Panaji: Congress’ Goa unit chief Amit Patkar on Friday said that the party workers will keep raising questions about the relationship between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and business tycoon Gautam Adani even as “the BJP is trying to suppress their voice”.
He said this while speaking at the ‘Satyagraha’ programme at Mormugao in South Goa, against the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi from the Lok Sabha following his conviction in a defamation case by a Gujarat court.
“We will protest unless and until the Prime Minister does not clarify his relationship with Adani,” he said.
“Rahul Gandhi had said that there are Rs 20,000 crore in shell companies linked to Adani and asked whose money it was? He had questioned the relationship of Modi with Adani. We will keep asking these questions, though the BJP is trying to suppress our voice,” Patkar said.
On the first day of the ‘Satyagraha protest’ in the coastal state, last Sunday, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had joined the Congress to protest INC leader Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification.
“We want to show how BJP is doing injustice to the public. Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ was to raise issues of inflation and other,” he said.
New Delhi: Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh on Thursday said that the Bhutan-India relationship is facing a Chinese challenge, which also poses a threat to the Siliguri Corridor – the land bridge to the northeastern states.
“Bhutan and India’s so far unshakeable relationship is facing a challenge from an aggressive China. We urge the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) to not hide behind smokescreens and ensure that this very long-standing partnership with Bhutan remains strong and is further deepened,” he said in a statement.
He said the Modi government presented the 2017 Doklam standoff as a “major victory”, but since then the Chinese have engaged in an unprecedented military infrastructure buildup in the area, and also built villages and roads adjacent to the Doklam plateau many kilometres inside Bhutanese territory.
“It is well-known that the adjacent Chumbi Valley poses a potential threat to India’s strategic Siliguri Corridor, the so-called Chicken’s Neck that connects the seven northeastern states with the rest of the country. In this context the remark by Bhutanese Prime Minister Lotay Tshering that ‘there is no intrusion’ into Bhutan by China and that Beijing has an ‘equal’ say in any discussion over its illegal intrusions raises several concerns.”
The Congress leader also questioned if there a dilution in the unwavering Indian and Bhutanese contention that the tri-junction of India, China, and Bhutan lies at Batang La, and not at Mount Gipmochi as the Chinese claim? This could cause a serious problem for the security of the Siliguri Corridor, he warned.
The recent Chinese construction reportedly includes an all-weather road in the Amu Chu river basin inside Bhutan moving south towards the Jhamperi Ridge that overlooks the Siliguri Corridor. “Is China eyeing the coveted Jhamperi Ridge from a new angle? What is India doing to defend Bhutan and to prevent the Chinese from reaching this important geographical feature?
“When will the Modi government respond to China’s renewed verbal, geographical and military aggression?” Ramesh asked.
Mumbai: Arjun Kapoor’s sister Anshula Kapoor is dating screenwriter Rohan Thakkar.
On Monday, Anshula made her relationship with Rohan Instagram official with a romantic picture. In the picture, clicked at sunset, the duo smiled and looked at each other inside an infinity pool.
“366,” she captioned the post with a white heart emoji. The duo seemingly celebrated their one-year anniversary in Maldives.
As soon as Anshula dropped the intimate picture, her family members, close friends and members from the film industry showered love on the couple.
Anshula’s step sisters Janhvi Kapoor and Khushi Kapoor commented a string of red heart emojis. Producer Rhea Kapoor, who is Anshula’s cousin, commented, “cuties.”
“Cuties,” Maheep Kapoor wrote.
Anshula is the daughter of Boney Kapoor and his first wife, Mona Shourie Kapoor who died in 2012. Rumours of Anshula dating Rohan first emerged when she posted a loved-up boomerang with him on social media. Anshula is a social media influencer. She has also been honest about her struggles with body image on social media.
Sharing an image of herself in an off-shoulder bodysuit, she wrote: “Over the years, I’ve endlessly told myself that bodysuits aren’t flattering for my body shape. I’ve stopped myself from wearing them more times than I can count. But I had a realization earlier this year. There’s a lot of hidden joy in being able to try everything I never let myself explore before, at least once. I want to experience that thrill. Am I owning it? Who cares! Am I having fun? Oh 100% yes! Still learning and trying not to let my stretch marks, cellulite, tummy rolls etc get the best of me and my insecurities. This is me just letting my curls loose, having the best time with the team I trust most, and loving every minute of it.”
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It has become a political fashion for Hindus like Mohan Bhagwat and certain Muslim opinion-makers to either provoke Muslims or laud Hinduism to enter the good books of the RSS and BIP maharajas.
Shri Mohan Bhagwat ji keeps reminding Muslims that they are actually Hindus having Hindu ancestry. There are also some Muslim commentators who indicate their appreciation of the ancient Vedic philosophical heritage. They say that it represents universal human values which is no doubt true.
