NEW YORK (TIP): The Bihar Jharkhand Association of North America (BJANA) is excited to announce the celebration of Jharkhand Diwas 2024 on Thursday, November 14th, 2024, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at the Consulate General of India in New York (3 E 64th St, New York, NY 10065), according to the information provided to The Indian Panorama by the BJANA President, Sanjeev Singh.
Jharkhand Diwas commemorates the formation of Jharkhand as a separate state in India. This special occasion will celebrate the state’s rich cultural heritage and its contributions to India’s growth and development. The event will also highlight the achievements of the Jharkhand diaspora in the United States and the collective impact of the people of Jharkhand on the global stage.
The event will feature a vibrant cultural program, as well as art exhibitions showcasing Jharkhand’s handicrafts and handlooms. BJANA will also spotlight its ongoing community welfare initiatives, which include efforts in tribal empowerment, women’s rights, education, and healthcare access in Jharkhand. These initiatives demonstrate BJANA’s commitment to supporting the socio-economic development of the region.
About BJANA:
The Bihar Jharkhand Association of North America (BJANA) is a non-profit, cultural, and social organization dedicated to serving the community of individuals from the Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand residing in North America. The association’s mission is to promote the cultural heritage, traditions, and values of these states while also fostering social, educational, and economic progress within the community. We invite all community members to join us in celebrating this important occasion and honoring the achievements of Jharkhand on both national and global platforms.
RANCHI/NEW DELHI/NEW YORK (TIP): Jharkhand Governor C.P. Radhakrishnan invited Champai Soren to form the government late on February 1. Mr. Champai was elected as the new leader of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) Legislature Party following Hemant Soren’s arrest by the Enforcement Directorate on January 31 under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after he met the Governor and submitted his resignation as Chief Minister.
Earlier in the evening, Mr. Champai, accompanied by Congress leader Alamgir Alam, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MLA Satyanand Bhokta, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) MLA Vinod Singh and Congress MLA Pradeep Yadav went to Raj Bhavan and staked their claim to form the government.
After meeting the Governor, Mr. Champai said, “We have staked claim to form the government. I urged the Governor to allow us to form the government. The Governor said that he will soon inform us.”
While a delay on the part of Mr. Radhakrishnan in calling Mr. Champai to form the government sparked criticism from the ruling camp, the Governor gave his nod late in the day. Till 5 p.m., the MLAs were hoping that the Governor would invite them to form the government, Mr. Champai said.
Meanwhile, a special PMLA court on February 1 sent Mr. Hemant Soren to judicial custody for a day. He was taken to Hotwar Central Jail in Ranchi after the court reserved its order for Friday.
The ED had sought 10 days’ remand for the former CM. The 48-year-old executive president of the JMM will spend the night in the upper division cell of B-block in Central Jail.
Mr. Hemant Soren, meanwhile, urged the Supreme Court to hear his plea against the arrest. Appearing before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and A.M. Singhvi said such arrests of sitting Chief Ministers “affect the polity of the country”. Chief Justice Chandrachud agreed to consider listing the case before an appropriate Bench on February 2.
Ruling coalition MLAs had been housed at the Ranchi Circuit House since February 1 morning, waiting for the Governor’s call. The JMM released a video ‘roll call’ on social media in which all the MLAs counted themselves — 43 in total — to prove that they have the required count to form the government in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly. The JMM-led alliance claimed to have the support of 47 MLAs. It said only 43 of them were present at the ‘roll call’ as the rest of the MLAs were unwell.
Soon after this development, one bus which was parked inside the circuit house took 38 MLAs, along with their luggage, to Ranchi airport where two chartered flights were waiting. However, the MLAs had to return to the Circuit House as the flights couldn’t take off due to poor visibility caused by fog.
“We have never seen such a situation where the Governor is so adamant and not inviting the party with majority to form the government. We are sensing that something may happen with our legislators so we are taking them to a safer place. We will not allow democracy to be sold off,” Jharkhand Congress chief Rajesh Thakur had said earlier at the airport.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge shared a video on X (formerly Twitter) of the ‘roll call’ of Congress and JMM MLAs. “In the House of 81 MLAs, only 41 form a majority. Despite having the support of 48 MLAs, not inviting Champai Soren ji to form the government is clearly contempt of the Constitution and denial of public mandate. Nails are being hammered in the coffin of Indian democracy by ‘His Excellencies’,” Mr. Kharge had said. BJP MP Nishikant Dubey took a jibe at the parading of the MLAs and said, “Split in Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, National President Shibu Soren ji, MLAs Sita Soren ji and Basant Soren ji were not seen in today’s parade.”
