Raghu Karnad
@rkarnad
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रघुकुल रीत सदा चली आई. Founding team @theWire_in. 2022-'23 fellow @CullmanNYPL
India
Joined May 2012
I'm at Mustafabad, near the Loni Border, and new fires (set post-9pm) are burning in front of our eyes - Muslim jhuggis and tempos, according to onlookers - by masked men shouting JSR. Delhi Police are present saying they are unable to intervene.
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University students torched public property, pelted stones at police, brought cities to a halt to protest an elected government. It was 1974. The students, mostly ABVP, were led by Arun Jaitley. Not so long ago, and maybe worth remembering. #JamiaMilia #Delhi.
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Since tweets by @rihanna and @miakhalifa are now considered 'external forces' and 'foreign interference', a small reminder. During the first Emergency, the Sangh's main line of dissent was through foreign press, governments, activists, and funding. A short thread.
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At least Vajpayee's BJP tried to -stop- terrorists from getting to the Parliament.
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The picture that is growing rooted in my mind is of Appa in his spot on the sofa, his hand around a glass of whiskey, gently bubbling with bits of history, legend, song, folktale and philosophy. That was the man I…
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If you're confused about the possible identity of the masked attacked in #JNUviolence, a question to ask: .Has there been a single tweet yet from @narendramodi @AmitShah or HRD minister @DrRPNishank? What about @CPDelhi @DelhiPolice? Ans: none.
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Cassandra: Warned her arrogant rulers, again and again, about true dangers to their city; was disregarded and abused ("a raving tongue of evil speech") and told to be silent, but was always right.
There’s a bunch of Cassandras who are delighted that the Modi Governent is on the back foot with China. Folks, this is about the Indian Army. Can you put your petty politics on the back burner please. This is India vs China. Not BJP vs China. Politics can wait.
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Yesterday #StanSwamy died, after eight months in prison conditions that exacerbated his Parkinson's. He was one of the jailed human-rights advocates aka #BhimaKoregaon 16. The story of the evidence against them is. amazing and bizarre, and is worth going over. A thread.
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After a week of obfuscation, @BJP4India's IT Cell admits to funding #NaMoTV. It's not a news channel (requires a license) but it's not an ad service (says Delhi EC). It is broadcast by satellite, with no license for that. Is this party running the government or running around it?.
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Breaking, from sources at #ShaheenBagh: Deepak Chaurasia & Sudhir Chaudhary of @ZeeNews have arrived, were let in through the barricades by police, but confronted by women protesters who refused to speak to them – and simply sang the National Anthem. (1).
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We're all talking about PM Modi's popularity as if it's based on a psychic link with the public. Newsflash: it's based on a publicity / propaganda campaign more expensive than you'll believe. I lift the lid on the insane numbers:.
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Natasha Narwal, a young activist leader held in jail, has lost her only parent to Covid. She could not speak to him before he died. Last August, the imprisoned activist GN Saibaba was refused a video call to see his dying mother one last time. A video call. /n.
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Student, being beaten by police: You're hijacking our Constitution to strip millions of Indians of their rights!.Ruling party: You have three controversial Fbook posts.Centrists: *turning from side to side* I literally cannot tell the difference.
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by thinking that a lot of RTs must mean that they're right.
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It is unacceptable that a government should exploit a national health emergency to threaten journalists. The history of democratic India is being written right now, and we have to ensure that a free press survives this period. Please share, forward & speak up #IStandWithTheWire
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Dear @narendramodi, I have some great ideas.I've typed them up and saved them on my laptop at C:\MyDocuments\MannKiBaat\Ideas.doc.Do ask an agency to get them whenever convenient.
Do you have an idea for this month’s #MannKiBaat on the 30th? . Share it on the MyGov Open Forum. You can also dial 1800 11 7800 and record your message. The NM Mobile App has a section as well to share inputs.
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I remember seeing this tweet and thinking, if E. Sreedharan had worked under this government, we would never have heard his name – only Modi's. Well, the UPA gave Sreedharan space to be a national hero. And the BJP gave him space to be a failed politician.
