Going further it reminds the public of how, in the recent past, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress provided evidence-based public exposures of deficiencies and manipulations of the electoral rolls in previous elections in Maharashtra, Karnataka and then in Haryana. This clearly required that the ECI make itself publicly accountable to explaining these discrepancies and otherwise investigate to identify the circumstances in which such frauds took place. As an independent body, it is the ECI’s responsibility to do so and certainly not that of the Central or state governments.

However, the ECI, currently headed by Gyanesh Kumar, has simply dismissed all these exposures, in effect refusing to make the ECI accountable, as it should and must be, to the Indian public. Even a former Election Commissioner, Ashok Lavasa, has criticised the current ECI on this count. No surprise then that there is the very widespread view that precisely such electoral manipulation has played a major role in determining the outcome of the Bihar assembly polls. Moreover, the ECI has failed at another level also. It has ignored a blatant violation by the Modi-led NDA of the Model Code of Conduct for parties during elections.

Towards the end of September, Modi launched a state government scheme to make bank transfers of Rs. 10,000 to women to start self-employment ventures with one instalment transferred on the date elections were announced and others made during the election process itself! More than a crore of women in different households benefitted from this. The total voter turnout, male and female, was a little over 5 crores. Previous such pre-poll cash handouts by governments have been halted by the ECI but not this time in Bihar.

This lure to women voters turned out to be particularly important for Nitish Kumar and the JD (U). The female voter turnout at around 72% was almost 10% higher than the male voter turnout and was a key factor in raising the JD (U) vote share by 4% from the last assembly elections in 2020 and enabling a seat tally increase of 42 seats to 85 in all. The BJP had roughly the same vote share at around 20% as in 2020 but increased its seat tally this time by 50 to 89 in all. Among the NDA’s other partners, the new Chirag Paswan led party the LJP, with its vote base among Dalits, got a vote share of around 4% and 19 seats. The Congress with double the LJP’s vote share dropped 13 seats from 2020 to achieve only 6 this time. The RJD got the same vote share as in the last assembly election of 23%, higher than any other party did. However, it’s seat tally dropped by 50 from 75 to 25 this time. The CPI(ML)-Liberation fell from 12 seats to 2.

Finally the statement asks, what then are the lessons to be drawn from all this? First, that in all likelihood there was significant manipulation of rolls favouring the NDA. Second, voters faced with promises of jobs and freebies of all kinds will prefer to have a bird in hand than two in the bush, i.e., a state party backed by the Central government that has already delivered a handout and is in a better position to give more, will definitely have the edge. Third, all parties share a consensus that SC Reservations must be preserved even as it may be extended to other sections. So why should Dalits prefer opposition parties to the BJP and its political allies. The material problems of lower castes remain but a small and rising Dalit elite that provides leadership is attracted to where power already lies. Moreover, in lieu of serious material improvement, the Sangh’s Hindutva ideology offers a form of cultural compensation to lower castes in recognising them and their religious deities and practices as part of a wider Hindu fold that is being seen as the natural heir of Indian-Hindu nationalism. Fourth, the Mahagathbandan (MGB) whether in Bihar or elsewhere pursues a soft Hindutva, does not directly challenge the BJP’s Islamophobia and itself reduces the number of Muslim candidates put up.

So, says the statement, it should not be surprising that in Seemanchal, where there is a higher concentration of Muslim voters, they would have preferred Owaisi’s AIMIM than to, say, the Congress. This is disturbing because it enhances religious polarisation. However, this can only change if supposedly secular parties are prepared to act in a genuinely secular manner. Fifth, apart from anti-BJPism, what does the MGB have in common? There is not and cannot be any genuine programmatic unity since apart from the Congress and the Left, the other regional parties do not have any Pan-India, let alone any international, vision or perspective.

Sixth, always a factor in the importance of cadre-based capacity of the RSS and its affiliates to entrench themselves within the pores of civil society as a matter of daily routine and not just for the purposes of periodic mass mobilisation which of course is also greatly facilitated by having this cadre base. The lesson here is for the Left and not for the other opposition parties that do not possess an ideologically committed and disciplined cadre base but have activists as part of more traditional patron-client linkages and networks that can also more easily shift their political loyalties. The Indian parliamentary left has a cadre base but one that is much smaller and more ideologically uncertain than in the past. Even for it to achieve electoral successes, the extra-electoral terrain is where the forces of the Sangh must be confronted through sustained struggles on various fronts.

Building a newer left that is internally more democratic and that sheds the shibboleths of Stalinism and Maoism for its cadres, is vital. Such a broader united front of the Left must not be sectarian within, and it must prioritise linkages with progressive movements of all kinds that continue to exist in our continental-sized country rather than with opposition bourgeois parliamentary parties. The latter are not capable of, and will never move in the direction of forging an anti-capitalist, truly democratic and deeply egalitarian society. This should be the goal of such a Left united front that is allied with a range of progressive movements. Forging a programme and practice of left populism as an intermediate stage in pursuit of that much longer-term goal is our shorter-term need.

The statement was released today.

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According to the NCRB, suicide remains most prevalent among daily wage earners, housewives, and students. These descriptions are not only about occupational status, but reflections on India’s social hierarchies. The “daily wage earner,” who made up 26.4% of all suicide victims in 2023, is the precarious worker, buried in debt, inflation, and insecure employment. The “housewife,” at nearly 14.7%, is a symbol for unpaid domestic labour under patriarchal control and social isolation. The “student,” accounting for 8.5% of total suicides, demonstrates the systemic public and private failure to provide a humane education and mental health support. For the NCRB, these are merely descriptive occupational categories, yet they carry moral and political significance; they are indicators of whose despair is acknowledged and whose is not.

Numbers without Context

The NCRB identifies “family problems” (32%) and “illness” (18%) as primary contributors to suicide. This seems simple on paper – family dysfunction and health issues. However, these classifications conceal more than they disclose. What the Bureau calls “family problems” may include domestically violent behaviour, dowry harassment, or control related to one’s gender. “Illness” likely includes untreated depression among other illnesses, stigma related to disability, and traumatic, life-changing events. Then, stripped of the structural analysis, we easily convert the collective suffering to private pathology in the data.

There is no clearer example of this than student suicides. In 2023, India reported 13,044 student suicides, or about 36 a day, with Maharashtra (2,578) and Tamil Nadu (1,982) having the highest number, followed by Madhya Pradesh (1,668). These states have the largest educational ecosystems, or competition for schools, outside of state-controlled educational ecosystems. Similar patterns recur beneath the statistics: students migrating from rural to urban centres; that caste-based discrimination continues as students are excluded to elite institutions in various ways, if they are even included; and pressures from family about economics that bar a young person’s choice to attend school prevent their abilities to enjoy school, carry their anxieties into learning spaces when they keep “school pressures” from family. The NCRB does not ask whether “academic pressure” is systemically tilted “equal” – it is not.

In February 2024, the Supreme Court released its comprehensive Guidelines on the Mental Health of Students, citing what it referred to as an “epidemic of psychological distress” on campuses across India. The Court called upon universities and colleges to create counselling cells, train faculty to identify early indicators of distress, and implement systems that can protect students from discrimination that may take place on the basis of caste, gender, or the socio-economic status of their family of origin. These Guidelines were developed as an extension of the Court’s findings in Sukdeb Saha v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2024), in which it explained that the State has a “positive constitutional obligation” under Articles 21 and 21A to ensure mental well-being in educational and workplace environments. A detailed summary done by CHMLP can be read here. In that case, the Court condemned the State’s failure to create a coherent national framework for the prevention of student suicides, in particular to direct the states to view student suicide as a consequence of policy failure rather than a private tragedy.

These pronouncements reaffirm a simple truth that the NCRB’s data failed to reveal: student suicides are not individual personal crises but expressions of collective neglect, of caste hierarchy, and of inadequate mental health infrastructure. Nonetheless, and despite these judicial interventions, implementation remains inconsistent, as most such institutions continue to treat mental health services as optional, rather than as the institutional responsibility they need to understand it as.

