indian GDP. The Industry and agriculture follow with 25.92% and 20.19% respectively. Life expectancy on the eve of independence was 32 years. It has now gone up to 70 years. In 1950, infant mortality rate in India was 145.6/1000 live births and maternal mortality ratio in the 1940s was 2000/100,000 live births which declined to 1000 in the 1950s. There were just 50,000 doctors across the entire country and the number of primary healthcare centres was 725. Today, infant mortality is 27.7 per 1000 births and maternal mortality rate is 103 per 100,000. India now has more than 1.2 million doctors. There are 54,618 Sub-Health Centres (SHC), 21,898 Primary Health Centres (PHC) and 4,155 Urban Primary

Health Centres (UPHC), as on December 8, 2021. There are as many as 70,000 public and private hospitals. As of April 5, 2022 there were 117,771 Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWCs) are operational in India apart from 748 e-Hospitals established across the country as part of the ‘Digital India’ initiative of the government.

As for education, when the British left India there were 210,000 primary schools, 13,600 middle schools and 7,416 higher secondary schools in India apart from 498 colleges and 27 Universities. Today there are 1.6 million schools, 42,343 colleges and a thousand Universities. More than 250 million children are going to school today in India and close to 40 million are enrolled in our Universities.

India survived a devastating once in a century pandemic of Covid 19 and its economy contracted by 7.3% in the financial year 2020-21. It may be some consolation that this contraction was lower than in other major economies. As per latest available estimates the growth rate of GDP for 2021-22 is pegged at 8.7% which has to be seen in the context of 7.3% contraction in the preceding year.

India is bound together as a great nation by the strength and stability of its democracy, the rule of law and a breath taking diversity of its populace in terms of religion, language, culture, climate, history, geography and more. At the time of India’s first census in 1951 Hindus were 305 million (84.1%), Muslims 35.4 million (9.8%), Christians 8.3 million and Sikhs 6.86 million (1.9%). In 2022 the estimated population is 1090 million Hindus (79.80%), 200 million Muslims (14.23%), 31.2 million Christians (2.3%), 23.7 million Sikhs (1.72%), 9.6 million Buddhists (0.70%), 5.1 million Jains (0.37%) and 9.1 million (0.66%) other religions and 3.3 million (0.24%) religion not stated. There are two million Hindu temples, 300,000 active mosques, 8,114 Jain temples a few of them abroad, more than 125 Buddhist temples, monasteries, stupas and pagodas, some 35 Jewish synagogues etc. At the time of independence many predicted that India will splinter into pieces based on caste, creed, tribe, language, culture etc., but she has remained in one piece and stronger than ever.

Future Prospects

In the last ten years, despite a sliding down of growth rates since 2016 till the economy picked up this year and a significant unemployment burden haunting policy makers in the country, there is a quiet revolution taking place in the arena of technology, digitization and innovation

spearheaded by young Indian companies. The government’s Atmanirbharta crusade has given an impetus to it.

Latest research of the Indian economy in the last ten years by analyst Ruchir Sharma has a few exciting revelations. In 2011 India had 55 Billionaires with a cumulative wealth of US $ 256 billion which was then equivalent to 13.5% of India’s GDP. Ten years later in 2021 India hosts 140 billionaires with the cumulative wealth US$ 596 billion equivalent to 19.6% of the GDP. Sharma adds that 110 of these are new Billionaires created during the course of just last decade. At the time of independence India was the sixth largest economy in the world. In 2021 it retains the same position which is no mean achievement with India’s population having more than quadrupled.

Notwithstanding the above, there is no room for complacency because (a) India still have a large population that lives below the poverty line, estimated by the World Bank at 140 million which is 10% of the population, (b) the formal and informal sectors may not able to absorb the large number of educated young who are passing out of colleges (2022 estimate is 10.76 million), (c) external and internal factors will keep haunting the policy establishment in its effort to achieve double digit GDP growth rate which is the need of the hour for India. Be that as it may India also has several advantages – (i) a median age of less than 30 years, (ii) a strong and focussed government, (iii) growing market, and, (iv) an innovative Indian youth. If India persists with its pursuit of building and consolidating its infrastructure, keeps the society cohesive and harmonious, stabilizes predictable consistency in policy formulation and implementation, a brighter future can be ensured for its future generations.

