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“Give me back my right to live without fear,” Bilkis Bano had said after the 11 people convicted of gang-raping her had been granted remission by the Gujarat government, earlier this month.
Writing about how those men were feted with garlands and reportedly called “Brahmins with good sanskar” upon their release, former Union Minister P Chidambaram argues, in The Indian Express, that the moral of the story is clear:
He then goes on to enlist examples of journalists, bankers, officers, etc – all of whom, he says, need to be reassured by someone of authority that they can live without fear.
“Did you cling to your mother too, when the men came for you, I wonder? And flinch away from the thought,” writes Shalini Langer in a letter addressed to Bilkis Bano’s three-year-old girl, who was among those who were killed, on that night of horrific gang-rapes and murders in 2002.
The letter (published in The Indian Express), in which Langer shares that she imagines the girl in her own daughter’s image, she writes about how the girl’s mother had refused to be cloaked behind “honour”. But most importantly, she wonders what would even be the right thing to say to the three-year-old whose life, and the endless possibilities that had yawned open for her at that age, were snatched brutally away from her.
“The BJP is waiting in the wings to upend the Jharkhand government, and has tasted blood,” says an editorial piece published in The Hindu, as it probes the uncertainty that surrounds Hemant Soren’s continuation as Jharkhand's chief minister.
Further, it argues that amid the disqualification proceedings and in the face of a potential investigation for corruption, Soren will, anyway, have diminished authority. Thus, the “honourable thing for him to do in this instance of disqualification would be to resign as the Chief Minister.”
Was it worth for Congress to deny Gulam Nabi Azad – the party’s “latest high profile refugee” another Rajya Sabha term? This is essentially the question that Santwana Bhattacharya poses in a piece for The New Indian Express. The author argues that history has been repeating itself for the Congress and talks abut the utility of Azad.
“The problem is that in the ‘new India’, there is not a single political leader who has the moral authority to control Islamist fanatics,” writes Tavleen Singh in her column for The Indian Express.
Thereby, she goes on to point out, the same is because Hindutva fanatics have been over-indulged and an atmosphere of hatred, founded on grievances from medieval times, has been permitted. She also argues that while Indian muslims had in the two decades since 9/11 felt safe in India, the recent hostility towards them now compels them to take (what she feels are) “extreme positions” like “the demand for girls to wear ‘hijab’ in schools and colleges,”
Pranay Kotasthane analyses Delhi’s now-scrapped liquor policy in a piece for Times of India, contextualising it in the national context.
“The Delhi government could have done better,” he writes, even as he goes on to point out that like previous attempts at liberalisation in other sectors, this policy also suffered political pushbacks.
In what some may consider a scandalous suggestion, Chidanand Rajghatta writes (for Times of India) that Khadi products need “videshi expertise” in order to garner global heft. He also suggests that beyond mouthing platitudes, the Prime Minister should actually go ahead and become the poster boy for these fabrics. Taking cue from the explosive business of “ripped jeans”, Rajghatta writes, “Monetizing the defect is where marketing savvy comes in.”
In an article for The New Indian Express, Shiv Visvanathan laments the tumble of Indian universities into the “deadwood of technocratic thought.” He argues that the university is a theatre for ideas, a domain of play, and a common ground for dissenting academics, and yet it is being turned into an “interlude from employment, as a cadre for politics, as a bureaucracy for certification.”
Pooja Bedi, in a piece for Times of India, writes about the “heart-breaking and harsh reality of Bilkis Bano,” and argues that if there’s a time for a Prime Minister to unite or divide the nation, it is now.
Further, she talks about how both Nirbhaya and Bilkis, one Muslim and one Hindu, are daughters of India and “representative of your daughters and grand-daughters in the future, and of an India, you have created either by your inaction or actions.”
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