Innholdsfortegnelse for 11 July 2022 i India Today

Every party is entitled to expand or defend its territory. That is part of the biological makeup of every political entity—and the Shiv Sena was a prime example. Founded in 1966 by the irrepressible Bal Thackeray, a cartoonist-turned-fiery advocate of Marathi regionalism mixed with ultra-Hindu nationalism, the Sena had steadily grown in relevance in Maharashtra politics. What has unfolded over days of breathless action, culminating in Uddhav Thackeray’s emotional resignation in a Facebook Live address on June 29, now threatens the party’s very existence. But the perilous situation the Sena finds itself in has its roots in the past. For long, Mumbai was the party’s stronghold, where it captured the country’s richest municipality. It was to build a larger base for itself in the state that the Sena entered into…

I am not Hanuman. I am no one’s Hanuman. My name is Ramchandra. Make no mistake.” So shot back Union minister R.C.P. Singh on June 26, when journalists in the Jamui district of Bihar described him as Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Hanuman. It is now clear that the IAS officer-turned-politician, who was denied a Rajya Sabha nomination, no longer wants to be seen as a Nitish follower. He may well have been reminded of LJP leader Chirag Paswan’s reference to being PM Narendra Modi’s Hanuman.…

Never after Narendra Modi has the Gujarat BJP had a political personality of any significance. And frankly, it has never needed one. The sight of a Gujarati saffron icon ensconsed in India’s top job has sufficed to confer an endless gift on the state unit. But in a year when the BJP will seek to stamp its dominance on the Gujarat assembly like never before, it needs a micro-manager cut of the same cloth as Modi—even if tailored to a lesser calling. And it has one in state BJP president C.R. Patil. He has become the last word on anything to do with the state unit. The very mention of ‘CR’ is considered a go-ahead for any decision. As the party gears up to ensure its uninterrupted run in power…

I faresounding rebuff were needed to that old saw that the only culture Punjabis know is agriculture, this book is extravagant proof. Produced in association with the Smithsonian’s Asian cultural history programme, it is a lavishly photographed and designed volume of Sikh art—miniatures, weaponry, coins, textiles, photographs and contemporary paintings among other memorabilia—that is the single-handed collection of one individual. Parvinderjit Singh Khanuja, an India-born oncologist who set up a flourishing practice in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1993, pursued his “expensive passion” over 15 years as a form of seva (public service), a founding tenet of his faith. His impressive hoard now has a permanent home in the Phoenix Art Museum and, from 2017, is shown in themed exhibitions such as Virtue and Valour, Warriors of World War I and The…

TO RAISE A FALLEN PEOPLE: HOW NINETEENTH-CENTURY INDIANS SAW THEIR WORLD AND SHAPED OURS by Rahul Sagar JUGGERNAUT ₹799; 312 pages A nandibai Joshi and Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar are hardly household names in India today. Perhaps they should be. In Rahul Sagar’s To Raise a Fallen People, we can once more read their words—words that shaped colonial Indian society. Sagar’s anthology brings together the writings of several figures from the 19th century, arguing for their lasting intellectual impact. Joshi, who in 1886 became the first Indian woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, and Jambhekar, a polymath of sparkling intelligence who died tragically young in 1846, are only two such examples. At the heart of this book are two questions. For how long have Indians thought…

In early June, Ed Sheeran dropped a remix of his cloying wedding-rap anthem ‘2Step’ that featured a verse by Indian singer-songwriter Armaan Malik. This was Malik’s second international collaboration, following his 2021 single ‘Echo’, which featured indie K-pop star Eric Nam and Indo-Ameri-can producer KSHMR. Having already established himself as a popular playback singer at home, the 26-year-old is now looking to break out onto the global pop music scene. His weapon of choice, it appears, is the international pop collaboration. He’s not the only one. In May, Badshah dropped ‘Voodoo’, a collaboration with the Colombian ‘Prince of Reggaeton’ J. Balvin. Last month, he followed it up with a remix that also features popular Atlanta rapper Lil Baby. Diljit Dosanjh, having signed a deal with Warner Music earlier this year,…

Just because it is hot and humid outside does not mean that you interiors can’t be cool. A beautiful summer home is filled with flowers, colour and sunshine. It is a holiday time for most children, which means more family time, entertainment and parties. Here are a few ways to get your home ready for the season. Khushi Todi is an interior designer and the founder of Bangalore-based Cane Boutique. www.caneboutique.com 1 Trendy seasonal fare is incomplete without a nice colourful outdoor setting with quirky accessories, print on print table decor and cute fairy lights. Let’s not forget throws that make the setting cosier and also prepared for an unforeseen monsoon shower. Add outdoor umbrellas or gazebos that not only protect you from the harsh sun rays but also from rain.…