[Ambassador A. R. Ghanashyam is a retired Indian diplomat who has served as Ambassador of India to Angola and High Commissioner of India to Nigeria]

It was in May 2020 that Indian Prime Minister Modi made a clarion call for a Bharat that was “Aatmanirbhar”. It is important to clarify what this meant and what it did not. While a rough translation of the word is no doubt “self-reliant”, it is nevertheless not the kind of self-reliance that India arguably believed and practiced in the early years of its independence up until the seventies and eighties. It is easy to state what it is not. It is certainly not autarchy; it is certainly not inward-looking; and it is most certainly not stopping imports and making every product at home. It may be more prudent to think of “Aatmanirbharta” as Self- Reliance 2.0.

In this framework of Self-Reliance 2.0, the PM clarified that rather than be self-centred, India will open up even more to the world outside, guided by its motto: Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, or our Earth is just one family. PM Modi went on to say that Aatmanirbharta will stand on five pillars: economy, infrastructure, technology, demography and demand. PM explained the raison d’être of Aatmanirbharta by saying that this should prepare India for participation in global supply chains and that this is a battle India cannot afford to lose.

There is little doubt that the global pandemic i.e. COVID-19, played a significant role in India’s push for Self-Reliance 2.0. Take the simple example of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and N-95 masks. At the beginning of the pandemic, India was not making any N-95 masks. Today, India manufactures at least 200,000 N-95 masks a day, if not more. Even more impressive is India’s own record of vaccinating its mammoth population. In 2020 when COVID emerged, almost no one believed India could ever fully vaccinate its population and that such an exercise would take years and years. Yet, in July 2022, about 18 months the first vaccination began, India completed 2 billion doses of vaccines for its citizens. The story of how this was achieved is worthy of a case study which will cover vital issues such as public-private partnership, centre-state cooperation and not to mention building awareness among citizens and getting their participation willingly in this exercise. Indeed, the WHO and others have praised India and the best practices here will be emulated the world over.

Proving that Self-Reliance 2.0 is not just for  Indians, India also exported a large number of vaccines and PPE countries all over the world. The latest statistics from the MEA website talks of 240 million (approx) vaccines which have been delivered to 101 countries, of which there are developed, developing and least-developed countries. The story of India being the pharmacy of the world is too well known to bear any repetition here. All of this is real “aatmanirbharta” at work.

The COWIN platform that India used for distributing vaccines to its mammoth population was remarkable. COWIN is essentially a cloud-based IT solution for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating COVID vaccination in India. By July 2021, India decided to make this open platform available to all countries for their use. In the COWIN global conclave organized in July 2021, as many as 142 countries in the world expressed interest in adopting this platform. Again, this is Aatmanirbharta at work.

The war in Ukraine has had a profound impact not just in Europe, but more importantly for developing and least-developed countries. Specifically, the war has impacted food, energy and commodity prices adversely. Wheat shortage in particular, is expected to affect Africa and the Middle-East quite significantly. At a time like this, it is comforting to know that India’s position when it comes to food security for its huge population is satisfactory. This is yet another manifestation of Self-Reliance 2.0. Indeed, not only was India able to give away food-grains and lentils to 800 million of its citizens as part of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, India was also able to carry out modest exports of food-grains to low income countries that needed it. Again, Aatmanirbharta at work.

Yet another amazing success story of Aatmanirbharta is the case of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) which is a government-backed centralized digital payment gateway, widely popular in India. To understand the significance of UPI, consider this: India accounted for the largest number of worldwide digital transactions in 2021 at a whopping 48 billion, a number that is nearly three times bigger than China’s (18 billion) and is at least six times bigger than the transactions of US, Canada, UK, France and Germany combined. Voices in the US are saying that we must learn from India which is leapfrogging into the uture. Again, Aatmanirbharta at work.

The above is not to suggest that everything is rosy. India faces monumental challenges with regard to eradication of poverty, job creation and investment in health/education/skills of its vast population. But the lessons are clear: India is sui generis and it is only an “Indian” model that will work for India and Indians. Hence, the capital importance of Aatmanirbharta. After all, as we have seen above, ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ is not just good for India but also for the world at large.

[Ambassador (Dr.) Mohan Kumar is a former Indian Ambassador and afull time academic now.]

