Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
KYIV — “She’ll say whatever the FSB [Federal Security Service] wants her to say,” said Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian lawmaker-turned-dissident who now lives in Kyiv.
Discussing who was behind the bombing of a St. Petersburg café earlier this month — which left 40 injured and warmongering military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky dead — the “she” in question was 26-year-old Darya Trepova who, until recently, was an assistant at a vintage clothing store and a feminist activist, and has been accused of being the bomber.
And the St. Petersburg bombing — as well as another carried out against commentator Darya Dugina — has now sharpened a debate within the deeply fractured, often argumentative and diverse Russian opposition, regarding the most effective tactics to oppose President Vladimir Putin and collapse his regime — raising the question of whether violence should play a role, and if so, when and how?
Russian authorities arrested Trepova within hours of the blast, and in an interrogation video they released, she can be seen admitting to taking a plaster figurine packed with explosives into a café that is likely owned by the paramilitary Wagner group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin. On CCTV footage, she can be seen leaving the wrecked café, apparently as shocked and dazed as others caught in the blast.
But Ponomarev says she wasn’t the perpetrator, instead insisting that it was the National Republican Army (NRA) — a shadowy group that also claimed responsibility for the August car bombing that killed Dugina, daughter of ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. Yet, many security experts are skeptical of the NRA’s claims, as the group has offered no concrete evidence to the outside world.
Still, Ponomarev insists they shouldn’t be doubtful and says the group does indeed exist.
“I do understand why people are skeptical. The NRA must be cautious, and for them, the result is more important than PR about who they are. That’s why they asked me to help them with getting the word out, and whatever evidence they show me cannot be disclosed because that would jeopardize their security.”
But who, exactly, are they? According to Ponomarev, the group is comprised of 24 “young radical activists, who I would say are a bit more inclined to the left, but there are different views inside the group, judging from what I have heard during our discussions” — which have only been conducted remotely.
When asked if any of them had serious military training, he said he didn’t think so. “What they pulled off in St. Petersburg wouldn’t require any, and what was done with Dugin’s daughter? We don’t know the technical details but, in general, I can see how that could have been done by a person without any specific training.”
Yet, security experts say they aren’t convinced that either of the apparently remotely triggered bombings could have been accomplished by individuals without some expertise in building bombs and triggering them remotely — especially when it comes to the attack on Dugina, who was killed at the wheel of her car.
Regardless, the bombings are intensifying discussions within the country’s fragmented opposition.
On the one hand, key liberal figures, including Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza — who was found guilty of treason just last week and handed a 25-year jail term — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov and Dmitry Gudkov, are all critical of violence. Although they don’t oppose acts of sabotage.
Alexei Navalny is among those who are critical of violence, though aren’t opposed to sabotage | Kiril Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty images
“The Russian opposition needs to agree on nonaggression because conflicts and scandals in its ranks weaken us all,” Gudkov, a former lawmaker, said. “We need to stop calling each other ‘agents of the Kremlin’ and find the points according to which we can work together toward the common goal of the collapse of the Kremlin regime,” he added in recent public comments.
Gudkov, along with his father Gennady — a former KGB officer — and Ponomarev became leading names in the 2012 protests opposing Putin’s reelection, and they joined forces to mount an act of parliamentary defiance that same year, filibustering a bill allowing large fines for anti-government protesters.
On the issue of mounting violent attacks and targeting civilians, however, they aren’t on the same page. “There are many people inside the Russian liberal opposition who are against violent methods, and I don’t see much of a reason to debate with them,” Ponomarev told POLITICO. There are times when nonviolent methods can work — but not now, he argues.
Meanwhile, inside Russia, Vesna — the youth democratic movement founded in 2013 by former members of the country’s liberal Yabloko party — led many of the initial anti-war street protests observing the principle of nonviolence, though that didn’t prevent the Kremlin from adding it to its list of proscribed “terrorist” and extremist organizations. Nonviolence is likewise observed by the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR), which was launched by activists Daria Serenko and Ella Rossman hours after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“We are the resistance to the war, to patriarchy, to authoritarianism and militarism. We are the future and we will win,” reads FAR’s manifesto. The organization has used an array of creative micro-methods to try and get its anti-Putin message across, including writing anti-war slogans on banknotes, installing anti-war art in public spaces, and handing out bouquets of flowers on the streets.
Interestingly, scrawling on bank notes is reminiscent of Otto and Elise Hampel in Nazi Germany during the 1940s — a working-class German couple who handwrote over 287 postcards, dropping them in mailboxes and leaving them in stairwells, urging people to overthrow the Nazis. It took the Gestapo two years to identify them, and they were guillotined in April 1943.