It was a Spanish artist’s fascination with an actor that ultimately resulted in blurring lines, redefining art and creating new furniture. The piece in question, the Lips Sofa by Salvador Dali, inspired by actor Mae West’s luscious lips. This was perhaps the first celebrated form of sculptural furniture. For those not in the know, sculptural furniture are unusual pieces of furniture with a distinctive sculptural aesthetic. They bring intense aesthetics and function together. Think of them as pieces of art you can interact with; and like art, they are available in different styles ranging from unorthodox and abstract to modern, minimal and geometric. However, unlike art you can place a flower arrangement on it, lean against it or even sit on it. Not Boxed In A popular type is tubular…

VAISHNAVI WALVEKAR, 32 Founder, Vahe, Pune www.vahe.co During a trip back home to India while doing her masters from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, Vaishnavi Walvekar happened to visit Dilli Haat in Delhi. “I met an artisan from Srinagar who held these little papier-mâché trinket boxes that were stylised with intricate paintings. It reminded me of a vase I bought years back. My first thought was holding it and realising how lightweight it was,” says Walvekar. So began her journey and interest in the craft form, which she followed it to Kashmir, with a belief that she could reinterpret this age-old craft with modern abstractions. Vahe, started in 2021, is a manifestation of this journey. Material World They work with papier-mâché, the technique that predominantly uses two raw…

Economy: Unemployment In India By M.G. Arun The unemployment rate fell marginally in May 2022 but the recovery was not broad-based. Only robust economic growth can create more jobs on a sustained basis https://bit.ly/3OyDHhX Spotlight: Murmu’s Political Journey By Romita Datta Hailing from a backward village in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district, presidential nominee Droupadi Murmu has distinguished herself as an able, down-to-earth person https://bit.ly/3NxoPzd Spotlight: Alluri Sitarama Raju By Amarnath K. Menon The freedom fighter who led the Rampa rebellion against British rule in the Eastern Ghats is fondly remembered by tribals in the region https://bit.ly/3I4WlvG Cinema: Anil Kapoor In ‘Jugjugg Jeeyo’ By Suhani Singh In playing the character of a family patriarch who seeks to end his marriage for another woman, the 65-year-old actor treads a delicate line with success…

Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and founder of YSRC party, has long wanted to delink the state assembly election from the Lok Sabha polls, unlike in 2014 and 2019. Now, he is set to hold the party plenary in Guntur on July 8-9, after a break of five years. He aims to organise the party around state-level polling booths. He has set a goal of winning more seats than the 151 of the 175 seats his party won in 2019 and counter the challenge from N. Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party.…

Pinarayi Vijayan may be no gaubhakt, but Kerala under his rule is seeing a white revolution: annual milk production in 2021-22 hit 25.49 metric tonnes. Pinarayi has been rearing cows at Cliff House, his official residence, since he became chief minister in 2016. However, his intention to build a cattle shed triggered a controversy in Kerala after the PWD ministry in the state, headed by his son-in-law Mohammed Riyas, sanctioned Rs 42.9 lakh for the project on June 22. That’s a high price for gaubhakti in the south, it would seem.…

DHFL had been using Union Bank’s credit facilities since 1984. As of July 2020, 17 members in a Union Bankled consortium had sanctioned Rs 42,871.42 crore to DHFL. However, it started defaulting on the credit facilities since June 2019, and currently its account with the consortium lenders has been classified as NPA (non-performing asset) Union Bank, Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank subscribed to DHFL nonconvertible debentures (NCDs) amounting to Rs 262 crore between 2016 and 2019. However, the NCDs too were not redeemed In its special audit report, KPMG said DHFL disbursed large amounts as loans and advances to a number of inter-connected entities and individuals. Most of the transactions were investments in land or properties The report points to significant financial irregularities, diversion of funds through related parties, fabrication…

IN THE LANGUAGE OF REMEMBRANCE: THE INHERITANCE OF PARTITION by Aanchal Malhotra HARPERCOLLINS INDIA ₹799; 756 pages In this monumental archive of Partition, Aanchal Malhotra turns from recounting the history of that rupture through objects and material memory, as she did in her previous book Remnants of a Separation, to reflecting on “the inheritance of Partition”, illuminated through the memories of three generations of Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis. Seventy-five years after the division of the subcontinent, Malhotra belongs, very consciously, to a generation that is able to look back and speak about Partition with the clarity of distance, though not without its own inherited pain. She listens, if not unflinchingly, then with immense empathy, to Partition survivors, their children and grandchildren, weaving their stories seamlessly over some 600-odd pages in…

