A Defective Indian!: Why the Racist Violence in Bangalore is Not a Stray Incident

March 18, 2017

“Demanding me to lick his boots, he said, you deserve it only because you are a dirty tribal from the north east”. -Higio Gungte, Arunachal Pradesh.

I am an Indian, an optimist Indian, albeit a critical one. Today, 25 years of contemplation of society and self, I claim, I am a despondent citizen of India. I started as an optimist however lived short while, deliberated by theirs-who I called my own kinds- racism and its consequential prejudices, made me an Indian skeptic. My first encounter with the animal Racism was in India, in my own country. Racism wore superiority with pride. It walked loud and bold in the streets, in the shopping malls, in the airports and everywhere I walked.

But I met it, up close one evening in one the subways of Delhi in the year 2009. As I walked into the packed metro, I was rebuff by many eyes and disdained at my presence, their eyes examined me. Jittery, I turned away to one of the corners, only to allow my space felt corrode by two men slowly, but surely advancing. They offered me money and it ascended-asking me discreetly ‘‘how much do you charge for the night?’’. I was stunned at the question and didn’t know how to respond. Yet I did! Gathering courage, I said, you should watch your words! Well, he reprimanded, ‘’why don’t you go back to where you belong!”

Well 2009 onward, racism and I had a frequent encounter- someday for coffee-rather light but most of the days, like the morning breakfast- extensively heavy. On my first visit to the prestigious Jaipur Lit Fest, my friends and I, all Indians but yes, from the North-East part of the country were denied entry into a hotel, and were asked to ‘prove our nationality’ on arriving at a hotel. The manager demanded that he sees our passports! We asserted we were Indians! we all speak excellent Hindi, and thought that it would just suffice. I mean, does it even matter?

Since then, I have been looking for home!

Through this article, I speak from, and of, and to, my country; to speak of a prerogative, gambled by few of my fellow Indians, for reasons known to them and unknown to me and to my brothers and sisters from the 8 North Eastern States of India. I write to speak of the county, the states and the cities, and of the many individuality and identities that comes with it, conditioned by the colours, features, names, languages, foods, songs, dances and others. Most vividly, I write to question on the idea of ‘Indianness’. Honestly, I don’t even know if this word exists, but time has taught me that such ideas has dwelt here, uncontested. And some of us have lived here, at risk, unfree, assaulted and erased.

Hate Crimes and Dharnas

Slogans like – Racism down down! We want justice! We are Indians! are almost an everyday tune to our tongues now. One does not need to be reminded of the many past incidents of racial attacks and its similar bigotries perpetrated to certain communities of India, that do not fit in the Índian’ design. Either one is ‘not enough Indian’ or rather ‘you don’t look like an Indian!’ On 29th January 2014, when Nido Tania, a 20-year-old Student from Arunachal Pradesh was murdered in the Lajpat Nagar area of Delhi, it triggered widespread protests across the country. Many political parties joined in and some of them also assured, there will be no more Nido Tania and atrocities of similar kinds. But, only few months later in October 2014, there were two separate but parallel incidents, one in which a 26 year-old engineering student was beaten by three men in Bangalore for not speaking Kannada. Second, where two students from Nagaland, Awang Newmei and Aloto Chishi were beaten and tortured brutally for hours by few local men in Gurgaon. What’s terrifying is their intent. The perpetrators then chopped off one of their hair saying, “We want to send a message to all of you in the northeast. If you guys from Manipur or Nagaland come here, we will kill you.” These are only few of the incidents; there are so many more- brutal and inhumane in nature. Besides, many of us are fighting a battle every day, trying to find ways-how to tackle- to the incessant subtle cynicism that we are subjected to almost every day.

