“The explosive findings published by The Indian Express today, backed by evidence, have now cast serious doubts over the results of every Assembly election held after the SIR exercise. The investigation reveals that Chief Election Commissioner Thiru. #GyaneshKumar had been acting unilaterally and in secrecy, without the concurrence of the other two Election Commissioners. Even more alarming is the revelation that Thiru. Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Thiru. Vivek Joshi were kept in the dark about crucial decisions being taken within the very institution they jointly oversee. Their objections to decisions being taken without their knowledge were brushed aside on as many as 14 occasions in just ten months. These revelations have severely eroded the credibility of the Election Commission.”

He elaborated further, “The Election Commission is a three-member body whose business must, as far as possible, be transacted unanimously. Where the Commissioners differ in opinion on any matter, the decision must be based on the majority view. If two of its three members were themselves kept unaware of what was being done in the Commission’s name, this cannot be dismissed as a mere internal or procedural matter. It constitutes a grave assault on Indian democracy. The credibility of an apex institution that is expected to function independently, transparently and without political interference has been seriously compromised.”

“The revelations concerning the electoral rolls are equally disturbing. Appeals were filed against the inclusion of voters even after courts had ordered that their names be added to the electoral rolls. Who authorised these appeals? Who filed them? The two Election Commissioners themselves say they were kept in the dark.

“The law empowers Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to scrutinise and revise electoral rolls. Yet, they were unable to add even those who had been duly found eligible to vote. ERONet, the digital platform through which these changes had to be made, was entirely under the control of one person. When such concerns are being raised by two serving Election Commissioners, the extent of political interference that may have taken place within the Election Commission is plain to see.

“As early as March this year, the DMK, along with other Opposition parties, moved an impeachment motion against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. He has no right to continue in office any longer. Thiru. #GyaneshKumarMustGo immediately. The SIR exercise must be halted. The DMK demands a fair and thorough investigation into everything that has transpired within the Election Commission and that those responsible be held accountable.”

Related:

Exclusive Investigation SIR: How many voters did the ECI actually disenfranchise? Why do final figures show inexplicable ‘additions’?

Judgement delivered, paradox prevails: every voter a citizen, but what is the fate of 51.8 million excluded?

SC greenlights SIR, upholds ECI’s power to revise electoral rolls

The Bihar Verdict 2025: How an election was engineered before votes were cast

The post Former TN CM, M. K. Stalin demands Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Teesta Setalvad speaks with Saurav Das about youth activism, intergenerational solidarity, “School Thik Karo”, social audits of government schools, police accountability and the right to protest.

They discuss the Supreme Court’s intervention on protest-related FIRs, the violence faced by protesters, and why citizens must keep questioning institutions meant to serve them.

And then, humour: why satire, irreverence and a refusal to be solemn became part of the movement itself.

A conversation about young citizens, public institutions and the courage to ask questions.

The post This Regime Is Anti-Fun; Humour Can Strip Its Legitimacy | Saurav Das | Teesta Setalvad appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Significantly, this citizens’ convention that was attended by over 300 eminent personalities from various fields has demanded immediate completion and publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) prepared on the basis of the 2014 electoral roll, and expressed complete oppose to the highly controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Assam.

The convention was held on September 20 at the L. Baruah Sadan, Guwahati, at the call of eminent citizens, writers, poets, social workers and the leader of various social organization under the initiative of the Forum for Social Harmony. It was presided over by Dr. Ghanashyam Nath, Senior journalist Munin Bayan, Farmer Organizer Jayanta Gogoi and Professor Taiz Uddin Ahmed, and the days agenda was conducted by Harkumar Goswami, Debajit Choudhury and Arup Baishya. Harkumar Goswami explained the objectives of the convention on behalf of the Forum.

The programme began with the lighting of lamps before the portraits of Zubeen Garg and Dr. Bhupen Hazarika by retired Gauhati University professor Dr. Abdul Mannan. A minute’s silence was observed in memory of Zubeen Garg and in memory and honour of the working-class people in Assam who have recently died untimely deaths or by suicide due to state neglect. The convention condemned the government for not declaring September 19 a special day and a public holiday this year and demanded that September 19 be declared ‘Zubeen Divas’ every year. The Zubeen Sankalpa was recited by eminent Assamese young artist Shanku Niranjan Nath.

The discussions were divided into thematic sessions. Speaking on the recent floods in Upper Assam, the withdrawal of environmental protection in Kaziranga, and what was seen by many participants as ‘corporate loot’, Dr. Padmalochan Nath, social worker Manoram Gogoi and former Mayor of Jorhat Prashanta Bora said the recent floods are the result of indiscriminate plunder of natural resources with government patronage. They also strongly criticised the government for failing to take adequate measures for the rehabilitation of the affected people. Manoram Gogoi added that even small markets dependent on Assam’s own produce are coming under the control of large pan-Indian business houses, which is devastating Assam’s agrarian economy and threatening its distinct regional existence.

Eminent writer and advocate Arup Borbora elaborated on how civil rights are being curtailed one after another and how the threat of authoritarian rule is intensifying.

Several speakers highlighted the citizenship issue. They apprehended that by keeping the NRC pending and effectively ‘throwing it into the dustbin’, the Government of India intends to impose another mode of bureaucratic harassment, the SIR in Assam! Activist associated for close to a decade with the Citizens for Justice and Peace, Nanda Ghosh spoke on Citizenship, cited examples of case histories that revealed the inhuman plight of marginalised and working peoples, especially women during the NRC process (2009-2019). He also presented a realistic, ground-level picture of human rights violations taking place through the D-Voter, Foreigners Tribunal, and pushback mechanisms. He said the NRC in Assam was not carried out to end political debate over the foreigner issue; rather, it was used to create a reign of fear and to establish a relationship where citizens are treated as slaves to the state and mere subjects of the rulers. Nanda Ghosh demanded the immediate issuance of Rejection Slips to the 19 lakh excluded people and completion of Tribunal proceedings within a fixed time frame. Since there are no specific rules governing Tribunal proceedings, they can drag on for decades. Therefore, the process should be concluded quickly based on the revised 2014 voter list, which was revised using 1971 as the base year.

Significantly, the convention firmly rejected the government’s anti-people move to impose SIR in Assam. Ghosh also suggested building a body of all-India public opinion against SIR jointly with organisations like ‘Vote for Democracy’. The original charter of demands for the convention had clearly stated that SIR must not be allowed in Assam. He also explains the day-to-day ground reality on citizenship gleaned by e team members of the Citizenship for Justice and Peace (CJP)’s with heir experience in 19 districts of the state.