(With input from PTI)
The Union Government on Thursday, February 9, said that 5.9 million tonnes of lithium reserves have been found for the first time in the country in Jammu and Kashmir. Lithium is a non-ferrous metal and is one of the key components in EV batteries. “Geological Survey of India for the first time established Lithium inferred resources (G3) of 5.9 million tonnes in the Salal-Haimana area of the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir,” the Ministry of Mines said on Thursday. It further that 51 mineral blocks including Lithium and Gold were handed over to respective state governments.
“Out of these 51 mineral blocks, 5 blocks pertain to gold and other blocks pertain to commodities like potash, molybdenum, base metals etc. spread across 11 states of Jammu and Kashmir (UT), Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana,” the ministry added. The blocks were prepared based on the work carried out by GSI from field seasons 2018-19 to till date. Apart from these, 17 reports of Coal and Lignite with a total resource of 7897 million tonnes were also handed over to the Ministry of Coal. Source: ANI
India is on course to become the world’s most populous country. The ‘World Population Prospects 2022’ report says that India’s population is projected to be 1.429 billion next year, when China would have 1.426 billion people. By 2050, it is estimated that India will have 1.668 billion people, far ahead of China’s population, which will drop to 1.317 billion. The UN has credited India with bringing down the fertility rate slowly and smoothly, in stark contrast to China’s strict policies that have produced rapid results.
The report of the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), released in May this year, stated that India’s total fertility rate — the average number of children per woman — had ‘further declined from 2.2 to 2 at the national level’. One of the survey’s key findings was that there were only five states whose fertility rate was above the replacement level of 2.1 (the rate at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next) — Bihar, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Manipur. Notably, these states are among the laggards in terms of per capita income. This makes it obvious that population growth adversely impacts economic prosperity. The fact that Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists have fertility rates well below the national average can be largely attributed to economic security among members of these communities. Overtaking China as the most populous nation will pose a new set of challenges for policymakers. The government’s welfare schemes will have to factor in the rising numbers and the availability of resources to ensure that all eligible beneficiaries are covered. Healthcare, housing and education sectors, in particular, will come under greater strain. India might have made significant strides in population control in recent years, but there is no room for complacency. The overall contraceptive prevalence rate has risen from 54 per cent to 67 per cent; the aim should be to improve it substantially through an intensive and extensive awareness programme about the use of modern methods of contraception. Once population growth reaches an unmanageable level, socio-economic development will be derailed. India can’t afford to let that happen.
While regional parties will continue to be significant in various States of the Union, the principal challenge of overcoming majoritarianism lies in the Hindi heartland, especially in U.P. Oppositional electoral alliances, notably the formation of a federal front, are important strategies in this battle but it is no less important to challenge the ideological foundations of the majoritarian project through progressive and inclusive politics.
The landslide victory of the All India Trinamool Congress in the West Bengal Assembly elections and the pushback of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have given rise to a pervasive belief that right-wing politics can be defeated by regional assertions. Undoubtedly, regional and cultural assertion in these States acted as an effective bulwark against the BJP’s expansionary plans in southern and eastern India. The regional-cultural tropes deployed by Mamata Banerjee, for example, worked so well that at one point, Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah was even forced to clarify that if the BJP is elected, someone from Bengal would be the Chief Minister. This underlines the effectiveness of regional culture and politics in trumping communal politics. However, this claim needs to be tempered by the realism that it cannot work in the Hindi heartland, which is dominated by caste and communal politics, and has so far not seen any serious ideological and political challenge to politics based on these identities.
Encompassing nine States whose official language is Hindi, namely Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) and Uttarakhand, this region retains a central position in the electoral strategies of the BJP and its larger political imagination. The party’s stunning show in these States propelled it to power in the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections. Its continued political dominance in the heartland will neutralize its losses now as well as in future in States where it has been bested by regional players. I will focus here on U.P. to illustrate the limits of the regional assertion.
