Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said that the former minister is in custody for over 2.5 years since his arrest on July 23, 2022.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday (November 26) expressed concerns about keeping an accused in custody for a long period without trial and also flagged low conviction rates in cases pursued by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
A Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan made the observations while hearing a petition filed by former West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee in a money laundering case, reported LiveLaw.
Representing Chatterjee, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said that the former minister is in custody for over 2.5 years since his arrest on July 23, 2022. He also highlighted that the petitioner is 73 years old and that there was no chance of an early completion of trial, given that there are 183 witnesses and four supplementary prosecution complaints.
Rohatgi also said that Chatterjee has already undergone more than 1/3rd of the maximum punishment under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, which is 7 years imprisonment.
“If ultimately he is not convicted, what will happen? Waiting for 2.5-3 years is not a small period! What is your conviction rate? If it is 60-70%, we can understand. But it is very poor,” Justice Bhuyan asked Additional Solicitor General SV Raju who was representing the ED.
ASG said that the matter has to be seen on a case-to-case basis.
Blanket bans, lacking contextual consideration, infringe on freedom of speech and journalistic work. On the other hand, gigantic loopholes ensure that a flourishing culture of violence is accessible to minors.
Eleven-year-old Raman has a life plan in place – he will get married when he turns 12 next year and to sustain his family, he will “become Lawrence Bishnoi.”
Raman (name changed) is the cousin of Vipul Kumar, one of the two authors of the piece. Raman’s father, a skilled migrant worker, moved the family to Gujarat from their native village in Bihar a year ago. The move left Raman without friends. His phone was his only source of entertainment and Bishnoi, his new hero. What did Raman know about Bishnoi?
“Lawrence wanted to kill a fox as a child, but Salman Khan stopped him, so now he wants to kill Salman,” Raman said, unfaltering in confidence.
Though wildly inaccurate, his fascination with Bishnoi was steady. Bishnoi is in jail in Gujarat but has now found renewed space in front pages since he was named by the Canadian government as someone whose gang was allegedly working with the Indian government to foment violence in Canada. Then there are his multiple threats to the actor Salman Khan. Through all of this, Bishnoi has become a hero to young men and children, primarily thanks to social media.
Bishnoi himself does not have a personal social media account. His name has been banned from yielding search results on Meta. And yet, videos on him, posted by fawning social media participants, go viral all the time. As per the National Investigation Agency and various state police forces, content featuring Lawrence Bishnoi’s name alone has an impact on youngsters. Certain groups attempt to sell illegal firearms in his name, while others sell anything that passes for “Lawrence Bishnoi merchandise”.
Recently,The Wire reported on e-shopping platforms and websites like Meesho selling the latter. It caught the attention of other news platforms and caused massive online uproar. Soon, these platforms took down their products.
On November 8, the Maharashtra cyber policefiled a first information report against sellers and platforms under sections 192, 196, 353, and 3 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, and section 67 of the Information Technology Act, over listing products that glorify criminal figures. A press note by the police said that idolising criminals through merchandise can potentially “encourage impressionable youth to admire and imitate unlawful behaviour.”
However, gangster t-shirts are a small cog in the wheel that normalises gun violence, glorifies gang crimes and makes “becoming Lawrence Bishnoi” a viable career option for children like Raman.
Music
While gangster-inspired pop music is not new in the world or in India, social media has taken it to hitherto unseen levels of popularity. Lawrence Bishnoi-themed songs flood social media and are on major streaming and music hosting platforms like Apple music, Jio Savan, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, and Spotify. Not only do these songs explicitly glorify gang crime but they also feature gangsters by name, in some cases featuring clips of their audio threats and their photographs in posters. Some of these songs are fan tributes to Bishnoi actions; others declare support for him.
‘Fan chhiye Lawrence Bishnoi ke’
This song by Suman Sona and Gaurav Thakur was uploaded on Amazon Prime Music on October 25, 2024. It is also available on Jio Saavn and Soundcloud. The song has been uploaded on aYouTube channelwith over 663,000 subscribers.
A part of the Bhojpuri-Maithili lyrics in English say, “Don’t show your power because I am a big fan of Lawrence Bishnoi… Don’t act like a strongman, otherwise we’ll treat you in a way that nobody will be able to find your dead body.”
‘Lawrence Bishnoi-Titu Remix’
Four days later, on October 29, a similar song was released on Apple music. The singer on the poster – which also has Bishnoi’s photo – poses with a pistol.
The lyrics say: ‘The Hindu lion [presumably Bishnoi] has arrived. He kills his opponents with a roar. If someone puts a finger, he will tear them apart.’
‘LBG (Lawrence Bishnoi Gangster)’: Samrat Shooter Sam Roy
Available on Jio Saavn, Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon Prime, this song has received 1.8 million plays on just YouTube. Its various versions have lakhs of views. The song starts with Bishnoi’s voice – his audio threat from his interview to ABP News after the murder of singer Sidhu Moosewala. “No matter how big or powerful the person is we will kill him (Koi bhi kitna bhi bada tagda aadmi ho mashhoor ho, ham usko maar denge),” Bishnoi’s processed voice says.
Is there legal framework to regulate such songs? Are these songs illegal? Or will banning them be illegal?
Apar Gupta, lawyer and co-founder of the Internet Freedom foundation feels that these songs need to be viewed within the framework of existing content control regulation, to which end there are various and substantive provisions of the law. “It is also important to consider that users who post this kind of content not only come under the framework of laws but also under user agreements of platforms. For instance if I want to publish on Spotify or Youtube, there are certain content restriction guidelines which apply to specified categories such as children,” he said.
According to Gupta, “There are some user agreements made by the platforms themselves. While the IT rules say that the platforms have an obligation of enforcing their end user agreement with users. Ideally, if those conditions are not satisfied, any user can file a complaint with the platform. And If the platform doesn’t act then you can approach the grievance appellate committee.”
But what of concerns of censorship? “Content in this particular category may be socially undesirable and potentially may have a tendency of escalating aggression in society but it is important to bear in mind what are the other ways to tackle it rather than just banning content,” he said.
