SANTA CRUZ, CA (TIP): An Indian- origin Billionaire’s petition has been rejected he US Supreme Court for seeking to keep surfers and other beachgoers from crossing his land to get to a popular northern California beach.
Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, bought the 53-acre (21.4 hectare) property in the 2008 for $32.5 million dollars.
Since then he has waged an unrelenting legal battle with regulators intent on enforcing state law that guarantees public access to California’s 1,200-mile (2,000) kilometer Pacific coastline.
His property adjoins Martin’s Beach at Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco and long a haven for surfers and strollers.
Rebuffed several times by lower courts, Khosla finally turned to the Supreme Court, but on Monday, October 1, it declined to hear the case, closing off what is normally an avenue of last resort.
It was a victory for surfing associations and others who feared that a Supreme Court ruling in the case might favor rich landowners. Some landowners have gone so far as to put up gates, security guards and no trespassing signs to keep people from crossing their properties.
“The courts at every level, including now the US Supreme Court, has upheld the Coastal Act’s protection of the public’s rights to access the California coast,” said Lisa Haage, chief of enforcement of the California Coastal Commission.
“This case reaffirms that you cannot make a unilateral decision to shut down a beach that has provided generations of families with memories,” she said.
Khosla’s lawyers insist their case was not about public access to the coastline but protection of property rights.
“No owner of private business should be forced to obtain a permit from the government before deciding who it wants to invite onto its property,” Dori Yolb Kilmer, Khosla’s attorney said.
CAMBRIDGE, MA (TIP):Indian American Gita Gopinath has been named by The International Monetary Fund as its Economic Counselor and Director of Research Department.
“Gita is one of the world’s outstanding economists, with impeccable academic credentials, a proven track record of intellectual leadership, and extensive international experience,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a statement on Monday, October 1. “All this makes her exceptionally well-placed to lead our Research Department at this important juncture. I am delighted to name such a talented figure as our Chief Economist.”
Gopinath, the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Economics at Harvard University, will succeed the retiring Maurice Obstfeld.
A specialist in international macroeconomics and finance, she becomes the second Indian American to hold the position. Raghuram Rajan, a former Chief Economic Adviser to India’s Finance Ministry and a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School, served as the IMF Economic Counselor and Director of Research from 2003 to 2006.
Gopinath, who grew up in Mysore, Karnataka, currently also serves as an adviser to the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Kerala.
She did her undergraduate degree in economics from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi, and a master’s from the Delhi School of Economics. She came to the United States to enroll for a master’s at the University of Washington. In 2001, she earned her PhD in economics from Princeton University in the fields of international macroeconomics and trade. Her advisers included former Fed chief Ben Bernanke, Harvard economist Ken Rogoff, and Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, now a professor at UC Berkeley.
After her PhD, Gopinath worked as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago for four years before joining Harvard in 2005 in the same position. Five years later, she would become a tenured professor. Currently, she is one of the only three women to have tenure at the economics department at Harvard. She is also the first India-born woman to get tenure at the department.
Gopinath, now a US citizen, is married to Iqbal Singh Dhaliwal, who heads the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They have a 14-year-old son, Rohil.
NEW YORK(TIP): Indian- origin PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, who steps down as its chief executive officer, October 1, after 12 years at the helm of the global beverage giant, said a “lot of fuel” is still left in her “tank” and she looks forward to doing something different with her life.
Chennai-born Ms Nooyi was named Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PepsiCo in 2006.
In her remarks during PepsiCo’s Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call, Ms Nooyi said, “You know 12 years is a long time as a CEO, and even though I have a lot of fuel still left in my tank, I wanted to do something different with my life. Spend more time with my family and give the next generation in PepsiCo a chance to lead this great company.”
Ms Nooyi, working with the global company since the last 24 years, said she was blessed to have had the opportunity to lead PepsiCo and “work with such incredible people including our outstanding board, executives and other associates, our customers and other partners, our shareholders and all our other stakeholders.”
Ms Nooyi, who will hand over the reins of the company to veteran Ramon Laguarta at a time when the beverage maker navigates a shrinking global soda market, will remain chairman of the board until early 2019 to ensure a smooth transition.
PepsiCo’s board of directors in August announced that they unanimously elected Mr Laguarta, 54, to succeed Indra Nooyi, 62, as CEO. Mr Laguarta was also elected to the company’s Board of Directors, effective from today.
One of the most powerful and influential business leaders in the world, Ms Nooyi was regularly featured on power lists compiled by Forbes and Fortune magazines. She was also among the few female executives to lead global corporate giants. Just under five per cent of Fortune 500 companies have a female CEO at present.
Ms Nooyi, a mother of two daughters, has been very vocal about the challenges women faced in trying to find a balance in managing their home and work. She once said at an Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado in 2014 that women “cannot have it all.”
In a parting letter she wrote before stepping down as CEO, Ms Nooyi shared some reflections on what she has learnt during her tenure and the lessons that have guided her throughout my career.
“Think hard about time,” she said. “We have so little of it on this earth. Make the most of your days and make space for the loved ones who matter most. Take it from me. I’ve been blessed with an amazing career, but if I’m being honest, there have been moments I wish I’d spent more time with my children and family. So, I encourage you: be mindful of your choices on the road ahead,” she said.
Ms Nooyi further wrote that serving as PepsiCo’s CEO has been the honor of a lifetime.
“Now it’s on to the next adventure-for us all. Thinking about my life beyond PepsiCo, I’m reminded of the words of the great Sufi mystic Rumi: Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.”
Ms Nooyi said throughout her tenure, PepsiCo has strived to achieve a difficult balance between attending to short term pressures while managing for the long-term.
She noted that PepsiCo has made positive contributions to communities around the globe in which it operates through its support of access to clean drinking water, human rights, nutrition, agricultural programs and many more initiatives.
She said in the midst of managing the business for the long-term, PepsiCo also delivered a strong and consistent financial performance specifically during the period between 2006 and 2017.
Net revenue grew more than 80 per cent and the company added a new billion-dollar brand almost every other year. “We return $79 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Our market capitalization increased by $68 billion. Dividends per share nearly tripled from $1.16 to $3.17, and we generated total shareholder return of 162 per cent,” she said.
The quarterly earnings report on Ms Nooyi’s final day on the job beat analyst estimates: revenue rose 1.5 per cent to $16.5 billion while earnings totaled $1.59 a share.
Ms Nooyi described her successor Mr Laguarta as a terrific executive with a long and proven track record of growing businesses. She said he has a “deep understanding of the changing preferences of consumers and other critical trends unfolding around the world, and he has demonstrated that he knows how to navigate them successfully.”
She also expressed confidence Mr Laguarta will lead PepsiCo to “new and greater heights in the years to come.”
SINGAPORE(TIP): Indian-origin man, who tried to extort half-a-million Singapore dollars from Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore, was charged in court. Nagarajan Balajee faces a jail term of between two and five years and caning under a charge of “attempting to commit extortion,” as reported by local media.
According to court documents, 35-year-old Balajee had allegedly threatened to publish a defamatory libel concerning Aalishaan Zaidi, 47, the global head of digital banking at Standard Chartered Bank, unless he paid SGD 500,000.
Mr. Zaidi was one of a few bank employees who received the threatening e-mails sent anonymously. He made the police report on the bank’s behalf.
Balajee was arrested on September 30 along Kovan Road in suburban Singapore. Several laptops and mobile phones were seized from him in connection with the case, the police said.
The bank had made a police report about how it had been threatened with a leakage of confidential information.
Balajee is believed to have used multiple fictitious e-mail accounts to deliver the threats to the bank anonymously, according to media reports.
Preliminary investigations by the police also found that he might have used overseas registered mobile lines and virtual private network (VPN) services to mask his identity, to evade detection. VPNs allow unauthorized content from overseas to be accessed by users.
Balajee is currently out on SGD 20,000 bail and will be back in court on October 30.
Democracy has taken a beating under President Trump. Will the midterms make a difference?
“Restoring democracy will require more from each of us than the casting of a single election ballot. It will demand a sustained commitment to renew American institutions, reinvigorate common citizenship, and expand national prosperity. The road to autocracy is long—which means that we still have time to halt and turn back. It also means that the longer we wait, the farther we must travel to return home.”
Twenty-one months into the Trump presidency, how far has the country rolled down the road to autocracy? It’s been such a distracting drive—so many crazy moments! —who can keep an eye on the odometer?
Yet measuring the distance traveled is vital. As Abraham Lincoln superbly said in his “house divided” speech: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.”
Let’s start with the good news: Against the Trump presidency, federal law enforcement has held firm. As of this writing, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry is proceeding despite the president’s fulminations. The Department of Justice is ignoring the president’s Twitter demands to prosecute his opponents. As far as we know, the IRS and other federal agencies are not harassing Trump critics. In July, a police department in Ohio retaliated against a Trump adversary, the porn actress known as Stormy Daniels, by arresting her on now-dismissed charges that she touched undercover officers while performing at a strip club. But evidence indicates that this was entirely a local initiative.
Trump sometimes wins in court, as he did on his Muslim ban. He loses more often, as he did on separating immigrant children from their parents at the southern border. Politically charged cases are advancing through the legal system in traditionally recognizable ways.