When it comes to web shows that depict army life and exploits, filmmaker Raj Acharya is a veteran of sorts. Having directed the limited series 21 Sarfarosh: Saragarhi 1897 (discovery+, 2018) and two seasons of Avrodh (SonyLIV, 2020—), Acharya can’t seem to get enough of making shows about the Indian Army. “The endeavour at every stage is to make it look different,” he says. Given the fresh surge in demand for inspiring narratives about the Indian armed forces, Acharya isn’t the only one thriving. There are several others who believe that what works in films likeUri: The Surgical Strike (2019), Kesari (2019), Shershaah (2021) and Gunjan Saxena (2020) will work in a longer OTT format, too. In June, Dice Media released Bravehearts (YouTube), an anthology of short films while SonyLIV…

Akon, Hamsika Iyer – ‘Chammak Challo’ The centre-piece of composer duo Vishal-Shekhar’s soundtrack for the 2011 SRK-starrer Ra. One was ‘Chammak Challo’, written in collabor a tion with Senegalese-American superstar Akon, who sang on the track alongside Hamsika Iyer. It’s rumoured that Akon was paid a cool Rs 2.5 crore. Skyhabor ft. Dan Tomkins and Marty Friedman – ‘Catharsis’ This song off the Indian band’s 2012 debut album proved that we could compete—and collaborate—with the best. Ex-Megadeth shredder Marty Friedman plays a sublime guest solo, featuring vocals by Tesseract (and future Skyharbor) frontman Daniel Tompkins. A.R. Rahman and Pussycat Dolls – ‘Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny)’ Rah man has an illustrious and growing list of international collaborations, but having reached #15 on the Billboard Top 100 chart, this English remake…

JULY will see a different kind of electoral battle—the one that will elect India’s 18th president. The ruling BJP has nominated former Jharkhand Governor Draupadi Murmu for the post. A range of Opposition parties have grouped together to pit former Union minister Yashwant Sinha, but do not have the support of all non-NDA parties. Murmu, who has the numbers heavily tilted towards her at present, appears on track to become India’s first Adivasi president, besides the first to be born in independent India. The President’s election is conducted by an electoral college consisting of all legislators—from the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and state assemblies, measured by a differentially weighted value. Each MP’s vote has a value of 708, whereas an MLA’s vote value is determined by the population of the…

Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s decision to allot prime government land chea ply to set up TRS district party offices is being challenged in the High Court. As per an August 17, 2018 order, the government can allot land up to an acre (4,840 sq. yards) each to recognised political parties to build offices. On May 11 this year, the ruling TRS got 4,935 sq. yards at the same price in Hyderabad’s upscale Banjara Hills area where it had built the state party office on government-allotted land in 2006.…

Long before the US withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, Taliban insurgents were using this guerrilla tactic to subvert its ground strength and set off bursts of violent mayhem. That too with a simple device: small sticky bombs planted on vehicles carting the enemy. Inspired by its success, Kashmir is now witnessing the entry of this new weapon of offence alongside a shift in the tactical armoury of militancy itself. Security forces woke up to the threat after a drone consignment was recovered in Samba along the LoC on February 14. Cheap and portable, a sticky bomb packs RDX or TNT into a small box, has a magnet to fix it to the target metal surface, and is detonated remotely with a timer. The security establishment is a…

Complacency has been as much of an obstacle in our fight against Covid as the virus itself. First, it was pandemic fatigue that made people shed mask and social distancing protocols, then it was vaccine hesitancy, now it’s both. The seemingly milder Omicron variant and sub-variants, as well as the fortification of two doses, and possibly a booster dose, of the Covid vaccine has lulled people into believing that Covid is behind them. But if there’s one thing the virus has taught us—and brutally in the case of Delta—it is not to take it for granted. Indeed, India is seeing a rise in Covid cases again, as the country reported a 45 per cent single-day rise in new cases with 17,073 fresh infections on June 27. In the week ending…

The diplomat-author has been an important figure in th landscape of Indian literature. One thinks of Shashi Thar-oor and his satirical book The Great Indian Novel (1989), of course, but also of A.N.D. Haksar, the brilliant translator of Kalidasa and other Sanskrit stalwarts, the poet Abhay K. and several others. Navtej Sarna, surely the most versatile an prolific writer among this group, has just released his third novel (and ninth book overall) Crimson Spring, a powerful reimagining of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 13, 1919, through the eyes of nine characters, two of them British. Sarna, who retired in 2018 after 36 years in the IFS, had previously written The Exile (2008), a poignant, bittersweet novel based on the life of Maharaja Duleep Singh. Crimson Spring represents the author…

