Category Archives: India

Darjeeling unlimited: new party vows to end region’s strife

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Hamro’s leader promises new start for Indian hill station after years of strikes and insurgencies

India’s romantic hill station Darjeeling has evoked images of beautiful tea-growing gardens but also, for those who follow its politics, of industrial strikes and violent insurgencies.

No more, says the leader of a new political party that swept to power in recent municipal polls, vowing to end years of agitation that have blighted the region’s main sources of income: tea and tourism.

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Indian spiritualist Sadhguru on 100-day motorbike mission to save soil

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Yoga guru will visit dozens of countries en route from London to India to raise awareness of plight of one of nature’s greatest resources

One of India’s best-known spiritual leaders is embarking on a 100-day motorbike journey from London to India to raise awareness of one of nature’s most undervalued resources.

Sadhguru, or Jaggi Vasudev, is setting off on Monday on a 30,000km (18,600-mile) trip through Europe and the Middle East in an effort to “save soil”, meeting celebrities, environmentalists and influencers in dozens of countries along the way.

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India court in Karnataka upholds ban on hijabs in colleges

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Fearing unrest over the ruling, the state government bans large gatherings after the restrictions on headscarves sparked violent protests

A court in India has ruled that wearing a hijab is not an essential principle of Islam, in a setback to Muslim students who were demanding the right to wear the headscarf in colleges in Karnataka, south India.

The Karnataka high court was hearing the petitions of Muslim students who had been stopped in January from entering the government college in Udupi, where they were enrolled, for wearing the hijab.

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BJP claims election victory in four states including Uttar Pradesh

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Win secures status of chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk known for his hardline views

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party has claimed victory in four significant state elections, in a sign of the power of Hindu nationalist politics across the country.

The BJP defied historical precedent and retained power in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically significant state with more than 180 million voters. Early results on Thursday showed the party had won at least 266 out of 403 seats, giving it a clear majority.

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Narendra Modi walks diplomacy tightrope with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine

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Analysis: Indian PM is reliant on Putin’s nation for arms and is conscious of shifting relations between Russia and its foe, China

As the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, picked up the phone to Vladimir Putin this week – the latest in several phone calls between the two leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine – he put forward a suggestion.

Modi’s push, according to an Indian government statement, was that Putin should have a “direct conversation” with the Ukrainian prime minister, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in order to “greatly assist ongoing peace efforts”.

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‘Women of the wild’: the platform giving India’s nature experts a voice

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Frustrated by a lack of female representation, film-maker Akanksha Sood Singh set up an Instagram account to showcase ‘the untold stories of women working for science and nature’

“I wish these things wouldn’t happen to anyone,” says Akanksha Sood Singh, a wildlife film-maker based in Delhi. “But if it has happened, this is a safe space for women to come and to share their experiences.”

The safe space Sood Singh is referring to is the Instagram account Women of the Wild – India, which showcases “the untold stories of women working for science and nature”. The platform gives them a chance to promote their expertise, but also somewhere to share their experiences of working in what are often male-dominated fields where sexual harassment can often feature.

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The world leaders pushing for peace in Ukraine, and their motives

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They claim to be honest brokers, but is that just a fig leaf to cover their moral bankruptcy?

How blessed are the peacemakers? After the first wave of intermediaries led by Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, a new group have beaten their way to Vladimir Putin’s long table since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or at least sought to intervene by phone.

The current crop includes Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Turkey, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohamed bin Zayed of the UAE and now the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi.

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People of colour fleeing Ukraine attacked by Polish nationalists

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Non-white refugees face violence and racist abuse in Przemyśl, as police warn of fake reports of ‘migrants committing crimes’

Police in Poland have warned that fake reports of violent crimes being committed by people fleeing Ukraine are circulating on social media after Polish nationalists attacked and abused groups of African, south Asian and Middle Eastern people who had crossed the border last night.

Attackers dressed in black sought out groups of non-white refugees, mainly students who had just arrived in Poland at Przemyśl train station from cities in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. According to the police, three Indians were beaten up by a group of five men, leaving one of them hospitalised.

