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Sunday View: The Best Weekend Opinion Reads, Curated Just For You 

Here is a compilation of the best opinion pieces across newspapers.  

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India
8 min read
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The NRC is at Odds With the Citizenship Act

Karan Thapar wants to bring your attention to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, which is a ‘deliberate and blatant defiance of the law of this country’ that has come into being with the permission and protection of the Supreme Court. In his column in Hindustan Times, he expresses his concern over how the rush to complete the NRC and identify illegal foreigners will transform legal citizens of India into illegal immigrants.

“The cavalier way it was addressed by the Supreme Court in its August 13 order is not just inadequate, but distressing. What makes the situation even more inexplicable is the Press and the Opposition are either unaware of this or unperturbed by it. For them, truly, ignorance is bliss. And now can you see why I’m so keen to attract your attention and provoke a response? On top of everything else to do with the NRC which is worrying and questionable, this is, surely, of a different order altogether? If there’s no redress it could shatter our belief in the rule of law.”
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Fifth Column: Hindutva in Modern India

Tavleen Singh, in her column in The Indian Express, recommends RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to take a leaf from the biographies of the father of Hindutva, Vinayak Savarkar, who disapproved of cow worship. While the number of lynching incidents give the impression that Hindutva is an ideology akin to Nazism, these books reveal that it is actually an ideology of Hindu reform, she writes.

“Savarkar rejects the caste system and makes a serious case for Hindus to respect science and modern technology. He is scathing not just about Gandhiji’s attempts to blame the Bihar earthquake on untouchability but also about Shankaracharya saying that it happened because of attempts to end the caste system. Having grown up believing that Hindutva was a dangerous, divisive ideology, I find myself surprised at how important an idea it could be for our times.”
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Modi's Chandrayaan 2 Praise: Science as a Kind of Aarti, Bharat Mata is the Goddess

Mukul Kesavan hails ISRO’s achievements by writing about how, apart from the final loss of communication, the space agency was precise, frugal and capable in the actual business of space voyaging with Chandrayaan-2. In a column in The Telegraph, he writes that 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 to increase the glory of Bharat.

“But unlike the DRDO, ISRO has been a poster boy for State-sponsored research and development. In a world where space exploration is being rapidly privatized, with Elon Musk’s Space X and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin making NASA seem like a lumbering sarkari behemoth, ISRO sails serenely on, from one success to another. If the Nehruvian dream of the enlightened State creating dynamic public sector institutions ever made landfall, it was with ISRO.ISRO’s origins are classically Nehruvian: like Homi Bhabha and the department of atomic energy, Vikram Sarabhai was the visionary scientist at whose urging the State created an institutional space for self-sufficiency in science and technology. But unlike many Nehruvian public sector organizations, ISRO produced a string of greatest hits, from sophisticated satellite launch vehicles to geo-stationary satellites to planetary and lunar space missions. Chandrayaan 2’s near miss was only the latest of ISRO’s many achievements. Since so much ink has been expended in documenting the inefficiencies of State-run institutions, it might be useful for sociologists to explore ISRO’s institutional culture to understand what made this PSO so successful.”
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The Many Tragedies of the Kashmiri Pandits

Ramachandra Guha writes about how Kashmiri Pandits have managed to rebuild their lives outside Kashmir, but now their suffering is being misused by the right to gloss over its own anti-Muslim violence. In a column for Hindustan Times, he writes about how hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits were systematically tortured and murdered in the past, and now the abrogation of Article 370 and the savage state repression which has followed is being viewed as retribution for what was done to the Pandits.

“In the days after August 5, I have naturally thought a lot about Kashmir, and about Kashmiris I have known. The one who has been most in my mind is my friend and former boss, TN Madan. He is now in his late eighties, physically frail, but, as ever, intellectually alert and morally upright. I wrote him a mail saying I was thinking of him. This was his reply: ‘These are calamitous times. Although I have always had misgivings about Article 370, and although my mother, brother and his wife had to leave our home in 1990, the home which my father had built, I feel deeply distressed that the people of the Valley should be humiliated and tyrannised, held prisoners like they are, cut off from everybody. I grieve over the severe threat that the idea of a humane culturally plural India faces today. But I remain a pluralist myself, and hopeful’.”
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2010s: The Decade Is Ending on a Sour Note for Indian Economy

While Indian industries struggled in a liberalised economy in the 1990s, Indian businesses came of age and soared in the 2000s. However, the 2010s saw many top corporates crash and unicorns (unlisted companies worth a billion dollars), which don’t make much profit and are overwhelmingly owned by foreign investors, crop up. SA Aiyar in his column for The Times of India writes that he believes the reason is the lack of an education system that emphasises on academic excellence, world-class research, and world-class institutions.