But such methods don’t satisfy Ponomarev, the lone lawmaker to vote against Putin’s annexation of Crimea in the Russian Duma in 2014. He says he’s in touch with other partisan groups inside Russia, and at a conference of exiled opposition figures sponsored by the Free Russia Forum in Vilnius last year, he called on participants to support direct action within Russia. However, he was largely met with indifference and has subsequently been blackballed by the liberal opposition due to his calls for armed resistance.
Meanwhile, opposition journalist Roman Popkov — who was jailed for two years for taking part in anti-Putin protests and is now in exile — is even more dismissive of nonviolence, saying he talks with direct-action groups inside Russia like Stop the Wagons, who claim to have sabotaged and derailed more than 80 freight trains.
On Telegram, Popkov mocked liberal opposition figures for their caution and doubts about the St. Petersburg bombing. “The Russian liberal establishment is groaning in fear of a possible ‘toughening of state terror’ after the destruction of the war criminal Tatarsky,” he wrote. Adding, “It is difficult to understand what other toughening of state terror you are afraid of.”
According to Popkov, who is also a member of the Congress of People’s Deputies — a group of exiled former Russian lawmakers — the opposition doesn’t have a plan because it is too fragmented, but “there is the need for an armed uprising.”
However, several of Putin’s liberal opponents, including Khodorkovsky, approach the issue from a more cautious angle, saying that people should prepare for armed resistance but that the time is nowhere near right for launching it — the result would almost certainly be ineffective and end up in a bloodbath.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Kolkata: Kolkata witnessed history on Wednesday as a rake of Kolkata Metro conducted a successful trial run through an underwater tunnel under Hooghly river in the route connecting Esplanade in central Kolkata with the iconic Howrah station.
Only senior officials and select engineers of Kolkata Metro were on board during the trial run, the first in the history of the nation.
Describing the event as a historic moment for the city, Kolkata Metro General Manager P. Uday Kumar Reddy said that this is just the beginning and regular underwater trial runs in this route will commence soon.
Reddy, who described the trip as “revolutionary”, was part of the first trial run as he travelled from the Mahakaran station to the Howrah Maidan station.
According to Reddy, regular trial runs on this route will be conducted for the next seven months.
“Soon after that, regular services for the general public will commence,” he said.
The route stretching from Howrah to Esplanade is approximately 4.8 km long, of which 520 metres will be through the tunnel under Hooghly River. The tunnel is 32 metres under the water surface level.
It took a long time to undo the government’s monopoly over the printing press. Scholar Nayeem Showkat details the evolution of the printing facility and allied newspaper sector in Jammu and Kashmir since 1858
Rising Kashmir Printing Press
Four centuries past the invention of Gutenberg’s press, dotted by fervent production of information, the Dogra rulers of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir acquired its first printing press Vidya Vilas Press in 1858. Its purpose was the printing official documents in Jammu. The facility was equipped with facilities to also print Persian and Devnagri script and it has published several books as well.
Pandit Bankat Ram Shastri from Banaras is said to be instrumental in helping the Maharaja in the establishment of the press. Meanwhile, Saligram Press was also established in the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir. It is noteworthy that both the presses were endowed with the technology to print Urdu script as well, and as mentioned in Akhtar Shehanshahi, these facilities were cardinal for the birth of Urdu journalism in Jammu and Srinagar.
Translation Department
Roping in various eminent scholars under the supervision of Pandit Govind Koul, Maharaja Ranbir Singh, concurrently, established a translation department to translate books from Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and English into Dogri, Urdu and Hindi. The books encompassing extensive areas of astronomy, geology, mathematics, physics, zoology, and chemistry, were printed for free distribution to scholars of government schools, pathshalas and madrasas.
With aforethought of higher studies in oriental languages, schools were instituted in every wazarat and tehsil, with two such principal pathshalas in Raghunath Temple, Jammu, and Utterbhani respectively, imparting instructions in Vedas, grammar, Kavya Shastra and Nyay. For the accomplishment of the desired goals, books were supplied free of cost, and scholarships were granted to the scholars and teachers.
A portrait of Maharaja Ranbir Singh, Pic: National Portrait Gallery London
Besides, Maharaja Ranbir Singh also constituted a body of scholars in view of the translation of shahparas (writings) of various languages into Urdu and Hindi, which triggered debates on their critical and historical context. The rationale behind his intention of floating an organisation called Vidya Vilas Sabha, was to bring together various intellectuals and literati as its members, to discuss and debate different literary issues for the promotion of various languages including Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi, Dogri and Urdu.
It was in that era that numerous manuscripts of Sanskrit and Persian were printed and translated into Dogri, Hindi, and Urdu. It is worth mentioning that a substantial number of texts written in the Sarada script of Kashmiri were transcribed into Devanagari. The library then consisted of around 5000 manuscript volumes, some of which were printed in Vidya Vilas Press.