Yet another attack

15th and 16th March 2016, another protest-peace march was organized. Once again the old slogans like, we want justice! And racism down down! Took over the streets of Bangalore, Delhi and Arunachal Pradesh. Reason? A criminal lawyer, Mr. B. Hemant Kumar (Landlord) in Bangalore thinks that tribal people from the North East are best kept at his boots, preferably to lick them. I am aghast at the incident that happened on the 6th of March on a young boy named Higio Gungte from Arunachal Pradesh, a college student of Christ College and was living as a tenant in one of Mr.Hemant’s building for almost a year. I am sad to learn about the physical pain and the emotional trauma this little boy was inflicted with over a petty issue-excessive use of water. Gungte’s family is a close relative of mine and after the tragic incident I had spoken to both his mother and sister. From their long conversation, one thing that troubled me, was the question his mom asked me, is, “what wrong has my son done to him (Landlord)? This is a clear case of Racism- a hate crime and an FIR has been lodged against the landlord at the Hulimavu police station in Bangalore but he is out on bail now.

Allow me to share with you few important details from the FIR in Gungte’s words.

Dated- March 13, 2017
To,
The SHO,
Hulimavu Police Station,
Bangalore 560076
Sir,
I, Higio Gungtey, would like to submit that I am a person belonging to the Nyishi Tribe, a schedule tribe of Arunachal Pradesh. A copy of the certificate is produced for your kind perusal. Hemant Kumar has attacked me for no reason but because I come from North East. I and two of my friends are tenants in his rent house since March 2016, with the rent amount 12000 per month and the rent agreement was made in the name of my friends Mridupawan Bharali and Rajeev Ranjan Singh (hailing from Assam and Jharkhand respectively). He told us that my name need not appear in the rent agreement. It was on Monday March 6, 2017 our landlord Mr. B. Hemanth Kumar came to our house and he started attacking my friend while I was talking to my parents over the phone in the balcony. When I saw him dragging my friend by his neck, I immediately rushed into the room and tried to stop him but instead he started beating me. He beat me mercilessly in all part of my body. While beating me he said, “you dirty tribal from North East”.
He kicked me in my stomach several times and I was choking and fell down on the floor because of the severe pain. In no time, again he kicked me on my chin and it started bleeding. My tongue got cut and it was too painful. Then I went to the bathroom to spit the blood out, he dragged me out of it and hit my right cheek, it was too painful. My mouth was full of blood. He punched me in my face. I was already very tired from the beating and dragging. He tried to kick my genitals as well but somehow, moved and escaped.
Mr. Hemanth told my two friends to slap me otherwise he will beat me more. As a result my two friends out of fear of him started slapping me.
While he was beating me, he abused verbally saying, “I will fuck your mother and sister”.
He forced me to lick his boots
While he was kicking me with his boots, one of the boots came out. He ordered me to put it back to his feet and tie the lace, and lick his boots. While licking his shoe he said,”You only deserve it because you are a dirty tribal from North East and don’t show your face again in this city”.

Please No More!
I felt my heart skipped a beat when I read his FIR. I was disappointed and disturbed by both the actions of Gungte’s two friends and Mr. Hemanth, but much more by Mr. Hemanth. He is an educated man, a lawyer by profession. Gungte, in his wildest dreams must have never imagined, he would be ever treated like that. Only if one could read MR. Hemanth’s thoughts. You see, no man is disturbed by things, but by his opinion about things. And I fail to understand, why does he hate the ‘tribals from the north east?’ I also struggle to reason out why Gungte’s friends (room mates) gave in to Mr. Hemant’s threats. If only they could have gathered some courage, things would have been relatively calmer for Gungte and his family.

Gungte’s noiselessness is very familiar to mine and many of us who are told every day we don’t belong here. His voice is the offspring of many nations within a nation. And together our voices carry the many unheard stories of racial discrimination and its intolerance.

I believe, more than ever that the search for justice is the supreme foundation for activism in our time here and abroad, although the melody of misery and anguish has been consecrated in this country. I draw strength from the traditions of every brothers and sisters who without fear and inhibitions have dealt with racial discrimination and its biases; with every reason, have stood firm in their fight, and most remarkably to those who have lost their lives in the pursuit to finding one’s identity like Nido Tania, Richard Loitam and many more. But, when we condemn attacks in Kansus (shooting of two Indians’ thinking they were Iranians) and Canada (Quebec mosque shooting) why do well fail to dismiss this one? They say when the horrors and pain of the people are louder than the babies crying and when the cry of your neighbours makes you more uncomfortable than the murder itself, something is awfully wrong. And It’s time, that India, where differences were once accepted and celebrated, should introspect on this before it is too late and before our attitudes harden.