More generally, Trump has been noticeably constrained by his unpopularity. He inherited a strong and growing economy. Casualties from America’s military actions have remained low. A more normal president, facing the same facts, might expect approval ratings like those of Bill Clinton during his second term: mid-50s or higher. Instead, Trump scrapes by in the low 40s.
In June, Gallup asked Americans to assess 13 aspects of Trump’s personality. Only 43 percent of respondents thought he cared about people like them. Only 37 percent found him honest and trustworthy. Only 35 percent said they admired him. Clearly, his erratic and offensive behavior, his overt racial hostility, and his maltreatment of women have taken a toll.
The bulk of this magazine issue is given over to questions about liberal democracy’s long-term viability. Around the world, democracy looks more fragile than it has since the Cold War. But if it survives for now in America, future historians may well conclude that it was saved by the president’s Twitter compulsion. Had he preserved a dignified silence for a few consecutive months, he might have bled less support and inflicted more damage on U.S. institutions. Then again, a Donald Trump with impulse control would not be Donald Trump.
Trump has built the worst-functioning White House in living memory, and its self-inflicted errors have slowed him down almost as much as his personality has. He traveled to Saudi Arabia, but never visited forward-deployed U.S. troops in the region. Potentially positive moments, like North Korea’s release of three detainees on May 10, 2018, are regularly squashed by stupidities, like the leak that day of a White House aide’s denigration of John McCain (“It doesn’t matter; he’s dying anyway”).
Yet even as Trump ties his own shoelaces together and lurches nose-first into the Rose Garden dirt, he has scored a dismaying sequence of successes in his war on U.S. institutions. In this, Trump is not acting alone. He is enabled by his party in Congress and its many supporters throughout the country. Republican leaders and donors have built a coping mechanism for the age of Trump, a mantra: “Ignore the weird stuff, focus on the policy.” But the policy is increasingly driven by the weird stuff: tariffs, trade wars, quarrels with allies, suspicions of secret deals with the Russians. The weird stuff is the policy—and it is transforming the president’s party in ways not easily or soon corrected. Maybe you don’t care about the president’s party. You should, because a liberal democracy cannot endure if only one of its two major parties remains committed to democratic values.
Here are the three areas of most imminent concern:
ETHICS
President Trump continues to defy long-standing ethical expectations of the American president. He has never released his tax returns, and he no longer even bothers to offer specious reasons, like a supposed audit. His aides shrug off the matter as something decided back in 2016.
Meanwhile, the president continues to collect payments from people with a vested interest in decisions made by his administration, from foreign governments looking to influence U.S. policy, and even from his own party. Those who seek the president’s attention know to patronize his hotels and golf courses. Authoritarian China has fast-tracked trademark protections for his family’s businesses. Trump’s disdain for ethical niceties has infected his Cabinet and his senior staff. It’s no longer much of a story when his commerce secretary is revealed to have filed false financial disclosures or when his top communications aide turns out to have worked to intimidate alleged sexual-harassment victims at Fox News. Or when his son-in-law is shown to have sought financing for business ventures from investors in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates at the same time that he was participating in the administration’s discussion about which of those countries to back in a military confrontation. If one gauge of authoritarianism is the merger of state power with familial economic interests, the needle is approaching the red zone.
SUBORDINATION OF STATE TO LEADER
At a July 20, 2018, ceremony, CEOs gathered in the White House to offer personal job-creation pledges to the president. Watch the video if you have not already; the scene recalls a rajah accepting accolades from his submissive feudatories.
Perhaps the most defining characteristic of modern autocrats such as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán, and Vladimir Putin is the way they seek to subsume the normal operations of government into their cult of personality. In a democracy, the chief executive is understood to be a public employee. In an autocracy, he presents himself as a public benefactor, even as he uses public power for personal ends.
Apparently to punish the Washington Post owner and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for his paper’s reporting, Trump has pressed the Postal Service to raise Amazon’s rates—thus warning other business leaders to be careful what they say. He has conscripted NFL team owners into his war against black football players who kneel during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality.
Trump’s tariffs personalize power too. They enable him to privilege some industries and hurt others. Some losers—farmers, say—may be compensated; others, such as aerospace manufacturers, will be disregarded. All economic sectors must absorb the new truth that executive action can send their profits soaring (in July, not long after Trump imposed new tariffs on steel and aluminum, America’s largest steelmaker reported its highest second-quarter profits ever) or tumbling (shares of Molson Coors, which relies on cheap aluminum to make its beer cans, dropped 14 percent this spring after Trump’s tariffs were announced).
When Trump refers to “my” generals or “my” intelligence agencies, he is teaching his supporters to rethink how the presidency should function. We are a long way from Ronald Reagan’s remark that he and his wife were but “the latest tenants in the People’s House.”
ALTERNATIVE FACTS
Trump is hardly the first president to lie, even about grave matters. Yet none of his predecessors did anything quite like what he did in July: Travel to a U.S. Steel facility and brag that, thanks to his leadership, the company would open seven wholly new facilities. In reality, the company was reopening two blast furnaces at a single facility. You’d think his audience would know better, but the assembled employees cheered anyway.
Trump may not be much of a manager or developer, but he is a great storyteller. He has substantially shaped his supporters’ worldview, while successfully isolating them from damaging news. The share of Republicans with a positive opinion of the FBI tumbled from 65 percent in early 2017 to 49 percent this past July. In the past three years, Vladimir Putin’s approval rating among Republicans has almost tripled, to 32 percent.
To protect the president—and themselves—from the truth about Russia’s intervention in his election, Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee have concocted (and the conservative media have disseminated) an elaborate fantasy about an FBI plot against Trump. The party’s senior leaders know that the fantasy is untrue. That’s why they squelch attempts to act on the fantasy by opening a special-counsel investigation into the bureau. But they cheerfully allow their supporters to believe the fantasy—or to believe it just enough, anyway, to get revved up for the midterm elections.
Many Americans want to believe that Democratic victories in November will reverse the country’s course. They should be wary of investing too much hope in that prospect. Should Democrats recover some measure of power in Congress, their gains could perversely accelerate current trends. As Republicans lose power in Washington, Trump will gain power within his party.
Today, Republicans queasy about Trump can look to House Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as alternative sources of power or patronage in Washington. But if the party loses hold of Congress, congressional Republicans’ clout will dwindle. Power will be divided in Washington between Trump and the Democrats. If legislative success becomes a vanishing possibility, the White House may begin testing the limits of its authority more aggressively.
Trump will face more hearings, more investigations, and generally more trouble than he faces today. Partisan loyalties will be engaged as Republicans rally around their embattled leader. The conservative pundit M. Stanton Evans quipped, “I didn’t like Nixon until Watergate.” A joke then describes reality today. Among Trump supporters, “No collusion!” has already evolved into “Collusion is not a crime,” with “Collusion is patriotic” perhaps soon to follow. Trump supporters have no exit ramp. Party affiliation has hardened since the 1970s into a central aspect—in many ways the central aspect—of personal identity. If Trump is exposed and repudiated, his supporters will be discredited alongside him. If he is to survive, they must protect him.
In an ultra polarized post-November environment, the Republican Party may radicalize further as it shrivels, ceasing to compete for votes and looking to survive instead by further changing the voting system. Donald Trump is president for many reasons, but one is the astonishing drop in African American voter participation from 2012 to 2016. It’s not surprising that Hillary Clinton inspired lower black voter turnout than Barack Obama did in 2012. It is surprising that she inspired lower black turnout than John Kerry did in 2004. But in the intervening years, the rules were changed in ways that made voting much harder for non-Republican constituencies, particularly black people—and the rules continue to be changed in that direction.
You may know the story of American democracy as a series of suffrage extensions, culminating in the reforms of the 1960s and ’70s. But voting rights have just as often been rolled back at the state and local levels—the literacy tests and poll taxes of the Jim Crow South are the best-known examples. Since 2010, that history of state-pioneered ballot restrictions has repeated itself, and if Republican power holders feel themselves especially beset after 2018, the rollbacks may continue.
We cannot blame democracy’s troubles in the United States or overseas on any one charismatic demagogue. Many of today’s authoritarians are notably uncharismatic. They flourish because they command political or ethnic blocs that, more and more, prevail only as pluralities, not majorities. So it is with Trump.
Free societies depend on a broad agreement to respect the rules of the game. If a decisive minority rejects those rules, then that country is headed toward a convulsion. In 2016, Trump supporters openly brandished firearms near polling places. Since then, they’ve learned to rationalize clandestine election assistance from a hostile foreign government. The president pardoned former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted of contempt of court for violating civil rights in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Dinesh D’Souza, convicted of violating election-finance laws—sending an unmistakable message of support for attacks on the legal order. Where President Trump has led, millions of people who regard themselves as loyal Americans, believers in the Constitution, have ominously followed.
Once violated, democratic norms are not easy to restore, as Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has observed. In the wake of Silvio Berlusconi’s corrupt tenure as prime minister, Italy is now governed by a strange coalition of extremist parties. Nominally of the right and the left, they share a dislike of the European Union, affinity for Putin’s Russia, and distrust of vaccines. Fate struck down the demagogic Louisiana governor Huey Long, but his family bestrode the state’s politics for decades after his death. Argentina, emerging from neo-Peronism, has stumbled on its way back to legality.