Advocate Shantanu Borthakur spoke out against the indiscriminate and unlawful evictions being carried out by government authorities, without following any law or the Constitution, using force to hand over Assam’s water, land, forests and cheap labour to corporates. The government’s promise of land rights and pattas is nothing but a form of deception.

Advocate Kishor Kalita observed that land rights, eviction and citizenship are interlinked, and that all people’s rights are in crisis due to the aggressive role of the state.

Prabhat Das Panika, a leading organiser of tea workers’ and state-wide Adivasi struggles, Nilim Dutta, and Dhrubajyoti Asom, leader of gig workers, spoke on the plight of tea workers and gig, platform-based and app-based workers. They said the government is indifferent to their income and social security because it is more interested in serving corporate owners.

Prominent Political Analyst and activist Arup Baishya offered an excellent political analysis of the events and drew an outline of an action plan on how to confront fascism.

The convention analysed how the relationship between citizen and worker on the one hand, and between state and citizen on the other, is being restructured. To uphold citizens’ rights, workers’ rights and democracy, greater unity between intellectual and manual workers is essential to build an effective and successful resistance. The condition of lakhs of new workers in the service sector — transport, gig economy, construction, projects and women workers — is extremely miserable, as evidenced by the untimely deaths of many migrant workers.

Almost all speakers emphasised that the nexus between politics and corporate capital and the resulting centralisation of power in Delhi has undermined the constitutional structure and devastated Assam’s federal regional identity. The only way to establish civil rights, mass rights and democracy is to rise above all narrow divisions and build united resistance.

A powerful five-minutes long protest dance-drama was performed by the “Oikatan Sanskritick Gosthi” which added a distinct dimension to the programme.  During the break, poems were recited and protest songs were performed by Laynu Das Kalita, Prahallad Mili and Nilab Saurav.

The meeting conveners subsequently decided to undertake outreach programmes around the demands raised at this day-long convention. The convention concluded with a brief address by the presidium.

Related:

SIR Phase 3: 1.58 crore names deleted from draft rolls across 12 States and UTs

Supreme Court issues notice on plea for time-bound reverification of Assam NRC over “large-scale errors”

Assam FT deems Assam NRC to be final NRC

The post Assam: ‘No to SIR!’ Complete the pending NRC!  appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Hence the alliance of women rights organisations from across the country has rejected the conflation of equality with uniformity and homogeneity. Likewise, ALIFA has ‘refused the criminalisation and surveillance being imposed in the garb of ‘gender justice’. We demand an immediate rollback of these Codes and insist that there must be no rush to enact or impose them without ensuring that all constitutional rights of the affected communities are fully safeguarded and that widespread consultations are held with them.’

‘A week ago, on September 13, 2026, Mr Amit Shah, the Union Home Minister, publicly said that a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) would be implemented in all 21 BJP- and NDA-ruled states before 2029. This renewed push by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to impose a UCC across the country before the 2029 elections demands a firm and clear response from women representing diverse social locations across India, in whose name this monolith project of the BJP-RSS is being orchestrated.

The Uniform Civil Code in Uttarakhand has been in force since January 27, 2025. The UCC Bills passed by Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh in their Legislative Assemblies are awaiting Presidential assent as of September 2026, and therefore, not yet in force. Neither Uttarakhand’s UCC nor the frameworks contained in the Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh UCC Bills provide a model that incorporates substantive gender equality, let alone gender justice. A critical scrutiny of the UCC Codes across states by ALIFA has revealed the many ways in which these are likely to have adverse impacts on women and vulnerable social groups, while claiming to ‘safeguard women’s rights’.

The All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA) elaborates on our key concerns regarding the UCC Law and Bills here:

• The new codes retain and reproduce unjust provisions that push back against hard-won rights, over decades. They retain restitution of conjugal rights equally for men and women, a remedy long denounced by women’s rights advocates for compelling marital cohabitation and for its potential use against women attempting to leave abusive marriages. They restrict access to divorce during the first year of marriage, subject only to narrow exceptions, rather than expanding women’s ability to leave a marriage safely and autonomously and include religious conversion as a ground for divorce. All these provisions are regressive and inimical to constitutional freedoms and rights.
• The new Codes fail to address the gaps already known in the existing Personal and secular laws across the country. Rather than providing a comprehensive family-law framework, many remain largely focused on marriage, divorce, succession and live-in relationships. They do not address issues such as marriage inequality, the absence of a concept of marital property for women, no-fault divorce with safeguards for women, and marital rape, which have been consistently brought before the Supreme Court for redressal or raised by women’s and queer movements, and legal reform campaigns. Nor do they suggest reform of adoption and guardianship to guarantee equal parental rights irrespective of gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or marital status.
• Instead, some of these Codes introduce new criminal penalties into intimate and family relationships without adequate provision for ensuring the matrimonial rights of women. The emerging approach of selectively criminalising certain marriage and divorce practices historically associated with Muslim Personal Law and practices such as Triple Talaq is a glaring example of this. Gender justice does not mean arbitrarily singling out particular communities and practices for penal treatment, while leaving the structural inequalities experienced by women across communities substantially untouched. As feminists, we oppose the substantive inequality and discrimination related to divorce, separation and annulment, inheritance, custody, and guardianship in all communities.
• Most glaringly, the Codes do not address women’s economic inequality within marriage. They do not establish a marital-property regime that recognises women’s unpaid care and domestic labour or guarantees an equitable share in assets accumulated, sustained, or value-added during marriage. Formal equality in marriage and inheritance means little, if women must leave decades-long marriages without an enforceable share in the wealth their unpaid and paid labour helped create.
• The succession provisions in the Codes also require much closer scrutiny than the language of “equal inheritance” suggests. Under the Hindu Succession Act, daughters and sons currently have a birthright in Mitakshara coparcenary property. Uttarakhand’s UCC removes the distinction between coparcenary and other property and permits property to be disposed of by will, potentially removing the limited protection against disinheritance that daughters had in ancestral joint-family property. The Muslim Personal Law provides mandatory shares for legal heirs, including daughters and sons, and restricts testamentary disposition to one-third of the estate. The Goa Succession Special Notaries and Inventory Proceeding Act stipulates one-half of the estate to the “forced heirs” in case of children. The UCC displaces these protections too. A genuinely gender-just succession regime should not merely ask whether formal shares are described as equal, but whether women and other vulnerable heirs remain protected against disinheritance and economic dispossession.
• The UCC Law and Bills empower the State to surveil and arbitrarily intrude into the intimate lives of citizens, including coercive intervention through registration, inquiry, reporting and penal provisions in the name of ensuring equality in marriage, inheritance and other aspects of family law. These provisions are especially dangerous for inter-faith, inter-caste, queer and transgender couples whose relationships are already under extreme scrutiny and stigma. The Gujarat Bill, which makes registers of marriages, divorces and other prescribed records open to inspection, allows certified extracts to be obtained on application, and requires employers, government bodies, companies and other authorities to rely on UCC registration certificates before changing a person’s recorded marital status, typifies this approach. While this may protect women who could be deceived if information regarding their intended marriage is not in the public domain, there are no safeguards for the adverse consequences this can have for inter-faith or inter-caste marriages that face opposition from family or civil society groups.
• The UCC Law and Bills criminalise aspects of consensual adult relationships, creating victims and culprits without a crime. The provisions transform consensual adult intimacy into a matter for administrative verification, third-party complaint, police record and criminal punishment, including imprisonment merely for failure to register a consensual adult relationship. Under Uttarakhand’s UCC Law, adults in a live-in relationship MUST register it within a month or face imprisonment; similar mandatory-registration and penal provisions have now been reproduced in the Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh Bills. In Gujarat, for example, the Registrar may summon the partners or “any other person” as part of an inquiry; records of live-in relationships are required to be forwarded to the local police; parents or guardians are required to be informed where either partner is below 21and non-registration can attract imprisonment. A complaint or information from a third party can trigger proceedings requiring the couple to register as well. The arbitrariness and discrimination are stark, as those in consensual adult live-in relationships are subjected to registration and policing under the garb of protection, while corresponding protections are not included in the Codes for adults in forced marriage, in inter-caste, in inter-faith marriage or queer and transgender couples facing familial coercion or violence.
• The UCC Law and Bills do not apply to all women. One, they explicitly exclude Scheduled Tribe communities, almost 15% of the Indian population. Two, some emerging UCCs continue to organise marriage and family around binary categories of “man” and “woman”, do not recognise same-sex marriage, and fail to create a clear framework recognising queer and trans people’s relationships and families and other forms of CIS families. The Gujarat Bill, for example, contains no reference to transgender persons at all, thereby completely excluding the relationships and marriages of transgender people and other queer people.  Transgender and queer people, as well as Adivasi women, have been demanding gender justice, rights and equality (not UCC) in live-in and marital relationships for a long time. A UCC Law or Bill cannot credibly describe itself as “uniform” while shutting out the lived experiences of entire communities and family forms and/or rendering them legally invisible.
• The new Codes totally ignore Goa’s experience and the complexities and contradictions with its UCC. The Goa ‘UCC’ is hardly uniform when looked at closely. It continues to recognise both canonical and civil registration of marriages, which may not per se be discriminatory, while many discriminatory provisions of the Code of Customs and Usages of Gentile Hindus continue to be applicable. Uniform provisions that are discriminatory for women include empowering the male spouse to manage the marital property. The issues of inadequate access to family law and several other concerns identified in the Goa UCC remain unaddressed in the new UCC Law and Bills.
• The Uniform Civil Code was placed in the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution, under Article 44, a goal that the State should be working towards. But Article 44 does not prescribe what form such a Code must take, nor does it require uniformity to be pursued through the erasure of legal pluralism and social diversity.  Thus, Article 44 clearly enables amendments to existing laws to move towards uniformity of rights. Even the 21^st Law Commission (2018) set up by the BJP government found that a UCC is neither necessary nor desirable. Instead, it recommended amending every Personal Law to remove discrimination within family laws while preserving diversity where difference itself was not discriminatory. Similar demands have been placed by several women’s groups for decades.
• The UCC Law and Bills, by conflating equality with uniformity, miss the point that uniformity does not guarantee equality, nor is non-uniformity necessarily discriminatory. The prescriptive law of monogamy has not ensured justice and equality. This for instance, is the case for women whose husbands enter subsequent relationships or marriages without their consent or knowledge, as also for women who marry not knowing of the prior marriage of their husband, and those who marry in coercive circumstances. Nor does formally identical treatment necessarily address unequal bargaining power, unpaid care work, economic dependence, domestic violence or women’s lack of access to marital assets.
• Notably, despite BJP’s push, UCC is not fully agreeable even to all NDA constituents. Bihar’s ruling JD (U) has ruled out implementing a UCC in the state. Other NDA allies have called for discussion or consultation rather than automatic implementation. Those objections cannot simply be overridden.  BJP cannot and should not manufacture consent by projecting the UCC as an instrument for achieving women’s rights in live-in relationships or marriage.
• BJP deliberately denies the plural Indian reality that all people need not live by ONE prescribed model of family, culture or community and that gender justice does not require erasure of non-discriminatory difference. India has multiple kinds of kin relationships/families that are determined by locality, community, history, geography, religion, caste, sexuality and gender. Customs differ across the country within the same religious community too. Likewise, the communities categorised as scheduled tribes also have diverse customs within. What we require is that women, queer and transgender persons across communities and social locations, enjoy equitable rights, dignity, autonomy and freedom, and the capacity to determine the terms on which they live their own lives.
• In an electoral democracy, lawmaking for citizens in the absence of their significant representation in national parliament and state assemblies is undemocratic. Laws restructuring the intimate and family lives of hundreds of millions of people require meaningful participation by those most affected, including Muslim women, Adivasi women, Dalit and Bahujan women, queer and transgender people, women from indigenous communities, persons with disabilities, single women and women from diverse regional and religious communities. Representation cannot be substituted by governments claiming to speak on their behalf. In fact, without immediate and unconditional implementation of Women’s Reservation (including for women from all disadvantaged and vulnerable groups), such laws having far-reaching implications cannot be legislated on behalf of women. If specific provisions of Personal Laws that are discriminatory in nature require reform, the Government should bring in the reforms only through widespread consultation with women, queer and transgender people from all social and geographical locations.

For all these elaborated and articulated arguments, ALIFA states that it “believes that BJP’s obsession with regulating intimacy – who to marry, form relationships and constitute families belongs to an age-old repertoire of social control, now refurbished in the garb of ‘modernity’, ‘reform’ and ‘women’s empowerment’. The BJP cynically co-opts and turns upside down this language of women’s empowerment and gender justice to advance a much wider project of cultural homogenisation, control, and Hindu Rashtra. We see this pattern across a range of current initiatives, from the politics around NRC and SIR to the High-Powered Demography Mission that proposes demographic surveillance and other measures that seek to define who belongs, who does not, and what constitutes an acceptable citizen and family. We firmly place the UCC within this larger political context, rather than treating it as an isolated question of legal reform.”

