Widely observed as Mahaparinirvan Diwas to mark the death anniversary of India’s Constitutional architect, BR Ambedkar, 6 December now presents itself as a clash between two competing ideologies, writes CPI General Secretary D Raja in The Indian Express.
Raja believes that the clash is between those who believe in the constitutional values of “equality, freedom, democracy and social justice” and those who simply don’t.
The left leader maintains that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which was unable to ‘digest’ Ambedkar’s ideas on caste, had chosen the constitutional ideologue’s very date anniversary to demolish the Babri Masjid, leading to widespread chaos and damage to India’s social fabric.
Writing on the raging controversy around love jihad, Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, in his column for the Times of India, argues that individual rights are ignored in a democracy by politicians who, guided by the idea of vote banks, often pander to the interests and demands made by religious and caste groups.
Calling the new anti-conversion laws nothing but a ‘viscous ploy’ to falsely present love marriges between a Muslim and and non-Muslim couple as a “holy war,” Aiyar calls upon the Supreme Court to strike down these very laws that he says are based on a vague definition of inducement.
Expressing her thoughts on the issue of the farmer’s protest, veteran journalist Tavleen Singh, in her column for The Indian Express, says that while successive electoral victories made by the Bharatiya Janata Party built an “aura of invincibility” around Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the nation now seems to have forgotten that it’s not just the ballot box where the people’s voice can be heard.
Maintaining that the Prime Minister no longer has his ears to the ground, Singh says that the treatment being meted out to protesting farmers was a consequence of the fact that no one – from large sections of the media to even some of the PM’s cabinet colleagues – can dare oppose him.
Penning his thoughts on the controversy around the kiss between a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy within a temple in Netflix’s Suitable Boy, author and former diplomat Pavan K Varma, in his piece for the Times of India suggests that those opposing kissing should immediately read up ancient Hindu texts on the power of Kamdeva.
Writing for The Indian Express, senior Congress leader and former Union Minister P Chidambaram writes that forgetting one’s own history and showing no regard for fundamental principles of the constitution are the telling signs of primitive instincts that have gained legitimacy following the growth of the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS.
Asserting that these primitive instincts have long led to the imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states, the implementation of a discriminatory citizenship law and an absolutely illegitimate form of control on one’s diet, Chidambaram says that this regressive thought process has now taken on one’s personal liberties by enacting several marriage laws.
In his piece for the Times of India, author Chetan Bhagat says that attempting to vaccinate about 1.3 billion Indians will be a ‘mammoth exercise’ for which everyone must put their act together, else it could very well turn into chaos.
Comparing the vaccination drive to a World Cup Final, Bhagat says that the daunting enterprise must undertaken with a sense of unity where every Indian gets the vaccine without any form of discrimination.
In his piece for the Hindustan Times, Dechen Palmo, a research fellow at Tibet Policy Institute, warns that China’s plans to build a super dam on the lower reaches of a river in close proximity to Line of Actual Control in Tibet, should be a worry for New Delhi as the same river flows through Arunachal Pradesh and Assam where it is called Siang and Brahmaputra respectively.
To be constructed in Metok, the last country of TAR, the super dam will be just 30 kilometers away from the Indian border will comprise 6 large hydropower stations with an installed capacity of 10 million kilowatts.
Commenting on a recent column in which ‘Little Master’ Sunil Gavaskar asked if Cricketer Virat Kohli is being ‘unpatriotic’ by choosing paternity leave and spending time with his wife over test matches in India, Shobhaa De, in her piece for the Times of India, writes that practices adopted by previous generations are not set in stone and that each new league plays their game differently.
In his piece for The Indian Express, Rakesh Sinha harps back to October 1988, during which over five lakh farmers had taken over Boat Club, a stone’s throw from the Parliament, in order to make their long-standing demands heard.
Sinha recount’s the role of Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Mahendra Singh Tikait, who mobilised farmers from western Uttar Pradesh, while also shedding light on the many tactics adopted by the then Congress government to disperse the protesters.
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