A moment of pride for 🇮🇳! The arch of Chenab bridge, connecting Kashmir to Kanyakumari has been completed. With an arch span of 467m, it is the world’s highest railway bridge. PM @NarendraModi ji’s vision to connect India has inspired the Railway family to scale new heights
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Question: Did you know that the super-spreader Kumbh Mela in Haridwar should have happened next year – twelve years after the last one, in 2010?. But the government agreed to bring it forward to 2021, for astrological reasons?. RT if you didn't know, Fav if you did.
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Sonia Gandhi's statement has 8K retweets, after being posted on @INCIndia two days ago. @varungrover's poem has 15K+ RTs, after being posted on his personal account 12 hours ago .But go on, tell me how "Opposition parties" are provoking this movement.
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Just a heads up. Every op-ed and Twitter thread talking about a victory of ideology, narrative or spirit – and not talking about monopolies on money, media and tech – is part of the New Big Lie.
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Allow me. Not just in India, but across the British empire, freedom fighters sought support from rival powers – including the Axis. But guess who had diplomatic relations with Hitler in April 1941, two years into the war, when Bose got to Germany? The USA.
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@narendramodi @AmitShah @DrRPNishank @CPDelhi @DelhiPolice (2) I received word about #JNUViolence at 18.15 – three and a half hours ago. Since then the Home Minister has tweeted four times; the HRD minister eight times – none of them about JNU. BJP Delhi MP @M_Lekhi tweeted 18 mins ago – about inaugurating a pedestrian bridge. #SOSJNU.
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. That's all you need to have to call for the death or imprisonment of Indian journalists; for them to be 'hanged to death'. @YouTubeIndia will let 500K people watch, and @TwitterIndia will let the tweets trend as #BigExpose. The banality of evil, 21st century style.
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Vachana of Basavanna (translated by AK Ramanujan, 'Speaking of Siva'). Words from a thousand years ago never rang more true.
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Why don't we stop describing the violent arrest of #MunawarFaruqui as a case of free speech vs religious sentiments. That's already false. It's a case-study of the new political entrepreneurship: find ways to criminalise Muslims. advance in The Party. Zero sentiments involved.
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Impossible to watch this without flashbacks to other grainy videos from recent years of mobs beating disoriented, defenseless men to death. Only this time, men in uniform did their jobs & saved his life. Funny what we expect of our enemy and not ourselves.
PrimeMinister @ImranKhanPTI: the last time we met, you spoke passionately about our nations’ shared history. If our peoples are to have a shared future, we need to treat each other with decency. Starting with WingCmdr AbhinandanVarthaman, whom you see being abused in this video.
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"I want to tell the 130 crore citizens of India that since my government has come to power, since 2014, there has been no discussion on NRC anywhere. ," the PM said at #RamLilaMaidan. "Lies are being spread.". Yes, they are.
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Raj Narain's case against Indira Gandhi concerned a minor violation of electoral law – but it plunged India into the #Emergency. Modi's campaign is testing the same law, putting us at risk of another catastrophic disruption. My analysis @theWire_in:.
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I’ve been trying to think through the haze of disbelief this month, as the bombing has gone on and on. One question that troubles me: How 1,200 people killed by guerillas matter more to Western governments than 12,000 — and counting — killed by bombs from the sky. (Thread).
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In 2017, the Jaipur Lit Fest hosted two RSS leaders for a special conversation. @DalrympleWill defended the decision against all objections (including mine). He’s consistently platformed conservative & far-right speakers, while disagreeing with their beliefs (1/4).
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(4/4) A lesson here for Indian liberals who want to play nice with soft fascists, and offer them legitimacy. This movement will not spare you for your attempted fairness. It will not consider your evidence. It only cares about your value as an “enemy" when it needs the next one.
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Always ask, what is this a distraction from? What do they want me to not see.
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Genuinely looking forward to the @KunalKamra88 cross-country road show .
Offensive behaviour designed to provoke & create disturbance inside an aircraft is absolutely unacceptable & endangers safety of air travellers. We are left with no option but to advise other airlines to impose similar restrictions on the person concerned.
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I consider this tweet abusive & targeted harassment. The relevant authority is @TwitterIndia. Report the tweet & let's see if it counts as Abuse>Targeted Harassment. Do RT.