The News Media
The watershed moment in the history of news media in Jammu and Kashmir came when Vidya Vilas Sabha started to publish a double-column bilingual – Urdu and Hindi (Devnagari script) – a weekly newspaper, Vidya Vilas Jammu, covering the proceedings of this sabha. This laid the foundation of the first-ever newspaper of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir.
However, according to the First Press Commission Report, an independent periodical namely Vrittanta Bilas was published from Jammu in 1867. Surprisingly, no evidence could be found to further substantiate it.
The reference of Vidya Vilas is found in Savaaneh Umri Akhbarat, which was published in June 1896 with the name of Akhtar Shehanshahi from Lucknow by Akhtar u Daula Haji Sayed Mohammad Ashraf Naqvi. The newspaper is said to have been started by Maharaja Ranbir Singh at the suggestion of Munshi Harsukh Rai, the editor of a Lahore-based popular Urdu newspaper Kohi-i-Noor.
Published from Vidya Vilas Press, Jammu, this newspaper came into existence in 1867. In contradiction with other writers, DC Sharma claims the year of its publication to be 1868.
Growing up in the shade of the palace, this weekly newspaper contained eight pages. However, according to Tahir Masood, the newspaper comprised 16 pages. The news on its right column used Urdu script and the left column had Devnagari script.
Most historians have referred to this news sheet as Bidya Bilas. It is notable that both the Hindi words Vidya and Vilas denote The Luxury of Knowledge. However, the word Bidya is the same in Urdu as Vidya, while no such word called Bilas exists in either Urdu or Hindi language.
It raises certain doubts regarding the usage of these words either due to the local parlance or it could have simply been a mistake of an inscription. So, the title of the newspaper may be written as either Vidya Vilas or Bidya Vilas.
With a subscription rate of 12 rupees per annum, the newspaper was published every Saturday. Khojo Shah Sadrullah was the manager, while Bakshi Krishan Dayal was the editor of the weekly. According to Akhtar Shehanshahi, Maharaja himself was the patron, with Pandit Bankat Ram as its owner.
Maharaj Ganj Press
Following his ardent interest in the development of the Urdu language, Deewan Kripa Ram recommended Munshi Harsukh Rai of Koh-i-Noor to establish a private Urdu printing press in Srinagar, alsopromising to offer him certain facilities for it. Consequentially, in response to the offer, came to the fore the printing press Tohfa-e-Kashmir, which was established by Rai in Sheikh Bagh Maharaj Ganj area of Srinagar in 1875.
The press brought out a weekly newspaper with the same name, Tohfa-e-Kashmir from Maharaj Ganj the next year. This is said to be the first newspaper ever published fromthe province of Kashmir, though the practice couldn’t sustain for long. It is the same press where Abdul Salam Rafiqi’s weekly Al-Rafiq was printedin 1896.
The periodical’s critical approach, however, led to its closure as well as that of the printing press Tohfa-e-Kashmir Press. Rafiqi, later on, is said to have published the newspaper from Rangoon. However, the claim of certain historians that Rafiqi resumed publication of this newspaper from Rangoon in 1906with the support of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in Aligarh looks dubious as Sir Syed had died in 1898.
Further, the development of the printing press received a major setback when Muhammad Din Fauq submitted an application in 1904 seeking permission to initiate a newspaper from Srinagar. This request evoked an opposite reaction with the prime minister issuing a command for the formulation of a decree banning the setting up of a printing press. It was the time when the Moravian Mission under the leadership of Father FA Red Solob as the superintendent had already instituted a litho-press with an aim to publish the translated books in its Leh office.
Ranbir Takes Off
With no visible impact of the invention of the printing press five centuries ago on the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir, the press here took a long to set in motion and develop. It was on March 27, 1924, Mulk Raj Saraf was conveyed the State Council’s order permitting the initiation of a newspaper in lieu of cash security of Rs 500 as laid down in the Jammu and Kashmir State Press and Publications Regulation Samvat 1971. Besides issuing a newspaper Ranbir, he was granted permission for initiating a printing press in Jammuunder section 5 of the Act.
However, with no clue about the printing press, Saraf on his query was apprised by the establishment that “the permission to a newspaper implied the starting of a press as well.” Maharaja also agreed to donate Rs 50 per year to Ranbir. Thus began the journey of the State’s first regular Urdu weekly Ranbir. Saraf in his autobiography claims to have initially thought to name his newspaper Pahari and printing press Dogra Press in place of Ranbir and Public Printing Press respectively.
The office of Ranbir was set up in Thakur Kartar Singh’s cutcha quarter near Rani Talab. Unable to afford a power-driven plant, a hand-driven litho printing machine was installed for printing Ranbir.