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Only 6% of G20 pandemic recovery spending ‘green’, analysis finds

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Review of G20 fiscal stimulus spending counters many countries’ pledges to ‘build back better’

Only about 6% of pandemic recovery spending has been “green”, an analysis of the $14tn that G20 countries have poured into economic stimulus.

Additionally, about 3% of the record amounts governments around the world have spent to rescue the global economy from the Covid-19 pandemic has been spent on activities that will increase carbon emissions, such as subsidies to coal, and will do little to reduce greenhouse gases or shift the world to a low-carbon footing.

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More rights defenders murdered in 2021, with 138 activists killed just in Colombia

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Most of 358 victims worked on land, environmental and indigenous rights, with more killed in Mexico, India and among Afghan women


A Colombian conservationist who saved a rare species of parrot from extinction, a young feminist activist in Afghanistan, and two poets in Myanmar who used words to protest against the military coup were among 358 human rights defenders murdered in 35 countries last year, analysis has found.

The environmentalist Gonzalo Cardona Molina, 55; Frozan Safi, a 29-year-old Afghan economics lecturer; and K Za Win and Khet Thi, two of several poets to be killed, were among those targeted because of their “peaceful and powerful” work, according to a global analysis of threats and attacks faced by human rights activists compiled by Front Line Defenders (FLD) and the Human Rights Defenders Memorial.

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Reviled, harassed, abused: Narenda Modi’s most trenchant critic speaks out

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The Indian journalist Rana Ayyub speaks about the campaign to silence her that has led to charges of sedition and ‘defaming Hindus’

When I talked to the journalist Rana Ayyub in her Mumbai home last Wednesday she was calmer than she was when I had spoken to her three days earlier. But that is not saying much. Last Sunday her words were jumbled, her voice on edge. She said she had not slept. That she could not eat or keep food down. That she had had thoughts of self-harm.

“I was on a plane yesterday and I said to my brother, ‘Can you feel me sitting next to me?’ And he said, ‘Have you completely lost it?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m just not sure I’m sitting next to you. I feel like I’m in a dream.’ And afterwards, I spoke to my psychiatrist and she said, ‘You’re dissociating. You’ve had a traumatic experience –that’s your brain shutting down.’”

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‘A flashy theme park’: outcry over Modi’s plans for the Gandhi ashram

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The site Mahatma Gandhi lived at during 1917-30 is getting a very costly makeover many think is meant to distort his legacy

Like most things in Mahatma Gandhi’s life, his ashram in the Indian city of Ahmedabad was simple and austere. Yet between 1917 and 1930, these modest white bungalows, set on the bank of the Sabarmati river in the state of Gujarat, were the beating heart of Gandhi’s non-violent freedom struggle against British rule and his experiments in upending India’s oppressive caste system.

Gandhi – who would eventually lead India to independence and remains a global icon for peace – left the Sabarmati ashram in 1930, never to return, and in the years since, it has become one of India’s most sacrosanct sites. It is where Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Xi Jinping, Benjamin Netanyahu and most recently Donald Trump all paid a visit to during their trips to India.

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‘Shoot them’: Indian state police accused of murdering Muslims and Dalits

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Ahead of key Uttar Pradesh elections, state police accused of being ‘mercenaries’ of hardline Hindu nationalist government

According to police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, it was suicide. The young Muslim man they had brought into their custody had, out of despair, killed himself in the police station toilets. But, as photos of the scene emerged, so too did suspicions.

The 22-year-old man, Altaf, was 165cm (5ft 5in) tall and weighed 60kg (9.5 stone), but the toilet tap he had supposedly hanged himself from was just 76cm off the ground and made of flimsy plastic. And why, as the police later claimed in court, was the CCTV in the police station mysteriously not working that day?

Family and friends tell a very different story: that Altaf, a Muslim man living in the town of Kasganj, was in love with and planned to marry a Hindu girl. That powerful local Hindu vigilante groups opposed to interfaith unions found out and reported him to the police. And that on 9 November 2021, Altaf was arrested and tortured to death in police custody and his family pressured to keep quiet.