I am not a Midnight Child. My mother was in no hurry. I was born several months later. But I am still older than the Republic of India, even if I missed its birth as an independent nation, bloodied in the severance with its brother, Pakistan, and crying for those tens of millions of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and some Christians too, who were killed, raped, looted, and forced to flee their homes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants us to hail the 75th year of Independence no less but as the “Nectar of Immortality Grand Festival”, the Amrit Mahotsav.

He also wants us to simultaneously observe the day with a “Horrors of Independence” memory. He wants the Hindus and the Sikhs, who fled their homes in West Punjab, the Frontier provinces, Baluchistan and Sindh, to remember the murder of their parents and grandparents, the rape of their aunts and sisters, and even mothers, as they left their homes and villages to race to the Independent India. Many fell to sword, knife, and gun long before they reached the border. Many women lived, but never made it to the border.

But Mr. Modi’s media and social media army tell us in so much unsaid shouts that no Muslim was killed, that the Muslim was the killer, the abductor, the rapist.

I’ve seen no reports in the national and international media if Pakistan, whose people celebrate Independence a day earlier, on 14th of August, is also observing a “Horrors of Partition Day”. They would have every right to do so if their government or ruling party so chose. And if we did not give them ideas.

India and Pakistan have enough visual, audio, and documented material on the horrors. Much of Pakistan is bereft of Hindus and Sikhs who were born there. The bodies would have been cremated on mass pyres or buried in pits and old wells. Many of the women left behind, or “captured’, possibly married their captors, and had children.

It happened here, in India, too in what are today Punjab, Haryana, Jammu, parts of Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and even beyond the Narmada, and in the East, in the sliced Bengal, and areas of what is now Assam.

Partition has impacted politics in both India and Pakistan for 75 years, much more than 200 years of colonial rule. The Deccan was spared to an extent, and the lands of the Tamils, the Kannadigas, the Konkans and the Malayalees.

The difference was that even after partition, a very large number of Muslims chose to remain in India, by choice or by default. In Pakistan only a handful of Sikhs and Hindus remained. A few of them have crossed to India in the last few decades.

Mr. Modi’s arousing passions in India, seventy-five years later, has little to do with sympathy for the wounded. It has to do with his preparation for a third term in the battle of general elections of 2024, for which his party has again chosen him as the commander-in-chief.

He wants no hitch, no pothole, no barrier and certainly no person or party to come in his way.

Mr. Modi can use the Partition, and bend history his way, because there really has been no counting of the dead, no allowing the ghosts to find peace, and no balm to those whose kin is still missing.

Neither India nor Pakistan has issued White Paper on the human toll of Partition across the line drawn by the colonial British, whose officers were still controlling large numbers of police and military in both countries under the nominal control of the governments of two independent nations.

With several wars, a constant threat of subversion and terrorism and a nuclear bomb-powered military stand-off between the two countries, there is no question of any talk of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal wounds and give the two nations and their new generations of citizens a clean slate to write their future. Only a handful of human rights activists in the two countries dare to dream of a future with peace.

It would be difficult to guess a body count now. But many Hindus live in properties in India once owned by Muslims, as much as Muslims in Pakistan live in houses of Hindus which were allotted to them or captured by them during or after the partition violence. These properties are now known as Enemy Property, under laws in the two countries.

Periodically, social media and television stories abound of siblings re-uniting now in their nineties – a brother Hindu and a sister Muslim, or vice versa, depending on how they were separated from their families. The rich nawabs and Rajput Muslims of Pakistan still cross the border to take brides from families of their rank for their grandsons.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru could have been overwhelmed by the refugees wading through rivers of blood. It goes to him and his colleagues that almost every Hindu and Sikh was given house or land and compensation. The national capital itself changed not just in its historical character but demography too.

I know these first-hand. As newly-weds, my wife and I lived among the refugees from West Punjab and later in a colony where those from East Bengal were settled; we lived half a decade among them. We listened to their stories of sheer horrors of Pakistan, their struggle in the refugee camps, and how, with just a little money, they had rehabilitated themselves. I met people, who had begun living in tents, and running small shops on pavements, who had risen to be industrialists, police officers, politicians, and even Member of Parliament. I also knew a real gangster of the stature of a local godfather.

The stories of resilience of these people, including that of the gangster, gave all of us hope that left to themselves and with a nurturing environment, these victims of Partition could heal themselves, and regain their strength and dignity.