Let me end it here:

The idea of home is so complicated to me; home isn’t here
people look at me like I am from somewhere else.
Where is home?
Writing became an expression of my discomfort
a language
an arrangement of unbroken rage
writing poetry to question
why?
Poetry to reclaim my identity and to be
home
again.
My body is yellow, white, brown and black
Is it my skin that betrays or is it my face?
I am still looking for an answer!
You tell me
How do I respond without making you angry and uncomfortable?
How do I wear a mask that doesn’t event fit me!
Do you feel my pain?
Why can’t you, my fellow Indians respond for me?
I want all of you to speak for us.
What are words if they aren’t realized?
And realization is a distant dream
A dream to be an Indian
and here I am living despite it all
with a language that comforts me
in a language that sounds familiar.
I write to all the younger version of me, you are
already
home.
Even the colour of my dreams scream
Indian
my blood is Indian
my bones are solid Indian
so, I am writing!
I am protesting as I write
I am protesting about being an outsider in my own land.
But, why am I still looking
for something that will define me?
I can’t find my belonging here.
You will often catch me and many of us
searching for it
In the books and in passports
striding
with resilience.

This article was first published on India Resists

The great EVM debate: Convincing the losers that they lost

March 18, 2017

It's not about whether recent elections were rigged, as alleged. It is about a transparent mechanism for determining the truth.

Original photo: AFP

Accusations about the tampering of Electronic Voting Machines continue to be in news.

India’s EVMs have been carefully designed to avoid some of the well-known security problems with electronic voting machines in the West. But it is difficult to agree with Former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi’s assertion that all the Election Commission needs to do is double down and more forcefully insist that the EVMs are secure because that is what they believe.

It is not about what insiders trust to be true about voting technology, but about what has been demonstrated to be true to the public about a particular election. Besides, no EVM, including the Indian ones, can be assumed to be invulnerable to a determined attacker. While India’s EVM design makes it harder to implement large-scale attacks, all EVMs do not have to be rigged. Machines judiciously chosen in constituencies that are more favorable to rigging, with the collusion of local individuals, after the random allocation described by Quraishi, could be sufficient.

Additionally, in a country with a very efficient counterfeit mafia, we cannot expect that printed paper seals will always expose tampering efforts, because they can be replaced with counterfeit ones.

Finally, a computer chip can be smart enough to know when it is being tested. For example, Volkswagen recently pleaded guilty to having software whose purpose was to detect that the car was being tested, so it could behave as expected and emit fewer pollutants. On the other hand, during regular use, it produced greater emissions. So testing machines at random is not enough to know whether they can be trusted to perform as expected during the real election, when they are not being tested. It thus stands to reason that the losing parties would be suspicious of an election outcome that relies solely on the electronic mechanism, which is not transparent to the voter.

When an electorate has reasonable and genuine concerns that an election could have been rigged – whether or not it was – you have a situation that is not conducive to a healthy democracy. We now have losers with concerns that the election was rigged, winners who would rather not know whether it was, and voters without an independent mechanism for determining the truth.

This has happened before: the Congress dismissed reports of security vulnerabilities when it won, and the BJP loudly voiced its concerns. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. In both cases the Indian voter has been left in a state of genuine uncertainty.

Evidence-based elections

Experts in voting system security propose evidence-based elections that are not vulnerable to problems, known or unknown, in the technology. Technology can be tested in order to reduce the likelihood of problems during use. However, the only way to ensure that the technology performed correctly is to examine the evidence to determine if it did.

For EVMs, the evidence would be in the form of a voter-verified paper audit trail or VVPAT, which records each vote on paper and allows the voter to verify the paper record before the vote is cast electronically.

Numerous countries have chosen to use paper in some form to record votes: 70% of the votes in the 2016 US election had a paper record. Neither Britain nor Germany use electronic voting for general elections. France has chosen to hand count its upcoming election; the Netherlands chose to hand count the most recent one.