However, the intentions become suspicious in the background of the declaration of RSS-BJP leaders about India becoming a Hindu Rashtra. There is nothing substantial about such arguments; it is purely communal and keeps the nation diverted from the social and economic disaster looming large. This is common knowledge or, as they say, the new normal.
I am enlightening the RSS and the Muslims engaged in appeasement of RSS that more than 150 years ago a Muslim intellectual and one who is also accused of being the initiator of the two-nation theory, had not only claimed that he was a Hindu but also complained that the Hindus did not agree to call him a Hindu.
He is Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) founder of the great Muslim University of Aligarh. His views on this issue and on the Indian culture (not Muslim or Hindu culture) are as follows.
Sir Syed was fully aware of various shades of the word Qaum especially the distinction between its religious and political connotations. He insisted that Muslims be mindful of this distinction. In an article in 1884, he explained it. He held that the word nation always stood for communities either aligned to the descendants of some person or to some country. However, Islam abolished all “community distinctions” based on worldly considerations and replaced them with one spiritual community relationship–the relationship of the creed of Islam, “There is no God except Allah, Muhammad is His Messenger.’
All distinctions of country or colour were abolished under another declaration of the Qur’an, all believers are brothers. At the same time, he points out that Muslims should not forget that besides the spiritual brothers (Muslims). They are also in the country with other brothers of the motherland (vatani bhai) with whom we share various cultural features. Respect for the neighbor is part of our faith and this neighbourliness has extended to co-citizenship. There are two parts of this relationship regarding our co-citizen-brothers (ham-vatan bhai)-one part is of God and the other is of human relationship. Leave God’s share to God and engage with the part of human relations. Help each other in human relations related to culture and social affairs. Observe mutual love, true friendship and friendly etiquette.”
Anwar Moazzam
Anwar Moazzam is a leading Islamic and political thinker, who lives in Hyderabad.
Man accused of illicit relationship puts on ‘Agni Pariksha’
Hyderabad: In the Mulug district of Telangana state, the elders of a tribe in a village ordered a man Gangadhar who was accused of being in an illicit relationship with a married woman to undergo ‘Agni Pariksha’ to prove his innocence.
The condition of Agni Pariksha was that, if the hands of the man get injured while removing the ember, he will be considered as guilty and a fine of Rs 11 lakh will be imposed. If the hand is not injured, he will be declared innocent.
This condition was accepted by Gangadhar. As per the order, Gangadhar reached Govindraopet Mandal near the pond in Laknavaram, where he was kept on the Agni Pariksha, the elders of the tribe were also present. After taking bath in the pond, Gangadhar removed the embers of the burnt fire with the soaked body with his bare hands.
However, Gangadhar, who went through the trial, imposed a fine of Rs 11 lakh despite not being injured and a set up a panchayat to resolve the issue. The incident took place in District Mulug. According to the police, Gangadhar of Mulugu was accused of having an illicit relationship with a married woman.
However, Gangadhar approached the police and lodge the complaint. Acting on the complaint police have registered a case against nine persons for harassment.
Anthony Ciccone has passed away at the age of 66. The man had alcoholism problems and was never able to have a relationship with the star
Madonna’s brother has passed away at the age of 66. Anthony Ciccone he didn’t have a good relationship with the star. To communicate the sad news, he was the brother-in-law through a long post on social media.
Joe Henrythis is the name of sister Melanie Ciccone’s husband, greeted him with a moving messagewithout specifying the cause of death:
My brother-in-law, Anthony Gerard Ciccone, left this earth last night. I had known him since I was 15, in the spring of our Michigan lives. Anthony was a complex person and we fought at times, as real brothers often do.
She then went on to talk about how much she loved him, even though she often doesn’t he could prove it to her.
Goodbye, Brother Anthony. I want to think that the God your mother and mine believed in has them there waiting to receive you. At least for today, no one will distract me from this vision.
Anthony Ciccone and the stormy relationship with Madonna
Anthony Ciccone didn’t have an easy life, he found himself dealing with the alcohol addiction and found himself at live on the street. He himself has always spoken publicly about the relationship he had with Madonna and the rest of her family, emphasizing that he had not never felt loved and supported.
In an old interview with the newspaper Daily Mailhe revealed that he didn’t never felt part of that family and that none of them ever cared about his drinking problems.
He repeated that in their eyes he was not a human being and that he felt as if he were worth nothing.
If I froze to death, my family probably wouldn’t know about it for at least six months and then not worry about it. Madonna? I never loved her and she never loved me. We don’t love each other.
If you want to solve a problem, it helps to be able to define it, but when it comes to a problem like China, western leaders have been struggling to find the right words.
Liz Truss sought to designate China as a “threat” to Britain, but did not stay prime minister long enough for that to become established policy. Her successor, Rishi Sunak, has opted for the less combative “systemic challenge” but he is under pressure from backbench MPs to follow Truss’s path and call Beijing a “strategic threat”.