An #urbannaxal showing true colors; India needs azaadi from such leftist malcontents and #urbanNaxals who support violence, support killer maoists and incite hatred,bigotry and divide people; poisoned minds by extremist faculty.
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Just now, @ranjithoskote was driven to resign from his distinguished role at #Documenta, for reasons involving the word #antisemitism. The real story is . just so perverse and bizarre, and it's worth going over. A thread.
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Alongside threats, the video explicitly named @BDUTT @zoo_bear @dhruv_rathee @khanumarfa @TheDeshBhakt @SaketGokhale @RanaAyyub @missanabeem @fayedsouza & websites like @thenewsminute as conspirators; it also implied that the journalists aim to assassinate the video-creator (2/3).
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If you haven't read this yet (it's viral) . make sure to. And then go back to ignoring this man, and his televised cult of aggression, as quickly as possible. @khanumarfa, with courage and clarity:.
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The video claimed to 'prove' that these orgs were conspiring to 'destroy India'. It said said the news sites mentioned in the farmers' protest #toolkit were also endorsed in a thread by @missanabeem, and also formed the DIGIPUB News Foundation in Oct 2020. That's it. (3/3).
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If the scale of these protests wasn't a landmark, the government pushback is. All of #Karnataka, all of UP under Sec 144. #Delhi #Chennai #Hyderabad #Ahmedabad: authorities bar protests. Delhi Metro stations shuttered to stop people from gathering. They are gathering anyway (1/n).
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New friendships forming at the #KisanMuktiMarch. Annadurai from Trichy. Sucha Singh from Patiala. No common language afaik but a common struggle. #NationForFarmers
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Amit Malviya on @IndiaToday TV trying his best to make "international consortium of media houses" sound like a bad thing.
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I'm haunted by what they said or did just beforehand, to make a man desperate enough to come out running with a stick, alone, into lethal fire.
Haunted by that civil clothes camera guy. @AmitShah called Bengali-descent Muslims “termites” not humans - a sign to men like him that it’s ok to let his inner monster out. He’s high on xenophobia, that’s why he is getting such pleasure from every leap on the fallen man.
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Farmers unions are marching, led by Medha Patkar, Ashok Dhawale and others, and have occupied one lane of the Delhi Jaipur Highway.
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"Biggest interview of the decade" = an industrialist taking questions from his own PR consultant. Watch & cringe.
Don't miss the biggest interview of the decade as @RNTata2000 speaks to @suhelseth. Catch the full interview exclusively on CNBC-TV18 at 9PM
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Translation: Delhi policemen will now deliver govt propaganda to citizens, who will have to attend or else lose their personal liberty.
Point number 4 is a rather odd bail condition. Court has said that one of the bail conditions in the #Seemapuri case is that the accused will go to the local police station, where the SHO will remove their doubts about #CAA!
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Since #Emergency is trending, a bit of perspective. Over his four serial arrests, Dr Kafeel Khan has spent 16.5 months in jail – longer than most opposition leaders did in 1975-'77. Arun Jaitley, whose built a legend on his time in prison, was held for 19 months. (1/2).
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What is the value of a perfect night-sky? .In Ladakh, where Indian and Chinese soldiers are clashing and dying, another endeavour carries on along the LAC. Some of the highest-built observatories in the world are probing the universe, through India’s clearest night-sky. (1/n)
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The criminal, criminal stupidity.
Another mass steam inhaling arrangement . This time from Barkey Police Station , Mangaluru . #IndiaFightsCorona
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One of the early stories I reported was from panchayat polls in #Nandigram, soon after the farmers' rebellion, just as Mamata began to topple the CPIM edifice. It was an illustration, and a caution, about interpreting images of violence during polls in West Bengal /n.
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Through my entire adult life, the face of the #Congress Party was the face - or the mask - of #SoniaGandhi. My short profile for @TheAtlantic:.
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If this thread doesn't make you donate to @AltNews, you don't deserve the internet .
How do you get a Union Minister to tweet what you want? Well, you go and edit the trending document made by BJP IT cell, and then you control what they tweet. Thread. Here's the video of this morning when their trending document got automagically updated :-). 1/n
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About his foreign tours, @narendramodi said that Manmohan Singh also used to travel, but “my visits are noticed because I interact with people & take decisions.".Fact check: Modi has visited 92 countries since 2014. MMS visited 93 countries over ten years. #ModiInterview.