Among the demands placed before the government are:

1. The Government of Uttarakhand to immediately repeal rights-repulsive provisions including those that criminalise non-registration of consensual live-in relationships, mandatorily require police and parental notification, and subject adult relationships to State inquiry, and to incorporate provisions that factor in both legal pluralism and enabling rights after due consultative processes.
2. That the Governments of Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh immediately withdraw the Bills passed in the respective state Assemblies.
3. That the governments of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh, which have set up committees to recommend a draft UCC, do not take any further steps and instead institute widespread democratic consultations with women’s rights and civil rights organisations, queer and transgender persons groups, Adivasi organisations, disability-rights groups, minority organisations and other affected communities.
4. That all the state government’s stop family law legislation in the name of UCC, which is being imposed and accompanied by an Islamophobic diatribe.
5. That any amendments to family laws that are discriminatory should be done only after consultation with women, queer and transgender people across communities and social locations, and should be assessed against the substantive outcomes of equality, autonomy, dignity, economic security and freedom from discrimination and violence rather than against uniformity for its own sake.
6. Any reform of succession law must preserve or strengthen protections against the economic disinheritance of women, rather than replacing existing birthright or mandatory-share protections with unrestricted testamentary power.
7. Any reform of family law must recognise the different consensual relationships, families and parental rights of adult cisgender, queer and transgender people rather than maintaining a formally uniform but substantively heteronormative and gender-binary framework that is effectively discriminatory.
8. The State must address the substantive areas on which women’s, transgender and queer movements have repeatedly demanded reform, including marital property, no-fault divorce with safeguards for women, equal guardianship and adoption rights, marital rape, maintenance, economic security on dissolution of marriage, and meaningful access to family-law justice.
9. Family-law reform must recognise unpaid care work and women’s contribution to assets accumulated during marriage and create enforceable equitable economic rights at separation, divorce and death.
10. Any legal recognition of live-in relationships must be rights-conferring and dignity-affirming rather than surveillance-based, intruding on privacy: access to maintenance, protection from violence, inheritance and other remedies must not depend upon compulsory registration of an intimate relationship.
11. Personal and relationship data collected under family law must be subject to strict necessity, confidentiality and data-protection safeguards, as also upheld by the Supreme Court in the right to privacy judgements and must not be routinely shared with police, families or third parties.
12.  No person’s free choice of partner or intimate relationship should trigger parental notification, police scrutiny or administrative investigation because of their religion, caste, gender identity, sexuality or decision not to marry.
13. Any comprehensive reform must be tested not only for formal equality but for its actual impact on women and people facing social and structural disadvantage, particularly economically poor women, Adivasi and Dalit-Bahujan women, Muslim women, queer and transgender people, persons with disabilities, migrants, single women and survivors of violence.

In conclusion, All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA) has stated in this detailed public statement that it “unequivocally rejects the deeply paternalistic, invasive and unwelcome ‘reforms’ being imposed in the name of women and the attempt to homogenise equality for all women, erasing the agency of women across social locations. We refuse to be fooled by the smokescreen of ‘women’s rights’ and seek to expose both the rhetoric and the substantive content of the Uniform Civil Code, including enacted and emerging Codes across India. Through a continuing critical examination of their provisions and underlying political project, we shall strive to engage with and enable women, queer and transgender people across India to see through these UCCs for the falsehoods that they are and collectively resist the exclusionary politics, the conflation of uniformity with equality, and cultural control with women’s empowerment.”

The statement has been issued by both the All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA) and the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM).

Related:

Assam: Bill on Uniform Civil Code (UCC), a partisan act?

Uttarakhand implements Uniform Civil Code (UCC) attracting criticism and concerns

Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code: A Majoritarian Code – Neither Uniform nor Civil

The post Strengthen gender justice & secular legal frameworks, No To ‘Uniform Control Code’ in garb of UCC: ALIFA appeared first on SabrangIndia.

One of the first conventions was a gathering of over 3,000 women in Dahanu taluka, Thane-Palghar district. Mariam Dhawale, Prachi Hativlekar, Lahani Dauda, and Sunita Shingda addressed and guided the attendees. Similar conventions will be organised across all other talukas of the district, followed by all districts in the state.

When the Janwadi Mahila Sanghatana announced its state-wide decision during this gathering to lead a massive march of thousands of such excluded women to the Mantralaya in Mumbai on November 3, 2026, the thousands of women present welcomed it with resounding slogans.

From the Thane-Palghar district alone, 3,000 excluded ‘Ladli Behna’ beneficiaries from the Dahanu tehsil expressed their strong protest at this arbitrary exclusion and vowed to join the protest march under the AIDWA banner, said the organisation.

The AIDWA in Maharashtra is conducting a state-wide campaign for the nearly 1 crore women who were arbitrarily excluded recently from the BJP Chief Minister’s ‘Ladli Behna Scheme’, by giving flimsy reasons.

It may be recalled that before the 2024 Maharashtra state assembly elections, the BJP-led state government had begun the ‘Ladli Behana Scheme’ of giving Rs 1,500 per month to nearly 2.63 crore women in the state, clearly with a view to induce their votes. After winning the election, the BJP-led regime started a so-called ‘verification’ drive, after which it arbitrarily excluded nearly 1 crore beneficiary women from the Scheme in July 2026 and stopped giving them the amount, leaving only 1.66 crore, many of whom are also not getting their amounts regularly.

That is the rationale behind the AIDWA campaign which started by filling up thousands of forms of the excluded women, and holding large women’s gatherings across Maharashtra from September 20, 2026, onwards.

AIDWA national vice president Mariam Dhawale, state general secretary and national joint secretary Prachi Hatiwlekar, district president and state vice president Lahani Dauda, and district secretary and CEC member Sunita Shingda addressed the gathering. Similar gatherings will be held in all other talukas of the district till September 27 and then in all districts of the state.

At this large Dahanu gathering, the AIDWA leadership announced its decision to organise a massive Struggle March to Mantralaya in Mumbai, bringing together thousands of women from across Maharashtra who have been excluded from the Scheme. This announcement was greeted by thousands of women present with resounding slogans and great support.

Earlier, in July this year, Indian Express reported that the BJP-led Maharashtra State government has sent a list of 25 lakh probable beneficiaries for Income Tax verification. The reason: the deletion of over 92 lakh beneficiaries from the Ladki Bahin scheme — nearly 38 per cent of those enrolled — proved deeply embarrassing for the Maharashtra government and drew sharp political attacks.

As part of a “stricter verification process” before rolling out its flagship farm loan waiver scheme, the first list of around 25 lakh probable beneficiaries under the Punyashlok Ahilyadevi Holkar Loan Waiver Scheme has been sent to the Income Tax Department for verification before it is made public. Farmers who are income taxpayers will be excluded before the final list is published.

Unlike Ladki Bahin, where benefits were released before eligibility checks were completed, farmers shortlisted for the loan waiver will also have to verify details uploaded by banks before the final beneficiary list is notified. The actual waiver process is now expected to begin only by end of July.