Besides that, owing to the lack of katibs (calligraphists) and machine men in Jammu and Kashmir, a government katib Munshi Taj Din assumed the job of calligraphist on the condition that the necessary material be supplied to him at his home instead of him coming to Ranbir’s office.
A Government Monopoly
It is noteworthy that the government had a complete monopoly on the printing press till that time. All the earlier Census reports including the report of 1911 were silent on the inception or existence of printing presses or periodicals in the State.
For the first time, it was only the Census report of 1921, which mapped the printing presses prevalent in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The Census report of 1921 mentions a total of four printing presses in the industry of luxury category. Revealing that no private printing press remained in existence, all the printing presses have been specified as ‘Government of Local Authority’.
Front page of newspaper, Inquilab on July 17, 1931
It is recorded that one printing press was installed in Jammu, one in the central jail, and the remaining two litho presses also in central jails. The report further delineates that there was a printing press in the Jammu district employing 165 people including one direction manager, one supervising and technical staff, 17 clerks, 133 skilled workmen and 13 unskilled labourers.
One printing press called Printing Press (Jail) was also functioning in the Jammu district employing 31 workers including supervising and technical staff, two clerks, eight skilled workmen and 18 unskilled labourers. Similarly, there were two printing presses (jail) in Kashmir South, hiring 116 employees including four supervising and technical staff, two clerks, 37 skilled workmen and 73 unskilled labourers.
The Glancy Commission
In light of a paradigm shift across the world, Maharaja Hari Singh eventually accepted Glancy Commission’s suggestions and repealed the Jammu and Kashmir State Press and Publications Regulation Samvat 1971 on April 25, 1932. A new act, Jammu and Kashmir State Press and Publications ActSamvat 1989 came into force on the same day.
Largely on the lines of a similar law in vogue in British India, this Act liberalised the press in Jammu and Kashmir. This ‘gambit’ of Maharaja Hari Singh to liberalise the press in the princely State was not only lauded in the territory but across British India. The new Act legitimised publication of dozens of newspapers since May 1932.
Within a demi-decade of the enforcement of the new Act, a spurt in publication rate was witnessed in Jammu and Kashmir, subsequently resulting in the birth of several dozen newspapers. It is estimated that the number of newspapers increased to three dozen by the end of 1937.
Erstwhile Information Minister, Choudhary Zufiqar inspecting the archives section of DIPR Jammu and Kashmir in Srinagar.
According to the Census of India, 1941, the Indian union had some 3,900 newspapers including 300 dailies and 3,600 others, with a cumulative circulation of seven million. However, according to the Report, there were 44 newspapers in the State in the spring of 1941.
The document reveals that the growth of newspapers during the period (1931 to 1941) in Jammu and Kashmir was significant. In 1931, Jammu province had only one newspaper, and Kashmir province had none. However, in 1941, Jammu province had 24 newspapers, and Kashmir had 20 newspapers, making a total of 44 newspapers in the state. Interestingly, the report also mentions that Frontier districts did not have any newspapers until 1941, as indicated in the Census document.
Proclaiming that a fair number of such newspapers were issued punctually and regularly, the census data further revealed that while a portion of it couldn’t last long, others were published at uncertain intervals. The Census discloses that local newspapers were mostly printed in Persian (Urdu) script; a few were also printed in English (Roman) and Hindi (Devanagiri) script.
Though expounding that the standard of journalism has improved like never before, yet the Census data divulges that the influx of newspapers at that time was so high for a minimal newspaper-reading public that most of such newspapers would hover between life and death.
Surprisingly, the Census of India 1941 betrays that the first printing press in Jammu and Kashmir was installed in 1912. It further documents the growth of printing presses between 1931 and 1941, stating that in 1931, State of Jammu and Kashmir had eight printing presses, with four installed in Jammu province and four in Kashmir province.
In 1941, the number of printing presses in the State of Jammu and Kashmir had increased to 37, as per the Census of India report. Of these, 22 printing presses were present in Jammu province, while 15 in Kashmir. Needless to say, the Frontier districts remained without any printing press during both the time intervals discussed.
Text Books
The Census Report of 1941 notes that information about the publication of non- educational books in Jammu and Kashmir is mostly unknown. Albeit, it highlights that the number of non-educational books was small but increasing in the region.
No textbook, according to an official document, was printed in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir till 1936. It was during Maharaja Hari Singh’s reign only that the textbook business was nationalised in the late 1940s. To ensure prompt publication of the approved manuscripts, and further accelerate the process of printing in the State, the services of all the private presses were rendered.