The people, responding to Modi’s dog whistle, surely are a new generation, a third or fourth generation of people who are rootless not because of Partition but because of unemployment, inequity, and increasing gap between the super-rich and the average and poor citizens. Mr. Modi has not bridged the gap. His policies, and his open favours given through official channels to a handful, help a cartel of industrialists of his choice.

How will these groups, marching to the drum beat of private armies of the likes of the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and the traditional but now hugely inflated ranks of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, pave the way for a third-term Modi. And will that Modi be benign now that his mark on India’s history has been deeply carved, or will he speak of a thousand-year Reich?

We all know how thousand-year Reich ended. Therefore, what about the final quarter of the independent nation’s centenary?

No midnight child I am, but as a grandfather of a 14-year-old boy of a mixed Telugu-Syrian-Bengali heritage (with a dash of East Bengali genes), I ask this question: What is the India my grandson, then a man in his late thirties, will see?

The first quarter of new India’s century was one of courage, soothing balm, healing, and hope. Despite the shock of two wars, in 1948 stand-off with the nascent Pakistan, and a humiliation at the hands of China in 1962, Nehru laid the foundations of education and technology that in time have seen a Punjabi Indian scientist, Har Govind Khurana, win a Nobel prize. And an entire army of technocrats from India’s flowering Institutes of Technology, science, and medicine, would join the post-World War II leap of science and technology in the United States of America. India is well set to send a man to the moon, a mission to Mars, and may even discover a new molecule which will enable Indian and global pharma to make cheaper life-saving drugs. As Pakistan and the neighbours seem to disintegrate into military doctorships and fundamentalist politics, India consolidated its democracy.

The second quarter of the century consolidated democracy further.  But it was first marred by the State of Emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi after she lost a democratic election. Her defeat was propelled by a popular movement that morphed into a rebellion against her. She lost the general elections after Emergency; but won the next as those who defeated her could not continue together.

Her return to power in a couple of years was marred by the rise of aberrant political forces such as the Khalistan movement which eventually led to the military action in the Golden Temple, holy to the Sikhs, and the consequent assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh guards. Possibly more than 5,000 Sikhs were stabbed or burnt to death in the national capital and several towns of the north. A regiment of the Indian army mutinied.

The third quarter of the century has seen the rise of Hindutva. It began with the decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was rebuilt on the Jana Sangh of the pre-Emergency period, that it could become a political challenge not on a popular or economic platform, but one designed to gather the Hindu masses in a matrix of militant faith. The existence of the Muslims in free India despite partition, and the slogan to rebuild a Hindu Rashtra were to be the fuel and the goal.

Mr. Modi can be said to be the best product of the slogan first raised by Mr. Lal Kishan Advani, a refugee from Sindh, as he began his march in the 1990s to rebuild Ram Temple after razing the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The 500-year-old mosque was razed by Sangh armies as the police, the Army and the Supreme Court watched, and the Congressman Prime Minister, Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao, had a long siesta.

The period saw Mr Rao privatize the economy and dilute the socialism Nehru and Indira had brought in. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were happy, as was India Incorporated.  After an intervening seven years of BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee’s rule, considered benign in retrospect, Congressman Manmohan Singh completed the task he had begun as Mr Rao’s Finance Minister.

Mr Modi won the general elections of 2014 fair and square, if you can see fairness and lawfulness in a campaign built on a rhetoric of elimination of a group of citizens of their citizenship and possibly life itself.

Mr Modi is not unfamiliar with bloodshed as a consequence of hate. He presided over the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002.

Patently he is not threatened by, or afraid of, any national or international opposition to these policies. He thinks the cadres he and his Home Minister Amit Shah have trained will overcome any resistance that may come during the 2024 general elections or the ones after that.

Is he correct in his thinking, or will the nation, and its people, ensure that the years towards the Century, in 2047, will again be of rebuilding, and encouragement to reason, science and a commitment to the welfare of all people.

I would like to hope that Nehru’s dream, and the dream of those of us now as old as Independent India, will not shatter. (The Indian Currents)

The midnight of August 15, 1947 is perhaps noted as the most significant in the pages of Indian history. In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, India awoke to life and freedom. But if freedom is the hard earned dream come true for the nationalist leaders of India, then stitching together the hundreds of territorial pieces into a distinct whole was an aspiration much harder to realize and as of August 15, lay yet unfulfilled. The departure of the British from Indian territory was accompanied by the question of how to bring together the 500-odd chiefdoms and states they had left behind.

