The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of the holiest sites in Christianity, and is believed to be the resting place of Jesus Christ. Christ’s tomb underwent renovation recently, and during that time the inner sanctum was kept locked up, without giving the public access.

Who had the key to the giant gates of the church? For five centuries, a Muslim family in Jerusalem has been the caretakers of the church, with the ornate iron key passing from father to son over 80 generations.

It is this story that a new video by National Geographic uncovers as part of its exploration of world religions.

“This is an honour not only for our family,” says Adeeb Joudeh, the current caretaker in the video above. “This is an honour for all Muslims in the world.”

The responsibility was given to Joudeh’s ancestors because Church authorities wanted a neutral caretaker, as there was a mix of followers among Christians, including Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Franciscans, and more.

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More than 200 eminent citizens, including jurist Fali S Nariman, economist Jayati Ghosh and musician TM Krishna, have opposed the classification of the Finance Bill, 2017, as a Money Bill, calling it an “illegitimate” move that undermines the Constitution. In a letter to Vice President Hamid Ansari on Wednesday, they argued that the Upper House should not be bypassed by introducing important legislations as Money Bills, urging Ansari to “do everything else in his power” to stop this practice, reported PTI.

The signatories pointed out that the Finance Bill has 40 amendments to several Acts that have “far-reaching” effects on our democracy and Constitution. “Allow extensive and uninterrupted discussion into every aspect of the Bill in the Upper House,” read the letter addressed to the chairperson of Rajya Sabha.

Money Bills do not need the approval of the Upper House, where the Bharatiya Janata Party is currently in minority. “It has become a duty to speak out and raise concerns following the passage of a Bill that has, in one fell swoop, affected so many…rights that we normally take for granted,” said economist Jayati Ghosh.

Jagdeep Chhokar, co-founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms, echoed Ghosh’s views. “It is a clear case of misuse of the spirit of a Money Bill,” he told Hindustan Times. An online petition has also been launched to garner more support, according to The Times of India.

According to the Indian Constitution, a Money Bill is one that falls under six broad categories of financial legislations, including the imposition or regulation of taxes and the regulation of government borrowing. But the Finance Bill tabled by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and passed by the Lok Sabha on March 22 had made Aadhaar mandatory to file income tax returns from July 1 and to apply for a permanent account number. It also includes amendments to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, Companies Act, Employees Provident Fund Act, Information Technology Act as well as the Smuggling and Foreign Exchange Act.

Regarding the Aadhaar Bill – which had also been passed as a Money Bill in March 2016 – the letter read, “The Bill allows for unprecedented surveillance of every citizen and massive invasion of privacy. These can be used by governments at different levels to target political opponents and dissidents, as well as others…the protections and cyber-security provisions in the Bill are inadequate. Despite all these concerns, the Bill will not even be debated in the Rajya Sabha and has not been subject to adequate public scrutiny.”

Opposition parties such as the Trinamool Congress and Biju Janata Dal had alleged that the Centre was trying to bypass the Rajya Sabha by adding the changes as amendments to the Finance Bill instead of introducing separate Bills.

More than 5,000 women will march in Nagpur on Friday in protest against casteism and religious patriarchy. The “Chalo Nagpur” protest was planned to mark the 120th death anniversary of Savitribai Phule.

Nagpur was chosen because it houses the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters. It is also the “home of the movement by BR Ambedkar for the rights of women and the Dalit community,” said Vani Subramanian, film-maker and activist. “Savitribai Phule had worked in Nagpur. So, there is also a positive energy there that we want to harness.”

Organisers believe this will be the first time in India that women from such diverse groups and different parts of the country are coming together in such large numbers. “We are expecting at least 5,000-6,000 women to join us at the march,” Shabnam Hashmi, a human rights activist and an organiser of Chalo Nagpur, had said at a press conference on Monday. “And they are going to do this at a time when not just their rights are being attacked, but their existence in every sphere of life is being attacked in some way of the other.”

“Today as inequality, intolerance and the efforts to silence us are growing,” says the Facebook page created for the march,”We rise to assert our voice, our rights, and the protections guaranteed to us by the Constitution. Together, we reiterate that in a secular, democratic state, no one has the right to discriminate, humiliate, violate, oppress, or commit atrocities against any person or community based on their identity.