The Silence around Farmer Suicides and those of Workers

The way the NCRB handles farmer suicides chillingly captures the politics of omission. In 2023, 12,567 farmers and agricultural labourers died by suicide — a 5% increase from 2022. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh made up over 60% of these suicides. Yet again, for every year, the report does not discuss structural causes: falling crop prices, shocks due to climate change, debt, and neglect in policy.

Organisations from civil society, such as the All India Kisan Sabha and P. Sainath’s People’s Archive of Rural India, have documented hundreds of farmer suicides that are absent from the NCRB report. Many suicides are coded under “other professions” or not included at all due to technical reasons of land ownership. Tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and women farmers who do the vast majority of agricultural work are missing. The NCRB’s silence about these deaths is a political act that removes the agrarian crisis from public consciousness by rendering structural violence into an absence in administrative categories.

In a similar vein, the cadre of “daily wage earners” has increased dramatically in the last five years, subsuming what was a more distinct representation of labour distress. It now includes construction workers, gig workers, sanitation workers, and small artisans who are all trapped in elements of insecurity. That nearly one in four people who commit suicide in India are daily wage earners, should not be an observation of a statistical trend, but a reproach of an economy that cares more for productivity than for people.

The Unseen Intersections of Caste, Gender, and Mental Health

By refusing to break suicide data down by caste identity, the NCRB obscures an understanding of mental distress in terms of social humiliation and exclusion. For instance, the case of Darshan Solanki, a student at IIT Bombay, who died by suicide in 2023, was widely identified in news reports as a death resulting from caste discrimination, but it would not be categorized under anything official. Likewise, the suicides of Dalit and Adivasi students across medical and technical institutions in India, who endure daily micro-aggressions from their peer groups in the form of “competition,”, also go undocumented in suicides that become of relevance to national statistics.

Gender issues exacerbate susceptibility. The relation between domestic violence, demands for dowry, and emotional abuse remains the most consistent factor for women in suicide. Yet, the label “housewife” that the NCRB has categorized those women under is a clear indication of biased and patriarchal categorization that sits below the level of humanity when suffering is reduced to a bureaucratic category. By neglecting to label intimate partner violence and coercion within marriage as a cause, the Bureau also erases the structural violence that is encountered in everyday life.

Despite the passage of the Mental Healthcare Act of 2017, mental health continues to be an undercurrent in policy and also data collected for the report. Governments allocate less than 1% of total health spending to mental health for community mental health services, which should be alarming. The NCRB noted “mental illness” as a cause for suicide in only 4.1% of suicides recorded in the annual report, and experts recognize this figure is severely understated. What this illustrates is not a rethinking of resilience, but denial. The state can measure death, rather than despair.

Disappearing the Crisis

Data manipulation encompasses not only the omission of unpleasant cases but also the reclassification of data. In 2023, several states, including Maharashtra and Telangana, reported a decline in farmer suicides due to “better welfare delivery,” although independent reports indicated a mostly correspondingly higher number. Similarly, the circumstances leading to a decline in cybercrime in Mumbai were simply reclassified to generate an 11.7% decrease in cybercrime. Suicides are often reclassified into other occupations or left unqualified to further the claims of administrative success.

The sanitization of statistics is part of a larger pattern: the act of withholding documentation to showcase progress. In Jammu & Kashmir, in 2023, the NCRB reported zero counts of communal violence and non-sedition prosecutions, while hundreds of detentions were conducted under the Public Safety Act.  Further, the NCRB stopped collecting data on lynchings and hate crimes from 2017 onwards, stating that the data collected was “unreliable”. By deciding what “counts,” the state ultimately will dictate what “counts” as a national issue.

Toward a Politics of Care

While the NCRB’s Crime in India report quantifies violence enacted by other people, Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India quantifies violence enacted by systems — by poverty, patriarchy, and policy. Still, states treat these deaths not as a social emergency, but as a statistical inevitability. A humane interpretation of the numbers insists that we view suicide not as the failing of an individual, but as the failing of governance.

There are still signs of resilience. Grassroots organizations like Kisan Mitra Helpline, Students’ Collective for Mental Health, and SNEHA have sought to offer mental health counselling, debt mediation, and legal aid to communities at risk. The Supreme Court’s latest directions to improve student mental health are also positive, but without an investment in a mental health infrastructure, these are largely symbolic.

To address India’s suicide epidemic, policy needs to shift from counting deaths to preventing deaths. This requires an acknowledgement of the structural nature of despair, deeply rooted in inequity of wealth, caste humiliation, and gendered violence, and a reimagining of the welfare state as one of care, rather than control. Until then, each number in the NCRB’s ledger will remain an indictment of a country that is still growing but not healing.

The Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India report serves a dual purpose, chronicling suffering and depoliticizing it. Each suicide occurs as an isolated act, separated from the systems that created it. The result is a perception of neutrality; the data is both the proof and the excuse.

The judgment in Sukdeb Saha v. State of Andhra Pradesh can be read here.

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this resource has been worked on by Preksha Bothara)

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The petitioner Masoom Raza, practicing advocate in Bihar, told the Sabrang India that the scheme as an “arbitrary sanction and timed execution” of a 2,500 Crore fund aimed at 25 lakh women beneficiaries. The petitioner further said that this action is not a “legitimate welfare measure” but a “calculated exercise in electoral inducement” designed to “destroy the ‘level playing field'” for the election.

The petition names the State of Bihar, the Election Commission of India (ECI), the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar, the Department of Rural Development, and the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (JEEVIKA) as respondents.

What is the scheme and why is it being challenged?

The PIL provides a detailed timeline to support its claims. The MMRY scheme was given Cabinet approval on August 29, 2025, to provide a non-refundable grant of 10,000 rupees to one woman per family for self-employment.

The petitioner’s challenge focuses on the timing of the implementation:

September 20, 2025 – The Rural Development Department (RDD) issued a letter confirming a “high-profile online launch” for the first instalment transfer, scheduled for September 26, 2025, with the presence of the Hon’ble Prime Minister and Chief Minister.

September 29, 2025 – JEEVIKA issued an office order scheduling a “single, massive Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) of 2500 Crore” to 25 lakh beneficiaries on October 3, 2025.

October 6, 2025 – The Election Commission of India announced the schedule for the Bihar Assembly Elections, 2025, bringing the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) into “immediate effect”. The MCC, Part VII, Clause (v), prohibits ministers and authorities from sanctioning “grants/payments out of discretionary funds” after elections are announced.

The petition alleges that despite the MCC coming into force on October 6, the state continued to execute the disbursement in a “staggered manner”. The PIL cites a Direct Benefit Transfer timeline, showing that post-MCC fund transfers were initiated on October 17, October 24, and October 31, 2025.

The petition argues this demonstrates a mala fide decision to ensure the financial grant operates as an inducement during the polling phases. It also notes that the same timeline indicates a further disbursement is scheduled for November 7, 2025, necessitating “urgent judicial intervention”.

What are the specific allegations of wrongdoing?

Beyond the timing, the petition also raises serious questions about the scheme’s implementation, alleging it was procedurally flawed and led to corruption.

The PIL argues that the scheme’s guidelines improperly delegate the core executive function of ground-level beneficiary verification to “non-governmental” and “non-statutory” functionaries known as “Community Mobilisers (CMs)”. The petition claims this delegation is arbitrary and ultra vires (an act done without legal authority), creating a fundamental flaw in the scheme’s governance.

This hurried and unchecked process, the petition alleges, has resulted in “widespread illegality and mismanagement,” including demands for bribes for application verification. The petition includes multiple news reports as evidence.

These news reports allege that irregularities and extortion demands have marred the implementation of the scheme across several districts. In Bettiah, four employees were dismissed following complaints of “illegal recovery.” In Jamui’s Chakai block, a “Jeevika Didi” (Community Mobiliser) allegedly demanded 250 rupees to process a form, while in Barhat, similar allegations surfaced of demands ranging from 100 rupees for a form to 2,000 rupees from the 10,000 rupees grant, with an audio clip of a CM allegedly seeking money reportedly going viral.