The Indian Independence Act of 1947 gave princely states an option to accede to the newly born dominions India or Pakistan or continue as an independent sovereign state. At that time more than 500 princely states have covered 48 percent of the area of pre Independent India and constituted 28% of its population.

These kingdoms were not legally part of British India, but in reality, they were completely subordinate to the British Crown. For the British these states were the necessary allies, to keep in check the rise of other colonial powers and nationalist tendencies in India. Accordingly, the princes were given autonomy over their territories, but the British acquired for themselves the right to appoint ministers and get military support as and when required. However, several states were adamant over their decision to not join India. Some of them wanted independent statehood, while others wished to join hands with Pakistan.

Here are the five princely states that were against integrating with India:

1. Travancore

Known for its maritime trade and richness on both human and mineral resources, Travancore was one of the first princely states to refuse the integration. A distinguished lawyer by profession, Sir CP Ramaswamy Iyer was the dewan of Travancore. By 1946 he had declared his intention of forming an independent state.

Historian Ramachandra Guha in his book says that CP Iyer had support from both Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the UK government in this matter. However, he opted to change his mind after an attempted assassination by the Kerala Socialist Party. Thus, Travancore joined India on July 30, 1947.

2. Jodhpur

Maharaj Hanwant Singh, the ruler of the Rajput state of Jodhpur was in confusion about the whole matter. Even though the maharani (queen) wanted to join India, he was lured by Jinnah to join Pakistan in the promise of offering full port facilities in Karachi. On the other hand, Vallabhbhai Patel too tried to contact the Maharaja and offered him with sufficient benefits. After many dramatic acts, Hanwant Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on August 11, 1947.

3. Bhopal

Ruling over a majority of Hindu population, Hamidullah Khan, the Nawab of Bhopal, always wanted independent statehood. He was against the Congress rule and he had mentioned about the same to Lord Mountbatten. But when the Nawab saw many princely states being integrated with India at large, he too decided on the same by July, 1947.

4. Hyderabad

The Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Usman Ali, was adamant in his decision to be independent and wanted to join the British commonwealth. However, it was not encouraged by the British. The situations in the princely state took violent turn which Vallabhbhai Patel saw as a cancer in the belly of India. On September 13, 1948, under Operation Polo, the Indian troops were sent to Hyderabad. The armed encounter lasted for four days. Thus, on September 18, 1948 the princely state joined India after the army gained full control over the state.

5. Junagadh

The princely state of Junagadh was ruled by Nawab Muhammad Mahabat Khanji III. Even though Lord Mountbatten during his address to the princes advised to join the Indian Union, Nawab of Junagadh wanted independence. Junagadh had asked Pakistan for accession, which later got accepted. This move enraged India and thus ordered for a plebiscite. On February 20, 1948 the plebiscite was conducted and 91 percent voted to integrate with India.

In the 20th century, the global media spoke of democratic India “as a hope giving marvel”. Today, the country is “in the hands of diligent leaders and dedicated organisations whose first commitment is not to democracy or equality” but Hindu nationalism, leaving out the biggest question of “What does India stand for”, writes biographer and historian, and Mahatma Gandhis grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi as he reflects on the state of the nation in the 75 years since Independence.

“In the 20th century, the world’s newspapers spoke of democratic India as a hope-giving marvel. A densely populated country with high levels of illiteracy and poverty, a bewildering variety of religions, castes, and languages, and a history of internal conflict was functioning as a democratic polity and trying to become a society of liberty, equality, and mutual friendship!

“Today, however, the Indian state is in the hands of diligent leaders and dedicated organisations whose first commitment is not to democracy or equality. Hindu nationalism may summon noble stories from the past. It may evoke passions to avenge supposed wrongs enacted a thousand years ago. But it will never permit equality to a Muslim, a Christian, a Sikh, or a Buddhist. Unless they say they are really Hindus, that their Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, or Buddhism is secondary to their ‘Hinduness’. Which most of them will never say, not even under duress,” Gandhi writes in “India After 1947 – Reflections and Recollections” (Aleph).