We reached out to the above-mentioned streaming platforms to inquire about their moderation of gang-related content, including measures to protect minors, and the alignment of this content with their community guidelines.
Amazon and Youtube informed TheWire that the content in question has been removed due to non-compliance with their guidelines. The next day, Amazon took down almost all such songs related to Bishnoi, erasing entire playlists. YouTube only acted against the three sample links shared by The Wire. However, these very songs are available in different iterations on YouTube, especially as short form content.
Which brings us to the second chapter of this social phenomenon…
The Reels and Shorts revolution
What compounds the reach of such songs and adulatory content is the viral short form. There are hundreds and thousands of Reels (short videos on Instagram) with millions of views. And Bishnoi far from the only gangster being glorified in them.
One can find similar tracks on the 20-year-old slain Ujjain gangster Durlabh Kashyap. His posthumous fandom is such that teenagers dress up like him, get his images tattooed on their bodies, and even commit murders in his name. Songs and music videos made to glorify him show young teenagers dressing up as Durlabh and engaging in loot, dacoity, and violence – all on Reels.
Some viral Reels also promote Dawood Ibrahim, the famed lynchpin of Mumbai’s underworld. One Reel trend promotes Dawood as “India’s top badshah (king).” Against the audio backdrop of film dialogues, these Reels show the makers of the Reel as subsequent “kings” after Dawood Ibrahim and gangsters Salman Lala or Maya Bhai.
One such Reel has over a crore and 20 lakh views and has been shared 2.5 lakh times. It shows footage of Dawood with dialogue from the film Shootout at Vadala – “Badshah ki gali mein aakar uska pata nahi poochte, gulamo ke jhuke hue sar khud ba khud uska pata bata dete hain”. Translated, it means, “You don’t ask for a king’s address. The bowed heads of his slaves lead you to him.”
Salman Lala, a young gangster from Indore, is another favourite. In many of these being jailed has been glorified as sacred duty.
In another viral trend, one ‘Addu Defaulter’ is presented as the next big gangster. There are multiple videos showing him during his court visits and smoking in prison. Iterations of Reels fawning over Addu Defaulter are shared multiple times.
A single audio clip – like the one below which in one version features the voice of a gangster Billu Sanda – has been used for millions of Reels.
Some teenagers add “Defaulter” to their Instagram handles and claim that they have committed murder. The number 302 – the section for murder under the Indian Penal Code – is an indicator too. They also post pictures in handcuffs or with policemen, to claim that they are members of Defaulter’s group.
Instagram account of a teenager mentioning a murder charge in his bio.
Many of these Reels clearly feature minors. One shows a possible kindergartener packing bullets in her bag. The Wire’s video analysis had showed how multiple men and teenagers committed gun crimes after having been inspired by some of these gangsters and gang content.
‘Jab 16 Saal Ka Tha Khalnayak Dekh Li’ on JioSaavn with over 990,000 listens.
We also found that on YouTube, much of this content is readily available. To check this, we created a sample teenager account with the alias Rahul Kumar (13 years and 7 months old). We searched for the above-mentioned songs and content. All were available to the minor’s account. We changed Rahul’s age to 11 and then the ‘desired content’ setting to that of ‘9+ years old’. The content was still readily available. Soon, YouTube began suggesting more of it. On YouTube, you can control the content a child consumes till they reach the age of 13, while on Meta, the minimum age for creating an account is 13.
Sources at YouTube told The Wire that their policies strictly prohibit content that supports violent extremist or criminal organisations, including material that promotes violence or gang activity. After reviewing flagged videos from The Wire, YouTube said that they removed them in compliance with these guidelines. However, such content is still accessible and suggested to users under 18, even for those who have set the desired content setting to 9+ years of age. YouTube says that for users under 18, it applies added protections by defaulting uploads to private, enabling wellbeing reminders, turning autoplay off, blocking targeting through personalised ads, and limiting repetitive recommendations on sensitive content like non-contact fights. However, as we saw, sensitive content, especially content inciting or glorifying gang violence or extremism, is quite easily accessible and may be recommended even to users under 18.
YouTube says that they review flagged videos individually, removing those that breach guidelines and applying age restrictions on content that may be inappropriate for viewers under 18. In cases of graphic content, warnings and age-gates ensure only users aged 18 and over can view it. Throughout our search as 11-year-old Rahul Kumar, we didn’t find age restrictions on any of these channels, Shorts, or videos.
We conducted a similar experiment for Meta. We created an Instagram account for a 13-year and seven-month-old boy named Rahul Kumar. We searched with ‘Lawrence Bishnoi’. Initially, Instagram did not show much content. But soon the feed was filled with violent content related to Bishnoi and other gangsters. Engaging with a single Reel brought a cascade of similar, violent content into “13-year-old Rahul Kumar’s” feed.
After being shown Reels related to gang culture, the algorithm automatically began recommending content supporting violence for cow vigilantism, pseudoscience, targeting Muslims, and promoting the conspiracy theory of “love jihad”. One Reel featured visuals of a cow in tears, and the lyrics said, “We will put brass [bullets] in your chest if you kill cows.” Another suggested that Muslim men murder Hindu women.
Since our focus was solely on gang content, we did not search for any of this – it was automatically recommended.
Jonathan C. Ong, professor and director of Glotech Lab and a scholar on misinformation pointed out that subcultures are dynamic but not exactly welcoming at the outset.
“What an outsider might see as a passing comment could actually be a dog whistle or an invitation to join a radical group. This is why both human moderators and AI moderation systems struggle to detect such content,” he said.
‘Content moderation’
Meta’s transparency page says that there is an “increase in content actioned for Dangerous Organizations and Individuals on Facebook and Instagram” due to continued updates made to their “proactive detection technology”.
Despite these tall claims, a cursory search would show you that much of such content is readily available even when Meta has categorised Lawrence as a “dangerous individual” in 2024. Many others like Kashyap and Dawood are also “search banned”.
Search results in Hindi on Facebook.
