There should also be no doubt that these protests are being fueled by China and Pakistan to depose the pro-India Sheikh Hasina Government and install a pro-Islamist anti-India government like the erstwhile BNP-led government in Bangladesh.
The smartphone that freed a generation is now being used against it. The platforms that carried the protest are now carrying the smears. The digital spaces where young Nepalis found their political voice are today flooded with manipulated images, fake audio, and AI-generated lies targeting the very candidates their movement made possible. The weapon and the wound are the same object.
Politicians, who were silent, complicit, or even instigative during last September’s tragedy, are trying to rebrand themselves on social media to be palatable to “Gen Z” - Nepal’s youth population that was instrumental in overthrowing the last government, leading to comparisons with Bangladesh’s ‘Monsoon Revolution’ of 2024 and Sri Lanka’s Aragayala of 2022.
What links these cases — Pakistan, Britain, India, the Netherlands — is not geography or faith, but backlash. ‘Honour’ is used as a pretext to kill not because women are obedient, but because they are not. It is activated when women seek education, choose partners, leave abusive homes, testify in public, or simply insist on being treated as full human beings.
How do our regulators allow a university to function with almost every leadership position, academic and administrative, occupied by a member of the promoter family? How does patent filing become a game, as alleged in this case, or how does a paper authored under the university on banging vessels to kill the coronavirus get written? The incident brought to sharp light how India has slipped into an education system run on high fees by private institutions with questionable credentials.
There should also be no doubt that these protests are being fueled by China and Pakistan to depose the pro-India Sheikh Hasina Government and install a pro-Islamist anti-India government like the erstwhile BNP-led government in Bangladesh.
The reality is that communal politics of the kind played by the BJP, led by Prime Minister Modi, has stopped paying dividends of the kind that it once did.
As the world watches the unfolding drama in the United States, the implications for South Asia, particularly India, Pakistan, and China, are profound
The Baloch resistance movement faces an unprecedented threat in the form of deepfakes and propaganda propelled by 5GW tactics. The strategy aims to destabilize and discredit the movement, paving the way for a tightened grip on the region.
This need got a number of us doctors working in different parts of India to come together as a group. We post our questions in the group, or call up an expert for guidance: How do you manage fluctuating blood sugar in a young woman with diabetes? How do you treat malaria in a pregnant woman? We meet online once a week - to share new knowledge, case studies, and also ask questions.
The US needs to acknowledge that it needs India more than the vice versa. It would be good for the Biden Administration to get off the high horse and not issue “warnings” that can adversely impact the existing bilateral relationship.
While leaders like Mahatma Gandhi to Rahul Gandhi have expounded on the humane aspect of Hinduism, the Hindutva fraternity are seen by its critics to have treaded the path of hate and violence.
There is always resistance to any change and in a democracy with free media and freedom of expression, varied views on all matters are only to be expected and welcome. In this fast-developing world, an army can’t be static - or traditional - and frozen in an era of the past.
Babar Ali, a senior TTP commander, says, “Entire country (Pakistan) is now under our control; we are present in every corner of Pakistan.” Some 200 TTP fighters are located close to Pakistan’s largest nuclear facility in Dera Ghazi Khan in Pakistan’s Punjab
As the world turns more careful and looks to build with caution and care, the Indian State is going berserk in multiple directions with the goal of showing its strength outside India while ordinary Indians are getting the rough end.
Taking stock of the Kargil War 25 years later, what unfortunately emerges is that most of the important lessons have not been learnt, at least by India’s politico-bureaucratic establishment.
This also means unshackling the education sector, allowing greater freedom and autonomy to institutions of higher education in deciding curricula, courses, faculty hiring and salaries, student fees and programs. Otherwise, millions of our youth are wasting the prime years of their youth with a psychological burden, and grueling study with repeated attempts, to crack exams, where the odds of winning are worse than a lottery.
In that light, the words of Mohan Bhagwat signal discomfiture. But his hesitation to name Modi and call him out indicates that the RSS is caught in a trap of its own making.
There has to be a common thread holding the weave of a multidimensional diverse nation like India. The thread is definitely not how or to which God your pray (or not), what dress you wear (or wear no dress at all!), what you eat or not.
Without these reforms, the laudable objective of “India a Developed Nation by 2047” may remain a distant dream.