Weakened institutions will be challenged from multiple directions: We are already hearing liberals speculating about 1930s-style court packing as a response to Trump’s cramming of the judiciary. The distrust of free speech on campus is being carried by recent graduates into their jobs and communities. We see in other countries, especially the United Kingdom, the rise of an activist left nearly as paranoid and anti-Semitic, as disdainful of liberal freedoms and democratic institutions, as the so-called alt-right in the U.S.
It could happen here. Restoring democracy will require more from each of us than the casting of a single election ballot. It will demand a sustained commitment to renew American institutions, reinvigorate common citizenship, and expand national prosperity. The road to autocracy is long—which means that we still have time to halt and turn back. It also means that the longer we wait, the farther we must travel to return home.
(The author is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush)
The crises in Indian democracy and in global politics send one immediately to consult Gandhi.
Truth, Satya, was the central axis of the Gandhian system of thought and practice. For Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, everything turned on Truth — satyagraha, swaraj, ahimsa, ashram, brahmacharya, yajna, charkha, khadi, and finally, moksha itself. In a fine introduction to a new critical edition of the Mahatma’s An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Tridip Suhrud, closest to Gandhi among all contemporary scholars, lays out the intricate web of ideas arranged around the axial principle of Truth: “Truth is not merely that which we are expected to speak and follow. It is that which alone is, it is that of which all things are made, it is that which subsists by its own power, which alone is eternal.”
In a recent interview, Mr. Suhrud points out that Indians today continue to have “the need that he should always be available to us. When there is a crisis in our collective life, we expect Gandhi to provide an answer.” Both of Mr. Suhrud’s insights — that Truth is the key to Gandhi’s philosophy, and that we rely on Gandhi even decades after his death and long after his supposed lapse into political irrelevance — are essentially correct. I started making a note of the crises in Indian democracy and in global politics that sent one immediately to consult Gandhi.
“For Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, everything turned on Truth — satyagraha, swaraj, ahimsa, ashram, brahmacharya, yajna, charkha, khadi, and finally, moksha itself”.
Truth alone triumphs?
The ongoing controversy in the United States about the proposed appointment of Federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court as the nominee of the Republican Party, even as he stands accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford, in 1982, when they were both teenagers, hinges exactly on the truth of her testimony versus his defense. Only one can be true. As became clear in the Senate hearings on September 27, the palpable veracity of Professor Ford’s account over Judge Kavanaugh’s denial would likely still not change the Republican Party’s nomination of him (the outcome of the proceedings, including an FBI investigation, is pending as this article goes to press).
Effectively, the U.S. appears on the verge of replacing Truth with perjury as an acceptable value, even in the apex court of the criminal-justice system, shaking the very bedrock of American constitutionalism. When Truth is rendered negotiable and dispensable, the balance of justice — in this case, between genders and between political parties — is disastrously upset. The scales tip wildly without any kind of mechanism to orient men and women or Democrats and Republicans back into an equitable relationship with one another within a shared political context that ought to be egalitarian and fair.
Like other democratic institutions in the Donald Trump presidency, the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised on the verge of destruction. Arguably Americans, too, could have recourse to Gandhi, though perhaps not in the way that we in India might. Mr. Suhrud describes how Gandhi strained to hear the “small, still voice” within himself, the voice belonging to one he called “antaryami”, “atma” or “God” — an inner prompt, the self as a guide and a compass – so that he could keep moving ever closer to Truth.
It was this voice that he followed, sometimes to the bafflement of others who could not hear it. This was the voice that made him undertake life-threatening fasts his health wouldn’t permit; withdraw from active politics at the most crucial junctures of India’s anti-colonial struggle; leave factual errors and narrative inconsistencies in texts he wrote after readers had pointed out obvious mistakes; and, most difficult to understand, embark on life-long ordeals of a sexual nature, involving not just his own celibacy and asceticism, but also that of his wife Kasturba, his fellow Ashramites, and his sons and their families.
Even close and loyal associates like Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel were often confounded by Gandhi’s actions and decisions; more skeptical and antagonistic peers like M.A. Jinnah and B.R. Ambedkar couldn’t make sense of his motivations at all. In his monumental new history, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 1914-1948, Ramachandra Guha delves deep into these knotty episodes, where the voice of the Mahatma’s interior conscience and the compulsions of nationalist politics pull in opposite directions, and no power on earth is able to steer Gandhi away from his self-charted path towards Truth.
Mr. Guha calls Gandhi’s move to have his young grand-niece Manu sleep next to him, as he travelled through ravaged Hindu and Muslim settlements in Bihar and Bengal during the height of communal violence on the eve of Partition, “the strangest experiment”. No matter what the reactions of his colleagues, for Gandhi it was not strange, precisely because it was one of his ‘experiments with truth’ (in Gujarati, satya na prayogo).
Home and the world
Of late, many musicians in south India have faced vicious attacks from rightwing Hindutva groups for singing hymns and psalms, thereby allegedly hijacking “Hindu” Carnatic music for “Christian” evangelical aims. This despite the fact that the violin, central to the Carnatic system in modern times, is a European gift to Indian music, and both Christian and Muslim religious lyrics and poetry have been a constitutive part of the Carnatic repertoire throughout the 20th century, if not before.
Gandhi made great use of the Bible in his prayers, teachings, writings and Ashram liturgies. He was often accused of being a crypto-Christian. However, he flatly refused to give preference to the Vedas over the Bible. Mr. Suhrud quotes from Vol. 31 of the Collected Works: “He is no Sanatani Hindu who is narrow, bigoted and considers evil to be good if it has the sanction of antiquity and is to be found supported in any Sanskrit book.”
Outside India but not far from it, Indologist David Shulman has been reporting consistently on the brutal violence of hardline Zionist settlers as well as the Israeli army against unarmed Arab shepherds and villagers in the Jordan Valley. Mr. Guha delves into Gandhi’s difficult correspondence with philosopher Martin Buber and the intellectual J.L. Magnes in 1938-1939, just before the Kristallnacht. Gandhi advised European Jews to relocate to Palestine and make it their homeland only with the cooperation and goodwill of native Arabs, and not otherwise. This appalled even sympathetic Jews like Buber and Magnes, who had admired and supported Gandhi at the time of the Salt March in 1930, before the Nazi takeover of Germany.
How could Gandhi oppose the Zionist project, with Jews being sent to death camps in Hitler’s murderous regime? But now the tables are turned, and a rightwing Israeli state under Benjamin Netanyahu seems hell-bent on exterminating the Palestinians. Gandhi’s counter-intuitive Truth informs the civil disobedience, passive resistance and non-violent protest of both Arab and Jewish activists who oppose the continuing occupation and takeover of dwindling and defenseless Palestinian territories by bellicose Israeli forces.
The multilingual translator, editor and interpreter Suhrud (who works in all three of Gandhi’s languages, Gujarati, English and Hindustani, and has earlier produced a critical edition of Hind Swaraj), and the historian and biographer Guha (who has already written two other massive books in the past decade, about Gandhi in the first phase of his life, and about postcolonial India, “after Gandhi”), have together provided ample materials this year — leading up to the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth in October 1869, and the 70th anniversary of his assassination in January 1948 — that we can continue to consult Gandhi on all manner of issues that may trouble our individual or collective conscience. It might have been “small” and “still” in his own perception, but even today, Gandhi’s is the voice that is great within us.
(The author is a Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi).
After more than a year of intense negotiation, the U.S., Canada and Mexico managed to arrive at a revised trade agreement on Sunday to replace the quarter-century-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Even though the deal does not do anything new to promote the cause of free trade among the North American nations, it achieves the objective of averting any significant damage to the international trade system. Sadly, this is the best anyone could possibly hope for in the midst of the global trade war that began this year. When it comes to the finer details, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) makes several changes to NAFTA, which U.S. President Donald Trump had promised to scrap. The most prominent changes are the tweaks to production quotas applied to Canada’s dairy industry, which were intended to help protect it by restricting supply. Under the new deal, Canada will have to allow American dairy producers to compete against locals, a move that will favor Canadian consumers. The U.S. agreed to retain Chapter 19 and Chapter 20 dispute-settlement mechanisms as a compromise. This will help Canada and Mexico deal with protectionist duties imposed by the U.S., often under the influence of domestic business lobbies, against their exports.