While searching for Lawrence Bishnoi on Instagram and Facebook, the initial search yields no result, followed by a pop-up warning that the term may be associated with dangerous organisations and individuals. However, this warning appears only for searches in Roman script and Punjabi (Gurmukhi script on Instagram), but not in Devanagari, which is used for Hindi and some other regional languages in India. This indicates that the moderation is primarily aimed at English-speaking users. Various research studies claim that Meta lacks proper training for the platform in the Hindi or the Indian context. Sources close to Meta told the Wire that search for “Lawrence Bishnoi Gang” in Hindi is also censored. However, when we searched for “लॉरेंस बिश्नोई गैंग” what appeared on our screens are different variations with changes.
The inability to properly moderate content in non-English languages raises concerns about content moderation inequality. On the other hand, existing moderating strategies may be counterproductive and inspire social media users to be creative with their searches. Whistleblower Francis Haugen told TheGuardian in 2021 that she believes Facebook’s “prioritisation of profits over people” endangered the lives of people, especially in the Global South, a charge that Facebook had denied. She has also said that 87% of the spending on combating misinformation at Facebook is spent on English content when only 9% of users are English speakers.
A recent report, published by the Washington based think-tank Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), details how the platform amplifies and promotes violent and hateful content, allowing accounts that post hate crimes to fundraise on Instagram in violation of Meta’s content policies.
Jonathan also feels that content moderation inequality may be contributing to the proliferation of gangster-related content for young people in India. “We know that these platforms often invest less in monitoring content in non-English languages, especially in the Global South. When it comes to smaller platforms unlike Meta, there is even less investment in trust and safety,” he said.
Even as Meta claims to have a proactive approach in combating promotion of dangerous activity on its platforms, we found that its techniques are largely ineffective in the case of gangsters like Bishnoi, and yet have an overtone of censorship.
Recently, we posted a story on Instagram asking, “Has Meta banned the word ‘Lawrence Bishnoi’?” The story was deleted with a notification saying, “It looks like you shared or sent symbols, praise or support of people and organizations that we define as dangerous…”
Similarly, journalist Tanushree Pandey shared on Instagram an interview she conducted with the son of Baba Siddique, who was allegedly killed by Lawrence Bishnoi’s shooters. Her post was removed just minutes after it was published, without regard for context. In another instance, The Quint journalist Himanshi Dahiya shared our aforementioned video: “How gangsters became cool…”. Her caption mentioned Lawrence Bishnoi and was taken down by Instagram. Such blanket bans, lacking contextual consideration, infringe on freedom of speech and journalistic work.
When polls closed at 5 pm on November 20, the turnout was 58.22%. By 11.30 pm on the same day, after accommodating people presumably waiting in the queue to vote at 5 pm, it increased to 65.02%. Parakala Prabhakar draws attention to the inexplicable math.
Economist and current affairs commentator, Parakala Prabhakar, has drawn attention to inexplicable and disconcerting discrepancies in the official turnout figures put out by the Election Commission in Maharashtra which, he says, “question the legitimacy of the mandate”.
Very simply, when polls closed at 5 pm on November 20, the turnout was 58.22%. By 11.30 pm on the same day, after accommodating people presumably waiting in the queue to vote at 5 pm, it increased to 65.02%. Hours before the counting started on November 23, it was put at 66.05%. This means that the turnout increased by 7.83% after polls closed at 5 pm. Parakala estimates that this is, in terms of the number of people, an increase of almost 76 lakhs.
How could such an enormous number have been accommodated in the six hours between polls closing at 5 pm and 11.30 pm on the same day, when the final person waiting in the queue voted?
To illustrate how impossible this actually would be, Parakala cited the following example.
Let’s, for arguments sake, assume there were 1,000 people waiting to vote in a booth when polling stopped at 5 pm. Because they had arrived before 5 pm, they would have the right to vote. If you assume one minute per person to vote – but actually it should be a lot more i.e. closer to 4 or 5 – it would take a 1,000 minutes for these people to vote. A thousand minutes is 16.6 hours. The problem is between 5 pm and 11.30 pm, there are only six and a half hours. So there is no way 1,000 people could have voted in that time. How then could 76 lakhs have done so? This cries out for an explanation from the Election Commission.
While the PTI’s central media cell announced a temporary pause to its protest, a senior leader later said only Imran Khan could call the protest off.
New Delhi: Nearly 1,000 protesters have been arrested since supporters of jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan stormed Islamabad, while a key aide and a provincial chief minister have pledged to continue the demonstrations.
On Tuesday (November 26), supporters of Imran Khan marched towards D-Chowk in Islamabad. This came after the ‘final call’ for protest by the jailed politician. The protesters defied a court order and government warnings for this ‘do-or-die’ protest, which took place during the state visit of Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko.
Late Tuesday night, security forces cut off the lights and launched a raid in central Islamabad, unleashing a barrage of tear gas. According to Geo News, the protesters were almost completely dispersed.
Shortly after midnight, local authorities declared central Islamabad clear.
Interior minister Mohsin Naqvi in a press conference stated that Bushra Bibi, Imran Khan’s wife, and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Ali Amin Gandapur, also the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and who had been leading the protests, were “on the run”.
“In light of the government’s brutality and plans to turn the federal capital into a “slaughterhouse” for unarmed citizens, we are announcing the temporary suspension of our peaceful protest,” it said.
Hours after the top PTI leaders went incommunicado after fleeing the crackdown, Pakistani media reported that they had arrived at the residence of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly speaker Babar Saleem Swati. The provincial government in the volatile province is controlled by the PTI.
Bushra Bibi was expected to address the press conference alongside Gandapur, but ultimately, only the chief minister appeared before the media on Wednesday, stating that the sit-in was “still ongoing”, with only Imran Khan having the authority to call it off.
“When we gave the protest call, we said this would be peaceful. Imran Khan said we will go to D-Chowk peacefully and we will not go ahead of D-Chowk where we are not permitted. [Imran] Khan sahib gave this call, and he said this protest will continue until I call it off,” Gandapur said as per Dawn.
“People have died in this protest, we must pray for them,” the chief minister also said during the press conference held at Swati’s residence.
Describing the sit-in as a “revolution,” Gandapur warned, “if you try and stop it, people will come through other means”.