Related:

AIDWA Calls for Fight Against Increasing Gender-Based Violence

AIDWA Writes to Parliamentary Panel, Seeks More Time for Views on Personal Law Reforms

Scrap the move to raise the age of marriage of girls to 21: AIDWA

The post Struggle for re-inclusion of lakhs of women ‘deceptively excluded by govt’, march to Mumbai: AIDWA appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Stating that they are deeply dismayed at the recent reports of large scale, state driven deforestation due to diversion of forestlands for developmental projects, the open letter cites a July 2026, reply of the Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change in response to a Parliament question. Further, the communication states that, in the five years from 2014–15 to 2018–19, a total of 74,705.68 ha of forestland was approved for diversion. In the next five-year period from 2019–20 to 2023–24, this increased, by nearly 29 per cent, to 96,112.90 hectares. If the current pace continues, forest land diversion during the next five years is likely to exceed 110,000 hectares. Besides, the increase in deforestation is most evident in the ecologically sensitive Himalayan and North Eastern states, in Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, etc. And many other proposals are in the offing, the most appalling of them being the cutting down of nearly a million trees, over 13000 hectares of rainforest in Great Nicobar Island.

The communication also emphasises that, the compensatory afforestation that is expected to be undertaken for the diversion of these forest areas is either not undertaken or if undertaken is almost never successful. The proposals are also, often, ludicrous, e.g. taking up compensatory afforestation for the rainforests of Great Nicobar in dry Haryana, 4500 km away.

Within this alarming trend, of particular concern is the fact that lands within National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries. I.e. Protected Areas (PAs) along with their Eco-Sensitive Zones (ESZs) are also being diverted at an alarming pace. Proposals to divert lands inside PAs require the approval of the Standing Committee of the National Board of Wildlife (SC-NBWL), a statutory body   tasked with promotion, conservation and development of wildlife and their habitats. However, it is seen that 97% of the diversion proposals placed before the SC-NBWL since 2014 have been cleared.  In just four meetings held in 2024 and 2025, as much as 5824 ha of land inside PAs and ESZs have been cleared for non-forest use with as many as 100 plus proposals getting cleared in almost every meeting.  The diversions permitted were for industrial parks, quarrying, mobile towers, tunnels, oil refineries, railway lines, synthetic organic chemical manufacturing unit, petrochemical park, temples, helipads, mining, hotels, apartment complexes, oil drilling, etc. – entities which in no way benefit wildlife and their habitats. More worryingly, an increasing trend of diversions is noted in Protected Area clearances with every passing year: from 91 projects within Protected Areas granted clearance in 2019, the number steadily increased to 378 in 2024 and 312 in 2025.  PAs make up only 5.4% of the geographic area of the country and the headwaters of many rivers originate in these PAs, providing water and ecological security to the country.  Fragmentation of forests and wildlife habitat drastically reduces the ability of these areas to perform their vital role as a green lung for the country.

How did this happen

The implementation of infrastructure development, mining, etc. through diversion of forests and Protected Areas, has been possible due to the weakening of environment and conservation laws by the government as well as through judicial rulings.  For instance, the Forest Conservation Amendment Act 2023, has   redefined forests in a way that leaves out huge tracts of forested land from legal protection and allows easy diversion of such lands.

Projects which have gone ahead without obtaining the mandatory forest clearances as required under law are being regularised on payment of nominal fines, or by the ridiculous requirement that the violator undertake three to five times penal compensatory afforestation. This is totally antithetical to environmental jurisprudence which directs that EIAs should be done prior to commencement of the project and the diversion of forest and other lands, and not as a fait accompli after the project has started.   After the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 was amended and the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam or the Forest Conservation Amendment Act came into being in 2023, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change  has, in just two years (2024–25 and 2025–26), already approved the diversion, for non-forestry purposes, approximately 22562 ha of forestland per year , as compared to an average of 19223 hectares per year during the five year period 2019 – 24, and 14941 hectares  per year for the preceding  five year period.

The letter also contends that, the SC-NBWL, which is constituted of mainly top government officials, unfortunately, “seems to have no hesitation in approving almost all the diversion proposals placed before it.  It is particularly condemnable that in the past decade more than 30 wildlife sanctuaries and National Parks have been de-notified or drastically reduced in area to enable easy diversions of their land for “developmental” projects.  This includes the Megapode Wildlife Sanctuary as well as the Galathea Bay Wildlife Sanctuary in Great Nicobar, despite the latter being India’s most important and the northern Indian Ocean’s largest nesting site for endangered giant leatherback turtles.”

The recent Supreme Court ruling in July 2026 stating that post-facto environmental clearances (ECs) are legally acceptable if they are authorised by a post-facto valid statutory notification under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, does nothing to improve matters, permitting the central government to regularise violations under Section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.  The Court effectively replaces the ’precautionary principle’ (preventing harm) while dealing with India’s environment with a “pollute and pay” model.  Entrepreneurs can construct big-ticket projects without taking any of the mandatory prior clearances, present the government with a fait accompli and simply pay compensation to stay operational.

Every day brings a new, foolhardy proposal to reduce forested and wildlife protected areas. One such is the recent proposal of the Assam Government to reduce the Eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) of the iconic Kaziranga National Park from 10 Kms to 1 km and allow brick kilns, stone crushers, hotels, commercial warehouses, etc., to operate much closer to the park boundary. It does not apparently matter that the rhinoceros population will be severely and adversely affected. Another such proposal is the use of 12.6 hectares of the Delhi Ridge for the President’s Bodyguard parade ground, which, if implemented, will further fragment the already degraded ridge in Delhi which serves as a green lung for the metropolis.

Do highways mean growth?

The recent push for “development” arises from a misguided understanding that roads, infrastructure, mines, etc. will ensure the growth of the country. There is no realisation that an unpolluted environment together with extensive forest cover and thriving wildlife is even more important for human well-being. Recently issued environmental, forest and wildlife laws, rules and office orders along with “development friendly” judicial rulings have weakened the earlier strong environmental and conservation approach of the country.

The over 700 signatories state that while they acknowledge that infrastructure development projects are necessary for the country, but they should not come at the cost of ecological security. This can only imperil the country as evident from the massive landslides, mudslides, alarming AQI’s, heat waves, deluges, floods, and other environmental calamities occurring across the country. Such a prioritisation is against all aspects of the “precautionary principle” and “intergeneration equity” enunciated by the Supreme Court, as well as being in contravention of Articles 48 A and 51 A of the Constitution and most importantly of Article 21, the Right to Life.

