The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
After Pakistani Hindus have been ethnically cleansed by the Muslims there, now it is the turn of Bangladeshi Hindus. Many temples and hundreds of houses of Hindus have been vandalized and destroyed.
Bangladesh Puja Udjapon Parishad, a group which looks after Hindu temples,said 47 temples and at least 700 Hindu houses had either been torched or vandalised since the verdict against Delwar Hossain Sayedee.
And why did it happen
Sayedee, vice-president of the country’s largest Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami, was sentenced to hang on February 28 for crimes including rape and murder committed during the 1971 independence conflict. The sentencing of Sayedee and other Jamaat-e-Islami leaders has triggered the worst violence in impoverished Muslim-majority Bangladesh since independence, with 85 people so far killed in the unrest.
So, the country’s courts sentenced some Islamists to be capital punishment and THAT became a good enough reason to take the ire out on the Hindus there. Why?? And, will India or others protest? After all, everyone and his brother in the sub-continent wanted to protest the Babri Masjid demolition.
There is a reason why the Hindus DO NOT feel comfortable with the increasing numbers of Muslims amongst them. Educated or not. And, let us stop this crap about Indian Muslims vs Pakistani Muslims. Most of the subcontinent Muslims are cut from the SAME CLOTH. Heck most have the same families even today. If what has happened in Pakistan and what is happening in Bangladesh is ANY indicator, why is anyone surprised if Hindus in India believe that the Muslims in India wouldn’t do the same if they had a chance to do it??
And for the career-Seculars – when such things happen, either they are missing or have been shot dead as well, the handful of them that are raising their voices anyways.
Like they say – Shame on the aggressor if he hits you once; but shame on YOU if he hits you twice. If it happened in India, that would be thrice! That is beyond shameful!
And of course, the state machinery becomes totally useless and doesn’t do a thing.
Kazal Debnath, a vice-president of Bangladesh Puja Udjapon Parishad, blamed the attacks on Hindu temples and homes on Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir.
“It was the work of the Jamaat and Shibir, but we also accuse the government, the police and the local government representatives including (our) MPs for failing to protect the temples and our community,” he told AFP. He said the attackers were given free rein to “torch our temples, houses and properties”.
The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
This visit of India left me with many questions. Many observations and inputs from different people and sections. Food for thought that I have tried to contemplate on and make sense of. Sharing all that with you.
When you analyze the last 60 years of the economic miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia versus the continued impoverished Indian economy, you get very interesting lessons. Can Indians have the wherewithal in them to do in one generation so that the coming generations may rise?
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