If Hindu nationalism permits of no equality to those outside the Hindu world, “within that world it only permits tactical, not genuine equality. The virus of high castes, low castes, and outcastes is a stubborn legacy from out past”, Gandhi writes, lamenting that “despite the injustice lying at its heart, Hindu nationalism commands vast resources. It possesses state power, street power, and money power, and controls the bulk of the media”.

In such circumstances, Gandhi maintains, “the prospect of rebuilding Indian democracy must seem quixotic. Overcoming Hindu nationalism in India is likely to be as hard a test as, for example, overcoming Islamic nationalism in countries like Turkey and Iran. Or perhaps even harder. The challenge is probably beyond the capability of political leaders, no matter how gifted, or of parties, no matter how large”.

Contending that the ball is thus “in the court of the Indian people, a frequently underestimated force”, Gandhi writes: “The people will act or react at times of their choosing, when events throw up opportunities. At times elections may provide opportunities, and moments may arrive when our people openly or quietly press the change button.”

However elections are “dicey affairs” going by India’s experience and that of countries like Iran and Turkey, the author writes.

“Many things, and a variety of parties, must come together if a juggernaut backed by great wealth and claiming to represent �the national religion’ is to be defeated at the hustings,” Gandhi states, admitting that it is not reasonable to expect political parties to perform miracles, “whether of unity, dazzling appeal, or something else, before circumstances change” and blaming them “when miracles are not produced is a waste of energy”.

Until circumstances change, the author writes, “we should welcome any stroke for liberty and democracy, no matter how inadequate or isolated. We should not mind whether the stroke comes via the political platform and vote , or through the power of disciplined protest, or through the bravery of a judge, bureaucrat or reporter, or the words of a poet or songwriter, or in any other form”.

Such stokes not only can come but have been coming day after day, in place after place, Gandhi notes.

“These last few years, India has witnessed an array of creative and courageous young women and men, and their older compatriots, fighting for precious values, and willing to pay a price” and they include students, reporters, photographers, artists, poets, singers, scholars, lawyers, judges, and more, Gandhi maintains.

Asserting that democracy has been India’s strongest card but one that has weakened in recent years, the author warns that “a Hindu Rashtra will snuff out candles of hope in nations far from India and those close to it”.

Gandhi also depreciates the fact that the unceasing debate on India’s standing in the world, and whether it has gone up or down in recent years, “usually leaves out the biggest question. What does India stand for?”

“What are the ideas that India is contributing to our world? Calm, poise, and mindfulness through yoga? No doubt about that. While not everyone in the world who benefits from yoga or allied practice thinks of India while engaging in it, Indians can feel legitimate pride in this steady extension of an Indian or eastern insight to all parts of the earth”…but “Indians do not exist for India alone”, the author writes.

“India has to offer a message to a humanity where doctrines of supremacy are once more resurgent, yet equality’ and mutual respect’ are not the headlines that jump out of today’s India,” Gandhi write.

Gandhi closes with a grim warning that with India’s footprint being stamped more and more across the world, “in all these countries, it’s not just India’s name that is at stake. The daily life of people of Indian origin everywhere is affected by the state of Indian democracy. In much of the world, Christianity or Islam is the religion of the majority. Denying rights to India’s Muslims and Christians causes problems straightaway for Indians outside India. It’s an anti-Indian exercise, not just an anti-democratic exercise. Anything more foolish is hard to imagine”. (IANS)

India’s most famous lawyer and veteran human rights defender Prashant Bhushan has slammed the country’s Supreme Court saying it is now complicit in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comprehensive assault on civil and political liberties of religious minorities such as Muslims; human rights defenders; the civilian population of India’s only Muslim-majority province of Kashmir; the government’s critics; and dissenters.

“The Supreme Court has been virtually abdicating its role as the guardian of civil liberties and human rights of the people in India,” Bhushan said at a Briefing organized Wednesday by US-based civil and political rights groups. “[The Supreme Court has] indeed gone further in some cases to even assault the civil liberties of the citizens.”

The Constitution gave the Supreme Court the “very important responsibility of protecting fundamental rights [and] human rights of the citizens” and ensuring “that the executive and the legislature function within the norms or within the bounds of their power.” But the court had failed to deliver on that mandate to protect civil and political liberties.