Finally, the communication urges both the government and the judiciary to prioritise the ecological security of our country and the health and life of its citizens over the false narrative of more roads, more buildings, more townships, more mines, more industries, and more destruction of the natural world that is currently seen as progress.

Constitutional Conduct Group (77 signatories as below)

Related

Swaraj India decries MoEFCC’s Forest Conservation Rules 2022 notification

Environmentalist demand withdrawal of changes to Biological Diversity Act

Palghar Adivasis decry ecologically-dangerous infrastructural projects

AIUFWP’s 2nd National Conference begins in New Delhi

The post Prioritise ecological security of country over “false narrative” of “highway development”: CCG to Govt & Courts appeared first on SabrangIndia.

At the time of these killings in 1999, Dara Singh was an active member of the Bajrang Dal (BD) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), had campaigned for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 1998 elections, and regularly attended Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) camps and rallies. He was also a central figure in the vigilante band of Bajrang Dal’s cow-protection campaign, which in his hands took the form of ambushing trucks driven by Muslim cattle traders, intercepting the vehicles, freeing the cattle, and setting the trucks ablaze.

In this detailed background piece to the whole controversy, Citizens for Justice and Peace, had, on July 22, 2026, elaborated the sequence of events. The article may be read here. It was advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain who filed a plea in the Supreme Court seeking Singh’s remission of sentence and release, in which he had argued that Dara Singh met the state government’s criteria for granting remission (i.e. 25 years). Claiming that the burning alive of Graham Staines and his two minor sons was on account of “youthful rage” (Singh was 37 years old at the time of his arrest), the Odisha State Sentence Review Board had also recommended his release from jail on ground of “good behaviour.” Thereafter, on July 14, 2026, a bench comprising of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi of the Supreme Court through its order had asked the Odisha Government to take a decision on the premature release of Singh by August 19. The decision was only relayed yesterday, however.

Interesting developments, as reported by The Hindu, led to this turnaround by the authorities in Odisha. The newspaper reported that, “The Kendujhar district authority on August 28, 2026, have reported that on August 15, 2026, a congregation comprising approximately 200-250 persons associated with Dara Sena assembled in front of the District Jail, Kendujhar in connection with the proposed release of the convict, during which provocative slogans were reportedly raised,” says the proceeding copy of SSRB’s August 31, 2026, meeting.

The piece by CJP traced the three cases that Dara Singh was involved in before the killing of Staines and his two sons (January 1999). Dara Singh was also convicted for beating and burning to death Shaikh Rahaman, a Muslim garment trader. In the same year, he led the mob that hunted down and killed Arul Das, a Catholic priest, with an arrow as the priest fled a church his attackers had set alight.  Singh had been also implicated in the killing of Shaikh Imam, a Muslim cattle-truck driver’s assistant, who was beaten to death in September 1998 after his truck was looted and set on fire. Singh was acquitted in that case in 2006 for want of sufficient evidence.

Given the widespread national and international outcry, the 1999 murders hled to a CBI’s investigation after which, 14 adults including Singh, were put to trial, along with one minor who was tried in Juvenile Court. In September 2003, the Sessions Judge convicted all the accused for life imprisonment but sentenced Dara Singh to death. On appeal in 2005, the Orissa High Court commuted Dara Singh’s death sentence to life imprisonment. Thereafter, in its judgment on January 21, 2011, the Supreme Court of India upheld the High Court’s decision. The judgment notes that,

“In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity. All these aspects have been correctly appreciated by the High Court and modified the sentence of death into life imprisonment with which we concur.” (Para 43). The Court upheld the commuted the death sentence to life only because it did not meet the ‘rarest of rare’ threshold for capital punishment.

Related:

Dara Singh, convicted in string of 1999 communal killings, likely set for release by August 15

Odisha: Graham Staines’ Brutal Murder; Mystery Hangs Over Dara Singh’s Release

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In the aftermath of BJP’s landslide 2014 victory which brought it back to power in Delhi, many saw it as a stamp on the “majoritarian” rule. Ideally, in a democracy change of governments is par for the course. But in India many, especially the generation born after 2000, mistook Narendra Modi-led decimation of India’s oldest party as a call for societal change. This section saw itself as “viral tools” to bring that long-awaited change in India. Delusion is a dangerous syndrome which kills the ability to remain calm and balanced in the face of provocation. While those who get power often become deluded, the delusion tends to wash off on their camp followers too. Who can deny that the youth brigade count themselves among the most visible camp followers of the politicians.

There is no time better than youth to dream, idealise, aspire and achieve. With a burning desire to go the extra mile and achieve what their parents couldn’t, the youth put heart and mind in their mission.

Cruelly, life does not follow the film-like scripts. Not all dreams get fulfilled. Since the gap between job seekers and jobs in the market is glacial, many dreams remain unfulfilled. Like the immature romance, many dreams too get rocked. Once the dream of joining a good job and starting a meaningful life becomes a chimera, frustration sets in. The frustrated youth desperately look for an alternative career path.

Here comes political patronage as a charming option. It dangles the carrot and many unemployed youth, “cockroaches” in the words of a Supreme Court judge, aim for the carrot forgetting that the carrot always comes with a stick. Politicians dangle those carrots which for the unemployed youth appear too tempting to ignore.

This rather long premise is to help understand characters like Swatantra Bhardwaj, the goon who will now languish in jail for how long we don’t know. He bared his devilish side via a viral podcast. He claimed that he broke the skull of Sanjay Azad, father of student activist Nishu Azad, during the CJP’s Jantar Mantar protest and still remained scot-free because of his political connections. Bhardwaj could have kept quiet and possibly tried to undergo a behavioural change. But he didn’t. He spilled something which mercifully is still considered unpalatable to law-abiding citizens. The law, even if belatedly and at much prodding from a bunch of politicians and activists, finally caught up with this goon. The goon wrongly believed that his powerful “brothers” would always shield him.

The likes of Bhardwaj can be interesting study subjects for students of politics and sociology. Soon after Bhardwaj’s arrest, a video clip of a vlogger from Darbhanga in Bihar went viral. Speaking in chaste Maithili, the vlogger is heard telling parents of a particular caste to be careful while sending their children to Delhi for higher education. Bhardwaj who also comes from Darbhanga apparently joined the caravan of young Bihari students who reached and continue to reach Delhi to prepare for the Civil Services and other exams. We do not know if Bhardwaj ever sat for the UPSC exam. But we know that the boy from Darbhanga whose parents sent him to Delhi to try and become IAS/IPS ended up becoming a communal monster.

The internet is a great liberator. It has created an army of instant influencers, vloggers, commentators, political pundits and citizen journalists. Since Bhardwaj did not have a meaningful job in hand, he became an influencer. With no solid knowledge of Hinduism which keeps tolerance and acceptance among its cardinal principles, Bhardwaj perhaps started learning a lot of rubbish from the ‘WhatsApp university.”