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Greta stands with Sami and Navalny on trial again: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico

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Exiled Chagos Islanders bask in return ‘as pilgrims to abandoned place’

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Fifty years after the UK forcibly deported them, five Chagossians have visited the disputed archipelago with Mauritius’s help

Returning to their birthplace after decades of enforced exile, five Chagossians leapt from a motor launch on to the palm-shaded beach of Peros Banhos atoll on Saturday afternoon, kissed the sand and stood – hands joined together – in prayer.

For Olivier Bancoult, Lisbey Elyse, Marie Suzelle Baptiste, Rosemonde Bertin and Marcel Humbert, it was the moment they had long anticipated – the first time they could step ashore without close close monitoring by British officials. It is 50 years since they were forcibly deported to Mauritius by the UK, which cleared the archipelago of its entire population to make way for a US military base on the island of Diego Garcia.

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Indian supplier to UK fashion brands agrees to pay £3m in unpaid wages

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Shahi Exports, which makes clothes for the UK high street, has agreed to pay staff minimum wage and arrears

India’s largest garment company has paid out an estimated £3m in unpaid wages to tens of thousands of workers, after two years of refusing to pay the legal minimum wage.

Last month Shahi Exports, which supplies dozens of international brands, agreed to pay nine months of back pay to about 80,000 workers, with further payments expected in the coming months that will increase the total paid back to workers to £7m.

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‘The epitome of joy’: 10 of Lata Mangeshkar’s greatest songs

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The late Indian star sang of love in all its glorious and terrible forms – but also rooted listeners in history and spirituality

Sitting in the back of my parents’ Peugeot 504 as a child, we listened to songs by the likes of Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi and, of course, Lata Mangeshkar. We were too young to understand what they were about – love, loss, and romance – but we knew all the lyrics.

Well, not quite all of them. During her 92 years, Mangeshkar recorded 50,000 songs in 18 languages, breaking records as the most recorded artist in human history. As a playback singer for Bollywood films, she was never seen on screen, but her voice, dubbed in place of the actors’, was unmistakable. She got her start in 1942, and for a woman to have a career this long and distinguished in India, Mangeshkar must have been steely beneath those silk saris – her voice, though, remained gentle, and she was known as “the nightingale”.

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Lata Mangeshkar obituary

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One of India’s most famous playback singers hailed as ‘the nightingale of Bollywood’ who had a four-octave vocal range

Lata Mangeshkar, “the nightingale of Bollywood”, who has died aged 92 after contracting Covid-19, was a much-loved Indian national and international figure, whose songs provided the backdrop to the lives of millions for seven decades.

Music sung by her was heard constantly across India, in shops, restaurants, taxis or on the radio, and she became known as “Didi”, or sister, because so many people identified with her often emotional songs. And yet she was best known as a playback singer, a vocalist who does not appear onscreen but provides the soundtrack for films in which actors lip sync to her singing.

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Editor arrested in Kashmir as press crackdown escalates

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Journalist Fahad Shah detained on Friday under terrorism and sedition laws in disputed Indian region

A prominent journalist has been arrested under terrorism and sedition laws, as a crackdown on the press in Indian-administered Kashmir continues to escalate.

Fahad Shah, the founder and editor of the widely read local news website The Kashmir Walla, was arrested on Friday evening when he was summoned to a police station in the southern district of Pulwama.

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Lata Mangeshkar, legendary Bollywood singer, dies at 92

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The singer who defined music and melody for generations in India has died in Mumbai

Lata Mangeshkar, one of India’s biggest cultural icons and considered one of the country’s most influential singers, has died in Mumbai aged 92.

Prime minister Narendra Modi lead tributes for the “nightingale of Bollywood”, saying: “She leaves a void in our nation that cannot be filled. The coming generations will remember her as a stalwart of Indian culture, whose melodious voice had an unparalleled ability to mesmerise people.”

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