Editorial

Lessons from Sri Lanka for India:

The Sangh brigade is planning a repeat of the Babri Masjid demolition by raking up a dispute over the Gyanvapi mosque. This is a clear violation of the Places of Worship Act, 1991 which guarantees the status of every place of religious worship as on 15 August, 1947.

The people of Sri Lanka have risen up in sustained protests since March 2022 against the Rajapaksa regime and its misrule. The protests were sparked by economic mismanagement that resulted in soaring prices of food and fuel, fuel shortages, and indefinite power outages, with elderly people dropping dead in fuel queues.

Resist Modi’s Attempts To Project Him As Anti-Muslim Icon

In a public address on the 400th birth anniversary of Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth guru of the Sikhs on April 21, PM Narendra Modi, true to form, tried to distort his legacy to serve Islamophobia. This is part of a larger conspiracy on part of the RSS to pit the Sikh religious minority community against the Muslim one.   

The Assam Police’s arrest of Gujarat MLA and popular Dalit movement leader Jignesh Mevani over a tweet asserting that Prime Minister Modi “considers (Gandhi’s assassin) Godse to be God” and challenging him to visit riot-hit areas has once again brought home the role of the police in India as an arm of the ruling BJP. The Assam Police came all the way to his constituency in Vadgam to arrest him and take him to Kokrajhar in Assam.

In a disturbing pattern, Hindu religious festivals in the past week have been used across India as pretexts to organise menacing armed marches through Muslim localities, raising slogans declaring that only those who acknowledge Hindu supremacy can be allowed to stay in India. First on Ram Navami, and then again on Hanuman Jayanti, RSS-affiliated outfits held processions intended only to humiliate, intimidate and attack Muslims, and vandalise mosques.

Recent bail judgments in India hold up a mirror to blatant judicial double standards – showing lenience towards Hindu-supremacist hate while showing indifference to the indefinite imprisonment of scores of defenders of democracy as under-trials under draconian laws.

Vivek Agnihotri’s latest film ‘The Kashmir Files’ released on 11 March, the day after the Assembly election results were announced in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur, has created a storm across the country especially in North India.

Of the five states that went to the polls in February and March, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab grabbed the maximum attention because the elections were being held in the wake of the repeal of the farm laws, and Punjab, Haryana and Western UP constituted the heartland of the historic farmers’ movement that forced Narendra Modi to repeal these laws.

Two weeks into the invasion, Putin’s war on Ukraine shows no signs of abating. The shelling has become more intense and widespread over several parts of Ukraine which are seeing growing civilian casualties and an exodus of refugees. Ukraine is being subjected to massive devastation. According to Ukrainian forces, Russia too has suffered major military losses, in terms of both personnel and weaponry. As the economic and human cost of the war grows, the repercussions are being felt across the region and beyond.