The likes of Bhardwaj are doing a great disservice to his faith. My father, a high school teacher, had many Brahmin friends. He could give a run for the money to many pucca Maithil Brahmins when it came to speaking chaste Maithili. In fact, his closeness to the Brahmins and long association in the school system where Muslim teachers and students were always in a minority, had somehow ingrained a belief that Brahmin children were brilliant by birth. He would often cite examples of his Brahmin friends’ children excelling in studies. “Dekho us Mishraji/Jhaji ke beta ko, kaise top kiya hai aur achchi naukri mein gaya hai (Look at that son of Mishraji/Jhaji and he topped exams and secured a good job”), is how he would encourage us to emulate those “brilliant Brahmin boys.” Alas, much water has flowed down the Ganga, Gandak, Budhi Gandak and Bagmati since the days of my father going gaga over the achievements of many of his friends’ children.

Bhardwaj is a pawn in the dirty game of politics. He might have enjoyed some patronage, got a few crumbs while he walked down a dangerous path but ultimately fell victim to machinations he should have kept himself away from.

As a fellow Bihari and a native of Darbhanga, my heart goes out to the middle class parents who pawn jewellery and mortgage ancestral property to send their ladlas and ladlis (beloved sons and daughters) to a big city like Delhi to study hard and crack the tough UPSC exam but their wards ends up in wrong hands. The parents do not lack in showering love, affection and making sacrifices for their offspring. Where they lacked and continue to lack is what Ravish Kumar had pointed out over a decade ago.

They failed as parents in inculcating the values of love and compassion for fellow human beings. They failed to tell their children that co-existence is not a weakness. They bought and passed on the wrong notion that a multicultural India can be painted in one colour. They should have told their children that this country belongs to every valid citizen and India does not exclusively belong to one caste, community or party.

As the boy from Darbhanga has ruined his future because he mistook his so-called “closeness” to “bhais in politics” as a license to break laws, his case must serve as a lesson to all the parents out there.

Ravish Kumar’s warning still holds true.

(This article has been taken from Mohammed Wajihuddin’s social media post).

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BAPS’ exclusionary stance towards women is well known. I have personally experienced, and written about, their religious gurus’ behaviour towards women. In one instance, amidst the dastardly Akshardham terrorist attack in September 2002 in Gandhinagar, a Times of India colleague covering the event was stopped by BAPS sadhus from taking shelter in their residential area even as bullets were flying next to her.

Instead of pointing the finger directly at the monument’s operating company, SETE (Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel), for falling in line with the hijab protagonists in France, a section of enthusiasts preferred to mainly attack Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS).

I have read numerous comments on social media attacking BAPS. One of them was from Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi, who strongly criticized the sect, stating that the demand to remove women from the Eiffel Tower was “not a reflection of how India thinks — in policy or in the Constitution.” She insisted that if BAPS enforces such customs, they must “keep it restricted to those confined areas”, adding, “please don’t expect the world to follow the diktat.”

Not that I disagree with what Chaturvedi and others have to say. Their viewpoint on BAPS — or, for that matter, other religious sects, be they of any religion — is not only correct, it needs to be repeated umpteen times in India. In India, religious establishments are known to discriminate against women. However, what shocked me was that these reactions had little to say about the SETE directive to its female staff.

Hijab is known to be strictly regulated or prohibited in specific public institutions, roles, and contexts under the French doctrine of laïcité (state secularism). Yet, SETE seemed to violate the very principle it is supposed to uphold. It favoured the exact opposite logic. The underlying justification for religious veiling — or restrictions on interaction between unrelated men and women — is that female visibility and male-female contact must be regulated according to faith-based modesty standards.

When SETE management agreed to accommodate the BAPS delegation’s celibacy vows by directing female workers to clear their desks, hide in back rooms, and let male colleagues take over, it effectively legitimized the premise that a woman’s physical presence in a public workplace can be treated as a religious impediment. Clearly, SETE yielded to a conservative religious modesty doctrine at the expense of workplace equality.

Indeed, it was commendable that on September 7, 2026, the Eiffel Tower was forced to close for the day after its staff staged a walkout and strike. The industrial action followed anger over the management directive during the BAPS delegation’s visit on September 5 (Saturday), when female employees were reportedly ordered to step away from their workstations, stay out of sight, and be replaced by male colleagues. As anger escalated among the staff during the weekend, the primary trade union representing the workers, CGT, called an emergency meeting, leading to the strike on September 7 (Monday), shutting down the monument to tourists.

The staff union condemned what it described as a humiliating and discriminatory workplace violation. According to statements released by the CGT, the union objected to female employees being formally directed to leave their assigned duties and wait in separate back rooms or offices while the delegation toured the monument. At customer service, ticketing, and operational desks, women were directly swapped out and replaced by male coworkers so that no female presence would be encountered along the delegation’s route. Further, female workers were forbidden from walking through or entering common corridors, lifts, and platforms during the BAPS visit.

Workers emphasized that the Eiffel Tower is a preeminent global symbol of France and secular public life. They argued that coercing female public-facing staff to “render themselves invisible” because of their sex directly violated French labour laws, non-discrimination protections, and the fundamental principle of gender equality (égalité).

The incident provoked strong condemnation across French civil society and the political spectrum. Emmanuel Grégoire, the Paris deputy mayor, backed the workers’ strike as entirely legitimate, declaring: “Equality between women and men will never stop at the foot of our historical monuments, nor anywhere in this city.”

An official inquiry was launched into how management authorized the request. Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and French Equality Minister Aurore Bergé both issued statements affirming that no religious doctrine, belief, or visiting delegation can supersede French labour laws or dictate the presence of women in public spaces.

I personally seem to agree with those in India who assert that the blame should be directed at Eiffel Tower management. The management should have simply said “no.” Religious groups make accommodation requests everywhere; it was the duty of Eiffel Tower management to know French secular and labour laws and simply refuse the terms if they violated workplace equality. BAPS was a visiting delegation, not an employer in France, and had no legal authority to order French civil staff into back rooms. Therefore, SETE management caved inappropriately to customer preferences at the cost of its own workers.

Meanwhile, BAPS supporters are defending the sect’s monastic vows, arguing that the monks’ vows of celibacy and non-interaction with women are “voluntary” and centuries-old ascetic disciplines. They argue that European institutions “often bend rules” or “accommodate other religious sensibilities”, so what is wrong if SETE acted the way it did at BAPS’ request?