Abdul Salam Rafiqi, the first Kashmir journalist
The opulence of this milieu, armed with the freedom of expression, was further reinforced with various other platforms of generating public opinion like sabhas and societies set in motion. The Census of India betrays that a total of 435 sabhas and societies had been instituted in the princely State till the spring of 1941.
Since then, some of those itemised would perhaps have become obsolete whereas others may have emerged. Of these, 125 were classified as social, 258 as religious and 52 as political in nature.
It was the time when a foreign electronic printing machine from Lahore was also imported to Kashmir in 1932 along with an experienced machine-man namely Pandit Balik Ram for Ranbir. In 1943, Saraf purchased new machinery for his printing press – which was later named Prem Printing Press – for the purpose of enabling it to print English, Urdu, Hindi, Sanskrit, etc. An adequate number of newspapers from Jammu were now published at Prem Printing Press.
Post Partition Era
As a result, the literary activities in Jammu and Kashmir were further enhanced with the literati starting book shops and printing presses for the mass dissemination of literature across the length and breadth of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir.
Further, in an attempt to modernise the printing presses, the government of Jammu and Kashmir led by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah installed new machinery in the government presses in the State. The presses were developed under a three-year plan and a team of officers was sent to visit the presses in other parts of India.
The government also intended to send some students to England for getting the requisite training in handling the modern printing press. The machinery costing Rs 94,000 was procured for Srinagar, while Rs 50,000 for Jammu.
These decisions were taken at a time when Kashmir had many printing facilities, up and running: Brokas Press, Nishat Press, Srinagar, Clifton Press, Srinagar, Guru Nanak Printing Press, Srinagar, New Kashmir Printing Press, Commercial Printing Press, Srinagar, to name a few.
However, it seems that the events that unfolded in the backdrop of partition had an impact on the press and printing industry of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir to the extent that the whole printing industry was back to square one.
Owing to the topography of Jammu and Kashmir and only a few printing presses in place, it is conspicuous from the Census report of 1961 that the state couldn’t progress much in the field of printing. So was the condition of those minuscule presses that most of the printing work of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir was outsourced to Aligarh Press. It was still the government press in Jammu and Kashmir which was well equipped, but not to the extent that it could handle large consignments.
A Grim Situation
The situation in the erstwhile State remained quite unchanged even two decades after partition. As is evident from the Report of the Enquiry Committee on Small Newspapers, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, New Delhi, 1965, the periodicals in Jammu and Kashmir mostly don’t own the premises housing the periodical.
Besides, the equipment used by the majority of the newspapers also doesn’t belong to them. It was also revealed that the majority of the press undertook works other than printing newspapers to sustain itself.
It came to the fore that a major chunk of newspapers in Jammu and Kashmir had no printing facilities of their own and used to print their newspapers at other presses. To much surprise, it was found that not a single newspaper in Jammu and Kashmir had subscribed to any news agency at that time.
Further, according to the report most of the newspapers in the State were not illustrated at all. It is remarkable that no newspaper in Jammu and Kashmir had its own block-making facility. The newspapermen in Jammu and Kashmir were of the opinion that a financial corporation should be established which would grant loans to newspapers for the purchase of printing presses and equipment.
One of the major concerns of the newspaper industry at that time was the lack of good printing presses in the erstwhile State. The report also unveils that otherwise obsolete and out-of-fashion litho presses were ubiquitous in Jammu and Kashmir.
The output of these presses was as little as 600-700 copies an hour. During the Committee’s visit to two printing presses in Srinagar, it was also revealed that most of the presses were installed on premises which were unsanitary.
The newspapers were informed by the Committee that since the government had taken some steps to facilitate the printing of certain newspapers at the government presses, yet owing to newspapers’ failure of paying the printing charges, the experiment failed.
With an intent to avail printing facilities at economical rates, the Committee was told by the publishers of various newspapers that the government should consider the establishment of printing estates on the lines of industrial estates.
The Calligraphists
Not only the lack of efficient printing presses but also the printing of Urdu script through the litho process was impossible without the help katib (scribe). It is noteworthy that Urdu newspapers had a monopoly in the media industry of Jammu and Kashmir.
So, there was an unprecedented demand for katibs, who were employed on a salary as well as a job-rate basis, with the development of the press in Jammu and Kashmir. The getup of a newspaper relied completely on a katib.
Nayeem Showkat (Media Scholar)
As per the recommendations of the Enquiry Committee on Small Newspapers, the katibs were to be provided training in Polytechnic Schools so as to standardise Urdu calligraphy. This recommendation was further supplemented with a note by Hayat Ullah Ansari, according to whom Urdu calligraphy was standardised centuries back, that instead of the breadth of the nib as a unit to fix the dimensions of letters, the measurement of graph paper should be used so that writings of different katibs would look similar.
