The spread of Corona Virus in India has been on the upswing despite the measures undertaken by the state. In most parts of India the suffering has been immense. The central Government took up the issue of Covid 19, with great amount of delay. From early February WHO started warning the Governments all around about the impending dangers of the pandemic. That time Indian Government was busy in organizing ‘Namaste Trump’ and the ruling party at Centre was busy with the operation Kamal to overthrow the Congress Government in MP. As The Janata Curfew was declared on 22nnd March and total lockdown on 24th March, the issue started being taken up seriously. To shirk the responsibility of the state, it found a very convenient target. The Tabligi Jamaat’s (TJ) seminar (13-15 March) in Markaz Nijamuddin was blamed for the spread of Corona by the Government and then by the media. Definitely some lapses must have occurred in organizing of the seminar at this time, and a large assembly taking place during a pandemic is inexcusable at one level.
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The draft Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification 2020 proposed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEFCC) has been making some noise lately and with good reason. Some are fighting to get it scrapped, some more have only heard of it, but many are ignorant.
This 5th August nation witnessed a spectacle of Prime Minister doing the bhumi Pujan of Ram Temple on the site where Babri Mosque was demolished 28 years ago. In full religious regalia the Prime Minster performed the elaborate puja in presence of the Chief of the RSS, the organization which spearheading the transformation of potentially secular, diverse, plural India into a Hindu Rashtra.
Contrary to present impression that Muslims are separatists due to whom the partition of India took place, the truth is that Muslims contributed to freedom movement and upheld India’s composite culture in equal measure. The partition process, mainly due to British policy of ‘divide and rule’ well assisted by Hindu and Muslim communalists is being hidden from the popular vision in India and Muslims in general are held responsible for the same. Not only that the communal historiography introduced by British to pursue their policies has become the bedrock of communal politics and worsening of the perceptions about Muslims is in progress in India.
As Covid 19 has created havoc all rounds, the rulers of certain countries are using it to further intensify their set agendas. The democratic freedoms are being curtailed in certain forms, the reaction to which has come in America in the form of a campaign, which is opposing “stifling” cultural climate that is imposing “ideological conformity” and weakening “norms of open debate and toleration of
In Minneapolis, US an African American, George Floyd lost his life as the white policeman, Derek Chauvin, caught hold of him and put his knee on his neck. This is a technique developed by Israel police. For nine long minutes the knee of the while policeman was on the neck of George, who kept shouting, I can’t breathe. Following this gruesome murder America erupted with protests, ‘Black lives
India has tragically witnessed the phenomenon of lynching becoming dominant during last few years. It was particularly around the issue of Holy Cow-Beef, that lynchings became more prevalent and two communities had to face the brunt of it, Muslims and dalits. The IndiaSpend data showed the rise of the incidents from 2014 and that close to 90% of victims were Muslims or dalits. Some notorious cases
Over the last couple of days when the world was occupied with unifying efforts to fight the deadly Covid19 pandemic, sections of Indian media provided viewers a familiar scapegoat – the Indian Muslims – who are often stereotyped as a community being constantly at loggerheads with the citizenry and the State. Biased media channels were quick to resort to blaming the entire Muslim community for the
In the wake of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) UN High Commissioner, Michele Bachelet, has filed an intervention in the Supreme Court petition challenging the constitutionality of the Citizenship Amendment Act, as she is critical of CAA. Responding to her, India’s Foreign Minister S. Jai Shanker strongly rebutted her criticism, saying that the body (UNHCR) has been wrong and is blind to the
They say ‘history repeats itself first as a tragedy and then as a farce’. In case of India, communal violence not only keeps repeating itself, the pattern of the tragedy keeps changing every next time. Some features of the violence are constant, but they are under the wraps mostly. The same can be said about the Delhi violence (February 2020). The interpretations, the causative factors are very