In the eight years since Modi came to power in 2014, India had seen a “rampant trampling” of the people’s rights with a “full-blooded assault on minorities. “There are lynch mobs out on the streets. There are lynch mobs on social media. Laws are being made to somehow reduce [Muslims] to second-class citizens.” Muslims were being extra-judicially killed in “fake encounters;” their homes “bulldozed” merely for protesting.

“Civil rights of dissenters” were being crushed. “Anybody who stands up and speaks out against this government, especially journalists or activists,” was targeted

Saying that a “very large number of our activists and journalists are in jail,” many of them falsely accused of carrying out the anti-Muslim violence in Delhi in 2020, Bhushan said activists were being charged under draconian laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and “kept in prison for years altogether [and] denied bail.

“In such a situation, the role of the Supreme Court and the High Courts…  becomes even greater because it is really their responsibility and their power and duty to protect the rights of people whose rights have been trampled,” Bhushan said.

However, habeas corpus cases, petitions against the anti-Muslim Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), and cases challenging imprisonment on bogus charges of sedition under UAPA, the Penal code, or “even the National Security Act, which allows preventive detention those cases, are not being heard,” Bhushan said.

Bhushan said the Bhima-Koregaon case, so called because it arose from upper-caste Hindu violence against lower-caste Hindus in a village of that name in Maharashtra state, was “clearly a false case. Several forensic experts have shown that the material based on which [the accused] are charged has been planted in their computer. But now it’s been almost four years and these people are still in jail” and the Court has failed to give them bail. Over a dozen human rights defenders are incarcerated in this case.

“There are many people in Kashmir who have been in jail,” and many petitions have challenged the revocation of Constitutional Article 370 that had given special status to Jammu & Kashmir state. But the Supreme Court has refused to hear those petitions.

“In many cases, bail has been denied by the High Court or even sometimes by the Supreme Court,” Bhushan said. The Supreme Court “has been abdicating its responsibility [by] denying bail in obvious cases where the charge is bogus.”

Bhushan said the Supreme Court was “absolutely faulty” in its “interpretation of the draconian provisions of bail” under the UAPA. The “normal principle” is that “bail is the rule, jail is the exception.” Bail can only be denied if there were reasonable grounds to believe the accused would “flee,” “tamper” with the evidence or commit a crime.

Bhushan slammed the Supreme Court for last month upholding the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) “reversed” the “burden of proof.” Now anyone accused under PMLA would need to” prove innocence” to get bail. “It is virtually impossible before trial for anybody to prove his innocence before even the trial begins.”

Bhushan also criticized the Supreme Court for its recent ruling that ignored evidence against Modi’s complicity in a pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat state in 2002 and virtually ordered the arrest of human rights defender Teesta Setalvad who had long exposed Modi’s role in that violence 20 years ago. This ruling showed that the Court had taken the abdication of its responsibility to a “different level,” Bhushan said.

He also criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that rejected testimonies from indigenous people in Chhattisgarh state that the police had carried out mass killings.

Several Opposition Parties in India have strongly criticized the Narendra Modi led  Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Government for targeting its opponents and critics, saying that Modi has “unleashed a relentless campaign of vendetta against its political opponents and critics through the mischievous misuse of investigative agencies”

“Prominent leaders of a number of political parties have been deliberately targeted and subjected to harassment in an unprecedented manner. We condemn this and resolve to continue and intensify our collective fight against the anti-people, anti-farmers, and anti-Constitution policies of the Modi government that is destroying the social fabric of our society,” a statement issued by the Opposition parties said.

The Modi regime’s attack against members of the Indian parliament has led to rising concerns over a shrinking political state and the backsliding towards an authoritarian state.

After questioning Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party for three full days, each day for as many as 10 hours,  India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) has now targeted Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition party. 

In a show of strength, the Congress staged street protests and its leaders courted arrest across the country last week as the party chief Sonia Gandhi was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case related to the National Herald newspaper.

Gandhi, who was recovering from Covid, was summoned again on July 25. The 75-year-old replied to dozens of questions last week, media reports stated. According to Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, the ED said it had nothing to ask of her either Thursday or Friday. After which Sonia Gandhi said she was willing to appear on July 25th, he said. The Congress party slammed the agency’s action against its top leadership and termed it “political vendetta”.

“All Congress MPs and CWC members have courted mass arrest outside our party headquarters in a show of collective solidarity with Sonia Gandhi, a target of ‘Vishguru’s’ political vendetta,” said Congress general secretary Ramesh.