Ansari also suggested some changes, particularly in joints of the letters, like meem goes so much down that it occupies upon the second line and in the same way markaz goes so high that it touches the upper line. These changes would further improve the quality of Urdu writing and will save much space, he suggested.
What made the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir quite a peculiar case in this regard is that no school for katibs was established in the erstwhile State or in any other neighbouring state, thereby resulting in numerous printing faults arising from the low efficiency of katibs as was observed by the Committee.
(The writer is a Post-doctoral Fellow in Media Studies at the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi.)
Chennai: Tamil Nadu Youth Welfare and Sports Development Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin took a dig at the BJP on Tuesday saying no politician from the north had managed to win in the State as the DMK team was very strong on its home turf.
There was no history of those from the north winning in Tamil Nadu because of the “speciality of the State and its people”, he said. “Even now some are thinking of winning in Tamil Nadu and are making attempts in that direction. Their game may work in any other State but not in Tamil Nadu where the DMK is a very strong force,” Udhayanidhi, who is the son of Chief Minister M K Stalin, said.
Winding up the debate on the demand for grants for his department in the Assembly, Udhayanidhi said the DMK as a team had been nurtured to play well by its “coaches” such as the rationalist Periyar Ramasamy, late Chief Ministers C N Annadurai and M Karunanidhi and party leader K Anbazhagan.
“They taught us how to be united and play as a team and also when to be defensive. Our Chief Minister M K Stalin hit the ball for six, twice, in making the Governor give his assent to the online gambling ban bill and also in making the Centre withdraw auctioning of the lignite reserves in the State,” Udhayanidhi, who was elevated as a minister in December last year, said.
Turning towards the AIADMK, the minister referred to its legislator S P Velumani earlier requesting for tickets for MLAs to watch the IPL match, and asked him to approach Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah, who is the secretary of Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI).
“AIADMK whip (Velumani) has sought tickets to watch the IPL at Chepauk. But no IPL match took place in the last four years. Recently, I had arranged tickets at my own expense for 150 enthusiasts to watch cricket at the stadium,” Udhayanidhi said and added that IPL was being organised by BCCI which is headed by Jay Shah.
“He will listen to you. You can get 5 tickets for each MLA and we are prepared to pay for it,” the minister said.
The minister then went on to make a slew of announcements in the Assembly pertaining to his Youth Welfare and Sports Development portfolio.
In his maiden reply to the discussion, he said a new Tamil Nadu Sports Policy would be unveiled for the overall development of sports in the State and steps would be taken to set up Tamil Nadu’s first Olympic Water Sports Academy in Ramanathapuram district.
Apart from establishing a 6-trap range shooting academy for trap and skeet in the State, the government would set up Namma Ooru Vilayattu Thidal (our playgrounds) in all panchayats in association with the rural development and school education departments, to create awareness among youth on sports.
The Arignar Anna Marathon will be organised annually in all districts. About Rs 150 lakh will be allocated to conduct the World Cup Squash Championship this year and another Rs 258 lakh would be provided to hold the World Surfing League at Mahabalipuram.
Establishing para sports arena, besides the Tamil Nadu Centre for Sports Science at a cost of Rs 300 lakh, and setting up of open and indoor stadiums at a cost of Rs 90 crore in the six newly created districts were among the other important announcements made by the minister.
Joe Biden managed to tread carefully around historic and current political sensitivities during the first part of his trip to the island of Ireland this week, marking 25 years since the U.S.-brokered Good Friday Agreement sought to secure lasting peace for Northern Ireland.
But not long after crossing from that U.K. region into the Republic of Ireland on Wednesday, the U.S. president made a major gaffe: He confused New Zealand’s “All Blacks” rugby team with the notorious “Black and Tans” British military unit that fought the Irish Republican Army a century ago.
At the end of a rambling speech in a pub Wednesday night, Biden — flanked by Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin and star rugby player Rob Kearney, a distant cousin — tried to pay a compliment to one of Kearney’s greatest sporting accomplishments. That would be when Ireland’s rugby team defeated New Zealand for the first time in 111 years, in November 2016 in Chicago. New Zealand’s squad is famously called the All Blacks, in reference to their uniforms.
Trouble is, Biden let slip a reference that could well reflect his affinity with Irish rebel history and its folk songs.
“He’s a hell of a rugby player, and he beat the hell out of the Black and Tans,” Biden said to audience laughter.
The Black and Tans were an auxiliary unit of Britain’s security forces that fought IRA rebels in their 1919-21 war of independence from Britain. Their name reflected the improvised and inconsistent colors of their uniforms.
The unrelentingly pro-Biden coverage on state broadcaster RTÉ, which televised his speech live, didn’t acknowledge the mistake. The commentator’s sign-off? “Well, that’s Joe Biden: a little bit sentimental, a little bit schmaltzy, but a thoroughly decent guy and a great friend to Ireland. The trip is off to a great start.”
