India Archive

On the evening of June 21st, when the news came out that Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, and JP Nadda went to meet Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, a couple of Telugu media channels started speculating that he will be made the next President. By night, we knew that the NDA has announced Droupadi Murmu as the Presidential candidate. 

The political drama gripped the state of Maharashtra on Wednesday. Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut hinted toward the dismissal of Vidhan Sabha after rebel Eknath Shinde attained the support of 46 MLAs in Guwahati. Shinde stated that he had no plans to float a new political party and that he has always been Balasaheb Thackeray’s Shiv Sainik.

Author and human rights activist Amjad Ayub Mirza, who hails from Mirpur in Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK), says that Hindus and Sikhs who have been persecuted outside Bharat have a moral obligation to fight back and seek justice.

Recently, videos of a heavily intoxicated woman abusing police, her cab driver, and passersby on the road have gone viral on the microblogging site, Twitter. The woman, in a series of videos shot by the enraged cab driver and people witnessing her shenanigans, could be seen lingering on the streets while heavily abusing police – allegedly under the influence of alcohol.

If the elites in India and abroad are anything to go by, the Uber/Ola drivers know the pulse of the nation like no other. Because somehow, they have inadvertently given such profound political analysis in just 20-minute cab rides to the economists, journalists, and propagandists that one would think the eminent personalities are passing off conversations they have with the voices in their heads as conversations with cab drivers.

On Sunday, senior military officials from the Indian Army, Navy and the Air Force held a joint press conference regarding the Centre’s Agnipath Scheme. The Tri-Service press conference was held in Delhi to clear misconceptions around the recruitment process in the defence forces, which caused a furore among some sections of the youth.

Amid the violent protests against the Agnipath scheme for recruitment into the armed forces, the military has said those who are indulging in violence in the name of protests will be barred from joining the armed forces. While applying for the post of Agniveer, the applicants will have to submit a declaration stating that they were not involved in riots.

“Religiophobia should not be a selective exercise involving only one or two religions but should apply equally to phobias against non-Abrahamic religions as well,” Indian Representative to the UN T S Tirumurti expressed sternly on Friday. Tirumurti was talking at the UN meeting of ambassadors to mark the first-ever International Day on Countering Hate Speech.

India has seen a hectic and horrible fortnight. As the nation struggled to step out of the dark, demonic shadows of the global pandemic, crooked politicians worked overtime to create a civil-war-like situation on the ground.