Sunak has made clear he does not want the UK to be out of step with its allies on the issue, most importantly the US. In Washington, meanwhile, China designation is a delicate and evolving art.
The delicacy was apparent when a Chinese balloon sailed over the continental US earlier this month. The US declared the high-altitude airship and its payload to be designed for spying and shot it down once it was safely over the Atlantic. The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, cancelled a long-planned trip to Beijing to address bilateral tensions, but at the same time stressed that channels of communication would be kept open and that the US remained keen on a meeting when conditions allowed. Blinken may meet his counterpart, Wang Yi, as soon as this week, at the Munich security conference.
The theme of US-China policy towards the end of the Trump administration was an all-encompassing decoupling, in which China was presented in mostly adversarial terms. Joe Biden has preferred to talk about “stiff competition”. His administration’s national defence strategy paper deemed Russia to be an “acute threat” while China was portrayed as the US’s only long-term “competitor”. In recent weeks, the official catchphrase for Beijing has been the slightly nebulous “pacing challenge”, suggesting the US is the world’s constant frontrunner with China ever closer to its shoulder.
The problem with categorising China is that there are multiple aspects to its global role as it expands its presence on the world stage. For that reason, Democratic senator Chris Murphy has warned against digging up old cold war rhetoric.
“You can’t use the terminology that we used for our conflict with the Soviet Union for our conflict with China,” Murphy told Foreign Policy. “It is apples and oranges. We had virtually no trade relationship with the Soviet Union. Our most vital trade relationship is with China. So I do worry about a bunch of Cold Warriors and Cold War enthusiasts thinking that you can run a competition with China like you ran a competition with the Soviet Union. It’s not the same thing.”
Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 11 January 2023. Beijing has cultivated relationships with African countries. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
With this in mind, Blinken has adopted a Swiss army penknife multi-tooled approach that is “competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be and adversarial when it must be.”
Washington is acutely aware that it has been complacent in its competition with China for global clout, having assumed that better US technology and its democratic model would win the day, only to find that African countries and other parts of the global south were sitting on their hands when the US called for support in the UN general assembly. Last year an old Pacific ally, Solomon Islands, signed a security pact with Beijing, denying entry to a US Coast Guard cutter not long after.
The Biden administration now plans to beef up its diplomatic presence in the Pacific, reopening some shuttered missions. It has set up a “China house” in the state department to coordinate analysis and help counter China’s message around the world. On Wednesday, the deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, summed up the new US approach as Washington takes on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the contest for hearts and minds in emerging economies.
“It is not to say that the PRC can’t invest or that you should toss them out,” Sherman said at the Brookings Institution. Instead, she said the message will be: “Have your eyes wide open”.
“Understand what you’re getting, understand what rules apply, what the norms are. Give us a chance, see what we have to offer. Let us compete and help you develop as a country in the ways that you choose,” Sherman said.
As for collaboration with China, she said there was little choice other than to work with Beijing to address the climate emergency.
“There is no doubt that we cannot meet the climate challenge without engagement with the PRC,” Sherman said. “It’s just not possible because we are both such large emitters and historic emitters.”
At the same time, there are plenty of fields in which the US and China are adversaries. The balloon affair has just added another layer to a constant, escalating intelligence struggle between the two powers, in which Beijing has scored some remarkable successes in recent years, stealing designs for the F-35 fighter jet for example. Chinese hackers also stole the personal details of 22 million federal workers – current, former and prospective.
Fears of China’s technological capabilities led Biden to introduce draconian export restrictions on semiconductors in October of last year, in an effort to strangle China’s microchip sector. It came close to an economic declaration of war, but Republicans in Congress are still trying to depict him as “soft on China”, calling on him to ban the TikTok app as a threat to national security. Some red states are considering bans on Chinese nationals buying land.
It is in the military arena of course where the stakes are the highest and the risks of a competitive relationship becoming adversarial are greatest. Last week, the Pentagon informed Congress that China now had more missile silos than the US. It was an eye-catching claim, though most of the silos are empty and the US retains a substantial superiority in submarine and airborne launchers. China is estimated by the Federation of American Scientists to have 350 nuclear warheads. Even if that number tripled, as the Pentagon predicts it will, it will still be less than a fifth of the US stockpile.
China’s long-term threat will depend ultimately on whether it is developing its military clout simply to deter or to attack, across the Taiwan Strait in particular. At the end of January, the head of US Air Mobility Command, Gen Mike Minihan, told other officers that his “gut” told him the US and China would be at war by 2025. It was an estimate quickly disowned by the rest of the Pentagon leadership, who shied away from such expressions of inevitability.
US officials say that Xi Jinping is watching Russia’s military debacle in Ukraine with concern and maybe recalibrating his options. Opinions differ within the administration on how seriously Xi takes his pledge to reunite China, another reason it has wavered over the right terminology.
There is agreement for now however that repeatedly deeming China to be a threat risks making matters worse, shaping policy in such a way that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