Not all the amendments, however, are congenial to the prospects of free trade. Many are simply hard compromises that Canada and Mexico may have made just to defuse trade tensions with the U.S. And not unlike other free trade deals entered into by governments, the present one attempts to micromanage trade in a way that benefits specific interest groups at the cost of the overall economy. The new labor regulations and rules of origin will add to the cost of production of goods such as cars, thus making them uncompetitive in the global market. The USMCA mandates a minimum wage that is above the market wage on labor employed in Mexico, yet another move that will make North America a tough place to do business. Foreign investors may now have fewer protections from unfriendly local laws as the accord does away with resolutions through multilateral dispute panels for certain sectors. But it is its potential to end up as a double-edged sword for the U.S.’s major trading partners that Indian policymakers may find instructive. Announcing the USMCA, Mr. Trump signaled he would now extend his ‘all or nothing’ approach to resetting trade ties with the European Union, China, Japan and India. Terming India “the tariff king”, he said it had sought to start negotiations immediately, a move he reckoned as a bow to the power of tariffs that a protectionist U.S. could wield. In dealing with an emboldened Trump administration, India’s trade negotiators will now have their task cut out if they want to protect exporters’ access to one of the country’s largest markets for its services and merchandise.
FORTWORTH, TX(TIP): Fort Worth police arrested two shooting suspects after they ran and attempted to hide inside Hulen Mall.
The shooting happened behind a shopping center at Hulen Street and South Drive, but the two were captured inside of the mall midday Thursday, October 4, after witnesses saw them and called police.
The two men were found in the bathroom of a clothing store near the food court and were trying to disguise themselves by changing clothes, police said. The men didn’t resist and were arrested. One of them had a handgun.
Police say the person the suspects shot at died at the hospital. Witnesses saw him stumble and collapse near the intersection of Hulen and South.
People who tried to help him at the scene saw at least one gunshot wound on his neck.
“He had been shot in the neck and bleeding from his neck so bad it covered his whole abdomen,” said witness Chris Lawson. “Plain white t-shirt covered in blood, everybody ran over to help him.”
Police are investigating witness reports that the victim may have been shot twice.
Crime scene investigators could be seen Thursday afternoon looking over a car not far from where the victim was found. Detectives are examining how the car is connected to the shooting.
The names of the two people arrested have not been released.
FLORENCE, SC(TIP): A man shot seven police officers in South Carolina, killing one, in a standoff so dangerous that the police had to use a bullet-proof vehicle to rescue the wounded, authorities said.
The man also held children hostage for two hours in his Florence home on Wednesday afternoon, but they were released safely as the suspect was taken into custody, Florence County Sheriff Maj. Mike Nunn said.
The South Carolina man who is accused of shooting seven law enforcement officers, killing one of them, has been identified as 74-year-old Fred Hopkins, who was being held by authorities Thursday, October 4 evening but not charged.
Hopkins, who lived at the site of the shootings, was in custody and being hospitalized for a head injury, according to TV station WMBF. Florence County Deputy Chief Glenn Kirby said law enforcement officers have not spoken with Hopkins because of “multiple health issues,” the TV station reported.
According to South Carolina Judicial Department records, Hopkins is a lawyer who was disbarred, the Greenville News reported. He wrongfully collected $18,000 in “attorney’s fees” and was disbarred in 1984.
Court records show in 2014, Hopkins was charged with public disorderly conduct, according to the Associated Press. Records also show that he had criminal charges brought against him in 2015 for not paying a court-ordered fine. A jury found him guilty of not paying a fine in 2017, records also show. Divorce records show Fred Hopkins served in the Vietnam War. He was injured in his time overseas and received military disability, according to court filings.
Hopkins described himself on Facebook as “a competitive marksman,” reported the Associated Press, and he shared photos of himself with a M-14 rifle at a firing range “set up exactly like one I used in Vietnam in 69-70.”
Florence Police Officer Terrence Carraway was among the seven law enforcement officers shot. Carraway died from his injuries. He was a retired technical sergeant with the 315th Airlift Wing based in North Charleston.
NEW DELHI (TIP): Facing inquiry over charges of nepotism and conflict of interest, ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO Chanda Kochhar today, October 4, quit the bank, six months before her current tenure was to end.
Kochhar, 57, has also resigned from all subsidiaries of the bank, including ICICI Securities where she had sought reappointment as the chairperson.
The board elevated Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sandeep Bakhshi as the new MD and CEO for five years.
The bank said the external inquiry instituted by the board against Kochhar in May would continue and the benefits to her would be subject to its outcome.
Following the board’s decision to institute an inquiry by retired Supreme Court Judge BN Srikrishna, Kochhar had gone on leave in May. There are allegations of involvement of Kochhar and her family members in a loan provided to Videocon group on a quid pro quo basis. Kochhar’s current five-year tenure as CEO was to end on March 31, 2019. — PTI
NEW DELHI(TIP): Russian President Vladimir Putin landed in Delhi on Thursday, October 4, for the annual India-Russia summit which could see the signing of military deals totaling close to $10 billion; a 24-hour visit that could have lasting implications for the India-U.S. relationship as well.
On Friday, India and Russia are expected to conclude three major military deals: for five S-400 missile systems estimated to cost about ₹39,000 crore (more than $5 billion), four stealth frigates and a deal for Ak-103 assault rifles to be manufactured in India. The U.S. has warned that the deals could attract sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) law that restricts defense purchases from Russia, Iran and North Korea.
India has been in negotiations with the U.S. administration for a “sanctions waiver”, but American officials have given no clear signal they will provide one. Last month, President Donald Trump’s administration-imposed sanctions on China as it started taking delivery of Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 systems.
The breadth of agreements, including the S-400 deal, during Mr. Putin’s visit is seen as a reiteration of India’s desire for “strategic autonomy” that was highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a speech this year. It comes a month after the inaugural 2+2 dialogue with the U.S., in which India signed the third foundational agreement — Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) — in addition to announcing several measures to operationalize the Major Defense Partner status, indicative of the difficult balance India hopes to maintain amid deepening U.S.-Russia tensions.
On Wednesday Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa said that once the Defence Ministry signs the contract, deliveries of the S-400 systems would begin in 24 months. In October 2016, the two countries concluded Inter-Governmental Agreements (IGA) for S-400 systems and four stealth frigates after which the negotiations began to conclude a commercial contract.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Modi will meet on Friday for a “working breakfast” followed by delegation-level talks. They are expected to witness the signing of at least 23 agreements, an official said, including Memoranda of Understanding for investment deals, a major agreement on space cooperation where Russia will assist India with its ‘Gaganyaan’ program to put a human in space, an MoU for Road Transport and the Road Industry, as well as one for cooperation on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
Officials say that nuclear power cooperation, one of the cornerstones of India-Russia ties, will be discussed, but the announcement of new sites for the next phase of Kudankulam reactors is yet to be finalized due to “land acquisition issues.”
Both leaders will also meet with young Indian and Russian student “geniuses” who have excelled in studies, as part of an educational exchange program.
Officials said a discussion on the way forward in Afghanistan, including Moscow’s push for talks with the Taliban is likely to come up for discussions as well. Mr. Putin and Mr. Modi will address a business summit in the capital before the Russian President departs on Friday evening.
WASHINGTON(TIP): Democrats are angry over FBI “clean chit” to President Trump’s nominee for Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh. Protests have erupted in Washington against Brett Kavanaugh whose confirmation vote is soon to be taken up by the Senate. Republican Senators appear confident that Kavanaugh will win confirmation.
The FBI report, sent by the White House to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the middle of the night, was denounced by Democrats as a whitewash that was too narrow in scope and ignored critical witnesses. But Republicans moved forward with plans for a key procedural vote on Friday and a final vote on Saturday on confirming the conservative federal appeals judge chosen by Trump for a lifetime job on the nation’s top court.
The FBI report represented the latest twist in a pitched political battle over Kavanaugh, and comments by two crucial Republican senators — Jeff Flake and Susan Collins — indicated it may have allayed concerns they had about the judge. Flake was instrumental in getting Trump to order the FBI investigation last Friday.
Republicans control the Senate by a razor-thin margin, meaning the votes of those two could be crucial in securing Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Collins said the investigation appeared to be thorough, while Flake said he saw no additional corroborating information against Kavanaugh, although he was “still reading” it.
Protesters in Washington on October 4. Screen shot /NBC News
A previously undecided Democratic Senator, Heidi Heitkamp, said she would vote against Kavanaugh, citing “concerns about his past conduct” and questions about his “temperament, honesty and impartiality” after his defiant testimony a week ago to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Heitkamp’s decision left Senator Joe Manchin as the only undecided Democrat. Most Democrats opposed Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh from the outset.
Meanwhile, Kavanaugh, in a column for the Wall Street Journal Judge Brett Kavanaugh has admitted to saying some things he should not have during a Senate hearing last week, a tacit acknowledgement of the questions being raised about his conduct and emotions as he seeks confirmation to the Supreme Court.
“I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times,” Kavanaugh wrote. “I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said.”
Kavanaugh also said in the column that he would be an independent and nonpartisan judge.
More than 2,400 law professors from across the political spectrum signed a letter this week arguing that the lack of “judicial temperament” that Kavanaugh displayed would be disqualifying for any court, let alone the highest in the land. A former Supreme Court justice, John Paul Stevens, has also weighed in, calling Kavanaugh’s hearing performance disqualifying during an event Thursday, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Thousands assembled today, October 4, to protest Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by marching on the Senate Office Building where his confirmation vote will take place. Among the masses a few celebrities have been spotted speaking out against the judge, with Amy Schumer and Emily Ratajkowski ending up detained by law enforcement.