At the protest, documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan spoke about the history of the ABVP and offered a primer on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s student wing.

“The ABVP was born in the aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination,” Patwardhan began. “There was a ban on the RSS and to circumvent it, the organisation’s members formed other organisations, one of which was ABVP. And the work that we see today has been going on since then.”

The documentary filmmaker, who has made Ram Ke Naam, about the events surrounding the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and Jai Bhim Comrade, about the activist group Kabir Kala Manch, spoke about the harassment of Gurmehar Kaur after she protested against the group and also referred to an incident at FTII, Pune in 2013 when a group of ABVP members attacked students for not saying “Jai, Narendra Modi”.

He outlined the different between the ABVP of the past and the ABVP of today. “In those days, they would not carry out their activities openly,” Patwardhan said. “That was because people knew that the organisation was involved with Gandhi’s killing. But that has changed since they have come to power.”

This article was first published on Scroll.in

The Environment Ministry has recommended that the British Broadcasting Corporation’s South Asia correspondent be blacklisted for filming a documentary that highlights the government’s aggressive policy in Kaziranga National Park to protect rhinos from poachers. “They [BBC] have misrepresented facts and selectively over-dramatised interviews and old footage. They had a different agenda fuelled by certain foreign NGOs and local elements opposed to conservation. We are exploring all options including legal steps,” park director Satyendra Singh told The Indian Express.

Correspondent Justin Rowlatt’s documentary, Killing for Conservation, shows that rangers are allowed to shoot people. According to Rowlatt, this shoot-at-sight policy has led to the killing of 23 people by forest guards, while 17 rhinos have been poached at the park in the past one year.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority issued a notice on Tuesday against airing the programme without getting approval from the Ministries of Environment and External Affairs. The documentary was aired on February 11.

In the notice, the NTCA has threatened to cancel all future permits to BBC if the programme is not removed from various online portals with immediate effect. “The immunity provided to forest officials under Section 197 of the CrPC has been construed as a ‘Shoot to Kill’ policy,” read the notice. It added that Rowlatt had changed the storyline. The NTCA has also requested the Indian High Commission in United Kingdom to initiate action, reported Mail Today.

A BBC spokesperson defended the documentary, saying that it is expected to present a “full picture”. He told The Indian Express, “The issues raised in the film are part of an important international debate on the appropriate way to combat poaching. We did approach the relevant government authorities to make sure their position was fully reflected but they declined to take part.”

The Kaziranga National Park houses around 2,400 one-horned rhinos, or two-thirds of the world’s population of the rare animal. The park is a world heritage site and considered the most prestigious wildlife reserve in India.

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“Over four centuries, they felt that their lives were somehow being shaped by forces of destruction, religious persecution, economic hardship,” explains John Akomfrah, a British artist. His video Auto Da Fé covers a long tradition of migration undertaken by humans, starting with the little known 1654 fleeing of Sephardic Jews from Catholic Brazil to Barbados.

The title, which translates to Acts of Faith, won the £40,000 Artes Mundi prize in Cardiff, the UK’s biggest prize for international contemporary art.

The video carefully orchestrates narratives of eight migrations from Hombori, Mali and recent Isis-driven victimisation of the Yazidis in Iraq and Christians in Mosul. The result is a feeling that no matter which religion we talk of, it is inextricable from persecution and migration.

The artist, who himself migrated from Ghana as a child, tells the The Guardian that Auto Da Fé is a response to the “shameful” hostility towards migrants seeking safety on foreign shores.

He attacks the lack of sensitivity, intolerance and the culture of fear in Europe. “You really have to consider the option that people are migrating literally to survive. They come here to be able to live, because there isn’t an alternative anywhere else.”

The ocean is one of the common elements on the display – similar to Vertigo Sea (2015) below, which reminds us of the recent stories of stranded migrants from Burma, Syria and African countries like Yemen and Somalia. “The migrants have to navigate corridor of uncertainty…and death,” points out Akomfrah.

Vertigo Sea

Akomfrah’s works are known for highlighting underrepresented communities in the post-colonial world and their universal stories told through imagery and evocative and immersive soundtracks.

The Stuart Hall Project (2013) is one such film. It is centred around the famous cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who influenced black British constructions of identity in the second half of the 20th century. The documentary, through archived audio and television interviews, shows how Hall did what he did.