Beyond paper trails

It is not sufficient to produce a paper record if it is going to be locked up, never to be seen again. The VVPAT should be stored securely, separate from the EVMs, and audited publicly after the election to determine that it is consistent with the declared election outcome. The audit can be very efficient, as it need not count each and every vote. A good audit polls votes at random and determines that the statistical properties of the votes it looks at are consistent with the election outcome.

Going beyond what is required by a Supreme Court order for a paper trail, the Election Commission had promised that all India’s EVMs will produce such a VVPAT for the 2019 general election. This is, however, not enough. The VVPAT should be audited to ensure that the election outcome is correct, and laws and procedures should be put in place for strong and transparent audits.

Quraishi asserts that the issue is not that electronic voting machines have been demonstrated to be insecure, but that the process with paper is more transparent. While security experts might differ with this interpretation of their work demonstrating security problems, everyone does agree that the use of paper greatly enhances transparency. In the execution of an election, transparency is the most important goal. The use of electronics obscures the process to the extent that any attempts to change the outcome would be very hard to detect. Attempts to change the election outcome would be detected in a transparent process, and transparency becomes the strongest part of the security arsenal.

Election audit

Any constituencies with a securely stored VVPAT should be audited for the recent elections. Future elections should ensure a paper trail that is verified by the voter. If EVMs with VVPAT are not available, paper ballots should be used, whether scanned and counted by the scanner, or hand counted. If the votes are hand counted, the counting should be public: observers should be able to view the ballot and note how it was counted. If the votes are scanned with an optical scanner which counts votes, the count should be audited, again in a transparent and public process. The paper trail should be stored securely till it is counted or audited. While there are challenges to securing the paper trail as well, an adversary intending to change election outcome would need to change both records in a consistent manner.

Election officials the world over resist audits because it increases their workload and because they trust the systems they have approved and/or used. One does not have to like the audit process, but one cannot claim free and fair elections without transparency.
Brush your teeth. Eat your bhindi. Audit your elections.

The Election Commission has, time and again, demonstrated itself as independent and up to the task of serving voters and democracy, even when this has required great effort. India’s democratic tradition, and its voters – who turn out in large numbers election after election, showing unmatched enthusiasm for, and faith in, democracy – deserve no less.

Poorvi L Vora is Professor of Computer Science at The George Washington University, Washington DC, USA.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

RPF personnel arrested in Kota for trying to rape woman in front of her children

March 18, 2017

A Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel was today arrested for allegedly attempting to rape a 30-year-old woman by spiking her cold drink, police said.

RPF personnel Khemchand Verma, posted at the Kota Railway Station, was arrested after the woman lodged a complaint against him, SHO at Kota GRP Station Ganga Sahay said.

She alleged that Verma took her and her two children to his residential quarter yesterday night when they were waiting for a train back home to Varanasi, he said.

“The RPF personnel told them that there was no train to Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. He took them to his residential quarter. There was another person present there, who left immediately after Verma entered,” Sahay said.

The woman said the accused offered her a spiked drink and tried to rape her by switching off the room’s light. She also said Verma tried to steal her valuables, Sahay said.

The officer said, “She managed to escape from the residential quarter and was found by GRP personnel at around 1:30 AM today in semi-conscious state outside the Kota Railway station. Her children were found crying beside her.”

She gave her statement in the morning and she is undergoing treatment at the Maharao Bheem Singh (MBS) hospital here, he said.

Verma has been booked under relevant sections, including 376, of IPC. The woman’s family members have been informed, Sahay said.

India – The Rise of Right-Wing and the Way Forward

March 18, 2017

Prabir Purayastha talks on the rise of the right wing

Newsclick went live on 11th March to discuss the outcome of the election results of the 5 states. Prabir Purkayastha and Pranjal discussed the results along with the rise of right. They talked about the future of identity politics in our country and the global rise of the right. We bring to you a small feature from our live discussions.