Enthusiastic presence at NJ Fundraiser organized by Chen Sridhar
EDISON, NJ(TIP): Eye Foundation of American (EFA) organized a fundraiser at Royal Albert’s Palace in Edison, NJ on September 22. The fundraiser was attended by a large number of patrons of the Foundation who generously contributed for the noble services being provided by the Foundation.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. V.K. Raju, Founder and President of the Eye Foundation of America said, “We have an important mission: to solve childhood blindness. Children are hindered by eye problems at a young age, which can limit learning and can have long term repercussions, such as lifelong disabilities. However, childhood blindness is preventable, and can be treated and cured if it is diagnosed and treated early. Cataract surgery is among the most cost efficient of any procedure in health care, so for a child born with cataract, which is common in India, this could mean a lifetime of blindness and lost opportunities. Each child needs only two doses per year to prevent blindness, which is not a high price to pay for a lifetime of sight. In order to perform thousands of surgeries for children, there is also a need for efficient equipment, training, and personnel, which requires funds.
“Cataracts in early life is one of the leading causes of devastating vision loss, and cataract surgery is among the most efficient modern-day therapies. When performed without delay, it can mean the difference between lifelong blindness and sight. We have a desperate need for charitable donations to fund the necessary equipment and training of personnel. Vitamin A deficiency is another tragic cause of childhood blindness. However, treatment is as simple as two doses per year of supplemental Vitamin A, which can cost as little as 10 cents/capsule”.
Dr. Leela Raju made a video presentation on eye diseases and cures.
Suresh Ramchandran and Harini Vasudevan entertained with multilingual singingKirtana Krishnan and Shanmathee Aryah of Sanskriti School of Dance presenting a classical dance
While it was an extremely educative evening, it was also entertaining. Suresh Ramchandran and Harini Vasudevan entertained with their multilingual singing, and Kirtana Krishnan and Shanmathee Aryah of Sanskriti School of Dance presented classical dances.
A view of the gathering Photos / Suresh Jilla-917-400-8486 / Jillasnap@yahoo.com
CHICAGO, IL(TIP): The Womens Empowerment Campaign of Chicago (WE) organized the very first Womens Business Expo & Job Fair on Sunday Sept 16th, 2018 at the Waterford Banquets, Elmhurst IL. The goal was to serve as a platform for women-owned businesses & women professionals. The event was a huge success including a business expo, job fair, motivational speakers, high-level public officials, personality pageant, fashion show, dance performances, youth forum & more. WE is a networking & empowerment platform for Indian women in Chicagoland with over 1700 members. Council General of India Neeta Bhushan was the chief guest of the event. “What organizations like WE is doing for the women of our community is commendable. Platforms like WE are very needed. For our community to prosper women business owners must be supported” said Neeta Bhushan.
WE was launched by Rita Singh, Shital Daftari & Dr. Anuja Gupta in Nov 2017. “We wanted to form a group that showed the power of Indian women in Chicago” said the founders. The philosophy of the founders and leadership team was to build a powerful community of support for Indian women in Chicagoland thru this platform. The founders are prominent businesswomen & community leaders in Chicagoland. “I was looking for a networking platform specifically for Indians in Chicago. There was no major networks & the existing organizations seemed small. That’s when I thought there’s definitely a need for a big organized network” says Dr. Anuja Gupta who is a physician and real estate developer of Verandah Retirement Community. Rita Singh who is an IT business owner and also has experience in show business says, “I had a very gratifying experience mentoring other people who wanted to start their own business and wanted to do it on a larger scale thru this platform. I wanted to make a meaningful difference in the Indian community”. Shital Daftari who is an e-commerce business owner of Saris & Things had a different perspective, “when I came to this country on an H1B visa I didn’t know where to start to find friends and other like-minded people. Having a network like this makes it easy”.
From L to R. Dr. Anuja Gupta, Rita Singh (Founders of the Women’s Empowerment Campaign), William Menezes, Marketing for Malabar Gold & Diamonds, US, the keynote speaker for the event Jayshree Patel with her daughter.
The WE Womens Expo 2018 was the first of its kind to serve as a platform for women-owned businesses. Over 75 women-owned businesses were present including a wide range of businesses such as clothes, jewelry, home products, professional services & women’s organizations. Even the food vendors at the event were women-owned services. “It was very important for us to limit the businesses to women-owned only. Most other community events have 90% men-owned businesses present. At our event we wanted to give full opportunity to women business owners” says Dr. Anuja Gupta, one of the founders of WE. Rita Singh, another founder of WE, added “Empowering small businesses owned by women is one of the best services we can provide on our platform. As business-owners ourselves we know the barriers other women business owners face & our event was specially designed to overcome some of the challenges.
The event was combined with a Job Fair presented by GEC Council, a company specializing in job fairs supported by private & public companies. Nazneen Begum is president of the company which offers job fairs all over the state of IL. “For GEC Council it was a great opportunity to team up with WE to do the job fair. The WE platform attracts a crowd known for women professionals & business owners” said Nazneen Begum. Over 25 recruiters from private & public companies were present at the event. The type of companies represented included public and private job openings. To supplement the job fair GEC Council organized a Jobs Workshop with high-level speakers including Syed Hussiani, banker at Wintrust Bank who does a lot of business with small business owners, Dr John Kalares from State of IL and Chicago Bears player Desmond Clark. “Presenting a diversity women’s job fair was a good opportunity for GEC Council” said Nazneen Begum
With the pageant sponsored by Malabar Gold & Diamonds, L to R: Jasar – Operations for Malabar Gold & Diamonds, US, Ms. Monica, “Winner as the Woman of Substance” for the pageant Competition held at the WE Expo’2018, William Menezes – Marketing for Malabar Gold & Diamonds, US.
The kind of vendors represented at the business expo included small & medium sized women-owned businesses. For many vendors this was the first opportunity to showcase their business.The pageant was sponsored by Malabar Gold and Diamonds, US, having its presence in 9 countries with 230 Stores Globally. Malabar Gold and Diamonds is shortly opening up its 1st Showroom in Chicago thereby making its presence in the 10th Country. The group is amongst the top 5 Jewelers in the world. Mr. William Menezes, Marketing for US said “Malabar Gold and Diamonds is a very exclusive brand. The members of the WE group are the perfect kind of clientele that our jewelry is made for”. “My business sells Pashmina shawls and this expo was a good opportunity for many people who have never touched real Pashmina to know what it feels like” said Meenu Mann owner of Kashmina Shawls Inc. Sarla’s Skillet was another business for whom this was the first expo. “I got a lot of useful feedback from a niche clientele that I would like to service” said Sarla Verma, owner of Sarla’s Skillet. The two food vendors present at the event were both women-owned businesses. “This is a very well-organized event which got us great exposure for our business” said Nala, owner of Nala’s Delight a food catering business based in Schaumburg IL.
The business expo & job fair was accompanied by thought-fully organized stage activities to keep the visitors engaged. This included motivational speakers, high-level dignitaries, a beauty with purpose pageant, fashion show, youth forum and dance performances performed by local children’s groups. Cosmetic & Reconstructive surgeon Dr. Tripti Burt was one of the speakers. Her topic was “Look Your Best” focused on newer plastic surgery procedures & beauty tips. Shirley Hogsett, president of Destiny Speaks & founder of Women2020 was another speaker at the event. “Women leadership is very important in our community. Events like this focus the highlight on women leaders & women in business” said Shirley Hogsett.
The keynote speaker of the event was Jayshree Patel from New York Life Insurance. Jayshree was selected as she recently was awarded the top agent award from New York Life. It was the first time in the 173-year-old history of the company that the award went to a woman and to an Indian. Her speech titled, “Shattering the ceiling – My journey to the Top” was very well received by the audience. “Winning the top spot at a company like New York Life is a sign that Indian women are rising to the very top in big American corporations. It reflects the changing status of Indian women in American society” said Jayshree Patel. The event was opened by a special “Ganesh Vandana” presented by the Maharashtra Mandal. There were 6 dance performances by local dance groups including women & children.
The dignitaries attending the event included top-level public officials from both the Republican & Democrat parties. IL First Lady Diana Rauner, Lieutenant Governor Evelynn Sanguinetti, Attorney General candidate Erika Harold, Congresswomen Laura Murphy, Congresswomen Michelle Mussman, State Representative Karina Villa & more were in attendance. “It is very important for women, especially minority-women to vote and also to consider public office as a career. Women are the backbone of our system and highly underrepresented in public office. It is very encouraging that organizations like WE support women public candidates” said Diana Rauner, First Lady of IL. Other dignitaries present included Raees Yawer, Trustee of Village of Streamwood & Dupage County judge Linda Davenport. “Women voters are a very important segment that is often over-looked. Each one of you present has the potential to choose the next President, Vice-President or Judge” said Linda Davenport.
For entertaining the visitors, the event had thought-fully planned beauty with a purpose pageant, fashion show and dance performances. The beauty pageant attracted a good level of professional women as candidates. “The WE Woman of Substance pageant is a beauty with a purpose pageant to celebrate the modern woman who lives her life with grace & intelligence” said Sonica Singh, one of the WE Team members who helped to organize the pageant. The Fashion Show at the event was presented by Yamini Kalra Saggar owner of The Purpple Closet boutique. “I wanted to participate in the event to showcase bold new Indian looks that my customers find stylish but comfortable” said Yamini Kalra Saggar.