Trailer of 'The Stuart Hall Project'.

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The Election Commission of India on Monday granted the Centre permission to present the Annual Budget on February 1, but on two conditions – it should not announce schemes specific to any of the five poll-bound states in particular, and neither should the government mention any of its achievements in these states in the Budget speech.

The polling monitor further directed the governments of the five poll-bound states – Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and Manipur – to adhere to norms and not announce a full-fledged state Budget, The Indian Express reported.

The direction from the Election Commission came the same day the Supreme Court dismissed a petition demanding that the Union Budget be postponed and presented after the Assembly elections. “There is no illustration to support that presenting the Union Budget before the polls will influence voters,” the court ruled.

On January 6, the Supreme Court had rejected an appeal for an urgent hearing of a petition seeking to have the Budget Session postponed. Opposition parties had made the same appeal to the Election Commission, saying presenting the Budget before the elections would give the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party an unfair advantage.

Following Monday’s Supreme Court verdict, the Centre scheduled an all-party meeting for January 30 to discuss the Budget Session. While Parliament’s Budget Session begins on January 31, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is expected to present the Annual Budget on February 1. The Assembly Elections will be held from February 4 to March 8, and the votes will be counted on March 11.

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In October 2015, towards the end of the final presidential debate, Donald Trump leaned into his microphone and called his political rival Hilary Clinton, a “nasty woman”, as millions watched. One of the people watching was nineteen-year-old Nina Donavan and she quickly composed a response to it, an angry ode to being a “nasty woman”.

“The second [Trump] called Hillary [Clinton] a nasty woman, I said, ‘Oh man, I’ve got to write a nasty woman piece,’” Donovan told The Tenessan. “I reclaimed it.” Only 20,000 people saw it on YouTube, but it resonated with many. One member of the audience during her original performance was actor Ashley Judd, who is known as much for her acting prowess as for her political activism. Judd, who is from Franklin, Tennessee, the same city as Donovan, sought the teenage poet’s permission to perform it.

And on Saturday, January 21, Donovan got to see the “physical form” of her poem as Judd gave an impassioned performances (above) of Nasty Woman, a beat-poem-cum-political-rap at a march in Washington.

“I am a nasty woman,” begins the poem. “I’m as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheetos dust. A man whose words are a distract to America. Electoral college-sanctioned, hate-speech contaminating this national anthem. I’m not as nasty as Confederate flags being tattooed across my city.

Judd gets angrier as the performance goes on.”I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege,” she yells listing out all of Trump’s failings. “…your daughter being your favourite sex symbol, like your wet dreams infused with your own genes. Yeah, I’m a nasty woman – a loud, vulgar, proud woman.”

The video below is of Donavan’s original performance.

To mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide, several academicians and activists participated in a seminar on “caste-based atrocities in higher educational institutions” organised by the University of Hyderabad’s student union.

“I am going to say that it was an institutional murder,” begins Magsaysay award winner Bezwada Wilson in the video above. “And 70 years after Independence, the unfortunate thing is that the University is unable to protect the lives of Dalit children who are marginalised. It is the systematic plan of people who are ruling in this country. There is a very clear understanding among them, they are afraid of the Dalits and the marginalised who are coming to the universities.”

Wilson’s anger becomes palpable as the talk progresses. “We should not think that it has started now,” he tells the gathered crowd of students. “If it has started today then it should not be a fact that 1.6 lakh Dalit women are cleaning the human excreta in the country even now. The prime minister will talk about the GDP, MDP, ADP, whatever it may be. But even three years after his rule, people are still carrying human excreta.”

The activist also harshly criticised the government’s handling of the investigation following the suicide which evoked massive protests at Hyderabad University. “If they really believed in equality, then the government would have launched a proper investigation as to what led to the death of Rohith Vemula,” Wilson said. “Contrary to that, they completed twisted the case. They made it about which caste he belongs to, which is a complete drama.”

Wilson also took aim at the broken promises made by the government. “Many people came and promised a lot of things last year but nothing has happened so far. Rohith’s brother, who completed MSc in Geology is now running an auto-rickshaw in his town. His mother Radhika is afraid to send him to any university. The vice-chancellor must feel ashamed to have not protected the rights of Rohith’s family,” he said.

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