“Unfortunately, no political party gives priority to academic excellence. All focus much more on creating ever more quotas in educational institutions and jobs. Modi has taken this to a new high by reserving 10% of educational seats and jobs for economically weaker sections, including Muslims and Christians for the first time. He is expanding the number of IITs and IIMs. A few excellent private institutions like the Indian School of Business and Ashoka University have come up. Alas, these are not remotely enough for a country of 1.3 billion. One consequence is that the skill gap, and hence the economic gap, between China and India, has widened sharply, and will keep widening.”
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Parallels in Media Coverage of Brexit and Kashmir

Britain and India seem to view the internal politics of the other through the perfunctory coverage in foreign publications, which is often a distorted presentation of half-truths that blow incidents out of perspective, writes Swapan Dasgupta in The Telegraph. Boris Johnson's proroguing of Parliament was presented to the world in a way that was unflattering to Brexit supporters and stories of Kashmir are being written the same way as those about Palestine, the Rohingya conflict and Islamophobia.

“There is a tendency for the media to focus on bad news — since good news is never newsworthy — and Kashmir’s entry into the list of ‘conflict zones’ has meant that ambitious journalists out to make a mark in a competitive profession will be inclined to hunt for horror stories, blow incidents out of perspective, and even be willing to believe outright lies. Just as there is a certain peer group and intellectual sanction to opposing Brexit on the grounds of preventing uncertainty, safeguarding democracy and opposing nationalism, Kashmir is being held up as a test of cultural autonomy and the future of the ‘idea of India’ — a phrase that in recent days resonates more in Pakistan than it does within India. In both cases, what is banked on is ignorance of specific situations and a particular ignorance of the grim reality of jihad, in favour of a grand narrative that, among other things, involves debunking nationalism and sneering at the right-wing. Every generation produces what Lenin mocked as ‘useful idiots’.”
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The Abbottabad Mystery

Khaled Ahmed tries to dissect the mystery of whether a former Pakistani intelligence official had informed the Americans about the Abbottabad hideout of the Al Qaeda chief, in a column in The Indian Express. He points out that the tip-off was arranged by a Brigadier (retd) Ijaz Shah, during 2004-2008, on General Pervez Musharraf’s instructions or by ISI official Brigadier Usman Khalid – the mystery continues.

“‘I have no doubt that a retired Pakistani officer who was in intelligence walked in and told the Americans. I won’t take his name because I can’t prove it and also I don’t want to give him any publicity. How much of the 50 million dollars he got, who knows. But he is missing from Pakistan. I should know.’ After this, Major General Asif Ghafoor, director of Inter-Services Public Relation (ISPR) of the media wing of the Pakistan Army, stated: ‘Lt Gen Asad Durrani, retired, is being called to the GHQ on 28 May 2018. He will be asked to explain his position’. Who was the officer who took ‘50 million dollars’ to sneak on bin Laden? Will his name be forever hidden from the public? Journalist Amir Mir, author of Talibanisation of Pakistan: From 9/11 to 26/11 and Beyond (2010) and The True Face of Jihadis (2006), in his blog, dug out the name too; but even then the discussion will not stop about who informed the US about bin Laden’s house near the prestigious Pakistan Military Academy.”
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Baby Who Lived, and Baby Who Should Have

Shalini Langer narrates the story of Aieman’s – a woman in Kashmir, who lost her baby after delivery as the senior doctor couldn’t be reached, and how her brother had to spend several hours running around Srinagar trying to inform family members of the same. In a column for The Indian Express, she apologises for being one among million Indians who didn’t raise their voice against ‘restrictions’ imposed, for being a part of the silent audience applauding the government and normalising words such as detention and curfew.

“But would I dare put this question to Aieman? For, don’t I dread what she would say in reply? The 26-year-old, the same age as I was in 2000, waiting for her first child with as much anticipation, with a wardrobe put together as lovingly, would be right in turning around and asking me: whose shoes am I really in? To Aieman, I am the biggest mass of social media users in the world who hasn’t blinked an eye over 7 million men, women and children blocked out from the world now for a month. To Aieman, I am the voter in the world’s biggest democracy whose eyes won’t see and ears won’t hear.”
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Kashmir: What Now?

Warning the government, Meghnad Desai writes in The Indian Express about how normalcy needs to be restored urgently in J&K as every day of delay makes it look more sinister both in Kashmir and around the world. It is time to relax the curfew, face the riots and work out concrete policy changes in economic and social sectors to heal the wounds of the past 65 years.

“The last 30 years have been fed by several delusions. India pretended when it suited it that J&K was sovereign and MPs needed special permission to visit it. For no other state were Internet and mobile telephone connections shut when the Prime Minister visited, except in J&K. Kashmir was and was not a part of India; it was and was not autonomous. It was the only state where between 40,000 and 50,000 people, local and infiltrators, have been killed in the last 30 years. On 5/6 August, there came legal clarity. The steady de facto erosion of political autonomy for J&K has been ended. The Line of Control is now an international border between India and Pakistan. The partition of India is at long last complete.”
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