More information about WE is available on their website www.ChicagoWE.comand their facebook page @ChicagoWE
LONG ISLAND, NY(TIP): The Association of Indians in America, NY Chapter (AIA-NY) held its Benefit Gala in support for its 31st Annual Deepavali Festival at Leonard’s Palazzo in Long Island on September 22, 2018. The Gala was attended by numerous respected individuals, past presidents of AIA, Community Leaders and dignitaries including members of the media and sponsors that have showcased their continued commitment and support for the Deepavali Festival. Among the prominent people attending the Gala were Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, Padma Shri Dr Sudhir Parekh, Mr. Chintu Patel, Co-Chairman of Amneal Pharmaceuticals and Regional Manager Air India, Mrs Vandana Sharma.
The 31st Annual Deepavali Festival will take place at the South Street Seaport on Sunday October 7thfrom 12 noon till 7pm, culminating with a spectacular display of Fireworks. The event is one of the largest in the tri-state area, attracting over 70,000 to 100,000 people. Festival of Deepavali meaning ‘A row of lamps’ is also popularly known as Diwali, or ‘Festival of Lights’. It signifies the triumph of ‘Good over Evil’. The festival will be a full day celebration with numerous corporate booths, food & clothing vendors, performances and activities for the whole family including a live grand display of fireworks.
Among the individuals honored at the Gala were CEO of Sun Development and Management Corp, Mr. Bharat Patel; Cardiologist, Professor and Associate Dean at the Icahn School of Mount Sinai, Dr. Jagat Narula; President and CEO of Unique Comp Inc., Ms. Kalpana Patel and Gastroenterologists and President & CEO of Digestive Disease Care; Drs. Nilesh and Preeti Mehta. Special Recognition Plaque for Innovation and Entrepreneurial ship was awarded to a young founder of a non-profit Venture called “Maker’s Asylum”; Mr Vaibhav Chhabra. Distinguished Community Service Award was presented to Asmita Bhatia and DIVYA Shah for their exemplary service of over 25 years. The evening comprised of cocktails, light entertainment and special performances followed by sumptuous dinner.
Honorees
This is the 31styear of Deepavali of the Association of Indians in America. The highlights of 31stDeepavali 2017 will include Naach Inferno returning to the stage of Deepavali with college and university teams from around the Tri-State area as they showcase dances fusing both East and West cultures. Presented by Star Bharat, the competition will be showcased globally.
The Association of Indians in America (AIA) is the oldest not-for-profit organization of Asian Indians in America founded on August 20, 1967. It is the grassroots national organization of Asian immigrants in the United States. With chapters and membership spread across the United States of America, AIA represents the hopes and aspirations of those immigrants who are united by their common bond of Indian Heritage and American Commitment.
This year, AIA-NY’s 31st Deepavali celebrations are going to be held on Sunday Oct 7, 2018 at the South Street Seaport. While Ronald McDonald personally coming to entertain the kids, the Young Celebrity Singers Jaz Dhami, famous for his Bollywood Hit Song “High Heels” and Shilpi Paul, famous for her “Naughty Billo” Hit song are going to entertain their parents and rock the stage.
For more info, please find us on Facebook and visit our website at www.theaiany.org.
TRENTON, NJ(TIP): – Legislation sponsored by Senator Vin Gopal and Senator Shirley K. Turner which would require state employees who could not attend work due to a budget shutdown receive their full salary or wages advanced from the Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism, and Historic Preservation Committee.
“During times when a consensus on the budget cannot be reached before the June 30th deadline, state workers should not have to suffer the consequences, especially since it is no fault of their own,” said Senator Gopal (D-Monmouth). “This bill will ensure state workers get the wages they are due in a timely manner.”
The bill, S-2756, would provide that state employees, who are subject to an involuntary disruption of service because of a shutdown of state government due to a state budget impasse, are entitled to their full salary or wages. The bill would apply in any fiscal year when there is a late enactment of a state annual appropriations act.
“The legislature should not have to vote on whether or not to pay state workers every time there is a government shutdown,” said Senator Turner (D-Hunterdon/Mercer). “They deserve the peace of mind to know they will get paid if a shutdown prevents them from going to work.”
The bill advanced from committee by a vote of 5-0, and next heads to the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee for further consideration.
What the RSS needs is an exposure to Indian culture and a deeper understanding of Hinduism itself
“The RSS was among the few organizations in independent India that refused to honor some of the key symbols of the Indian republic: the national flag, the national anthem and, of course, the Constitution of India. It speaks volumes that the head of the RSS has to clarify, nearly seven decades after the promulgation of the Constitution, that his organization believes in it, something explicitly contradicted by his predecessor. Notwithstanding its recent claims to the contrary, the RSS does not quite subscribe to any of the key tenets of the Constitution: socialism, secularism, federalism and, indeed, democracy.”
The recent outreach by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi seems to have succeeded in its principal objective: an image makeover for a niche audience. Thanks to an obsequious media and a commentariat ever willing to suspend disbelief, the event has yielded the soft, liberal gloss the RSS needed and desired. Sadly, the critics limited themselves to questions that the RSS anticipated, indeed wanted: Does the RSS exercise influence on this government? Is the RSS anti-Muslim?
It is time we asked a harder and deeper question: Is the RSS anti-national?
Theory and practice
On the face of it, this is an odd question. Nationalism, Indian-ness and Hindutva are very much the calling card of the RSS. This is not put on. I have known the RSS from inside and outside. Having met hundreds of swayamsevaks and many pracharaks, I know that an average RSS volunteer carries this nationalist self-image. I can also attest that just like the communists or old-time socialists, an average RSS worker tends to be more honest and idealist than a run-of-the-mill political leader. I am aware that on more than one occasion, the RSS has done exemplary rescue and relief work during national disasters. If anything, its critics accuse it of being ultra-nationalist. Thus, to question its nationalist credentials might appear outrageous.
Yet this question needs to be debated in all seriousness and all fairness. Given the salience of the RSS in our national public life today, this is a pressing question. We worry, rightly so, about the impact of Islamic fundamentalist groups and Maoist insurgents on our nation. We debate, as we should, the challenge posed by separatism in Kashmir and Nagaland to our nationhood. But we no longer debate with any seriousness the challenge posed by the RSS and its associates to the project of nation-building the Indian nation. The question is about the theory and practice of the RSS as an organization and its relation to the Indian nation, its past, present and future.
The nation and the past
Let’s begin with some indisputable facts about its past. Right from its inception in 1925, the RSS was not in any way active during the national movement. In fact, its associates such as the Hindu Mahasabha actively opposed the national movement. It is also a well-documented fact that V.D. Savarkar, whose ideology inspired the RSS’s founders and who remains its icon, was released from Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands after he wrote four mercy petitions to the Viceroy pledging loyalty to the British empire. After his release, he lived off a stipend from the British government and obeyed faithfully the conditions it had imposed on him. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, another Hindu Mahasabha leader, actively collaborated with the British during the Quit India movement while the RSS kept aloof from this biggest anti-colonial uprising. The two-nation theory was propagated by Hindu nationalists, much before the Muslim League. And it is no secret that Nathuram Godse was once an RSS member and was very much a part of its extended family when he murdered Mahatma Gandhi. Bluntly put, the RSS made zero, if not negative, contribution to the national struggle. But that is not sufficient to dub it anti-national today.
The role of the RSS after Independence is more relevant here. How did the RSS contribute to the project of nation-building? Sadly, the answer is again in the negative. The RSS was among the few organizations in independent India that refused to honor some of the key symbols of the Indian republic: the national flag, the national anthem and, of course, the Constitution of India. It speaks volumes that the head of the RSS has to clarify, nearly seven decades after the promulgation of the Constitution, that his organization believes in it, something explicitly contradicted by his predecessor. Notwithstanding its recent claims to the contrary, the RSS does not quite subscribe to any of the key tenets of the Constitution: socialism, secularism, federalism and, indeed, democracy.
“The secessionists challenge the territorial integrity of India. The left-wing extremists challenge the writ of the Indian state. The challenge posed by the RSS is much deeper: it challenges the very idea of India, the swadharma of the Republic of India. If this is not anti-national, what is anti-national?”
In practice, far from being a part of the solution, the RSS was always a part of the problem that India faced in its difficult journey of nation-building. The legacy of Partition and the challenge of bringing together immense diversities posed an unprecedented challenge to the nascent Indian nation. During this delicate phase, the RSS was at best an irresponsible denominational pressure group for the Hinduisation of the Indian state, opposing any and every concession to minorities and advocating a hawkish foreign policy. At worst the RSS became a fulcrum of organized subversion of the constitutional order, as in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. If constitutional patriotism is the heart of national political life, the RSS has repeatedly stood in opposition to the nation.