Dimensions in the heartland
The Hindi heartland is clearly different. There are at least four important dimensions of this difference. First is the absence of regional identity in States such as U.P. This is evident from the debate on States reorganization and the reorganization of Uttar Pradesh in the 1950s. The compulsions of nation-oriented identity emerged very clearly from the discussions in the States Reorganization Commission on suggestions for the division of U.P. for administrative convenience. U.P. leaders argued for a large and powerful State in the Gangetic valley as a guarantee of India’s unity.
In this sense, U.P. was considered the backbone of India and the centerpiece of political identity in modern India. Importantly, it was supposed to provide the chief bulwark against growing regionalization and fragmentation elsewhere. Instilling a sense of regional pride, an essential part of Congress strategy in southern and coastal India, was not followed in U.P. U.P. was seen as the political heartland in contrast to Punjab and Bengal for instance, which were splintered and incorporated into two different nation states. As is well known, the bases of this post-colonial identity varied from its location in the freedom struggle to staking claim as the cultural homeland of Hindi and Hinduism. In both cases, it was centered in the idiom of the nation-state and strong central authority.
Second, although U.P.’s cultural homogeneity remains a matter of disagreement, the idea of the heartland had great resonance among the political elite who opposed the demand for U.P.’s reorganization. The long-standing traditions of composite cultural identity and shared plural cultures began to yield place to a singular homogenized identity. The Hindi-Urdu divide, which mirrored the communal cleavage of U.P. society, played a crucial role in this process. Urdu was excluded as it was seen to symbolize Muslim cultural identity in independent India, while Hindi was boosted to promote the development of a Hindi-Hindu heritage for this region. The project of homogenization of Indian/U.P. culture as Hindu culture was quickened in later decades. Even though it would be hard to assume a direct link between Hindi dominance and communal politics of subsequent decades, it is nevertheless a fact that all political parties in the State used it as an ingredient of social and cultural differentiation and a means to consolidate political dominance.
Role of communal politics
Third, it is clear that communal politics and communal movements have played a key role in U.P.’s modern history which in turn have diluted other identities.
In some respects, this process gained momentum in the wake of Partition which cast its long shadow upon political institutions and culture in U.P. and to a great extent affected the perspectives of Hindus and Muslims alike. Hindu nationalism was marginalized within the Congress party but many of its ideas were accepted in framing party policies. The State leadership was instrumental in forging a conservative consensus in the State under Chief Minister G.B. Pant who steered the affairs of the state for eight years after Independence.
The intensification of communal politics took a new turn with the mass mobilization for the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya which was deftly used by the Hindu right to establish a major presence in U.P. and to facilitate the political reconstruction of U.P. through the promotion of a collective Hindu identity. The crusade for the appropriation of disputed shrines is central to the communalization of politics and short circuiting the more complex process of political expansion for the BJP.
Importantly, this has laid the groundwork for building permanent electoral majorities through the deployment of ascriptive symbols in U.P. which, given its huge size, helps it to establish a strong base in the Hindi heartland to offset the appeal of countervailing identities elsewhere in India.
Caste politics too
Finally, caste politics which was expected to counter Hindutva expansion has failed to do so; in fact, caste politics has become a building block for the BJP’s expansion. The party has reached out to Dalits, actively mobilizing them and other backward castes to assimilate them into the Hindutva meta-narrative. Instead of erasing caste from electoral politics, the BJP-Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh has sought to court fragments of castes as a way of undermining broad-based political movements and opposition to it. It has used the wider appeal of Hindu nationalism to co-opt backward castes and Dalits who are keen to align themselves to the larger narrative of Hindu nationalism.
A reset is needed
While regional parties will continue to be significant in various States of the Union, the principal challenge of overcoming majoritarianism lies in the Hindi heartland, especially in U.P. Oppositional electoral alliances, notably the formation of a federal front, are important strategies in this battle but it is no less important to challenge the ideological foundations of the majoritarian project through progressive and inclusive politics. This requires a reset of the basic political mindset in U.P. which can only be done by reviving the splendid heritage of the national movement in which this region played a central role and in which Gandhiji and Nehru played a heroic part. Invoking the spirit of the Bhakti movement which was the first major challenge to the religious orthodoxy of Hinduism would also help in resetting the cultural clock. This must, however, combine with much greater concern for the fundamental social and economic issues of the State, and making the struggle between communal and secular forces the central issue through public campaigns that address the problems of religious traditionalism and the cultural underpinning that this provides to the push to make India a Hindu state.
(Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Jawaharlal Nehru University)
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