Adani: Indian Fishermen warn Australia against Environmental Impact ahead of Coal Mine Talks – ABC News

March 17, 2017

Indian Fishermen have warned of the harmful effects of the Adani project even as Australia to be wary as Queensland's Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk prepares to decide whether to proceed with the Carmichael coal mine ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)News has reported.

Several Indian fishermen have pointed out that a local Adani project has not just displaced them but harmed the environment

Key points in the ABC Bulletin:

Noor Mohammad said the Adani project's coal dust, stream discharge harmed the community
Adani has been heavily criticised for a series of environmental breaches during construction of Gujarat project
Comment was sought from Adani on measures it had taken to address the ash problem, but the ABC received no response

Ms Palaszczuk and eight regional mayors are preparing to sit down with the chairman of Adani Enterprises, Gautam Adani, ahead of the company deciding whether to proceed with the proposed mine.

The Queenslanders will be shown the Adani's Gujarat port and power station, which itself has a chequered environmental record, of which the local fishermen said Australia should be wary. Noor Mohammad — a fisherman in coastal Gujarat —said his home used to be in Mundra, where Adani's port and power project now stands.

He was forced out when the Adani project started, and relocated with his wife, two sons and their families to a camp nearby. But he and other fishermen, like Buddha Ismail, said the destruction of tidal mangroves and ash from coal burnt at the power station had damaged the fishing.

"The Adani project is harming us. Their coal dust and stream discharge are harming us," Mr Mohammad said, adding he now caught a quarter of what he used to."There are no fish in the sea water near the coast. All living creatures are dead."

Adani was heavily criticised for a series of environmental breaches during construction that included destruction of mangroves, failure to regulate the ash generated by the power plant and altering the flow of waterways to the fishing's detriment.

At Hazira, another site on the Gujarat coast, early last year a court ordered the company to pay nearly $5 million in reparation for illegal construction work, which damaged the environment and deprived 80 fishing families of their access to the sea.

Mr Mohammad and Mr Ismail said based on their experiences Australia should be wary of Adani."From our side, we want to tell them that they should force [the] company to run away," Mr Mohammad said.

"I want to suggest them to not allow an [Adani] plant there," Mr Ismail said.

The ABC sought comment from Adani on measures it had taken to address the ash problem, identified in a key environmental report in 2013, but received no response before the deadline.

Mundra is slated to receive coal from the Queensland Carmichael mine if it goes ahead.

Adani said coal would help expand power generation, providing some jobs and critically, cheap electricity to 100 million Indians still without.

Despite their criticism, the fishermen both admitted they would see things differently if their sons worked with the company.

EU court allows companies to ban headscarves. What will be the impact on Muslim women?

March 17, 2017

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that interprets EU law issued a landmark judgment on March 14 that upheld the right of private companies in EU member countries to enact policies barring employees from wearing “religious, political and philosophical signs” in the interest of “neutrality.”

The EU ruling could increase discrimination at work. Pascal Rossignol

Such visible signs range from Jewish kippahs to Sikh turbans and Hindu bindis; Christian crosses, can, perhaps remain hidden under clothing.

The court decision was a response to two legal cases, one from Belgium and the other in France, where a Muslim woman was dismissed by her employer because of her headscarf.

Employment discrimination against Muslim women and anti-headscarf legislation have impacted Muslim communities in various parts of Europe, but particularly in France. In Western Europe, France has the largest percentage of Muslims and the most restrictive headscarf legislation. In 2004 it banned the headscarf and all conspicuous religious “symbols” in public schools.

Every year, there are several hundred hate crimes committed against French Muslims. Of these, the majority of victims who have been physically assaulted are women in headscarves.

So what will be the impact of the Court of Justice’s ruling on an already beleaguered minority of headscarf-wearing Muslim women?

History of headscarf legislation

It was in the 1990s and early 2000s that the headscarf started to be seen in France as a violation of secular, “neutral” space. It also became a symbol of political Islam and the oppression of women.

Debates over the issue continued for years, until the Conseil d’Etat (France’s highest administrative court) recommended the ban on all conspicuous religious gear in public schools in late 2003. In 2011, the state also banned the face veil, worn by an extremely small minority of Muslim women, in all public spaces.