Leaders of 13 political parties, including the DMK, Shiv Sena, RJD and the Left, met at Parliament House and issued a statement accusing the government of unleashing a “relentless campaign of vendetta against its political opponents and critics through the mischievous misuse of investigative agencies”.

According to reports, an alarmingly high volume of cases register by the ED in recent years. The total number of cases registered by the ED under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA) and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) has jumped almost three times in the first three years of the second term of the BJP-led government (2019-20 to 2021-22) as compared to the corresponding period in its first term (2014-15 to 2016-17), as per the data shared by India’s Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary in a written reply to Lok Sabha on July 25, 2022. 

The ED registered 14,143 cases under FEMA and PMLA between 2019-20 and 2021-22, as compared to 4,913 cases in 2014-15 to 2016-17 — an increase of over 187 per cent. The break-up shows that 11,420 FEMA cases were taken up for investigation in the first three years of the second term, up from 4,424 cases in the first three years of the first term — an increase of over 158 per cent. The cases registered under PMLA increased by more than five times in this period — from 489 between 2014-15 to 2016-17 to 2,723 in 2019-20 to 2021-22 — a jump of over 456 per cent. According to the year-wise data, 2021-22 saw the highest number of money laundering and foreign exchange violation cases in the last eight years of the Modi government. In 2020-21, the ED filed 5,313 cases under FEMA (the previous high was 3,627 cases in 2017-18); and 1,180 under PMLA (up from 981 in 2020-21).

Another tool used by the Indian Government in recent years to contain dissent has been the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). As per the submission by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) before the Parliament on July 20, 2022, there is  a huge gap between the number of persons who are under-trial and those who have been either convicted or acquitted under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in the country during 2016-2020.

Out of 6,482 persons under trial, only 80 persons have been convicted and 116 have been acquitted. The increasing number of persons undertrial is concerning and is a poor reflection on the Indian judicial system.It suggests that the law is merely enabling their continued incarceration. “Thus, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, (UAPA) is allegedly being misused to incarcerate political dissidents by a vindictive regime,” critics pointed out.

Amnesty India International has been critical of India and its human rights violations for several years. The annual reports by the agency that monitors violations by the state/federal government agencies across the nation have come under fire by the ruling party led by Narendra Modi.

The harassment of the Amnesty India International by the Indian Government agencies has led to the suspension of its activities in India in September 2020. “Because of the bank freeze, Amnesty International India has been forced to cease work in India,” reports pointed out. 

Now, as per the latest reports, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) of India has imposed penalties of Rs. 51 crore and Rs 10 crore, respectively, on Amnesty India and its former head Aakar Patel, citing violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).

The agency said in a statement that Amnesty International UK had been remitting large foreign contributions “through its Indian entities (non-FCRA companies) following the FDI route in order to evade the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA)” and expand its activities in India.

This was despite the Home Ministry’s denial of prior registration or permissions to Amnesty International India Foundation Trust and other trusts under the FCRA, it said in a statement last week.

“The Adjudicating Authority of Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has adjudicated a Show Cause Notice issued to M/s Amnesty India International Pvt. Ltd.(AIIPL) and its CEO Shri Aakar Patel for contravention of the provisions of The Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA) and imposed penalty to the tune of Rs. 51.72 crore and ₹10 crore respectively,” said the ED statement.

The funds were transferred to “expand its NGO activities in India, despite the denial of prior registration or permissions to Amnesty International India Foundation Trust (AIIFT) and other trusts under FCRA by Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India”, the ED statement said.

In 2018, ED began conducting searches of properties of Amnesty India over allegations that AIIPL was formed to receive foreign funding, violating FCRA rules. In 2019, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a case against the NGO alleging violation of foreign exchange rules.

In 2020, the Executive Director of Amnesty International India Avinash Kumar stated: “The continuing crackdown on Amnesty International India over the last two years and the complete freezing of bank accounts is not accidental. The constant harassment by government agencies including the Enforcement Directorate is a result of our unequivocal calls for transparency in the government, more recently for accountability of the Delhi police and the Government of India regarding the grave human rights violations in Delhi riots and Jammu & Kashmir. For a movement that has done nothing but raise its voices against injustice, this latest attack is akin to freezing dissent.”