By Bharat Dogra  If 1 out of 2 high school girls feel persistently sad or hopeless and one out of six students plan suicide in a year, isn’t it time for a society so affected to look inwards at what has gone wrong, so that at least, and as a first step, the causes of such a dismal state of affairs can be identified correctly? After all, effective remedial action depends first and foremost on a proper identification of causes. This is all the more necessary in a situation when, as this alarming official data for year 2019 for USA tells us, in addition there is an incredibly high rate of increase of these problems. According to the data of the  (the latest such data available at present and also quoted by the USA Surgeon General in the advisory issued by him in 2021), in 2019 37% of all high school students and half of female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. What is more, within a decade (2009-2019), this had recorded a 40% increasing, rising fr...

Counterview Desk  In a representation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as many as 42 farmers’ organisations though their representatives , backed by senior scientists and experts, have said that the Government of India (GoI) should stop misleading the Supreme Court “with untrue and incorrect” statements on GM mustard. Insisting that India does not need unsafe GM mustard, in their representation, they urged the Supreme Court to order immediate uprooting of GM mustard crop in various locations. The representation comes even as a penal of experts, coming down heavily on the GoI for refusing to see how in less than a week’s time the pollen from GM mustard will “start contaminating” non-GM mustard fields with transgenes, including male sterility and herbicide tolerant traits. Alleging that the GoI is actively misleading the Supreme Court with untrue and incorrect statements on GM mustard, Kavitha Kuruganti of the Coalition for a GM-Free India said, “We can list at least five areas where...

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ*  It was ‘Constitution Day’ once again on 26 November, as the nation remembered with profound gratitude the day in 1949, on which the Constituent Assembly ‘adopted, enacted and gave to ourselves’ a meaningful Constitution. The day was also a reminder that ‘Constitution Day’ for the citizens of India cannot be relegated to just one day- it has to be observed every single day; and secondly, the Constitution belongs to ‘we, the people of India’ and we should never allow it to be desecrated by anyone at any time! Setting the tone for the day, was a momentous address delivered by the Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud in the Supreme Court of India. CJI Chandrachud who took over the reins of the Apex Court just a couple of weeks earlier began his address by stating that the Constitution of India was a social contract between those historically in power and those who had been marginalised. Highlighting the need to enhance the representation of marginalised com...

By Firoz Bakht Ahmed*  Maulalna Abul Kalam Azad, whose 134th birth anniversary tell on November 11, and who joined lacerated hearts and broken beliefs, remains relevant as masses look askance all around in their search for stability in the prevailing times of confusion, communalism and radicalism. The eleven hundred years of common history, opines Azad in “Al-Hilal” (December 29, 1912), have enriched India with the common Hindu-Muslim achievement. According to Maulana, our languages, our poetry, our literature, our culture, our art, our dress, our manners and customs, the innumerable happenings of our daily life, everything bears the stamp of our joint endeavour. There is indeed no aspect of our life which has escaped this stamp. Our languages were different, but we grew to use a common language; our manners and customs were dissimilar, but they acted and reacted on each other, and thus produced a new synthesis. Whether we like it or not, we have now become an Indian nation, unite...

By Sandeep Pandey*   The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) or the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) have long argued for ‘Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan’, which into recent years has translated into a crisper English expression: ‘One Nation-One Religion-One Language’. Given this backdrop, it is curious that the BJP government has organised the Kashi Tamil Sangamam in Varanasi, the Prime Minister’s constituency. Why did the BJP and RSS feel the need for such an event? All Narendra Modi events are highly publicised and have multiple political objectives. It is never an innocuous religious/cultural event as it may appear from the face of it. Afterall, RSS calls itself a cultural organisation, but has never ceased to surprise us with its political designs. Tamil Nadu has a long history of opposing imposition of Hindi by Union governments. Periyar EV Ramasamy had opposed the idea of compulsory teaching in Hindi as far back as in 1937. The 1960s witnessed violent protests against Hindi in which...