He said he would file an FIR in connection with the violence against PTI workers and also announced financial compensation for the families of those killed, Geo News reported.
While the PTI claimed that at least eight workers were killed, Pakistani media, citing official and hospital sources, reported that six people lost their lives over three days of protests, including a policeman, three Rangers officials and two civilians.
Islamabad’s inspector general of police (IGP) Ali Nasir Rizvi informed reporters that 954 protesters were arrested by law enforcement agencies between Sunday and Tuesday. Of these, he noted, 610 arrests were made on Tuesday.
He alleged that 37 Afghan nationals were among those arrested.
The Pakistani interior minister said that “Afghan nationals will not be allowed to stay in Islamabad without permission after the end of the next month”, Geo News quoted him as saying.
Describing the protestors as “terrorists”, the senior Islamabad cop said that those who “instigated” the crowd would face legal action.
The IGP further stated that the demonstrators carried “every kind of weapon” during the rally. “They were armed with AK47s, they had pistols, every kind of 7.62mm weapon and sniper rifles,” he said as per Dawn, adding that protesters also used tear gas and slingshots to target law enforcement personnel.
He claimed that over 200 vehicles were impounded by police and that 39 weapons, including Kalashnikovs, pistols and 12-bore firearms, were seized. “These terrorists brought them and used them on police.”
Protests have been going on in several cities in Pakistan since the results of the general elections were released on February 8. The PTI claimed the polls were unfair and rigged.
Tensions have been worsened by the imprisonment of Imran Khan and several other senior PTI leaders since last year.
The convoy of the protesters had travelled from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the party’s power centre.
Roads to Islamabad were blocked, Internet services severed and schools shut.
Military and paramilitary personnel were called to stop the protesters from reaching key points in the city as well as to prevent them from carrying out a sit-in protest near parliament.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif denounced the PTI rally, asserting that Pakistan was bearing an economic cost due to the opposition’s agitation.
Addressing a cabinet meeting, Sharif claimed that damages from the PTI’s rally were causing a daily loss of Pakistani Rs 190 billion to the national exchequer, as per Dawn.
Amnesty International South Asia posted of the situation, “The government must fully protect and ensure the rights of protesters and immediately rescind the ‘shoot-on-sight’ orders that provide undue and excessive powers to the military.”
The situation on the roads of Islamabad has now reportedly returned to normal. Roadblocks on major points have been removed and internet services have been restored.
Commentators suggested that the latest protest highlighted a leadership vacuum within the party.
Talat Hussain, an analyst, noted that the PTI’s dependence on social media hype faltered when tested in real-world situations.
“Last night, [the] PTI learned there is more to politics than online narratives,” he told Al Jazeera.
Ahmed Ijaz, a political observer in Islamabad, questioned the sudden departure of Bushra Bibi and Gandapur and suggested their actions could exacerbate divisions within the PTI.
“The way they abandoned supporters at D-Chowk will hurt the party’s ability to formulate its next steps,” he told Al Jazeera.
This is in connection with an FIR against Zubair in connection to posts he made about Hindu extremist leader Yati Narsinghanand.
New Delhi: Police in Uttar Pradesh have invoked a law dealing with acts endangering India’s sovereignty, unity and integrity against fact-checker Mohammed Zubair in connection with a post he made on alleged hate speech by a Hindu extremist leader, reports said.
The investigating officer in the case told the Allahabad high court on Wednesday (November 27) that the offence of endangering India’s sovereignty, unity and integrity as under Section 152 of the BNS had been added to the FIR against Zubair, Bar and Benchreported.
They also added Section 66 of the IT Act – which pertains to ‘computer offences’ – to the FIR, which otherwise invokes provisions dealing with promoting enmity, fabricating evidence, outraging religious feelings, defamation and criminal intimidation, the report also said.
Ghaziabad police filed the FIR against Zubair last month following a complaint by an aide of the Hindu extremist leader, Yati Narsinghanand.
Udita Tyagi, general secretary of the Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati Foundation, alleged that Zubair posted an older video featuring Narsinghanand in order to provoke violence against him by Muslims, as per PTI.
Earlier that month, controversy ensued after videos showing Narsinghanand making derogatory remarks against Prophet Muhammad were shared on social media.
Narsinghanand had allegedly made comments inciting people to burn the Prophet’s effigies at an event in Ghaziabad on September 29.
Muslims in several places in Uttar Pradesh took to the streets in protest and demanded action against the priest.
Zubair challenged the FIR against him in a writ petition filed in the Allahabad high court and sought protection against coercive action.
He said his post about Narsinghanand did not call for violence against him, but simply alerted police about Narsinghanand’s actions and sought legal recourse against him, PTI also reported.
His writ petition also said that when Narsinghanand allegedly made the derogatory statements against Prophet Muhammad, he was out on bail in a hate speech case and his bail conditions said he was not to make statements promoting communal disharmony.
According to LiveLaw, Zubair also argued that his seeking action against Narsinghanand by sharing videos of him in the public domain could not amount to defamation.
The court has scheduled the next hearing in the case for December 3, Bar and Bench‘s report said.
“Whoever, purposely or knowingly, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or by electronic communication or by use of financial mean, or otherwise, excites or attempts to excite, secession or armed rebellion or subversive activities, or encourages feelings of separatist activities or endangers sovereignty or unity and integrity of India; or indulges in or commits any such act shall be punished with imprisonment for life or with imprisonment which may extend to seven years and shall also be liable to fine.”
This is not the first FIR filed against Zubair. He was also arrested in June 2022 over a post he made in 2018.
His arrest had garnered significant attention and criticism from national and international media, civil society and opposition parties, with allegations that it was an attempt to silence dissent and target fact-checkers.
Alt News, the fact-checking outlet Zubair co-founded, said in a statement on Wednesday that it “stands in solidarity with Zubair as he faces this relentless legal intimidation”.
“This affidavit is yet another example of how state machinery is being used to intimidate individuals and organisations committed to exposing hate and misinformation,” it also said.
Mahato’s demands and his ability for straight-talking, courage to take on the police and charisma have made him a youth icon in the state.
