'Union minister Jitendra Singh on Wednesday said those who “do not feel proud” of US President Donald Trump’s comment that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the “father of India”, do not consider themselves Indians. “India is being respected in a way which was rare in the past,” Singh said on the sidelines of the launch of CPGRAMS reforms in the department of posts. “People who live abroad are proud today of being Indian. This is happening due to the personality and personal outreach of Prime Minister Modi,” said the minister of state for the Prime Minister’s Office...'
'The entire debate around outsiders and foreigners has been based on the long held belief that Bangladeshi infiltrators are threatening the demography and culture of Assam. But now, as per a community wise break-up of the over 19 lakh people excluded from the final National Register of Citizens (NRC), nearly a third of the people left out of the list are actually non-Bengali people, many of whom belong to indigenous tribes and ethnic groups. Shockingly thousands of Karbis, Rabhas, Sonowal Kacharis and even Ahoms have been excluded from the final NRC!
'The authors of two scientific papers about Aryan migration endorsed a theory closer to the cultural triumphalism of the political right while the papers had themselves disfavoured it... What is surprising is that, in a press conference held in New Delhi on September 6 to explain their findings from Rakhigarhi soon after the papers were published online, coauthors Vasant Shinde, archeologist and vice-chancellor of Deccan College, Pune, and Niraj Rai, head of the ancient DNA laboratory at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleosciences, Lucknow, advanced the contested ‘Out of India’ theory.
'It seems almost sacrilegious to be less than sentimental about Chandrayaan 2. Such a huge and heroic effort! Such a massive investment of scientific skills! Such a national fervour worked up to a feverish pitch! The pride of 130 crore Indians! However, the truth is greater than any scientific breakthrough, and it must be reckoned with at all costs. First, the national hysteria about Chandrayaan 2 was deliberately worked up.
'...For Modi, the achievements of ISRO’s scientists are of the same order as the miracles worked by India’s mythical ancients and they serve the same purpose: the greater glory of Bharat. This is the opposite of the scientific temper: it’s science as a kind of aarti where the goddess honoured is Bharat Mata. Prime ministers are influential people, their example matters, their actions and words are cues for others. A year after Modi became prime minister the Indian Science Congress had sessions where ‘scientists’ read papers documenting interplanetary travel in ancient India.
'A piece of “breaking news” published by several media outlets on August 31 claimed that the Kerala police had booked 30 students of Kozhikode’s Silver Arts College for waving a Pakistani flag during the campaign for college elections. The anchor on Times Now channel (which reported that 25 students had been booked) said that the Bharatiya Janata Party had protested against the incident. She went on to question the channel’s correspondent, “Yes, Vivek, could you give us details about what really happened because we can see the visuals of a massive Pakistani flag being raised?”...
'Fourteen years after the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the state and central governments entered into a tripartite agreement in New Delhi to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC), 1951, as per the exclusive citizenship cut-off date of March 27, 1971 for Assam, the revised NRC was published by the office of the Registrar General of India (RGI) this August 31. As per a press note issued by the office of the state coordinator for NRC in Guwahati on August 31, a total of 3,11,21,004 persons were included in the final NRC out of the 3,30,27,661 applicants.
'It is ironical that the Narendra Modi government, which never tires of reminding everybody about their nationalism and patriotism, is actually following an economic policy of selling off the country’s national resources to foreign companies. It recently announced measures of easing foreign direct investment (FDI) in coal mining and associated infrastructure, contract manufacturing, single brand retail and digital media.
'On a cold December morning in 2018, a strange event occurred on the grounds of D.E.S. Navalmal Firodia Law College in Pune. The staff was gingerly led into their staff room for an unexpected meeting. The room was crowded with extra chairs and the doors were closed. Inside the room stood solemn-faced police officials flanked by members from the college’s senior management. The management began the meeting with a patriotic song that somehow led to a speech on nationalism and how it was time to repay one's debt to the motherland.
'Millions of people in north-eastern India could lose their citizenship on Saturday in what could become the biggest exercise in forced statelessness in living memory. Human rights experts have raised serious concern over the drive against suspected illegal immigrants in the border state of Assam, warning it could create a humanitarian crisis that disproportionately affects Muslims and the region’s poorest communities. Around 30 million people in Assam have been forced to prove they are citizens by demonstrating that they have roots in the state dating to before March 1971.