In Beldaur, women from multiple Self-Help Groups in Sukhaybasa village claimed they were denied benefits after refusing to pay a “nazarana” (offering or bribe) of 1,000 rupees per member to a Jeevika employee.

Prevent the misuse of “money of the taxpayers” and protect the “sacrosanct fundamental right of fair election

The petitioner, states that he has no “personal interest” in the case and is acting in the public interest to prevent the misuse of “money of the taxpayers” and protect the “sacrosanct fundamental right of fair election”.

The PIL prayed High Court to issue several directions:

1. Stop further payments: an order directing the State of Bihar, the RDD, and JEEVIKA to “immediately cease and desist” from all further fund disbursements under the MMRY scheme until the election process is concluded.
2. Enforce the MCC: a direction for the Election Commission of India (ECI) to take “prompt, decisive, and mandatory action” against the state for the “egregious breach” of the Model Code of Conduct. The PIL also notes the ECI’s alleged “failure to act” on a formal complaint filed by RJD Leader Shri Manoj Jha on October 31, 2025.
3. Investigate corruption: an order to constitute an “Independent Fact-Finding Committee” to inquire into the scheme’s verification process, the delegation of authority to CMs, and the “widespread allegations of illegal demands, corruption, and bribery”.
4. Demand records: a direction for the state to file a “detailed Compliance Affidavit” providing all original administrative records, including a complete list of beneficiaries sanctioned before the MCC was enforced (October 6, 2025) and a separate list of all beneficiaries who received payments after that date.

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Announcing this, senior High Court advocate Anand Yagnik, who heads the Gujarat chapter of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), said that a committee has already been formed to examine the pros and cons of SIR. “While the SIR exercise began in Gujarat on November 4 and is scheduled to continue for a month, we will file a supporting petition in the case against SIR in the Gujarat High Court or the Supreme Court after observing how it proceeds in the state,” he said.

Yagnik’s announcement followed senior advocate Shahrukh Alam—who is arguing the SIR case in the Supreme Court—urging Gujarat’s civil society to also file a petition. She said there was an urgent need to create public awareness and build pressure against SIR, especially in the apex court, and that this could only be achieved if petitions were filed from different states.

Supporting the view of Gujarat activists that SIR is an exercise aimed at excluding marginalized sections from the electoral rolls, Alam said that the SIR, which began ahead of the Bihar elections despite a revision having already taken place in January, should be seen against the backdrop of an overall attack on democracy, freedom of speech, and the Constitution itself. However, she regretted that the political class remains “largely indifferent” to what is happening.

According to Alam, “We must remember that the space for free speech is shrinking—universities are cancelling lectures and refusing discussions. The state is seeking to decide everything: what to wear, what to eat, whom to marry. Exercises like the UCC, NRC, and actions around Waqf are all about the state deciding your identity. Today, state endorsement has become essential for everything. We are living as if in an open jail.”

Continuing, Alam said that in the same vein, it is now the state that seeks to decide whether one is a voter or not. “Civil society must take up the larger issues around SIR. Voting is based on the universal adult franchise, and it has always been the state’s job to ensure that no eligible citizen is left out. But now, the burden is being shifted—citizens are being asked to prove they are voters by submitting citizenship documents. The state is abdicating its responsibility,” she said.

Alam questioned why the ECI spent a huge amount of public money to revise the electoral rolls in Bihar in January, only to begin another “intensive revision” within six months, allegedly to “purify” the rolls. “Who is accountable for this waste of public funds? The ECI has not been questioned on this,” she emphasized.

On the legal front, Alam noted that while the ECI has the right to create electoral rolls, problems arise when it makes it mandatory for individuals to prove citizenship to qualify as voters. The ECI claims it will verify this on the basis of 11 documents, excluding Aadhaar and ration cards. “The ECI cannot act arbitrarily,” Alam asserted. “The Representation of the People Act merely requests citizens to assist in creating complete electoral lists. For 70 years, teachers went door-to-door recording names without asking for documents. Now, the onus has been reversed—each resident must prove citizenship.”

Countering the ECI’s initial claim that SIR aimed to remove “infiltrators,” Alam said, “Only three infiltrators were found.” When challenged, the ECI changed its justification, saying it was to “remove dead people” from the rolls. “But even that proved flawed—instances of deceased individuals remaining on the lists continued. The Supreme Court has yet to hear the case, even though Aadhaar has now been allowed,” she added.

Addressing the meeting, Sarfarazuddin of PUCL Bihar, who played a key role in opposing the ECI, called the exercise “dangerous” and “without legal basis.” He said it began in Bihar on June 24, requiring individuals to verify that they were on the 2003 electoral list to remain eligible voters. “No rationale was given. The timing was deliberate—monsoon floods begin after June-end. Would people save their lives or their documents in such a situation?” he asked.

He explained that block-level officers (BLOs) distributed enumeration forms requiring verification from 2003. In the absence of that, 11 alternative documents were allowed—but Aadhaar and ration cards were excluded, while passports, school-leaving certificates, birth certificates, and residence proofs were accepted.

“This was designed to exclude marginalized communities,” he said. “The Manjhi community, for instance, has only about 10 percent literacy. How can they be expected to comply? Many people had to bribe officials to get documents, leading to rampant corruption.”

In an instance of how marginalized sections are being excluded, Sarfarazuddin said that an 86-year-old poor woman’s name was missing from the draft voter list, following which her widow pension was also stopped. “Women are likely to suffer the most because of SIR,” he warned. “The ECI requires parents’ proof as one of the 11 documents. How do poor married women cope with this?”

He recounted an incident in a Muslim locality where residents protested after their duly completed forms were rejected. “A schoolteacher acting as BLO called her superior and said, ‘You told us not to accept Muslims’ forms. People are protesting—what do I do?’ Embarrassed, the officer told her to accept all the forms,” he said.

Similar protests were reported elsewhere. Initially, 64 lakh voters were found excluded in the revised draft. Following protests and legal interventions in the Supreme Court, many were restored, but the case remains pending. “This will be a long, drawn-out battle,” said Sarfarazuddin. “The ECI knows it has erred, but it has made it a prestige issue.”

Mujahid Nafees, who heads the Minority Coordination Committee and is PUCL Gujarat’s general secretary, pointed out that thousands of houses of fisherfolk on Bet Dwarka were demolished, though residents had Aadhaar cards with those addresses. “No one knows what will happen to their voting rights now,” he said.

Another Gujarat activist, Pankti Jog of the Association for Democratic Reforms, questioned how the ECI plans to “purify” electoral rolls amid Gujarat’s large-scale internal migration. Economist Hemant Shah asked whether the ECI’s aim was to prepare a voters’ list or to assess citizenship.

Courtesy: Counter View

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According to a report by PTI, the devotees were stopped after crossing into Pakistan through the Attari–Wagah border. Officials allegedly told them, “You are Hindu, you cannot go with a Sikh jatha.” Amar Chand, one of those turned back along with six family members, said that despite having valid travel documents and clearance from Indian immigration, they were refused entry once inside Pakistan.

As per the Hindustan Times report, the jatha of around 1,900 Sikh pilgrims had crossed into Pakistan on Tuesday to participate in the Parkash Purb festivities. Chand’s family, along with seven others from Lucknow, had joined the group intending to offer prayers at prominent gurdwaras, including Nankana Sahib. However, all 14 were sent back by Pakistani officials soon after entering.

As per the HT report, a Punjab intelligence officer posted at the border confirmed the incident, saying: “Those denied entry are Hindus by faith, originally from Pakistan but settled in India for many years. They held valid Indian passports and had obtained immigration clearance from our side. Once they entered Pakistan, officials there examined their documents and returned them to the BSF.”

Interestingly, other Hindu devotees in the same jatha faced no such problems. Palwinder Singh, head of the pilgrimage department of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which organises the largest pilgrim groups, clarified:

“Nearly 40 Hindus are part of our group this year, and almost all entered Pakistan without any issue. Many Hindu followers of Guru Nanak travel every year for these pilgrimages — they have never been barred on the basis of religion.”