But the gaffe and “Rob Kearney” blew up on social media in Ireland. Some listed the retired rugby fullback’s career accomplishments including, most famously, his single-handed defeat of the British forces a century ago.
“The greatest gift Ireland wanted from Joe Biden was a signature gaffe. And … didn’t he just go and give us one for the century,” tweeted comedian Oliver Callan.
Attempting to hose down the row on Thursday, Biden aide Amanda Sloat, the National Security Council senior director for Europe, said: “I think for everyone in Ireland who was a rugby fan it was incredibly clear that the president was talking about the All Blacks and Ireland’s defeat of the New Zealand team in 2016.”
She added: “It was clear what the president was referring to. It was certainly clear to his cousin sitting next to him who had played in that match.”
Lost in the shuffle was Biden’s other Kearney gaffe: He still hasn’t figured out how to say his name.
When introducing Kearney at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day, Biden called him Keer-ney. The Irish pronounce the name Kar-ney. Biden stuck with Keer-ney on Wednesday.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BELFAST — He came, he saw … and he got the hell out as fast as he could.
But Joe Biden’s brief visit to Northern Ireland across Tuesday night and Wednesday — 18 hours total, about half of them in bed — featured none of the gaffes that have previously blotted his diplomatic copybook. (That would change, however, after he headed south to the Republic of Ireland a few hours later.)
Indeed, the U.S. president successfully navigated Northern Ireland’s famously choppy political waters, avoided throwing a spotlight on the failure of its unity government — and even revealed an often-hidden and more hopeful reality: Off-camera, these supposedly warring politicians actually get on well.
Wednesday’s gathering at Ulster University in Belfast brought Northern Ireland’s opposing political leaders — including the key figure blocking the revival of power-sharing, Democratic Unionist chief Jeffrey Donaldson — side by side at last, along with a selfie-shooting Biden.
The president carefully avoided confronting Donaldson directly about his party’s yearlong blockade of the Northern Ireland Assembly, while dangling the prospect of billions of dollars of U.S. business investment if powersharing is restored.
And instead of extolling his famous Irish Catholic roots, Biden’s speech noted the English and Protestant elements of his family tree, and the disproportionate contribution of Ulster Scots immigrants to the foundation of the United States.
“The family ties, the pride, those Ulster Scots immigrants who helped found and build my country, they run very deep,” Biden told the audience.
“Men born in Ulster were among those who signed the Declaration of Independence in the United States, pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor for freedom’s cause … Your history is our history.”
If Biden had punches to throw in the Democratic Unionists’ direction, he pulled them.
Speaking to POLITICO, a visibly relieved Donaldson said afterward that he’d appreciated the president’s “measured and balanced remarks” — and distanced himself from his unionist colleagues’ pointed criticisms of Biden as a poodle to Irish nationalism and even the outlawed IRA.
He also rebuffed a claim by his predecessor as DUP leader, Arlene Foster, that Biden “hates the United Kingdom,” stating: “The United Kingdom and the United States have a strong alliance and we want to build on that.”
Donaldson added that he had been reassured by the president during a brief backstage conversation “that he respects the integrity of Northern Ireland, that he respects our ability to restore the [power-sharing] institutions on the basis that we respect what the Belfast Agreement said — that Northern Ireland remains an integral part of the United Kingdom, and there should be no barrier to trade within the United Kingdom.”
The backdrop to the speech had been one of surprising unity, with unionists and Irish nationalists chatting amicably in the audience against background music of soft jazz.
Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy — the Irish republican party’s finance minister in the five-party government that collapsed in October because of DUP obstruction — laughed heartily alongside former Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt as the two discussed the ins and outs of power-sharing.
“The parties do work well together when they get the opportunity,” Murphy told POLITICO afterward.
He noted that Biden’s speech diplomatically avoided assigning blame for the Stormont impasse and focused on making a better Northern Ireland for today’s Ulster University students, who are too young to remember the three decades of bloodshed that ended following paramilitary cease-fires in the mid-1990s.
But Murphy added: “Biden’s pitch is about the future. The DUP don’t get that. If they think they somehow got off the hook here because they didn’t get a slap from an American president. Well, the rest of this society’s moving on with or without them.”
US President Joe Biden delivers a speech at the Windsor Bar in Dundalk, Ireland | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Most of those present agreed that, even though some leaders had wanted Biden to visit the Stormont parliament building overlooking Belfast, the president’s decision not to do so meant their failure to form a new government hadn’t become the central image of the visit.
“Of course it’s a missed opportunity. We don’t have an assembly and an executive,” said Naomi Long, leader of the center-ground Alliance Party and justice minister in the failed government.