By Rosamma Thomas*  During the pandemic, the annual Pushkar camel fair in Rajasthan did not occur for fear of contagion; in 2022, it was called off again as lumpy skin disease affected cattle. At Sadri in Pali district, however, festivity continues – a two-day Camel Cheese Festival was held on November 23 and 24, 2022. Visitors spent time with the camel herds and their Raika, drank camel-milk tea with the herders and then returned to lunch at the Kumbhalgarh Camel Dairy, from where the Kumbhalgarh Fort is visible, to taste camel cheese. The Raika herders have been facing a tough time – camels are no longer used as much for transport or agriculture in Rajasthan. The animals have limited utility, but their milk is prized. Camel Charisma, the dairy at Kumbhalgarh, sends camel milk across the country to people who use it in therapy – for autistic children, improved blood sugar levels, or even to treat cancer. It is believed that the health benefits of the camel milk is because the anim...

Anwar Ibrahim By Jay Ihsan*  Anwar Ibrahim, a hardcore reformist who took a punch to his eye in 1998 from then inspector-general of police, Rahim Noor, has finally been given the mandate by Malaysians to serve as the nation's 10th prime minister. Anwar knows too well the burden of staying true to both trust and faith the people have in him requires every once of commitment and dedication. The question is will he be apologetic for his transgressions enroute to "rebuilding" Malaysia? In his overzealousness to get the job done, Anwar, 75, needs to safeguard every bit of gumption to address prickling issues plaguing the safety of the nation especially those involving communal sensitivities. For one, dare Anwar get rid of terrorist hate preacher and fugitive Zakir Naik for inciting religious unrest in Malaysia? In November 2016, India’s counter-terrorism agency filed an official complaint against Naik, holding him responsible for promoting religious hatred and unlawful activi...

By Harsh Thakor*  Responding to the the call of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), thousands of farmers, supported by workers, students, youth, women and ordinary people, have staged foot-marches and rallies all over the country to register their protest against the “anti-farmer” BJP-led Union government. Protest gatherings engulfed 25 state capitals, more than 300 district headquarters and numerous tehsil headquarters. Rallies were staged in cities of Chandigarh, Lucknow, Patna,Kolkata, Trivandrum, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bhopal and Jaipur, comprising a total of around five lakh persons. In all, 3,000 protests led by 33 organisations forming SKM were held all over India. More than five million people poured out on the streets to join the ‘Raj Bhawan Chalo’ or ‘March to Raj Bhawan’ call of SKM, sending memorandum of demand of farmers to the President of India through state governors, seeking her intervene to stop the anti-farmer activity of the ruling party at the Centre. It was on 26 Nov...

By Harsh Thakor*  On November 3rd, we commemorated the 40th death anniversary of E.H.Carr who made an outstanding contribution as a liberal historian and gave a new dimension to method of historical research. Carr was an epitome of historical accuracy, being more illustrative than any historian on Soviet Russia. Even though a liberal democrat he applied the Marxist historical materialist method. Carr was not a Stalinist, as many Western writers dubbed him. However he pointed out many of Stalin’s measures undertaken were imperative for Russia to save itself from the encirclement of Western Countries. Carr made it clear that whatever his crimes, Stalin was the anti-thesis of Hitler, saving a progressive state and much more in tune with the given situation than Leon Trotsky. Carr supported Lenin but categorised many of Stalin’s measures as cruel or coercive, condemning Stalin’s suppression of opposition in Russia. Still with great foresightedness, Carr summarised how infiltration of ...

Counterview Desk  In an email representation to the Election Commission of India (ECI), Dr EAS Sarma, former secretary to the Government of India, has objected to the statement reported to have been made by Union home minister Amit Shah, who allegedly justified the 2002 Gujarat riots stating that certain sections of people “taught a lesson” to the rioters. Noting that the statement, if correct, “in effect implies those other than the law enforcement authorities had taken law into their hands”, Sarma says, “Shah's statement needs to be viewed by the ECI in conjunction with the reported fact that it was the Union Home Ministry that cleared the release of the eleven rape convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, directly related to the infamous Godhra incidents in 2002, which triggered the shameful sequence of events that shook the nation's conscience.” According to Sarma, if the statement is true, “I am constrained to draw the inevitable inference that it would have already impacted th...