The SGPC jatha will remain in Pakistan until November 13, visiting key Sikh shrines including Gurdwara Panja Sahib (Hasan Abdal), Gurdwara Darbar Sahib (Kartarpur, Narowal), Gurdwara Sacha Sauda (Farooqabad), Gurdwara Dehra Sahib (Lahore), and Gurdwara Rori Sahib (Gujranwala).

Amar Chand recounted that his family had even paid ₹95,000 (Pakistani rupees) for bus tickets after clearing all formalities. “Five officials came and told us to get down from the bus, saying Hindus can’t go with Sikh pilgrims. We were then sent back, and our money was not refunded,” he said. Chand, originally from Pakistan, moved to India in 1999 and obtained Indian citizenship in 2010.

Meanwhile, more than 200 other applicants were stopped at the Indian side of the border as they lacked final approval from the Union Home Ministry.

Earlier, the Indian government had initially decided against sending any jatha to Pakistan this year citing security concerns after Operation Sindoor. However, it later allowed a limited group to proceed under strict conditions.

Under the 1950 Nehru–Liaquat Pact, Sikh pilgrims are permitted to visit Pakistan’s revered shrines on four key occasions each year — Baisakhi, Guru Arjan Dev’s martyrdom day, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s death anniversary, and Guru Nanak Dev’s birth anniversary.

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The post Pakistan denies entry to 14 Hindu devotees in Sikh ‘jatha’ visiting for Guru Nanak Jayanti appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As is well known, Kushinagar is one of the most important holy places for Buddhists worldwide, as the Buddha delivered his last sermon here and attained Mahaparinirvana here. Bhadant Gyaneshwar was the most senior Buddhist monk in Kushinagar and had served as President of the Kushinagar Monks’ Association since 2005. He assumed this role after the passing of Bhadant Aniruddha Mahathera of Lumbini. The Kushinagar Monks’ Association was established on December 18, 1952, with Bhadant Chandramani Mahathera as its first President, serving until May 8, 1972. Bhadant Uttikhendariya Mahathera and Achyutananda Mahathera subsequently became Presidents. Bhadant Gyaneshwar Mahathera was thus the sixth President of the Kushinagar Bhikshu Association.

Bhadant Gyaneshwar was born on November 10, 1936, in the village of Jibenji, in the Akyab district of Arakan province, Burma. Arakan is now part of Rakhine State. His childhood name was Aung Ja Wae, and his father was a farmer. Today, Burma is known as Myanmar. Rakhine State remains the most indigenous and largest Buddhist region, though in recent years the treatment of Rohingya Muslims and their plight have drawn considerable international attention.

Bhadant Gyaneshwar had publicly noted that this issue was not so polarised during his time. He recalled that Bengali Muslims had migrated to his region and exploited local people. He vividly remembered events from World War II. In conversations with me, he discussed Myanmar’s diverse ethnicities but emphasised that there was no caste system or untouchability, unlike what he encountered extensively in India. His village, a coastal area with a significant Buddhist population, shaped his early life. Bhadant Gyaneshwar’s mother died during his childhood, causing him great suffering. At a young age, he was drawn to the teachings of Dhamma. On April 12, 1949, he entered a university in Rangoon (now Yangon) to study Pali. On June 3, 1956, after six years of studying Buddhism, he became a shramana and received the name that became known in Hindi as Dnyaneshwar or Gyaneshwar.

Burma was a flourishing centre of Buddhism, and India maintained strong relations with it. In 1954, Burma hosted the Sixth Buddhist Council, attended by Bhante Dharmarakshita. Babasaheb Ambedkar and E.V.R. Periyar also participated in this historic conference in Rangoon. Though only 18 years old, Bhadant Gyaneshwar attended and met Babasaheb Ambedkar. He remembered little of the encounter, being too young to grasp Dr. Ambedkar’s socio-political significance; like other locals, he was there to listen to distinguished guests and serve. The large-scale event held special meaning for him nonetheless.

Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar have long visited India’s historical and religious sites, often saddened by their neglect and dedicating their lives to restoration. Anagarika Dharmapala of Sri Lanka played a pivotal role in reviving Buddhism in India. For context, he fought to restore Buddhist control over the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya; his efforts helped revive Buddhism and its heritage across South Asia. He is renowned globally for advancing Buddhist ideas and practices.

Bhadant Gyaneshwar’s parents knew Bhadant Chandramani, as his father followed Buddhism. In 1962, when Bhikkhu Dharmarakshita and Bhikkhu Kittima Mahasthavir learned about Bhadant Chandramani’s declining health—one of India’s most respected monks—their concern deepened. They recognised his efforts to preserve Buddhist Dhamma in Kushinagar and sought someone to care for him while ensuring deep Dhamma knowledge and devotion for the future. By 1962, Bhadant Chandramani’s health had become a worry for the Buddhist community. Accordingly, the two bhikkhus invited 27-year-old Gyaneshwar from Burma to India, directing him to Kushinagar to live with Bhadant Chandramani. Bhadant Gyaneshwar arrived on August 5, 1963, to serve his guru and strengthen Buddhist heritage. From then on, he immersed himself in Indian Buddhist traditions, mastering the local language. He worked for the upliftment of marginalised people and counselled Dhamma practitioners from India and abroad, contributing significantly to Kushinagar’s development.

Bhadant Gyaneshwar possessed a sharp memory and an extraordinary ability to share his vast experiences. He regularly met disciples and people from all walks of life, discussing socio-religious issues. Language was initially a barrier, but he soon became fluent in Hindi and Bhojpuri, travelling worldwide. He continued charitable and social activities initiated by Bhadant Chandramani Mahasthavir. Though unable to return to Myanmar, he maintained ties; the Bhadant Chandramani VIP Guest House in Kushinagar was built with Myanmar Buddhists’ support.

His life exemplified struggle. In conversations with me, he shared key experiences, including efforts to remove unauthorised occupation from land around the Mahaparinirvana site in Kushinagar. These battles—reconstructing sites and reclaiming land—form a long and inspiring story. To adapt to India, he enrolled in local schools, completing high school in 1968, intermediate in 1970, BA in 1973, and MA in 1975 from Buddha Degree College, Kushinagar. He later earned Pali Sahitya Ratna and an LLB degree, reflecting his passion for knowledge.

The Myanmar government honoured him with its highest religious award. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, he could not travel, so the Myanmar Ambassador conferred the title *Abhidhaja Maharatthaguru* in Kushinagar in June 2021. Earlier honours included *Abhidhaja Aggamaha Thaddamma Jotika* (2016), *Aggamaha Pandita* (1993), and *Aggamaha Thaddamma Jotika Daza* (2005) for his service to Buddhism. Bhadant Gyaneshwar became a legal Indian citizen in 1978 and remained President of the Kushinagar Main Temple Bhikshu Sangha until his death.

He was associated with numerous Buddhist religious and charitable organisations and served on the Bodhgaya Mahavihara Administrative Body (appointed by the Bihar government) from 1990 to 2018. 

When I had asked him if Bodh Gaya should remain a Buddhist pilgrimage site, he replied, “Shouldn’t it be handed over to Buddhists as it is the most sacred site for Buddhists.” He advocated transferring all Buddhist sites to Buddhist control. While accepting Archaeological Survey of India oversight for preservation, he noted that global visitors seek not just archaeology but Buddhist teachings. India, as the Buddha’s land, should facilitate this.

Many disciples have become prominent monks strengthening India’s Buddhist movement. Dr. Nanda Ratan Bhante Thero, head of the Sri Lanka Buddha Vihara, met him in 1995 while in Shravasti. He pursued higher education under “Guruji” (as disciples called Bhadant Gyaneshwar). In 1998, Guruji sent him to Myanmar’s International Theravada Buddhist University; he returned to Kushinagar in 1999.