“But to have gone to Stormont today when it isn’t operating would have been farcical,” she said.
The assembly’s caretaker speaker, Alex Maskey, also from Sinn Féin, agreed that in hindsight, Biden was probably right to have declined his own invitation to visit what is essentially Ground Zero of Northern Ireland’s political dysfunction.
“It ran the risk of underlining the problem,” Maskey said. “It’s just as well he didn’t go there because you’d be spending the next two or three days trying to repair negative media.”
While Biden strikingly spent less than a day in Belfast before crossing the border to spend the rest of the week touring the Republic of Ireland, he left behind his new envoy to Northern Ireland, Joe Kennedy III, who will spend the next 10 days building business and political contacts across the U.K. region.
Kennedy, making his first trip here, chatted and joked with DUP politicians, particularly Emma Little-Pengelly, a close Donaldson ally and former special adviser to previous party leaders Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson.
They discussed tourist highlights of Northern Ireland’s glorious Giant’s Causeway coast and the best ice cream parlors in its resort towns. (Kennedy made a note of Little-Pengelly’s favorite: Morelli’s of Portstewart.)
Kennedy insisted Biden hadn’t needed to spend too much time in Belfast talking to local leaders this week — because he’d just had all of them, including Donaldson, as guests to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day.
His own mission, Kennedy added, “is not about the United States government coming in to tell the people of Northern Ireland what they need to do.”
“They’ve got a vision of what that future can be,” he said. “We can support them.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
SRINAGAR: After the issue of removal of chapters on Mughal History from National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books sparked controversy, the education body’s chief, Dinesh Prasad Saklani called the whole issue a lie and clarified that the chapters on Mughals were not dropped from CBSE books.
Speaking to ANI, he said that NCERT is following the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which emphasizes on reducing content load in education. We are currently in a transition phase and working towards finalising the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for school education. Textbooks will be printed in 2024 in accordance with NEP, and we are committed to implementing its principles. No content has been dropped at this time.
Calling the ongoing debate unnecessary, Saklani explained that there was a rationalisation process carried out last year due to the pressures posed by the COVID-19 pandemic on students everywhere.
Saklani said, expert committees were tasked with examining the books from standards 6-12, and they recommended that certain chapters could be dropped without affecting the students’ knowledge and reducing unnecessary burdens. However, this year no chapters were dropped.
Mughal history is still a part of the curriculum and those who have doubts should check the books themselves, Saklani added.
Mumbai: Amid a row over the removal of certain references in NCERT’s new class 12 textbooks, BJP’s Maharashtra chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Wednesday said some people had deliberately written “negative content” in history textbooks and there was a need to drop it.
He also said that although he was against some “negative descriptions” in textbooks, facts need not be removed from them.
“Gandhiji’s death had magical effect on communal situation in the country”, “Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists” and “Organisations like RSS were banned for some time” are among the portions missing from the class 12 political science textbook for the new academic session.
A political row has erupted over it with the Congress accusing the government of distorting history and “whitewashing with a vengeance”. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), however, claimed that no curriculum trimming has taken place this year and the syllabus was rationalised in June last year.
Answering a query on the issue during a press conference, Bawankule said, “Some people have deliberately written negative content in our history books. It needs to be removed.”
“Our country is marching ahead, progressing and going to be the greatest country in the world. There is no need for negative content,” he said.
After the press conference, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader was asked about his remarks on the issue, he said he was making a general statement over it and not referring to any specific issue.
Replying to a question about why historical facts were being removed from textbooks, he said, “I am talking in general and not particularly about the omission of some chapters or issues. Facts need not be removed from history. My objection is about some negative descriptions.”
Ranchi: The decision to drop lessons on Mughal courts from the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books is an attempt to change the nation’s history, alleged Avinash Pandey, Congress’s general secretary in-charge for Jharkhand on Monday.
Boards which use NCERT textbooks which include CBSE are expected to be impacted by the decision.
Uttar Pradesh has announced that government schools will adopt the NCERT’s new class 12 history textbooks in which portions about Mughal courts have been removed from this academic session.
As part of its “syllabus rationalisation” exercise last year, the NCERT, citing “overlapping” and “irrelevant” as reasons, dropped certain portions from the syllabus including lessons on Mughal courts from its class 12 textbooks.
Pandey told mediapersons that party senior leader Rahul Gandhi has taken this issue seriously and Congress will oppose the move.
Hitting out at Centre, Pandey said democracy is under threat in the country.
He said the party will launch its Jai Bharat Satyagraha Yatra from Lohardaga tomorrow and will create awareness among masses as to how opposition voices were being shut on raising issues in Parliament.
The Satyagraha Yatra will conclude on April 16, he said.
