The 17-year-old gave birth to a baby at a private hospital last month and the accused had shifted both the mother and the newborn to an orphanage in north Kerala’s Wayanad to hush up the incident.
Image credit : Outlook
One evening, illustrator and graphic designer Pia Alize Hazarika got into an argument with a woman. “She called me a bad feminist. It was because I didn’t align my views with hers. It sat a bit weirdly with me,” recalls Hazarika, founder of Delhi’s Pig Studio.
Instead of ranting about it online, she decided to channel her rage creatively, doing what she does best: draw a comic. “It would
show where I stand and what my beliefs are, and serve as a tool to show people that there’s a spectrum under which their views can fall; not everything is black and white,” she says.
Female genital cutting (FGC) or mutilation is a regressive cultural practice found mostly among Muslims living in Africa and Arab countries and also in Indonesia. Though Indian subcontinent has a huge Muslim population it is believed that FGC is very rare among Muslims in South Asia.
Still one sect of Muslims were known to be following this, the Dawoodi Boharas.
The Dawoodi Bohras are a sub-sect of Ismaili Shia Islam, who trace their roots back to the Fatimid dynasty of Yemen in the 11th century. The Dawoodi Bohras believe that the religious or spiritual leader of the community is the Da’i al-Mutlaq, referred to with the title of ‘Syedna’. The post originated in Yemen but moved to Gujarat, India, in the 1500s. Today, the Dawoodi Bohras are predominantly a Gujarati-speaking business community with their own distinct culture and a population estimated to be between one and two million. The majority of Dawoodi Bohras reside in India and Pakistan, but over the last few decades there has been a significant migration of Dawoodi Bohras to the Middle East, East Africa, Europe, North America, Australia, and other parts of Asia. The administrative headquarters of the Dawoodi Bohras as well as the office of the current (53rd) Da’i are in Mumbai, India.
Dawoodi Bohras are the most well-known Muslim community in India to practice FGC, known as ‘khatna’ or ‘khafd’ in the community – a ritual that many Islamic scholars around the world do not endorse. In most instances, the process involves the removal of a pinch of skin from the clitoral hood at the age of seven, or between the ages of six and twelve. While the Quran, Islam’s holy book, does not sanction FGC, the Daim al-Islam, a religious text followed by this community, does endorses the practice. It is likely that the practice came down to the Dawoodi Bohras from Yemen, where Dawoodi Bohras trace their roots and where FGC is widely practiced in several provinces.
Severe cash crunch unleashed by demonetisation move by Modi government in India had several victims. This tragedy seems to be the most horrific of the lot.
Hindustan Times – Indore edition 15/12/16
The current Indian government it seems is one of the most cruel the country has seen.
More than a month ago, on November 8th, in a nationally televised speech, Indian Prime Minister Modi announced that from that midnight onwards 85% of value of cash in circulation in India will become invalid. The two higher denomination currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 which were withdrawn from circulation formed the bulk of cash in use. Government gave time till December 30 to exchange or deposit old invalid notes, but put heavy restriction on the amount of withdrawal of new notes from Banks.
The stated reason for such a drastic move was to curb black money, eliminate counterfeit notes and to reduce terrorism. Looking back after a month it seems the move failed in all counts while putting ordinary people, especially the poor to severe hardships. Moreover it opened new avenues of corruption with involvement of bank and income tax officials.
Most economists were very critical of the move. Here are some excerpts of the criticisms.
It is not a common practice or desirable culture for a Hindu son in India to get separated from the parents upon getting married at the instance of the wife, especially when the son is the only earning member in the family. A son, brought up and given education by his parents, has a moral and legal obligation to take care and maintain the parents, when they become old and when they have either no income or have a meagre income. In India, generally people do not subscribe to the western thought, where, upon getting married or attaining majority, the son gets separated from the family. In normal circumstances, a wife is expected to be with the family of the husband after the marriage. She becomes integral to and forms part of the family of the husband and normally without any justifiable strong reason, she would never insist that her husband should get separated from the family and live only with her.
In a Hindu society, it is a pious obligation of the son to maintain the parents. If a wife makes an attempt to deviate from the normal practice and normal custom of the society, she must have some justifiable reason for that. In our opinion, normally, no husband would tolerate this and no son would like to be separated from his old parents and other family members, who are also dependent upon his income.
Image credit -http://www.burnsinstitute.org
Islamist terror strike from across the border on an Indian Army camp in Kashmir resulted in deaths of 17 soldiers. All four terrorists were killed later in a gun battle.
Terrorists have killed 17 Army soldiers and injured 19 in a suicide attack on an Army camp in Kashmir. Four terrorists struck the camp close to the headquarter of the 12th Brigade at Uri in Baramulla District . This makes it one of the deadliest terrorist strikes on security forces in recent times.
To put the death toll in perspective, seven military personnel had been killed in the Pathankot terror attack in January 2016. The attack on the Indian Air Force base there has since become a major international diplomatic incident.
The high number of casualties in the Uri terror attack could be attributed to the fact that a large number of soldiers, from the Dogra Regiment, had been stationed at the camp in tents and other temporary structures. Some of these tents caught fire during the attack, and the fire spread to other parts of the barracks. The soldiers had been stationed there as they were turning over from a tour of duty.
Credit – BBC
Young men in India are taught not to take no as an answer from girls they fall in love with. This result in horrific murders.
A 23-year-old woman was allegedly stabbed to death by a man for rejecting his proposal, in fourth such killing in Tamil Nadu in the last three months.
A 23-year-old woman was allegedly stabbed to death by a man for rejecting his proposal, in fourth such killing in Tamil Nadu in the last three months.Jahir (27) attempted suicide after killing Dhanya last night at Annur near here. He is in a critical condition, police said.
Dhanya, who worked in a private firm, was allegedly being harassed for some time by the accused to marry him though she had spurned his proposal, police said.
This is the fourth fatal attack on young women in the state, who had spurned proposals of their stalkers, since the killing of software professional Swathi at a railway station in Chennai in July.
Last month, an engineering student was clubbed to death in her classroom in a private college by her senior in Karur while a 25-year-old teacher was killed in a church by a man, who later ended his own life, for spurning his love.
Police arresting Indian citizens on charges of sedition has been increasing recently. The latest being the cases against Amnesty International and movie actress and Congress leader Remya. Though most of the cases are finally dismissed, the accused are put into lot of hardships and the process of defending the charge itself has become a punishment. The Indian Supreme Court has now reiterated that only incitement to violence and public disorder can be prosecuted under Sedition law.
The Supreme Court on Monday asserted that “making a strong criticism of the government” is not even defamatory, let alone seditious. The court also directed all authorities, including police and trial judges, to follow its Constitution Bench ruling which stated that only incitement to violence and public disorder could form the basis of a sedition charge. A bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Uday U Lalit maintained that it would not be within the fold of criminal jurisprudence to issue uniform guidelines for registration of FIRs under sedition charge, but underscored that a larger bench has already provided necessary safeguards that should be followed by all authorities. “Suppose somebody makes a strong criticism of the government… even a case of criminal defamation cannot be filed, let alone a case of sedition. Every magistrate is bound by what we said in the Kedar Nath (case),” said the bench. In Kedar Nath Singh vs State of Bihar, 1962, a Constitution Bench had ruled in favour of the constitutional validity of Section 124A (sedition) in the IPC, but had added a vital caveat: that a person could be prosecuted for sedition only if his acts caused “incitement to violence or intention or tendency to create public disorder or cause disturbance of public peace”.