Dr. Nanda Ratan Bhante says Guruji cared deeply for the poorest and most marginalised, prioritising education—especially for girls—and fought caste discrimination and untouchability. Thousands of followers in India and abroad attended his lectures and invitations. At Guruji’s request, Japan’s Maitri Association supported education for hundreds of children within a 10-kilometre radius of Kushinagar. He remained active in Kushinagar’s development.

Bhante Nand Ratan ji cared for Guruji devotedly. Days ago, at a Buddhist prayer meeting at our Prerna Kendra, he asked everyone to wish Guruji health and long life. Today, meeting him where Bhadant Gyaneshwar’s body lay for devotees’ darshan, Guruji was pensive: “We tried our best but could not save him. We wanted him for many more years. This will be my greatest regret.” I have seen Bhante Nand Ratan ji always caring for Bhadant Gyaneshwar. He did everything possible, but some things are beyond human control. Bhadant Gyaneshwar’s presence will be missed, yet his network of followers will carry his legacy forward.

Bhadant Gyaneshwar dedicated his life to Dhamma and gave Kushinagar a renewed identity. Children study in his schools; his temple attracts domestic and foreign visitors. Experiencing caste in India, he told me he had never known it in Myanmar, where ethnic differences existed without hierarchy.

Interviewing him nearly five years ago was a privilege and honour. As the Guru of Gurus, I was hesitant, unsure how to proceed. He called for a chair so I could sit beside him and converse comfortably. He answered with profound depth. Today, paying respects at the same venue, memories of that interview flooded back. At its end, he recited a Buddhist hymn for our well-being.

Throughout his long public life, he followed the Buddha’s path—the hope Babasaheb Ambedkar saw for the Bahujan Samaj, our true freedom for over 85% of the population. Bhadant Gyaneshwar’s efforts to spread Buddha’s wisdom in India and beyond will inspire generations. He loved Kushinagar, building its Buddhist identity. The Burmese Buddha Vihara and its later stupa were major contributions. Frankly, the stupa at the Burmese Buddha Vihara has become Kushinagar’s landmark.

A fitting tribute to Bhadant Gyaneshwar.

**Bhavatu Sabba Mangalam!**

Related:

Periyar: Caste, Nation and Socialism

Periyar: Caste, Nation and Socialism

The ‘Harijans’ of Bangladesh: Victims of constitutional neglect and social isolation

The post Obituary: Bhadant Gyaneshwar and his invaluable contribution to the buddhist world appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Unveiling what he called “The H Files”, Gandhi said the data collected by his team over months reveals a centrally coordinated operation to manipulate voter lists and subvert democracy itself. “This is not an accident. This is not about one booth or one constituency. It is a centralised operation to steal elections,” he declared at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in Delhi, a day before the Bihar Assembly elections begin.

“One in eight voters fake”: Rahul Gandhi

According to Gandhi, Haryana, with roughly two crore registered voters, had about 25.4 lakh bogus entries — meaning “one in every eight voters is fake.”

He said his team had classified the fake voters under five categories:

• 5.2 lakh duplicate voters,
• 93,174 invalid addresses,
• 19.2 lakh bulk voters (20 or more voters registered at the same address), and
• Several others linked to misuse of Form 6 (additions) and Form 7 (deletions).

“Despite clear technical capacity to detect duplicates, the ECI deliberately refused to run even a basic photo-identity matching query,” Gandhi alleged. “Why? Because they are helping the BJP.”

The ‘Brazilian Model’ case and recycled photos

Displaying a presentation with screenshots from the official voter database, Gandhi held up a photo of a woman he said is a Brazilian model, alleging that her image was used to create 22 separate voter IDs across 10 polling booths in Haryana. “What is a Brazilian woman doing on a voters’ list in Haryana?” he asked.

He further claimed that in some cases, the same photograph appeared 223 times across different constituencies. “This is just one example. There are thousands more. This is not voter error — this is organised fraud,” he asserted.

The Congress leader ridiculed Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s explanation that voter IDs bearing “House No. 0” are reserved for homeless citizens. “We physically went to those addresses,” Gandhi said, showing a two-storey house listed as ‘House No. 0’. “This is not homelessness. This is hiding. The CEC is lying to the people of India.”

In one instance, Gandhi said, 501 voters were registered under a single address, calling it “statistical proof of systematic rigging.”

“Operation sarkar chori”: Rahul Gandhi

Calling the alleged operation “Sarkar Chori” (Government Theft), Gandhi said the manipulation was engineered to deny the Congress victory despite exit polls and internal assessments predicting a landslide win for his party.

“The Congress was poised to win comfortably, but they converted a victory into defeat through data manipulation,” he said, noting that in at least eight key constituencies, the BJP’s margin of victory was under 23,000 votes, while over 25 lakh fraudulent entries existed across the state.

“These eight seats — Uchana Kalan, Dadri, Rai, and others — were the difference between Congress forming the government and BJP stealing it,” Gandhi said.

Allegations against Election Commission

Gandhi accused the Election Commission of being “in partnership with the Prime Minister and Home Minister” in “destroying Indian democracy.”

He alleged that the poll body not only ignored evidence of fake and duplicate voters but also destroyed CCTV footage from polling stations to erase proof.

“The ECI can remove duplicate entries in seconds. All they have to do is run a query to identify identical photos or addresses. They don’t, because they’re complicit,” he said, calling the Commission a “collaborator in vote theft.”

Responding to ECI’s earlier defence that “no voter deletion can be done online,” Gandhi retorted that his team had used the Commission’s own data to trace these irregularities. “We are not fabricating anything. We are exposing what the ECI’s own numbers reveal,” he said.

“Industrialised vote theft”: Rahul Gandhi

Terming the manipulation “industrialised”, Gandhi said the same centralised pattern was visible in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, adding that the Congress had first detected the scam in Mahadevapura and Aland Assembly constituencies in Karnataka.

“In Aland, fake login IDs and mobile numbers were used to delete voters remotely. In Mahadevapura, over one lakh names were found to be either deleted or duplicated. We saw the same pattern in Haryana — that’s when we realised this is national-scale rigging,” Gandhi said.

He added that the same strategy was now being deployed in Bihar, where 47 lakh names were deleted during the recent voter list revision. Several affected voters from Bihar’s Jamui district joined Gandhi on stage, claiming their names were removed without notice.

“Thousands of BJP Voters in Two States”

Gandhi also claimed that thousands of BJP leaders and workers were registered in multiple states. “They are voting in both Uttar Pradesh and Haryana,” he said, citing examples of party office-bearers with dual entries.

To underline this, he played a video of BJP Kerala Vice President B. Gopalakrishnan, who had in August openly stated that his party would “bring voters from other states and settle them for a year to ensure victory.”

BJP’s counter and EC’s response

The BJP dismissed Gandhi’s allegations as a “fabricated conspiracy”, timed to influence the Bihar polls. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said, “This is a planned diversion. According to Hindustan Times, Rijiju said that the Opposition has no issue left in Bihar, so they are attacking institutions. Questioning the Election Commission and our democracy means questioning the country itself.”

Meanwhile, Election Commission officials, responding during the press conference, said there had been “zero appeals” against electoral rolls in Haryana and questioned the Congress’s polling agents for not objecting at booths. “If someone votes twice, agents can object on the spot. Why did they not?” an EC source asked.

The Commission reiterated that Gandhi’s earlier claims about voter deletions in Karnataka were “incorrect and baseless.”

Wider reactions

The explosive allegations drew backing from opposition leaders. Aditya Thackeray, leader of the Shiv Sena (UBT), said the issue “transcends party politics” and concerns “the value of every Indian’s vote.”

“Once again, Rahul Gandhi has exposed the Election Commission’s fraud that helps the BJP capture states via vote theft,” Thackeray said on X (formerly Twitter). “The world is watching how our elections are no longer free and fair. This is not about parties — this is about democracy itself.”

He added that his party had also flagged similar voter list manipulation in Maharashtra, including Worli and other constituencies, but “the EC refused to act.”