SCARS OF 1947: REAL PARTITION STORIES by Rajeev Shukla PENGUIN VIKING ₹499; 192 pages Without ever discounting the horrors of Partition, Shukla often prefers to focus more on the stories of human grit and perseverance he’s heard from the likes of Manmohan Singh and Avtar Narain Gujral. THE MAP AND THE SCISSORS by Amit Majmudar HARPERCOLLINS INDIA ₹499; 332 pages Gandhi and Jinnah were unstoppable forces and immovable objects in their own right. This novel imagines how their incompatible personalities must have clashed to rupture India. LADIES’ TAILOR by Priya Hajela HARPERCOLLINS INDIA ₹399; 304 pages In Hajela’s novel, Gurdev loses his family and his home in the fires of Partition. Travelling to India as a refugee, picking up the pieces with a tailoring business, what price will he pay…

THE TEST CASE (2017) ALT Balaji/ZEE5 Are women unsuited for combat roles in the army? Convinced the only answer here is a resounding ‘no’, Captain Shikha Sharma (Nimrat Kaur) fights many biases in her effort to become a combat officer. THE FORGOTTEN ARMY: AZAADI KE LIYE (2020) Amazon Prime Video We all know that Netaji led the Azad Hind Fauj during WWII, but little is known about the INA soldiers. This Kabir Khan-directed miniseries aims to fill that crucial gap. 21 SARFAROSH—SARAGRAHI 1897 (2018) discovery+ In September 1897, 21 soldiers from the 36th Sikh regiment of the British Indian Army defended an outpost at Saragarhi against an attack by over 10,000 Pashtun and Orakzai warriors. This is their story.…

Q. You recently worked with Jackie Shroff in Rashtra Kavach Om and with Anil Kapoor in the Night Manager remake. Were there any big les-sons you took from Ram-Lakhan? It is an opportunity to imbibe as much as you can. It’s always enriching to work with actors who have been there, done that and are still doing it. There’s a hard-earned wisdom they have that just flows off the tongue. Q. After your first action film, do you feel a new-found respect for Tiger Shroff, Ajay Devgn and Ak-shay Kumar, who have made their careers as action heroes? Absolutely. When it is your eighth day without salt and you have to deliver a dialogue sounding coherent, you realise how tough it is. You don’t have enough food and are supposed…

There is so much happening in the world of green design, with almost everyone turning into eco warriors. The good news is that today you are spoilt for choice with pretty products that also do their bit for Mother Earth. Waste Not, Want not One of the most interesting sustainable practice by Eris Home is the ahimsa silk product made of ‘no-kill silk’. “Unlike traditional sericulture practices that boiled alive roughly 3,000 silk worms to extract their cocoon to make a single silk cushion we buy silk cocoons from tribal women is Assam, who collect the cocoons left behind by the Eris silkworm after they hatch in the wilderness,” says Sanjana Lunia, founder and creative head, Eris Home. The eco-conscious brand has also recently launched a line of vegan table…

Where the fish swims, ideas fly, especially for of Dior Maison and Dior Baby’s artistic director Cordelia de Castellane. She was so inspired by a the variety of freshwater fish that swam in the river that flows past the mill at Christian Dior’s country home in Milly-la-Forêt, France that she came up with the Aquarius Collection. Freshwater fish, adorned in luminous shades of blue and green, team elegantly with the glassware, earthenware plates and table linens, all hand-embroidered and painted. Almost every piece part of Aquarius captures the essence of light reflecting on water, making this collection a special one. PRICE on request; AT Dior Boutiques, The Taj Mahal Place, Mumbai and DLF Emporio, Delhi…

Nestled in the suburbs of Mumbai the 3,700 sq ft private residence for a celebrated artist is split over two floors. The lower floor houses the private spaces such as the family, living, dining and bedrooms and kitchen while the upper floor boasts of a lofty split-level lounge space that opens to the roof top terrace. Get The Look We wanted to achieve a casual aesthetic. That is why we have used cool tones in materiality and contrasted them with vibrant colours via the artwork. This generates an informal vibe that allows the end user to be creatively charged. Further, in contrast to the upper floor, the aesthetics of the lower floor are muted. Whites, light grey tones, large fluted sliding room dividers and textured fabrics in the soft furnishings…