New Delhi: ‘Tiger’ is an honorary title that the people of Jharkhand have awarded to politicians of different hues over the years. In a state with one of the largest forest covers in India, the honour is not merely titular but an earning that acknowledges the commitment of a politician for people’s causes and concerns. It combines traits like character, fearlessness and leadership into one single whole.
Former chief minister and a leader of the Adivasis, Champai Soren, for instance, earned the moniker ‘Kolhan Tiger’ (Kolhan is an Adivasi-dominated region in the southeastern part of the state) for his sustained leadership in the struggles for Adivasi rights through his political life.
There is, however, a new ‘Tiger’ on Jharkhand’s horizon – Jairam Mahato. He registered his decisive presence in the recently concluded assembly polls, in which the INDIA bloc led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) trounced the BJP-led NDA with a comprehensive majority, increasing its vote shares by a good margin from the Lok Sabha polls and also made decisive inroads in BJP strongholds.
‘Tiger Jairam’: birth of a new political icon
Twenty-nine-year-old Jairam shot into fame all of a sudden sometime in June 2022 when he gave a rousing speech at a public meeting in a tiny peri-urban settlement called Topchachi near the coal town of Dhanbad.
He and his friends opposed the Hemant Soren government’s decision to include languages like Bhojpuri, Magahi and Angika in state-level recruitment examinations. Instead, he demanded the Jharkhandi languages be included as official languages and that employment for “locals” be promoted.
Although the protests remained concentrated in the north Chotanagpur plateau, their message reached almost every nook and corner of the state, commanding wide attention from job aspirants and students. As the protests rocked the state, the Soren government was forced to withdraw the order in three districts, but not before the protestors were met with brute force.
Jairam’s protests weren’t isolated. The concerns around Jharkhandi identity remain politically relevant even 24 years after the state was carved out of Bihar. The north Chotanagpur plateau and Adivasi-dominated regions like Kolhan and Santhal Pargana together were the hotbeds for movements demanding a separate Jharkhand state since the 1970s.
Adivasi leader Shibu Soren, OBC leader Binod Bihari Mahato and Leftist leader A.K. Roy came together to lead one of the fiercest class and identity struggles to demand a separate state that also went on to create a Jharkhandi-Bihari binary. The resonance of the divide can be heard across the state even in current times.
The JMM itself was founded on the premise of Jharkhandi identity. However, its collective leadership fragmented after the creation of a separate state, scattering the Left and isolating the Kurmi or Mahato community, even as a strong Adivasi leadership emerged in the state.
Ever since Jairam shot to the limelight by successfully leading the language movement, he expanded his politics to the core concerns of Jharkhandi identity and took them up aggressively.
When he renewed the demand to implement the 1932 Khatiyan (which would recognise only those people as Jharkhand’s indigenous people whose family names were registered in land records from 1932) and demanded 90% reservation for Jharkhandis on the basis of the records, he re-energised a long-standing demand. The JMM and other Adivasi groups have been old supporters of the demand but had deprioritised it after they became prominent electoral players.
Jairam’s demands, along with his ability for straight-talking, courage to take on the police and a charisma that has energised young men and women across marginalised communities, have now made him a youth icon in the state. He has duly earned his title of ‘tiger’.
Freshly energised by his politics, Kurmis look to Jairam to lead their community
The issues that he has raised also reflect the way Jharkhand has matured over the years. In its initial years, Jharkhand struggled to put state systems in place and dealt with chaotic political situations. But after two stable governments in the last decade, the old concerns of Jharkhandis are back in business, with ‘Tiger Jairam’ at the forefront to lead the pack.
For Jairam to pick such issues was only natural. He was born in 1995 in the Maantand village of Dhanbad. He claims to have come from a family that had played an active role in the statehood movement.
The language movement catapulted him to the political mise en scène, following which he and some other student leaders formed the Jharkhandi Bhasha Sangharsh Khatian Samiti (JBSKS) in June 2023.
Jairam became the face of new-age politics. His bold speeches became viral on social media. The violent police action against his language movement earned him both sympathy and solidarity. His open challenges to the JMM and the BJP, and even the Sudesh Mahato-led All Jharkhand Students Union, on the common issues of Jharkhand transformed him into a celebrity among the youth.
At the same time, the Kurmis, who claim to form over 15% of the state population, looked up to him as someone who could replace the much-weakened Sudesh as their community’s leader in the future. That Jairam openly ridiculed Sudesh for compromising his ideals for the sake of power only emboldened such a perception.
A large section of Kurmis believe that they were wrongfully relegated by JMM supremo Shibu Soren to a secondary position after the state was formed, despite the community having played a significant role in the statehood movement.
Kurmis like to refer to themselves as moolnivasi (indigenous) and assert their Jharkhandi identity over their OBC status. Over the years, they have also nursed a hope that the state may get a chief minister belonging to the Mahato community, and pinned their hopes on Sudesh for a long time.
But as Sudesh’s electoral prospects took a hit in the last few years, Jairam’s aggressive stances and ability to unite a large section of people has infused fresh energy into the community.
Jairam, his JLKM party experience electoral successes
That Jairam will be a force to reckon with was evident even in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. In his maiden election as an independent candidate, he polled 3.47 lakh votes from the Giridih constituency and finished third by a margin of 20,000 votes. Two other JBSKS leaders also registered a strong presence in the Lok Sabha polls.
In August 2024, Jairam registered a new party with the Election Commission. It was named the Jharkhand Loktantrik Krantikari Morcha (JLKM) and it almost immediately registered an impressive show in its very first elections.
The JLKM made it a point to drive its agenda – surrounding Jharkhandi identity and 90% reservations for Jharkhandi youth in jobs – home. The party also promised that if their leaders were elected, they would donate 75% of their salaries to public welfare, while also pledging to crack down on widespread corruption at the district and block levels.
The party also ensured that it remained secular in character. It cultivated Muslim and Adivasi leaders along the lines of Jharkhandi identity and took strong exception to the BJP’s Hindutva politics.
As the assembly polls drew closer, concerted attempts by both the BJP and the JMM to weaken the JLKM led to some of its prominent faces deserting Jairam. Some joined the BJP, while some went to the JMM. But the movement that Jairam and his friends started left its mark in the assembly polls.