“This fight is not just for the Congress,” Thackeray said, “it’s for free and fair elections across India — for our Constitution and democracy. Vote chor, gaddi chhod (vote thieves, vacate power).”

Once again, @RahulGandhi has exposed the @ECISVEEP ’s fraud today that helps the bjp to capture States via vote theft.

The world is watching how our elections aren’t free and fair anymore… with proof!

One may agree or disagree with Rahul Gandhi, or the @INCIndia or the INDIA…

— Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) November 5, 2025

“We are protecting democracy”: Rahul Gandhi

In his closing remarks, Gandhi urged the youth to take ownership of India’s democratic future. “I want Gen Z to take this seriously. Your vote, your future, your democracy — all are being stolen in plain sight,” he said.

He invited journalists and citizens alike to independently verify his findings, saying, “We are not afraid. We are exposing the truth in front of the Supreme Court, before the people, not behind closed doors.”

Calling “vote chori” the theft of rights, employment, education, and the Constitution itself, Gandhi said: “This democracy belongs to you, not to the Election Commission or Narendra Modi. We will fight this with satya and ahimsa.”

Related:

No vote can be deleted online by the public, ECI refutes Rahul Gandhi’s claim but refusal to share data raises doubts

“Vote Chori Factory”: Rahul Gandhi accuses ECI of protecting electoral fraud, demands action in 7 days

Rahul Gandhi alleges ‘Vote Chori’ in 2024 polls, accuses BJP-ECI nexus of systematic electoral fraud

‘Election Commission involved in vote theft’: Rahul Gandhi repeats charge, now drops ‘atom bomb’ ahead of Bihar poll, also says ‘won’t spare you’

The post Rahul Gandhi alleges ‘industrial-scale vote theft’ in Haryana Polls, claims 25 lakh fake voters added with EC-BJP collusion appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The first and most pressing is the case of 26-year-old Sunali Khatun from Birbhum’s Murarai area, pregnant at the time of her arrest, who was detained in Delhi in June along with her husband and 8-year-old son and subsequently deported to Bangladesh. She is currently jailed in Bangladesh, legally battling for her return to India.

The Sunali Khatun case

Sunali and her husband, Danish Sheikh, along with their son, were apprehended in Delhi’s K.N. Katju Marg in June, labeled as illegal immigrants. Their deportation was ordered by the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) and executed despite Sunali’s family presenting Aadhaar and PAN documents, as per a report in the Times of India.

What has triggered shock and outrage is the revelation that Sunali’s parents — Bhodu Sheikh and Jyotsna Bibi — are listed as voters in Bengal’s 2002 SIR-era electoral roll, under Murarai assembly constituency.  Under the Citizenship Act, one route to being a citizen by birth is if one parent was an Indian citizen at the time of the person’s birth. In this case, both parents appear on a list of voters deemed legitimate by the Election Commission of India (EC).

The Calcutta High Court (HC) in September quashed the FRRO deportation order, noting the haste of the process and the mismatch in Sunali’s age (26 yrs, implying birth in 2000) and the claim of illegal entry in 1998. The court directed the Centre to repatriate her and her family within four weeks — a deadline that has lapsed, The Indian Express reported.

Her father told The Indian Express that “Now our names are on the list. What more do I need to have my pregnant daughter and her family back home?”

The ruling party in Bengal, the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), has seized on these facts to accuse the opposition and the Centre of weaponising the SIR process and targeting poor Bengali-speaking migrants. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the TMC declared:

“To brand an expectant mother as an illegal infiltrator when her parents stand documented as Indian citizens in the 2002 electoral rolls, is not administrative oversight; it is a moral collapse orchestrated in the name of nationalism” as per a report in the Shillong Times.

Meanwhile, the Centre has moved the matter to the Supreme Court, resisting immediate compliance with the HC’s order.

A suicide amid SIR fears

In a parallel but separate another incident, Kakoli Sarkar, a 32-year-old homemaker originally from Dhaka, married and living in Titagarh for 15 years, ended her life by self-immolation. According to her mother-in-law, Kakoli had valid Indian documents, had voted in multiple elections, yet she lived with anxiety that her name was not on the 2002 voters’ list and that the SIR/NRC process might render her a suspect.

According to reports, on the night of her death she left a note stating that “No one is responsible for my death … I don’t feel well here … Please take care of my two daughters…”

Local police have detained her husband Sabuj Sarkar and her in-laws for questioning to determine if family pressure and documentation fears contributed to the tragedy, as reported

Impact and broader anxieties

These two cases are emblematic of a heightened climate of uncertainty across Bengal, where the SIR rollout and the spectre of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) continue to loom large. The EC’s announcement of SIR-drives across multiple states and Union Territories, including West Bengal, has reignited fears of exclusion, statelessness, and the sense that one’s right to remain is provisional, reported Sabrang India.

For Sunali’s family, the fact that her parents are on the 2002 roll should — in principle — secure her legitimacy. Yet she remains in a Bangladeshi prison and the deadlines set by the court remain unmet. For Kakoli, despite voting and living in India for years, the absence of a listing on the 2002 roll and the ongoing SIR process appears to have triggered existential dread.

Kakoli Sarkar’s suicide is not the only one

The fear that drove Kakoli Sarkar, to end her life amid growing panic over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is not an isolated tragedy. Her death joins a disturbing pattern of despair spreading across Bengal — where citizenship and belonging have become matters of fear rather than procedure.

Haunted by NRC and citizenship fears

The recent death of 57-year-old Pradip Kar from Agarpara, North 24 Parganas, once again exposes the deepening distress among Bengal’s citizens over ongoing citizenship verification exercises. On October 28, 2025, Kar was found hanging in his home, leaving behind a suicide note that “NRC is responsible for my death.”

According to SabrangIndia’s report, his family said he had grown increasingly anxious after the Election Commission announced the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across 12 states, including West Bengal — a move widely feared to be a prelude to an NRC-like process.

According to Barrackpore Police Commissioner Murlidhar Sharma, there were no signs of foul play, but Kar’s note made an explicit reference to the NRC. “The family told us he was deeply disturbed by NRC-related reports. After the SIR announcement, he appeared anxious but they assumed it was illness,” Sharma said. Kar’s sister recalled, “He used to tell us he would be taken away in the name of NRC.”

Kar’s death mirrors the earlier tragedy of 31-year-old Debashish Sengupta from Kolkata, who died by suicide in March 2024 after being gripped by fears linked to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). As reported by Sabrang India, Sengupta—visiting his grandparents in South 24 Parganas—was found hanging after confiding that his ailing father, a migrant from Bangladesh, could be denied citizenship for lack of documents. His family said he was “consumed by dread” that the new CAA rules would render many stateless.

These deaths are no longer isolated incidents but reflections of emerging fears consuming ordinary citizens where bureaucratic exercises meant to verify identity instead provoke panic about erasure. Across Bengal, whispers of “NRC coming through the backdoor” now carry the weight of lived fear, not mere speculation.

Related:

Haunted by NRC fears, 57-year-old West Bengal man dies by suicide; Mamata blames BJP for turning democracy into a “theatre of fear”

Kolkata man commits suicide, family claims CAA rules led him to it

Selective & discriminatory, CAA notification likely to be followed by NPR-NRC

The post Pregnant woman deported despite parents on 2002 SIR rolls, another homemaker commits suicide appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In 2023, India reported 5,272 “Offences against the State”, a decrease from 6,062 in the previous year. During this period, independent monitors, journalists, and lawyers also reported an increase in arrests, summonses, and investigations under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the National Security Act (NSA). This contradiction suggests a pattern, suggesting the state is becoming better at not reducing conflict, but reclassifying dissent. What is not present in the data is often present in imprisonment, in FIRs filed under vague provisions, and in the long silences in the periods between bail hearings.

Counting the Uncounted

The category “Offences Against the State” used by the NCRB is conceptually neutral. It combines old offences of sedition, UAPA, breaches of official secrets, and offences against public order categories into one statistical grouping — thereby obscuring the legal distinction between offences, which have divergent political meanings. By reporting a decline without disaggregation, the NCRB holds out a possibility of “national calm”.