More than anything else, it is the theory and practice of its nationalism that shows the RSS to be a European import, out of sync with Indian nationalism. The RSS subscribes to the now outdated European model of nation-state which assumed that the cultural boundaries of a nation must match the political boundaries of a state. In Europe it meant a uniform race, religion, language and culture as the defining features of a nation. In India it meant Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan, the slogan coined by Savarkar. India’s home-grown nationalism challenged this European model and its futile and bloody quest for matching cultural and political boundaries. Instead, Indian nationalism was about creating political unity in conditions of deep diversity of culture, religion and language.
Paradox of its workings
Today, as a rapidly diversifying world seeks to learn from the Indian model, the RSS clings on to an alien, borrowed and fractious understanding of nationalism. Worse, its model of separatism of the majority is clearly the biggest obstacle for Indian nationalism. Isn’t it odd that an organization that claims to work for national integration has, or has had, little time and energy for an amicable resolution of some of the issues that challenge our national unity? These include intractable regional disputes (the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu and Punjab-Haryana water disputes), intra-regional tensions (demand for Telangana or Vidarbha), language issues (Punjabi-Hindi, Kannada-Marathi) or differences with racial and ethnic dimensions (violence against migrants from the Northeast in Bengaluru, Hindi speakers in Mumbai).
The RSS version of nationalism comes into play only when there is a religious angle to any issue. It is not that they care for Hinduism either. The RSS ideologues have little knowledge of or interest in Hindu traditions. In fact, the version of Hinduism that it seeks to impose is itself a parody of orthodox Islam and orthodox Christianity and against the basic spirit of Hinduism, let alone the spirit of humanism that informs all religions. Unfortunately, the principal focus of the RSS has been to foment Hindu-Muslim differences, division and hatred. Since Hindu-Muslim violence poses the biggest single threat to national unity today, those who work for the exacerbation of Hindu-Muslim tension must be seen as anti-national, and guilty of treason.
The secessionists challenge the territorial integrity of India. The left-wing extremists challenge the writ of the Indian state. The challenge posed by the RSS is much deeper: it challenges the very idea of India, the swadharma of the Republic of India. If this is not anti-national, what is anti-national?
I am not for a ban on the RSS. Its theory and practice represent a cultural-political malady that needs a deeper cure rather than a ban. It originates in an inferiority complex of a modern Hindu, made worse by a westernized, deracinated form of our secularism. This might sound odd, but what the RSS needs is exposure to Indian culture and its multiple traditions, greater appreciation of culturally more confident Indians such as Tagore and Gandhi and a deeper understanding of Hinduism itself. If it introspects rather than hold an outreach at Vigyan Bhavan, I am sure its Sarsanghchalak would recommend to the RSS what Gandhiji suggested to the Congress party: dissolve itself.
(The author is National President of Swaraj India and a psephologist/academic formerly with Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi)
The problem with religious laws is that they are easy to enact but difficult to amend or repeal
By Anees Jillani
“This is the problem with religious laws. They are easy to enact but very difficult to amend or repeal. Consequently, one should move extremely cautiously while introducing a feature in the legal system which has religious connotations. It may earn one brownie points with the religious community in the short term but is not good for maintaining religious harmony in the long run. They become a tool in the hands of criminal-minded persons who start using them to embroil their opponents in highly questionable litigations that get so controversial during the course of trial that it becomes almost infeasible to decipher the truth”.
More wars have been fought in the name of religion than anything else in the history of our world. In other words, more people have been killed for causes that supposedly espouse peace. It is thus always advisable if one wishes to achieve peace and harmony to lower the religious sentiments. Ironically, this conflicts with the fact that it is always easier to exploit people’s feelings in the name of religion and attain popularity and what one wishes to gain politically or otherwise.
I was in China a couple of years ago and was surprised when the youth I was talking to, gave me a blank expression when I raised the subject of God. They had absolutely no idea about it. There are few places left on our planet now where this is the case. Almost all communities have religions and they have to live together despite all their attempts to maintain homogeneity. Hindus, perhaps, have always been in majority in the Indian subcontinent, but Jains and Buddhists have lived along with them. The Muslims invaded India and most of the Muslim rulers had a liberal, if not totally secular approach towards other religious communities. However, the Muslims in India are now paying the price for some of the follies committed by them. The British brought Christianity and a set of laws and a system which continues to exist in all of their colonies. The Indian Penal Code 1860, which is called the Pakistan Penal Code across the border, is one such law that continues to remain in force despite a lapse of 157 years. Its Section 295 says:
“Whoever destroys, damages or defiles any place of worship, or any object held sacred by any class of persons with the intention to thereby insulting the religion of any class of persons or with the knowledge that any class of persons is likely to consider such destruction, damage or defilement as an insult to their religion, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”
Section 295-A was added to the Penal Code by the British in 1927 to avert outraging of religious feelings of any community. It states: “Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of the citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, or with fine, or with both.”
As luck would have it, in 1986, when General Zia-ul-Haq was the President and a civilian government led by PM (Mohammad Khan) Junejo was in power, human rights activist Asma Jehangir, in a press conference, commented on the educational status of Prophet Muhammad. It led to a huge controversy and the government in panic inserted Section 295-C in the Penal Code which read as follows:
“Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”
There was no looking back. The Federal Shariat Court, another creation of General Zia, in a subsequent ruling held that the words “or imprisonment for life” be deleted from this provision; it now carries the mandatory death penalty. At the time of addition of Section 295-C, the Criminal Procedure Code 1898 was also amended to state that an accused under this Section or under 295-B (dealing with defiling of the Koran), again inserted by General Zia, can be held without warrant, and that the court of session trying a case under Section 295-C must be presided over by a Muslim.
In 2011, governor of Punjab province Salman Taseer and the Federal Minister for Minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, were killed simply because they had talked of amending the above sections in the Penal Code.
The governor was killed by his own guard and only a few dozen dared to attend his funeral prayers. As opposed to this, hundreds of thousands attended his assassin’s funeral after he was hanged. The judges in the present environment rarely feel secure to dispense justice; and they can hardly be blamed, particularly after the fate of Justice Arif Iqbal Hussain Bhatti, who was assassinated in October 1997 in Lahore. What was the judge’s fault? He had acquitted Salamat (a 14-year-old), Rehmat and Manzoor Masih, from the blasphemy charge in 1995. The judge who convicted the governor’s assassin had to leave the country for a couple of years.
This is the problem with religious laws. They are easy to enact but very difficult to amend or repeal. Consequently, one should move extremely cautiously while introducing a feature in the legal system which has religious connotations. It may earn one brownie points with the religious community in the short term but is not good for maintaining religious harmony in the long run. They become a tool in the hands of criminal-minded persons who start using them to embroil their opponents in highly questionable litigations that get so controversial during the course of trial that it becomes almost infeasible to decipher the truth. No doubt more Muslims are tried under these laws than minorities but most of the convicted ones belong to the religious minorities. In other words, the laws have become a tool in the hands of a section of the population to crush the religious minorities; if the latter gets into any kind of dispute whatsoever with a Muslim, the easiest way to punish the adversary is by accusing him or her of blasphemy. The state machinery takes care of the rest.
(The author is a lawyer in the Supreme Court of Pakistan)
The Supreme Court’s refusal to refer some questions of law in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute to a seven-judge Bench has one immediate consequence: it could expedite the final hearing in the appeals against the Allahabad High Court’s compromise judgment of 2010 in the main title suit. The two-judge majority opinion has fixed the date for the hearing as October 29, a development that may mean that a final verdict is not far off and it could have a bearing on political events in the run-up to the general election due next summer. The final hearing ought to have begun a year ago but was delayed because some parties wanted the reference to a larger Bench so that certain observations in a Constitution Bench decision in Ismail Faruqui (1994) could be reconsidered. The apprehension was that remarks to the effect that “a mosque is not an essential part of the practice of Islam” and that namaz can be offered anywhere, even in the open, would influence the outcome of the appeal. Justice Ashok Bhushan’s main opinion has sought to give a quietus to the controversy by declaring that “the questionable observations” were to be treated only as observations made in the context of whether land on which a mosque stood can be acquired by the government. It should not be taken into account while deciding suits and appeals. It is difficult to fault this approach, as it is a fact that the respective claims of the U.P. Sunni Central Wakf Board, Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla, the deity, can only be tested against evidence adduced during trial and not by pronouncements on the significance of places of worship or practices in a particular religion.
At the same time, can one brush aside the possibility that observations on a sensitive religious issue would be exploited by one side to gain legal advantage? In his dissenting opinion favoring a reconsideration of Ismail Faruqui, Justice Abdul Nazeer notes that its observations have permeated the High Court judgment. Ismail Faruqui was a ruling on petitions challenging the validity of a Central law that acquired the land on which the Babri Masjid stood before it was razed by a frenzied and fanatical mob on December 6, 1992. The judgment was notable for upholding the rule of law by restoring the title suits that had been declared as having “abated” in the Act. It also declined to answer a Presidential reference on whether a Hindu temple stood on the disputed site before the mosque was built. Any observation made in the course of such a decision is bound to have a profound impact on the courts below. It is easy to contend that courts should work to their own timelines and not be influenced by such things as election season. But in the life of this nation, the Ayodhya dispute has gone through dark political phases and been more than a mere legal issue. The onus is on the apex court to dispose of the appeals at its convenience without giving any scope for the exploitation of religious sentiments.