Jairam won the Dumri seat, considered to be an impenetrable fortress of JMM leader Jagarnath Mahato. Jagarnath was a hugely popular leader in the region before he died in April 2023 owing to health complications. His wife Bebi Devi contested against Jairam but lost by a little over 10,000 votes.
Jairam could not win his second seat Bermo, but finished second with over 60,000 votes, pushing BJP candidate and former MP Ravindra Pandey to the third position.
Many of Jairam’s supporters in Jharkhand go on talking about how he dodged all bullets in the run-up to the elections. “He was offered a Rajya Sabha seat by the BJP; both the BJP and JMM even offered him some seats in their coalitions, but Jairam was clear that he would chart his own course for the sake of Jharkhand,” said Sudhanshu Mahato, a Hazaribagh-based JLKM worker.
The JLKM contested 71 of the 81 seats in the state but impacted the results in as many as 14 seats with a little over 6% of the votes in the polls, playing a decisive role at the end. Only Jairam could win from his party, but many of its candidates showed through the number of votes they garnered that the party is here to stay.
His elevation to the state’s political stage may have usurped Sudesh’s position as the most prominent OBC politician in the state. Despite being a part of the BJP-led coalition, Sudesh lost from his pocket-borough of Silli near Ranchi to Congress candidate Amit Kumar.
Jairam’s present and future can be gauged from a conversation that this correspondent had in Dumri with a group of young men who belonged to the Mandal community, which has largely preferred the BJP over other parties in the last few elections.
“Is chunaav mein hamara vote hamare bhavishya ke liye hoga [Our vote will be to secure our future in this election],” said Suresh Mandal, a 21-year-old student who also doubles up as a mechanic, about his preference for Jairam. “We have also convinced our mummiesand daddiestovote for him,” he added.
Jairam represents a new hope in Jharkhand at the moment. He is also seen as an “extremist” and even an “anarchist” by established leaders. Yet, he has emerged as the new ‘Tiger’ on the block – even as his older counterparts like ‘Kolhan Tiger’ Champai Soren is being perceived to have lost his way after he joined the BJP, a ‘Diku party’ (party of outsiders) according to many Ho Adivasis in Kolhan.
‘We hope these developments will lead to peace and stability in the wider region,’ the external affairs ministry said in a statement.
New Delhi: India has welcomed the ceasefire that began on Wednesday (November 27) between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which could potentially end the fighting that began 14 months earlier.
The ceasefire began at 4 am on Wednesday, following Israel’s most intense day of airstrikes in Beirut, which claimed over 42 lives.
“We welcome the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon that has been announced. We have always called for de-escalation, restraint and return to the path of dialogue and diplomacy. We hope these developments will lead to peace and stability in the wider region,” the external affairs ministry said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon.
Under the ceasefire’s terms, there will be no hostilities for an initial 60-day period during which Israel will withdraw from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is also required to move its weapons and forces at least 30 kilometres behind the Litani River.
The Lebanese Army and UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, are tasked with filling the void.
The ceasefire will be overseen by several countries led by the US.
However, Israel retains the right to act if it identifies an imminent threat.
The truce conditions are largely based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which had been the basis of the 2006 agreement to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.
The implementation once again hinges on the reinforcement of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL, both of which have previously been ineffective due to stakeholders disregarding their authority.
While the truce, if maintained, is expected to lower the chances of a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, it is not seen as a step toward resolving the war in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden shared the “good news” of the ceasefire in Washington on Tuesday, expressing gratitude to France for its assistance.
The announcement came after Israel’s security cabinet approved the US and France-brokered agreement.
The outgoing US president also stated that further efforts would be made involving Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and others to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, ensure the release of the hostages taken by Hamas during its attack in Israel last year and bring an end to the war without Hamas remaining in power.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unlikely to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza soon, as he may choose to wait for Donald Trump’s second presidency, given Trump’s promise to bring an end to the violence.
Chief prosecutor Karim Khan said more applications against high-level Myanmar government officials would follow.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Wednesday (November 27) applied for an arrest warrant for Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.
He said that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the junta leader was involved in crimes against the Rohingya Muslim minority.
A panel of three judges will now decide whether to issue the warrant.
What else do we know about the ICC warrant request?
Khan said that deportation and persecution were among the alleged crimes.
He said that they were committed by Myanmar’s armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, supported by the national and border police as well as non-Rohingya citizens of Myanmar.
“This is the first application for an arrest warrant against a high-level Myanmar government official,” the prosecutor said, vowing that “more will follow”.
Myanmar is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC, but 2018 and 2019 rulings found that the court had jurisdiction over alleged crimes that partially took place in Bangladesh, which is an ICC member.
The announcement comes several days after the ICC issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli defence chief Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Mohammed Deif for crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Application a ‘critical moment in Myanmar history’
Zin Mar Aung, the foreign minister in Myanmar’s in-exile National Unity Government, said that the arrest warrant application “represents a critical moment in Myanmar history.”
“He must be held fully accountable for every innocent lives he has destroyed and the families he has torn apart,” she said on X, adding that she called on the judges to “swiftly issue the warrant and the governments to act and enforce this warrant to uphold justice and international law”.
Speaking to Reuters, Mohammed Zubair, whom the news agency described as a researcher and Rohingya refugee living in exile in Bangladesh, said that the Myanmar military under Min Aung Hlaing’s command “killed thousands of Rohingya and subjected countless women and girls to horrific acts of sexual violence”.
“As the primary perpetrator of these atrocities, Min Aung Hlaing must be held accountable … The ICC and ICJ [International Court of Justice] must take decisive action to ensure justice for the Rohingya community and to prevent such crimes from happening again,” he said.
The news agency also quoted Melanie O’Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, as saying the application was “an important step towards justice for the Rohingya”.
“But it is disappointing to see another arrest warrant request with no genocide crimes. The Rohingya case is undoubtedly genocide … They drove the Rohingya across the border into conditions of starvation and disease, with a lack of healthcare, including for women pregnant with rape babies,” she was also quoted as saying.