Field reporting tells a different story. In UP, over 260 people were booked under UAPA between 2020-2023 for affiliations with alleged banned organizations or protests. In Assam, about 240 UAPA cases were filed, most against ordinary villagers for alleged “extremist sympathies.” In Jammu & Kashmir, local officials confirmed over 400 preventive detentions under the Public Safety Act (PSA) in 2023, but the NCRB reported zero sedition or communal violence cases (and the only cases of communal violence reported under “Offences Against the State” came from UP).

The absence of sedition or communal offences amongst J&K’s tables is not statistical levelling; it is political theatre. When it ceased to report on communal violence after 2017 and discontinued hate crime data due to “unreliability”, the NCRB removed its capacity to log dissent and identity-based repression. The state achieves its calm through bureaucratic design: what is not coded does not exist.

The Geography of Dissent

In India, oppression has been increasingly localised. The national claim of 13% (decrease) in “Offences against the State” obscures serious variations at the state level. Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, and Jammu & Kashmir — states under direct or close control of the centre — accounted for over half of UAPA registrations.

For example, in Manipur, where ethnic violence resulted in over 200 deaths and displaced 60,000 residents, the NCRB classifies the killings under “riots” and “arson,” not “communal or ethnic violence.” By using lost naming conventions, the NCRB ignores assessing the political roots of the conflict, by framing a breakdown of civil war-like norms as a disturbance of law and order. The ongoing case in Assam, where the government has expanded the use of the UAPA to include dissent and protect values of citizenship after protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, includes student leaders and journalists arrested for lengthy periods that vanish into their generic form of “public disorder.”

The city creates a paradoxical calm by reframing the law. Its NCRB numbers are a model of stability because the repression is distributed across other sections of law. Delhi is an example of national law enforcement priorities: bureaucratic calm, obscuring political repression.

Delhi: The Capital of Control

According to the NCRB’s 2023 data in Delhi, there were just six cases under UAPA, and a few others under sedition- numbers which starkly contrast with all that we know about cases in relation to the 2020 anti-CAA protests, the farmers’ protests, and the arrests of students in Delhi University and their teachers. The Delhi police, which is a part of the Ministry of Home Affairs, has become a model of a censorship state for centralization of dissent: students arrested for conspiracy, comedians questioned for satire, protest organizers charged for “rioting” rather than “offences against the state”.

Journalists like Meer Faisal and Qazi Shibli have been called for questioning on multiple occasions; students such as Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha, who were held in remand in the Delhi riots conspiracy case, remain on trial under UAPA even though the evidence against them is tenuous, and judgments have pushed back against what appears to be prosecutorial overreach.

This way of representing counts permits the data from Delhi to paint a picture of a city governed well, which permits dissent, free expression, and fun within the law. The lived experience tells a different story, of a city policed not through clampdown but through the ever-present threat of surveillance, summons, and social media judicial action.

Hence, Delhi’s repression is expressed through bureaucratic restraint rather than overt cruelty. It is the capital of restraint—a city where peace is created through paper.

The Architecture of Silence

This illusion created by the NCRB falls into a fourfold architecture of reclassification, omission, preventive detention, and digital suppression, all meant to turn repression into bureaucratic routine.

Maharashtra exemplifies reclassification. The NCRB mentions one UAPA and one sedition case in its comparable figures for 2023, while the Bhima Koregaon prosecution is ongoing in the court system. The difference isn’t that there were fewer arrests, but rather changed categorization—political matters labelled as public disorder. At the same time, the Bureau has refrained from noting lynchings or hate crimes since 2017, removing entire categories of violence from the national bookkeeping. What cannot be counted cannot be questioned.

Preventive detention exacerbates this silence. In Jammu & Kashmir, over 400 individuals were placed in preventive detention under the PSA in 2023, without any of them being charged under UAPA nor sedition. This too can be said for temporary curfews or travel restrictions that never lead to even a formal FIR. Digital control fulfils the architecture of silence. India had more than 80 internet shutdowns in 2023, with the highest in the world (https://www.accessnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2023-KIO-Report.pdf). Each of these shutdowns limits the state’s violence from being documented and, therefore, the NCRB can write its next report everyone is in peace. Thus, the Bureau’s data, is, then, not a neutral mirror of crime and thus, a curated reflection of governance—a record that transforms coercion into an order.

Freedom on Paper

The judiciary occasionally intervenes to disrupt this silence, rarely dismantling it. In Patricia Mukhim v. State of Meghalaya, the Supreme Court quashed a criminal process pursued against journalist Patricia Mukhim, alleging that she incited enmity against the government by posting on Facebook about government inaction after communal violence erupted in Shillong. The police charged her under Sections 153A and 505 of the IPC for reportedly promoting enmity, but the Court concluded that the post was calling out for equality and accountability, and importantly, this call for accountability was an act protected by Article 19(1) (a) of the Constitution. The Court held, in line with its previous jurisprudence, that the rights to critique failures of government action is part of democratic discourse, and criminal law should not be employed to silence legitimate expressions of concern.

The disjunction is enhanced by the NCRB’s silence. The NCRB does not treat any of these prosecutions as “Offences Against the State, even though they indicate how dissent is managed in reality. By treating repression as unquantifiable, the Bureau sustains the illusion of order. In the national ledger, India appears peaceful because the noise has been intentionally erased. The fewer number of offences reported, the more successful it is reported to be in maintaining peace—not by freedom, but by silence.

Reading the Decline

A 13% decrease in “Offences against the State,” reported by the NCRB, is not evidence of tranquillity; it is evidence of repression managed through a suppression of data. The numbers convey a political culture in which repression is managed through administrative, legal, and digital means. The selective reporting of cases in Delhi, the statistical black hole of J&K, and the removal of entries under ‘hate-crime’ all combine to form a national tableau of calm, entirely upon paper.

India’s democratic crisis is now one of a repressive silence. The state can operate without overt censorship; it can operate with hollowed out categories. Once dissent disappears from official stats, accountability collapses into nothingness. The NCRB’s spreadsheets do not report a reality; they curate one.

To truly understand Crime in India 2023 is to recognize that the state has mastered the art of anticivilization reflecting in the official statistics. Every absent number is an absent story; every decline is evidence of a faltering democracy. The fewer the number of offences reported, the less physical space for dissent there is. Being silenced, in India’s democracy today, is not evidence of peace—it is policy.

Related

Counting Crimes, Discounting Justice: The NCRB’s statistical blind spots

The Myth of Neutral Data: The Disappearance of Communal Violence in NCRB Data

Inexplicable delay in release of NCRB figures

Hate Surges in India, Reveal Disturbing Shifts in Patterns

The post Silence in the Statistics: What NCRB data won’t tell you about dissent appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Ritwik Ghatak films (Ghatak’s filmography) is a treasure trove of cinematic brilliance, transcending unexplored horizons, to reinvent contemporary Indian art. Each film is an intensive exploration of complex human emotions against the backdrop of socio-political realities, reflecting the turbulent times in which he lived.

He was an individual with a characteristic and independent working style, and one of the mascots of the parallel cinema. He also waged a rebellion against a national cinema whose conventions he wanted to make a major rupture from with each of his work.

Ghatak’s life ran parallel to some of the most traumatic periods in the 20th century India, which had a major bearing or influence on the course of his work. He was a product of the convulsions of the 1940s – World War II, the terrible “man-made famine” of 1944, the communal violence that came with independence, and especially the partition of Bengal.

Characteristics of Ghatak Films

 Ghatak’s approach to filmmaking had autobiographical overtones and often reflected his personal experiences. He would experiment with narrative structures, visual aesthetics, and sound design, creating films that were not only intellectually appealing but emotionally vibrant. His works manifested a commitment to truth, a deep empathy for his characters, and a keen sense of social justice.

Ghatak used the theme of alienation to manifest harsh truths of human experience under oppressive social and economic systems. His work expressed a form of cultural resistance against foreign domination, utilising myth and epic to examine cultural conflicts and the fragmentation of Indian identity in the post-colonial era.