NEW YORK(TIP): The Indian Diaspora Council International (IDC) Life Member Ken (Kanhai) Singh of Toronto, Canada, has donated $20,000 CAN ($16,000 USD) towards Kerala Flood relief.
The donation was made to the Vishnu Mandir to channel the desperately needed funds appropriately and for optimum reach and relief to those “affected by the recent devastating floods which that have caused numerous deaths, displacement, suffering, pain and anguish. Several local and international news reports have compared this flooding as the worst in Kerala in a century”.
Ken Singh remarked that his “contribution is to help those in urgent need in Kerala, being of service to humanity at such times of massive despair and destruction”
Ken Singh made the generous donation upon solicitation of Cliff Rajkumar, president of IC Canada, who conferred with IDC on the most efficient and expedient way for optimum effect.
Guyana born Ken is President of Atlas Cargo, International Freight Transportation in Toronto with branches in Calgary, Edmonton Montreal and Vancouver. He was recently profiled in IDC JOURNAL Newsletter. http://www.indiandiasporacouncil.org/idc-journal-march-2018.php
Excerpt from IDC profile: “Ken believes in giving back to society and he finds the time, amidst his busy schedule to actively assist in his local community and many other social causes worldwide. The Life Illustrated magazine article states, “He volunteers with the CPPS, a catholic mission project that works on projects to provide health care and clean water in Africa. The Central American arm of World Vision; Bosnian Children Cultural Heritage Center are all beneficiaries of his efforts to contribute to the various communities.”
IDC commends Ken Singh on his generous contribution and continues to urge relief contributions online and desperately needed clothing, materials and non-perishable food via bona fide international relief agencies and community organizations.
For more information contact: Ashook Ramsaran at AshookRamsaran@gmail.com
Mobile (USA) +1 917 519 5783
Indian Diaspora Council International (IDC), established in 1997, is an international non-profit organization with global affiliates and membership in 21 countries with the objective to embrace, engage and enhance the shared heritage, aspirations and interests of persons of Indian origin with optimum inclusivity.
JOHANNESBURG, SA(TIP): A former Indian-origin city councilor has been arrested in South Africa for making derogatory racist comments against President Cyril Ramaphosa in a video posted on Facebook.
In the viral video, former Durban councilor Kessie Nair, who was earlier sentenced to six years in prison for fraud in 2005, called Mr Ramaphosa a “kaffir” — a derogatory term used against black people during the racist apartheid era.
In the video, Kessie Nair said that he is prepared to take a bullet or go to prison for the rest of his life.
“I… do hereby call for that kaffir state president Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, yes I mean the kaffir state president Cyril Ramaphosa, to be charged for frauding [sic] this nation, for oppressing this nation, for high treason, for failing and he’s the source to all crime violence poor healthcare, poverty that prevails in a so-called true democracy,” he said in the nearly five-minute-long video.
“I’m ready to go to jail for the rest of my life or take a bullet, I just want to say that the truth will hurt.” Media reported.
In 2005, he was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud. He said that it took 13 years of introspection to release the video, reported.
“Nobody wakes up one morning and makes a statement and a video like that on social media,” Kessie Nair further reported.
He was arrested in Durban and was charged with incitement of public violence and crimen injuria or injuring a person’s dignity.
Nair‚ the nephew of late struggle stalwart Billy Nair‚ has received widespread condemnation from various quarters‚ including the provincial ANC‚ community and religious organizations‚ as well as the presidency.
His family has distanced themselves from his utterances. They issued a statement urging South Africans to forgive him and promising to do their best to “make amends”.
“We have a history of being in the trenches fighting apartheid and being involved in the struggle for the liberation of this country from the shackles of the nationalist government‚” said his brother Krishnan Nair.
Krishnan added that his brother suffered from a chronic illness and “needs immediate medical care and attention.”
Presidential spokeswoman Khusela Diko said that the rant did not deserve attention and that Nair needed support from friends and family.
LONDON (TIP): An Indian-origin UK based couple were slashed in a knife-point robbery at their fruit and vegetable shop in Handsworth, in the West Midlands region of England.
Chaman Lal, a local politician, and his wife Vidya Wati were taken to a hospital with minor cuts and injuries after the armed robbery at their shop Uplands Fruits on Sandwell Road.
West Midlands Police said a 45-year-old man and woman aged 33 were arrested on suspicion of the robbery and remain in police custody for questioning.
“We don’t underestimate how distressing this would have been for the two victims. We have managed to quickly identify and arrest the suspects who will now be questioned,” said Detective Inspector Gemma Currie of West Midlands Police.
Chaman Lal, a Labour Party Councillor for Soho and Jewellery Quarter in Handworth, near the city of Birmingham, runs the fruit and vegetable business with his family. The couple’s son, Bal, had released CCTV footage of the attack and offered GBP 1,000 reward to anyone with information about the attackers.
“We are still shocked at the moment. It was a bad experience,” Councillor Lal said.
“We have had very good support from our family and the community. We are grateful for all the support we have been getting,” he said.
The shop reopened as usual and attracted a number of well-wishers.
LONDON(TIP): The 22-year-old Sikh soldier Charanpreet Singh Lall, who created history by becoming the first to wear a turban during an annual parade to mark British Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday ceremony, could be kicked out from his post after he was tested positive for cocaine, according to a media report.
Singh made headlines across the world for wearing the turban during Trooping the Color in June.
However, last week he failed a random drugs test at his barracks, with insiders claiming he registered “high levels” of cocaine, according to media reports.
“Guardsman Lall has been discussing it openly in the barracks. The Guards carry out public duties at the Palace, it’s disgraceful behavior,” a source was quoted as saying by the report.
Brigadier Christopher Coles, Head of Army Personnel Services Group, said: “I can confirm that a number of soldiers from the Coldstream Guards are under investigation for alleged drugs misuse.”
Mr Lall, who was born in Punjab, moved to the UK with his family as a baby. He later joined the British Army in January 2016.
He hit the headlines in June after he made history as part in the 1000-strong ceremony marking the Queen’s 92nd birthday.
While Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her actual birthday on April 21, the Trooping of the Color ceremony takes place on any Saturday of June.
The ceremony has commemorated the birthday of the sovereign for more than 250 years and also functions as a display of army drills, music and horsemanship.
LONDON (TIP): An Indian- origin British Sikh woman was handed down a two-year suspended jail term by a UK court for launching a campaign of racist abuse and harassment against her Hindu ex-boyfriend and his family over a period of five years, including posting beef through their door as an attack on their faith.
Amandeep Mudhar had pleaded guilty to racially aggravated harassment and was handed down a two-year sentence at Swindon Crown Court in south-west England on September 25.
“Most people from religious backgrounds seek to find a common ground on what they share, be it a faith in god or human nature. Not from you: your behavior was unrelenting, provocative and extremely frightening,” said Judge Robert Pawson during the sentencing hearing.
The court was told of Amandeep Mudhar orchestrating a series of attacks on the unnamed family of her former boyfriend, including abusive and threatening phone calls and attacks on social media.
The court was told that the 26-year-old had a brief relationship with the man, which was “never fully intimate”, over a few weeks in 2012.
But after he ended the affair citing cultural differences, Amandeep Mudhar and her family launched into the attacks which included threats of rape against his sisters and mother and also to blow up their home and cars, the local daily reported.
Prosecutor Sue Cavender told the court that after 2015, she was made subject to a harassment warning by the police and a civil injunction brought by the family, which prevented her from contacting them.
However, she breached that with a social media message two minutes before it expired, saying to one of his two sisters “now watch what happens”, the report said.
Amandeep Mudhar then enlisted the help of a friend, 30-year-old Sandeep Dogra, to send numerous “offensive” Facebook and Instagram posts directed at the family. As well as threats to kill them and rape them, one of the comments branded them “fat, like your elephant god”.
The duo also went to the temple the family frequented, where they harassed the man’s parents, the report said.
In another incident, a parcel of beef was put through the door of the family home which, being Hindus, they found very upsetting, the prosecution said.
In victim impact statements, the man’s two sisters said they had suffered great stress for many years because of the harassment and one of them claimed that Amandeep Mudhar even got another child to bully her six-year-old son at school as part of her campaign of abuse.
Amandeep Mudhar and Sandeep Dogra had both pleaded guilty to harassment but avoided time behind bars as they were handed down two-year suspended jail sentences, which refers to a deferred custodial sentence on strict conditions.
She also faces a six-month curfew, during which her movements will be curtailed. She has also been directed to complete 100 hours of unpaid community service, attend rehabilitation days and pay 750 pounds towards legal costs.
The judge also imposed a restraining order banning Amandeep Mudhar and Sandeep Dogra from contacting the family, going to the roads they live on or the temple they visit.
“I hope this sentence draws a line in the sand and there will be no repetition. You have been warned, both of you,” the judge said.
Amandeep Mudhar’s lawyer highlighted her difficult childhood, during which her mother treated her harshly, and Sandeep Dogra’s lawyer said that he became involved after he felt the victims had racially abused his mother.
The court was told that they both had been shunned by their local community after the details of the case had emerged earlier this year.
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