Demonstrations against France’s ban on visible religious symbols in Paris in 2003. Charles Platiau

Efforts to have the headscarf removed expanded from public schools to workplaces. But dismissing women on the grounds of wearing the headscarf remained legally ambiguous or unchallenged. The March 14 ruling gives clarity and legal justification. With an official policy of neutrality that applies to everyone, companies can prohibit the headscarf without being considered discriminatory.

What about the perspectives of those who wear it?

As researchers have long demonstrated, women have many diverse motivations for wearing a headscarf. But for some, the headscarf is not merely a “symbol.” It is instead an act of piety and a way of being. Forcing them to remove it as a precondition for gaining work puts them, it can be argued, in an unfair and potentially harmful situation.

Muslim women’s voices

In the communities of French Muslims that I observed for my book on Islam and politics in France and India, the beginning of anti-headscarf legislation marked a major turning point in their hopes for integration and acceptance.

I began doing research in France in 2006 in the southeastern city of Lyon. Since then I have returned several times, totaling 14 months of ethnographic research in two different mosque communities. In both of these communities, most women I knew chose to wear a headscarf.

I had many conversations with people about the headscarf ban in public schools. Most felt demoralized when it was passed. As Ismat, a young woman of Moroccan descent, recalled, “we realized then…that Islam in France is going to remain difficult.”

A Muslim woman reads in the Arrahma mosque during Friday prayers in Istres, France. Jean-Paul Pelissier

Ismat, like almost every headscarf-wearing woman I met during my time in Lyon, had faced employment discrimination. When she went to see a lawyer for legal advice, the conversation quickly turned to his interrogating her about why she wanted to wear it in the first place.

According to the women I spent time with and interviewed, employers were explicit in their demands that the women take off their headscarves. There were eight women whom I knew well and who shared these stories with me. But I interacted briefly with many more who casually mentioned their experience with this kind of discrimination. Some women were willing to remove their headscarves to keep their jobs or continue their training, but many were not. Those who refused sometimes faced personally devastating consequences.

For example, Aisha, a lively young woman active in the mosque community, had long dreamed of becoming a psychologist and had studied hard to pursue her dream. In 2009, after moving to Paris with her husband, she found that no hospitals or clinics would accept her for clinical training in her headscarf. So she abandoned her ambition. Aisha lamented to me,

“We women are psychologically exhausted.”

In the working-class suburbs of Lyon, where I spent time with Muslim women with much stricter forms of veiling, the situation was more dire. Some had dropped out of high school, even against the wishes of their parents, because they did not want to remove their headscarves at the door of the school.

Suffering both poverty and stigma, they struggled to find work as child-care and domestic-care workers. Occasionally, informal employers temporarily tolerated their veiling before eventually placing conditions on them.
Asma, an Afro-French woman, went back and forth with her employer over the issue until finally, her employer fired her. She warned Asma,

“You will never be accepted here.”

Why this will isolate women

The Court of Justice’s ruling seems to validate such social and economic exclusion.

The ruling gives a stamp of approval to the discriminatory atmosphere that shapes the lives of women who choose to wear a headscarf as part of their faith. In my research, the women who managed to hold onto a job were those who found work only among other Muslims who tolerated or simply ignored their clothing.

Muslim woman take part in a demonstration against France’s banning of full face veils from public spaces outside the French Embassy in London, 2010. Luke MacGregor

What does this imply, then, about the ideal of integration?

These women will be further estranged from the formal labor market and are less likely to feel they “belong” in France – even though many come from families that have been in France for three generations.
Maryam, an observant Muslim who said she worked hard to reconcile her French identity with her Islamic faith, had a few years ago insisted in an interview with me,

“I am just as French as ‘Jacqueline,’ even with my religion.”

The question is, with yet another legal defeat, will she continue to believe this?

Fueling discrimination?

The court’s ruling will likely undermine religious freedom. And it will reinforce the arbitrariness of defining what practices are “political,” “philosophical” or “religious.”