There appears to be reason to believe that SETE acted the way it did to appease the current French ruling establishment, which is known to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BAPS delegation’s controversial visit to the Eiffel Tower took place a day after Modi virtually inaugurated the sprawling BAPS temple in Paris.

Not without reason, the Indian government opted to distance itself entirely from the dispute. When asked about the incident during a press briefing in New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson stated: “We are aware of the opening of a temple by the BAPS Sanstha in the Paris area. As to the particular issue pertaining to the Tower, this is a matter purely between the entities concerned.”

When questioned about Modi having virtually addressed the inauguration of the BAPS temple in Paris just a day prior, the MEA dismissed any political link, calling it standard protocol for the Prime Minister to send goodwill messages for major cultural milestones.

Modi thinks it’s a cultural milestone? Do the French authorities also think the same way?

I am really puzzled.

So far, the only Indian voice I have seen that has unequivocally stood with the Eiffel Tower workers themselves is that of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), which expressed solidarity with the Indian Alliance Paris (IAP) in supporting the workers’ strike. IAP is a Paris-based collective of Indian students, researchers and professionals, critical of BAPS and the spread of Hindu nationalism in Europe.

Significantly, IAP was not a group that suddenly discovered BAPS after the Eiffel Tower controversy. On September 5, even as the BAPS delegation was visiting the Tower, it had organized a public meeting in Paris, co-hosted by several organizations including the CGT trade union, to draw attention to BAPS’s conservative gender politics and its wider political connections. Activists and researchers from France, India and the US participated, a documentary was screened and a press statement was issued. IAP has said it had tried to warn French political parties about BAPS, but received little attention until the Eiffel Tower workers went on strike.

After the strike, IAP unequivocally backed the workers, while making another important point: the controversy must not become “fodder for more racism”. BAPS, it stressed, does not represent all Hindus and certainly does not represent India.

Courtesy: CounterView

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This is extraordinary. The book was going to be a massive commercial success, even if there had been no controversy around it. Penguin’s decision to back out of publishing it made no commercial sense at all. Sonia Gandhi a major Indian political figure, she has not been known to be shrill and provocative in her public pronouncements. For Penguin to hide behind ‘legal’ advice is disingenuous. It is abundantly clear that the publisher attempted to censor Mrs Gandhi’s memoirs, and the author refused to bend.

This is hardly the first time Penguin has done this. Recently, the publisher backed out of publishing the American journalist Joe Sacco’s graphic book, The Once and Future Riot. This is a book based on the communal riots that were instigated in Muzzafarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh in 2013. These riots were used to sharpen communal polarisation in the lead up to the 2014 elections, and were a contributory factor in the success of the BJP in that election. Then there is the case of a book by a former Army chief, which too Penguin was supposed to publish, but backed out of.

In two of these instances, fortunately, the books have found alternative publishers. Mrs Gandhi’s memoirs are being published by HarperCollins, another major publisher, and Joe Sacco’s book is being published by LeftWord Books.

There is a disturbing trend apparent here – of Penguin not publishing books that are in some way critical of the BJP, the RSS, the current government, and the Prime Minister. This trend started even before the BJP came to power in the May 2014 elections. Earlier that year, Penguin withdrew and pulped a book by the historian Wendy Doniger, when faced with a legal case filed by an RSS vigilante, Dinanath Batra. (Mr Batra has been dead for over two years now, so Penguin can’t even blame him for its recent actions.) Prof. Doniger’s book was subsequently published by Speaking Tiger without any changes in the text.

After the controversy around Sonia Gandhi’s book, other authors have also gone public with their experience with Penguin. One of them is Dhirendra K. Jha, who had signed a two-book contract with Penguin. His first, Gandhi’s Assassin, was published in 2022, but the second, a biography of the late RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar, ran into trouble with the publisher. Penguin insisted on deleting all references to the Nazi regime, of which Golwalkar was a well-known admirer; critical references to Golwalkar’s own 1939 book We or Our Nationhood Defined; and details of a 1942 RSS camp for which the author had documentary evidence. The author refused to make these changes, and the book was published by Simon & Schuster India.

While Penguin is the biggest culprit in terms of trying to muzzle and censor books critical of the Hindu Right, others also occasionally develop cold feet. For example, on the day the results were declared for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that placed the BJP in power, 16 May, Orient Blackswan ‘set aside’ a book on communalism and sexual violence in Gujarat. As in the case of the Wendy Doniger book earlier that year, the culprit in this case was again Dinanath Batra, the RSS vigilante, who threatened the publisher with a lawsuit.

In many of these cases, the publisher has hidden behind a smokescreen of ‘fact-checking’ and ‘editorial due diligence’. These arguments are efforts to muddy the waters. Any publisher that takes itself seriously adheres to their internal standards of editorial due diligence and, in the case of non-fiction, fact-checking. However, as the examples of the Golwalkar biography and the Sonia Gandhi memoirs show, Penguin has repeatedly crossed the line between due diligence and outright censorship. There can be no justification for asking the author to cut out references to the Nazi regime from a book on Golwalkar, when it is a well-known fact, cited by numerous authors previously, that Golwalkar wrote approvingly about the Nazis and their campaign for the extermination of Jews. The conclusion is inescapable: Someone at the very top of Penguin is either extraordinarily cowardly, or a right-wing bigot – or both.

Some people argue that publishers such as Penguin, because they are so big, have a lot to lose, and have a responsibility towards safeguarding their employees’ well-being and jobs. This is a ludicrous argument. It is small publishers such as LeftWord who have a lot more to lose. Big publishers not only have deep pockets and access to legal resources, they also have stature and prestige in the market and in society. Any number of eminent authors, citizens, opinion makers will jump to their defence if they are attacked. Small publishers have very little. If the government decides to go after a small publisher, the publisher could very well face the prospect of simply being shut down.

Small publishers have a lot more to lose, and yet, they are the ones who seem to have more of a spine. When a Penguin tries to muzzle critical voices, it has several pernicious long term implications. It makes the idea of censorship seem normal. It bolsters the idea that books are ‘dangerous’. It adds to the atmosphere of fear. It disincentivises risk taking by others.

Publishing is unlike most other businesses. It doesn’t involve merely producing goods and making profits. The ‘goods’ that a publisher produces are books, and books are carriers of ideas. Ideas are not a ‘product’. They form the bedrock for all social interactions in society. For any healthy society to thrive, you need a diversity of ideas to circulate. These include ideas that challenge the status quo. No society can progress unless challenging ideas, dissenting ideas circulate freely.

Through its recent actions of stifling free expression of ideas, Penguin has harmed the publishing ecosystem and the very idea of democracy.

This article appeared in People’s Democracy, Sept. 7–13, 2026.

Courtesy: https://sudu26.substack.com/

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