Marxist ideology fundamentally shaped his work, his films cantered on the lives and struggles of ordinary people, both rural and urban, particularly the trauma of the Bengal partition. Ghatak’s Marxist perspective was expressed   in his critique of the bourgeoisie and his portrayal of characters who, despite facing adversity, manifested a resilient human spirit.

Ghatak believed that exploring the collective unconscious through Jung was essential for exploring the inner world and that it complemented his materialist, Marxist analysis of social and political reality.  His films, especially his “Partition Trilogy,” used Jungian archetypes, symbolism, and mythologies to explore and manifest the collective trauma and rootlessness of the Bengali refugees.

Ghatak did not see a contradiction between Marx and Jung, but rather as different ways of interpreting the human condition. He diagnosed that the collective unconscious affects unconscious behaviour, while class structure determines conscious behaviour.

What distinguishes his work was a deep engagement with the human psyche and an unapologetic exploration of societal issues.  His subjects repeatedly projected the uprooted and the dispossessed: parentless children, homeless families, disoriented refugees, and the petit bourgeoisie, economically broken by their exile. With touches of artistic genius, he invokes glimmer of optimism in even the darkest adversity

The ability to fuse stark reality with poetic symbolism symbolised a constant struggle, against an age and society which sold itself to the shackles of rampant modernization, and against a national cinema whose conventions he wanted to make a rupture with in each of his works. His films exude sense of emptiness, giving us a feel of what it is to be alienated from one’s roots.

Ritwik Ghatak‘s work is a concoction of socialist ideology with a deep critique of post-partition India, focusing on themes of trauma, class struggle, and the commodification of culture. His female characters, epitomise both specific Indian experiences and universal human struggles against systemic oppression.

Influences in Early Life

His father, Rai Bahadur Suresh Chandra Ghatak, a magistrate in Mymensingh and Rajshahi districts of east Bengal, instilled in him the love for Sanskrit classics, the Vedas and the Upanishads, which often formed an integral theme in his films. In 1942, he was brought back from Kanpur to Rajshahi.

Involved from an early age in politics and in theatre, Ghatak was a member of the Indian Communist Party and considered Brecht and Eisenstein his role models.

He promptly submerged himself into the 10,000 books in the public library of Rajshahi. He was driven by and cultivated a love for the anti-Fascist movement of World War II which included Marx and Lenin. He later read a great deal on archaeology, on the Buddha, he examined the works of Jung, especially his psychology of the collective unconscious. The films he made between 1956 and 1966 bear powerful hoof prints of his deep and obsessive study of these books.

Best Films

It is interesting to note that despite being referred as the most creative artist in the area of filmmaking that India has produced, he only had 8 full length feature films to his credit. This speaks volumes of the impact that his 8 films made in comparison to the tons of films made by his contemporaries.

Ajantrik (1958) is a cinematic essay on the acceptance of the machine into the mental make-up of someone embedded or rooted in an ancient and totally un-mechanical tradition.  Ajantrik it is a ramshackle taxi driven round the town of Ranchi on the Bengal-Bihar border by an eccentric peasant called Bimal. The taxi is a target of ridicule to most who see or drive in it, but for Bimal it has a human character which is alternately jealous, loving and uncaring. Thus it breaks down when Bimal is attracted to a stranded girl.  At the end of the film, with the taxi’s death caused by a betrayal, the machine seems more reliable than its human counterparts.

‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’, ‘Komal Gandhar’ and ‘Subarnarekha’ form the famous trilogy, portraying the complicacies of the refugee families from the erstwhile East Pakistan.

Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960) (or ‘The Cloud-Capped Star’), is the most captivating portrayal of a harsh life in Bengal following the dreaded partition highlighting the atrocities experienced by the refugees. He used music and sound with magical effects. This film is, a ruthless, stunningly bold critique of the family as an institution.

The central character is Nita, who virtually sacrifices her life to keep her family afloat even when she realises that the man she loves, and who professes to love her, is about to marry her more sensual sister. All this is witnessed by Shankar, her musician brother who eventually leaves home, returning to find Nita in a sanatorium. In the film’s last scene, with the singer brother visiting Nita in hospital, the warning vibrato of a Pahadi folk song can be heard before he enters, as we witness the beautiful countryside around the clinic. Nita, sobbing, says to him: ‘Brother, I want to live. I want to live.’ For Ghatak, sound and music often became synonymous, with such scenes forging a perfect synthesis.

Also known as A Soft Note on A Sharp Scale, Komal Gandhar (1961) is the second movie in the Ghatak’s trilogy after Meghe Dhaka Tara.

Along with revolving around the theme of the Partition, the movie also is a narrative of a star-crossed couple and the rift that split apart the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). ‘Komal Gandhar’ explored three interconnected themes, Anusua, the lead character’s dilemma, the infamous divided leadership of Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) and the tragic fallout after the partition of India. Unlike his other works, this one ends with the lead pair (Vrigu and Anusua) being reunited ultimately.

Subarnarekha (1965) is the last instalment of Ghatak’s Partition Trilogy. ‘Subarnarekha’ narrates the life story of three refugees in West Bengal: a Hindu man, his little sister, and a low-caste boy. Subarnarekha navigates the lives of a man, his child sister and a young boy whom the man provided shelter after the boy loses his mother in a melee. The film begins in a refugee camp of the then Calcutta, where a number of refugees have assembled in the hope of building their homes afresh. It explores how poverty and homelessness transform an individual’s attitude and his decisions throughout his life. Subarnarekha projects the plight of the three characters, the effects of hardships on shaping their thoughts, actions and the very paths they pursue in their lives. It is a tale of darkness and despair at its zenith. It conveyed that there was no political answer to Partition and that the resulting spiritual confusion could not easily be resolved.

The deep sense of waste is sharply expressed and the film itself Ghatak’s most brutal description yet of the social consequences of a political act. The female protagonist, Sita, symbolises a political uprootal. Ghatak restores the imagery of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland in this film. Ghatak’s ‘wasteland’ is Calcutta and Sita is the ‘waste’ within it. The wasteland of Calcutta forbids Sita the freedom to live up to the mythical name she was christened with. She cannot accept this reality when she discovers that her ‘client’ is none other than her brother Ishwar, who ‘mothered’ her. Sita’s suicide makes a statement of protest against the dehumanisation of values in a modern, plagued society. Nevertheless life resurrects for the hero of the tragedy, with his sister’s child looking forward to a better life on the banks of the Subarnarekha River.

Titas Ekti Nadir Naam (1973 was originally an epic novel based on the tragic lives of a fishing community in the valley of the River Titus, Bangladesh. The film resurrected Ghatak’s obsession with the female principle, navigating the life and ultimate dissolution of a fishing community on the banks of the river Titash in Bangladesh. The river starts drying up. Death and starvation endanger the lives of the fishing community. Urban vested interests exploit the situation. The fishermen are displaced, and Basanti alone stays back, remaining a live witness to and victim of the incident. It featured multiple characters in a conglomeration of interconnected stories. The film is a powerful parable about the destruction of a traditional Bengali fishing community striking an analogy with the displacement caused by the Partition of India. A  poetic film that portrays the life of a fishing community along the Titas River to navigate realms  of cultural decay, memory, and fate.

In his final film, Jukti Takko Aar Gappo:  (1977) Ghatak played an alcoholic, disillusioned intellectual who comes into contact with Naxalites. The film explores the political and social realities of Bengal in the early 1970s. The film lacked any specific political ideology, navigating the story of an intellectual’s crisis and the isolation he experienced from society. The film is a deeply personal political statement, playing a pioneering role to project the crystallizing of Naxalite movement just taking shape in Bengal.

(The author is freelance journalist; he acknowledges the sources for this article: Times entertainment, Shoma Chatterji in ‘’High on Films’, Shreya Biswas in Indiatoday.in, Philatelyhobby.blogspot and Shoma Chatterji in Hindustan Times)

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