In today’s globalized world, it is murky at best to distinguish between the religious and nonreligious. Many symbols we don’t think of as religious are, in fact, sacred in some traditions. For example, the yin-yang symbol is considered sacred in the Buddhist and Taoist traditions. Will companies prohibit employees from wearing the yin-yang on a shirt or ring?

There are other popular symbols we hardly notice, like the Apple logo or the Nike swoosh. In my view, these too raise a question, whether corporate logos like these could be seen as symbols of worshiping the market. If so, should such logos be banned from employees’ clothing?

To be sure, the court’s ruling leaves specific matters to be decided by EU member states, who may interpret the issues differently in individual cases. Nonetheless, it is not a step forward.

I argue that the values and ideas of inclusion, democracy, freedom, or women’s rights, that the EU claims to uphold will not be advanced through this ruling. It might, in fact, undermine these values by allowing companies to discriminate against people in the name of “neutrality.”

Z. Fareen Parvez, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Angelina Jolie slams the ‘riding tide in nationalism masquerading as patriotism’

March 17, 2017

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has called for the need to keep fighting the ‘riding tide in nationalism masquerading as patriotism’ at a speech delivered at the Annual Sergio Viera de Mello Momorial lecture at the UN Assembly Hall in Geneva, Switzerland.

She stressed on the importance of inclusion and internationalism at a time when social tensions in the US and Europe are at an all-time high, according to Breitbart.

Jolie, the special envoy for the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called upon people to “keep the flame of internationalism alive”, while also saying, “I am a proud American and I am an internationalist. I believe anyone committed to human rights is”.

“We are grappling with a level of conflict and insecurity that seems to exceed our capability, with more refugees than ever before, with new wars erupting on top of existing conflict. We are seeing a rising tide in nationalism masquerading as patriotism and the reemergence of policies encouraging fear and hatred of others”, she added.

Goa governor’s ‘shocking’ confession on consulting Jaitley on govt formation

March 17, 2017

In a sensational revelation, Goa Governor, Mridula Sinha, has confessed to having called Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley before inviting the BJP to form the government in the coastal Indian state.

Speaking to Mumbai Mirror, Sinha said, “..I felt I should speak with Arun Jaitley, and I called him around 9.30 in the evening, discussing the situation. I informed him I had verified the numbers and was satisfied and that Congress leaders hadn’t arrived yet. He said that if any party comes with the numbers, it has to be considered. So that settled it.”

Sinha, a former member of BJP’s national executive, had come under criticism from Congress, which blamed her for not inviting the party that had emerged as the single largest entity post assembly elections.
Her confession comes barely days after Jaitley had taken a dig at Congress for complaining ‘too much.’

In a blog, Jaitley had written, “The Congress Party complains a bit too much. It accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of ‘stealing’ the mandate in Goa. It unsuccessfully petitioned before the Supreme Court. It attempted to raise issues in the Lok Sabha. What are the facts?”

The governor is now facing social media heat with users demanding her sacking. Congress, for its part, has decided to raise her conduct in the ongoing parliamentary sessions in Delhi.

Here are some social media reactions;

Courtesy: Janta Ka Reporter

1...2,1642,1652,166...2,696 Page 2,165 of 2,696

A Defective Indian!: Why the Racist Violence in Bangalore is Not a Stray Incident

The great EVM debate: Convincing the losers that they lost

It's not about whether recent elections were rigged, as alleged. It is about a transparent mechanism for determining the truth.

Evidence-based elections

Beyond paper trails

Election audit

RPF personnel arrested in Kota for trying to rape woman in front of her children

India – The Rise of Right-Wing and the Way Forward

Prabir Purayastha talks on the rise of the right wing

Adani: Indian Fishermen warn Australia against Environmental Impact ahead of Coal Mine Talks – ABC News

EU court allows companies to ban headscarves. What will be the impact on Muslim women?

History of headscarf legislation

Muslim women’s voices

Why this will isolate women

Fueling discrimination?

Angelina Jolie slams the ‘riding tide in nationalism masquerading as patriotism’

Goa governor’s ‘shocking’ confession on consulting Jaitley on govt formation

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