'On September 29, Tathagata Roy, retweeted a tweet with the headline, “Muslims rape 16-year-old Hindu girl, who begs them ‘Please leave me for your Allah’s sake’.” The original tweet was by Robert Spencer, the founder of the extremist Islamophobic propaganda blog, Jihad Watch, which based the news on a report by another propaganda website – one inspired by Hindutva – the Hindu Post. Roy’s Twitter timeline is replete with tweets of this nature: incendiary, hate-filled communal propaganda. Why are we talking about Roy?
'Maharashtra BJP unit on Tuesday said it will ask the party-led NDA government at the Centre to confer Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. In its election manifesto, released by BJP working president J.P. Nadda along with chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, state party president Chandrakant Patil and Mumbai unit head Mangal Prabhat Lodha, the state unit also sought the honour for social reformers Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule, a party leader told PTI...'
'The Bharatiya Janata Party released its manifesto or “Sankalp Patra” for the Haryana elections on Sunday... The manifesto, which has 15 chapters and 248 points, has been termed by the BJP as its vision document for “The Haryana of My Dreams”. Khattar said the manifesto is in line with the principles of creating a “Ram rajya”... Since Haryana has earned the dubious distinction of becoming the state with the highest unemployment rate in the country at around 28%, the manifesto also makes promises for promoting industry and providing jobs to the youth...'
'On October 7, Times Now channel’s “India Upfront” programme claimed that the Congress was attempting to present a “counter-narrative to the RSS view of history” by circulating a 128-page booklet among its members. Few should have any objection to the idea of pushing back against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s majoritarian view of history, which, in many instances, involves grave misrepresentations of fact, deliberate distortions and, on occasion, complete fabrications.
'It is essential for Hindus to take back their faith from extremists, says the founder of Hindus for Human Rights... A close Kashmiri friend of mine in New York City has not spoken with her loved ones for more than 50 days. The Valley has been under siege since August 5, with a communications blackout in place. Meanwhile, detention centres are being built in Assam for potentially millions of people rendered non-citizens through the National Register of Citizens programme.
'Hindutva groups in Dindigul, Tamil Nadu disrupted the filming of action-comedy Sulthan, starring Karthi and Rashmika Mandanna and directed by Bakkiyaraj Kannan, because they thought it was a biopic of Tipu Sultan. The film was being shot near an Archaeological Survey of India protected site on Tuesday night, when members of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu Munnani arrived and staged protests. A police officer told the Indian Express that while there was no damage, the shooting schedule was disrupted. “They were in the final stage of shooting.
'When I read in the newspapers that the Alwar trial court had acquitted the cow vigilantes accused of lynching Pehlu Khan – which, to me, had appeared an open and shut case from the newspapers – I was curious to find out on what grounds it had done so. Having worked in the legal field where it is commonly believed that a judge who has written a perfect judgment is yet to be born, I did not expect it to be perfect. But most certainly, I expected to see from a senior judicial officer a judgment on a standard format supported with sound legal principles.
'Last week, papers published in the journals Cell and Science reinforced two well-established but controversial facts of ancient Indian history: first, that the Indus Valley Civilisation was pre-Vedic, and second, that Sanskrit came to India through migrants from the north-west at a time when the Indus Valley Civilisation had declined. Media coverage, however, reported the exact opposite of what the studies found. To understand why newspaper headlines, television and Twitter feeds misrepresented the research so comprehensively, one needs to grasp why the facts are controversial.
'At Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia hospital, comatose patients with serious brain injury have undergone a treatment that is not a usual part of hospital regimens—the chanting of an ancient Vedic mantra that is believed to ward off untimely death. This treatment, condoned by the hospital, is part of a study for which the Indian government has sanctioned research funds.
'Kiruba Mohan, an active member of Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle was in forefront of the fight against the Hindutva brigade while he was pursuing graduation in Madras University... The Madras Uiversity on August 29 terminated a post graduate student Kiruba Mohan, who was a former secretary of the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle(APSC) in the same university, while he was pursuing his graduation.The university cited the reason as 'missing transfer certificate in his Post Graduate application'...