What is the situation in Myanmar?
While Myanmar has been grappling with insurgencies by militias representing various ethnic groups for decades, the conflict intensified in 2021 after the military overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Rohingya people traditionally inhabit the northwestern Rakhine state, which is also home to the largely Buddhist Rakhine people. The Arakan Army rebel group controls much of the state and is mostly made up of ethnic Rakhine.
The Rohingya have for decades faced widespread discrimination in Myanmar and most of them have been denied citizenship.
While challenges remain and answers are elusive, ongoing breakthroughs suggest that strings might just tie together the ultimate puzzle of existence.
Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature’s forces and particles fit together. It would be nice to do it with Legos. But perhaps a better bet would be connecting everything with strings.
Not literal strings, of course – but tiny loops or snippets of vibrating energy. And the “fit together” needs to be mathematical, not via properly shaped pieces of plastic. For decades now, many physicists have pursued the hope that equations involving an especially tiny “string” could provide the theory that solves nature’s ultimate subatomic mysteries.
String theory, as it’s called, has acquired a sort of fuzzy cultural acclaim, showing up in popular TV shows like TheBig Bang Theory and NCIS. Among physicists, reaction to the theory has been mixed. After several promising bursts of discovery in the 1980s and ’90s, strings fell somewhat out of favor for not delivering on their promises. Among those was providing the proper way to include gravity in the quantum theory of subatomic particles. Another was revealing the math that would show nature’s multiple fundamental forces to be just different offspring of one unified force. Still promises unkept.
Yet during the time since string theory’s retreat from the limelight, a considerable cadre of string devotees have labored to tie all the loose ends together. Success remains elusive, but real progress has been made. Questions plaguing physicists about not only the smallest bits of matter but also the properties of the entire universe may yet yield to string theorists’ efforts.
One major approach in this quest is figuring out whether string theory can explain what is known as the Standard Model of particle physics. Developed in the last part of the 20th century, the Standard Model provides a sort of roster listing all of nature’s basic particles. Some provide the building blocks of matter; others transmit forces between the matter particles, governing how they behave.
Source: CERN. Graphic: Knowable Magazine.
It’s pretty simple to draw a chart displaying those particles. You need 12 spots for matter particles — six quarks and six leptons. You need four spots for force particles (collectively known as bosons) plus a spot for the Higgs boson, a particle needed to explain why some particles have mass. But the mathematics underlying the chart is unfathomably complex, a combination of equations that make hieroglyphics seem self-explanatory.
Those equations work superbly for explaining the results of virtually all particle physics behavior. But the Standard Model cannot be the whole story of the universe. “Despite the incredible success of the Standard Model in describing the observed particle physics up to the currently accessible energy scales, there are compelling arguments for why it is incomplete,” Marchesano and collaborators write.
For one thing, its equations do not encompass gravity, which has no spot on the Standard Model chart. And Standard Model math leaves many questions unanswered, such as why some of the particles have the precise masses that they do. Standard Model math also does not include the mysterious dark matter that lurks within and between galaxies, nor does it explain why empty space is infused with a form of energy that causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.
Some physicists investigating these problems believe that string theory can help, since a string version of the Standard Model will contain additional math that could account for its shortcomings. In other words, if string theory is correct, the Standard Model would be just one segment of string theory’s full mathematical description of reality. The problem is that string theory describes many different versions of reality. That’s because the strings exist in a realm with multiple dimensions of space beyond the ordinary three. Kind of like the Twilight Zone on steroids.
String theorists concede that daily life proceeds just fine in a three-dimensional world. Therefore, the extra dimensions of the string world must be too small to notice: They have to shrink, or “compactify,” into submicroscopic size. It’s like the way an ant living on a vast sheet of paper would perceive a two-dimensional surface without ever realizing the paper had a third, very small dimension.
Not only must string theory’s extra dimensions shrink, but they also can shrink into innumerable different configurations, or geometries, of the vacuum of space. One of those possible geometries might be the right shape of the shrunk dimensions to explain the properties of the Standard Model.
“Standard Model … features, questions, and puzzles can be reformulated in terms of the geometry of extra dimensions,” Marchesano and collaborators write.
Because string theory math can be expressed in several different forms, theorists have to explore multiple possible avenues to find the most fruitful formulation. So far, string approaches have been found that describe many features of the Standard Model. But different compactification geometries of the vacuum are needed to explain each feature. The challenge, Marchesano and colleagues point out, is to find one geometry for the vacuum that combines all those features at once, while also incorporating features that describe the known universe.
A successful compactification of the extra dimensions, for instance, would produce a vacuum in space that contained the right amount of “dark energy,” the source of the universe’s accelerating expansion. And candidates for the cosmic dark matter should appear in the string math as well. In fact, a whole additional set of force and matter particles emerges from string equations involving a mathematical property called supersymmetry. “Almost all string theory models that resemble the Standard Model display supersymmetry at the compactification scale,” write Marchesano and his coauthors.
Versions of string theory containing supersymmetric particles go by the moniker “superstring theory.” Such “superparticles” have long been suspected of comprising the universe’s dark matter. But attempts to detect them in space or create them in particle accelerators have so far been unsuccessful.
As for gravity, particles conveying the gravitational force appear naturally in string theory math — one of the theory’s big attractions to begin with. But the fact that many formulations of string theory include gravity does not tell you which formulation provides the correct description of the real world.
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Tests are possible
If string theory is correct, fundamental particles of nature would not be the zero-dimensional pointlike objects of standard theory. Instead, different particles would result from different modes of vibration of a one-dimensional string, either a loop or a snippet with ends attached to multidimensional spatial objects called branes. Such strings would roughly be smaller than an atom to the extent that an atom is smaller than the solar system. Very small, with no feasible way of detecting them directly. The amount of energy needed to probe scales so tiny is far beyond the reach of any practical technology.
But if string theory can account for the Standard Model, it would also contain other features of reality that would be accessible to experiments, such as types of particles not included on the Standard Model chart. “String constructions that realize the Standard Model always contain additional sectors … at an energy scale that could be tested in the near future,” Marchesano and colleagues write.
Ultimately, string theory remains a hopeful candidate for putting all the pieces of the cosmic puzzle together. If it works out, scientists could finally unravel the mysteries about how quantum physics’ relation to gravity, and the properties of nature’s particles and forces, are all deeply linked. “String theory,” write Marchesano and colleagues, “has all the ingredients to help us understand this profound connection.”
Tom Siegfried is a science journalist in Avon, Ohio. His book The Number of the Heavens, about the history of the multiverse, was published in 2019 by Harvard University Press.
This article first appeared on Knowable Magazine, a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all. Read the original here.
The country has lost 2.33 million hectares of tree cover since 2000 to so-called development projects. That means we have lost about 300 million tonnes of carbon sequestration capacity per annum.
While our supreme leader is accepting inconsequential awards in Nigeria and Guyana (Do you even know where they are? Clue: they are nowhere near Manipur) and hugging war criminals and their accomplices in Rio de Janeiro, his own capital is invisible from outer space, or from my balcony, blanketed in a toxic cocktail of dust, poisonous gases, particulate matter 2.5, carbon dioxide (CO2) and God only knows what else; as I write this, it’s been six days and counting. Air quality index levels have crossed 1,000 (more than 20 times safe levels as prescribed by the WHO), according to official reports. North India has been officially declared the most polluted region in the world. Two million Indians die of pollution every year (one-fourth of the global figure) according to the World Health Organization, but when was the last time you heard either this demi-god or his environment minister or any other leader of any consequence talk about the environment?
I wouldn’t want to bore the reader with oft repeated statistics, but some figures are necessary to grasp what a waste of time the usual trope of blame-gaming – Aam Aadmi Party vs Bharatiya Janata Party vs Congress vs Yogendra Yadav vs all – is. And that this is not just about the privileged and spoilt brats of Delhi but about the whole country. All of us treat the natural environment like a piece of toilet paper – use it to serve our basest needs and just throw it away (incidentally, did you know that 28,000 trees are cut everyday for manufacturing toilet paper?). Consider some figures, if you can spare the time between your Muslim bashing, bridge game, gym workout, the Swiggy delivery or kitty party.
The country has lost 2.33 million hectares of tree cover since 2000 to so-called development projects (Global Forest Watch). One hectare of moderately dense forest can capture 147 tonnes of CO2 – if our environment minister can do the simple maths, that means we have lost about 300 million tonnes of carbon sequestration capacity per annum; one-third of what we had promised to add in the last conference of the parties on climate change. And this does not even factor in the other benefits of forests – ecological services, water retention, dust and sound barriers, and preservation of biodiversity. In addition, between 2015 and 2021, 3.13 million hectares of forests have been degraded from dense to open/scrub and 9.4 million trees have been felled for mining, road construction and power projects. In Delhi, 77,000 trees have been cut between 2019 and 2021. The lieutenant governor of Delhi himself (he who is accountable to no one, not even his conscience, since that has been kept in hock in 7, Lok Kalyan Marg) is being investigated by the Supreme Court in a case of irregular felling of 1100 trees in Delhi’s southern Ridge area. India has 28 trees per capita against a global average of 422.
This environmental slaughter is an ongoing and continuous process under the benign gaze of the judiciary, the National Green Tribunal, the World Bank, the IMF and the expanding roster of home-made billionaires. Approval has been given for felling 8,00,000 trees in the Andamans and 1,20,000 in the Hasdeo forests, in the face of protests by tribals. 60,000 trees have been cut for a wholly unnecessary road for Mr Adityanath’s favourite kanwariyas. Even Shimla, which now has more advisors to the chief minister than it has deodar trees, proposes to fell a few hundred trees to make fly-overs! I will not even talk about the Western Ghats, the horrendous Char Dham Highway and the wholly unnecessary four-laning madness that has gripped the Himachal government. Every single river has been poisoned beyond acceptable levels of drinking or even farming. Most of our wildlife and biodiversity are on the verge of extinction, never mind the figures cooked up by the Forest Research Institute, Project Tiger Authority or the Zoological Survey of India on their post-retirement microwaves. Why should we spare the air, when we are decimating ever other element of nature?
Environmental regulations that provide some limited protection to the environment even in a chronically corrupt country like ours are being relaxed on an almost daily basis to favour some crony or the other. The 10% upper classes, who contribute 90% of the pollution and degradation, are not bothered; they can insulate themselves with their air conditioners and air purifiers, or jet off (like our prime minister) to exotic locales and count their fixed deposits there. Those who stay back to keep an eye on their fixed deposits here will suggest that a lockdown should be imposed immediately – an absurd, elitist idea which will hit the most vulnerable most, just as they are recovering after the terrible effects of the COVID-19 lockdown. The environment and ecology are never election issues, no political party ever espouses them, no manifesto so much as mentions them even in passing, and you and I never demand this. By the time we are done with issues relating to electronic voting machines, caste reservations, free water, electricity and rations, “ghuspaitias,” Rohingyas and demolishing of mosques, we have time and energy left only for discussing Salman Khan’s latest film or Kangana Ranaut’s most recent demo of her profound knowledge of history.
It is no coincidence that India has been ranked 176 out of 180 countries in the Global Nature Conservation Index in October 2024, one of the five worst-performing countries in the world. So why should we be surprised at Delhi adorning this mantle of honour every year? And why should we be blaming an incompetent and environmentally illiterate government for it, considering that we ourselves don’t give a s**t about the environment?
Still surprised that we have this 3 trillion dollar economy smog over the Indo-Gangetic plains that has already knocked seven years off your lives, according to health experts? Don’t be, for all this devastation is in pursuit of the holy grail of the 35 trillion dollar economy by 2050. Except that the smog will have killed us all by then, or rendered us comatose (if today’s politics has not already done so).
So take a deep breath of the patriotic, made-in-India fumes and, while exhaling, chant loudly: Hum Hindu Khatre Me Hain.
You will never say a truer word in your life – or what remains of it – after the smog has lifted.
This article was originally published on the author’s blog, View from [Greater] Kailash. It has been edited slightly for style.