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Breaking: Forensic report says that #SurendraGadling's computer was hacked, had dozens of files hidden on it, then used as evidence of armed conspiracy. He is the second #BhimaKoregaon accused, after Rona Wilson, whose laptop was found by @ArsenalArmed to be infiltrated.
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RT if you would pay extra for eco-friendly packaging when you use @Swiggy_in & @ZomatoIN? We need them to realise how much the plastic waste steals the pleasure of having food delivered – and that we're waiting for a chance to pay for sustainable packaging. #NoPlastic @fayedsouza.
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'At least three reporters confirmed to Newslaundry that . [Nirmala] Sitharaman provided the “over 300” casualty figure to the reporters.'.
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(2) The RSS has a fanciful mythology of its resistance within India, but there's not much evidence of it. @Swamy39 wrote in the year 2000 that ‘most of the leaders of the BJP/RSS had betrayed the struggle against the Emergency,’ offering ‘to work for the nation’s tormentors’. .
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(6) It was this international pressure on Indira Gandhi that helped to bring the Emergency to an end in 1977. MG Chitkara, an RSS ideologue, said that overseas activism ‘proved to be one of the decisive factors in upsetting the calculations of the dictatorial regime here’.
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Between them, @IJaising and Anand Grover have about 80 years of contribution to Indian law. As the government comes after them, a reminder of the range and scale of their work for the public interest. @AnooBhu for @theWire_in:.
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Also, not to be pedantic, but it is his 124th birth anniversary. The Netaji Research Bureau, Kolkata, confirms that. (Your first birth anniversary would be the year after your birth.).
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Moreover, what does it even mean that "many states have been banned his comedy shows" (sic)? Banned how, under what law?.
Hey Bangalore police! What are you? Policeman or scaredy little mice?.It’s your job to protect the free speech enshrined in our Constitution, not to run away in fear.
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Foreign bureau chief in India tells me: In a healthy news industry, a dozen other papers would have picked up the Jay Amit Shah story from @theWire_in, and competed to fill in the blanks & establish the full story.
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Something so wrong about this. You're slandered by a ruling party officer, your powerful colleagues/ employers sit mute, and you have to play nice? If you won't stand up for yourself, Rajdeep, at least don't pander to this culture of crazy slander.
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For a sense of what it's like asking real questions of this govt, watch how @PiyushGoyal reacts to @RahulKanwal's serious, respectful question on #BalakotAirStrike. 00:00 - 05.30. You have to watch it to believe it.
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@narendramodi @AmitShah @DrRPNishank @CPDelhi @DelhiPolice @M_Lekhi @nsitharaman @DrSJaishankar (5) Watch and weep: Complete impunity. @CPDelhi .
Here is the mob wielding iron rods and lathis and sticks freely roaming the JNU campus. The main gate is blocked, media not being allowed inside either. This is a complete collapse. @ArvindKejriwal if the police won't step in you must
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This is a scandal. Last week, @ANI rushed to discredit a veterans' appeal against politicizing the armed forces. It claimed that two senior signatories had denied endorsing it. @nsitharaman condemned the 'fake' appeal. Yet there was proof of the two endorsements all along (1/3).
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[Thought experiment]. Like him or hate him, the Prime Minister comands wide support - having won the last election with well over 300 seats. Yet a protest movement has now openly declared that it will remove him from office through non-electoral means. Contd. .
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If you are concerned about this being fake news, it is all on video, coming out on the Wire tomorrow, also recorded by three other reporters from different orgs - all of whom had to literally run across the border to UP police thana (Loni Road) where the police were more helpful.
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A reminder that in 2020, GN Saibaba was refused bail and denied even a video call to see his mother one last time before she died. Today, after 11 years imprisoned under UAPA, he was acquitted.
Natasha Narwal, a young activist leader held in jail, has lost her only parent to Covid. She could not speak to him before he died. Last August, the imprisoned activist GN Saibaba was refused a video call to see his dying mother one last time. A video call. /n.
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AM: #Bulandshahr in Hindi news because a Shiva temple opens its doors to a Muslim congregation to do namaaz. PM: #Bulandshahr in all the news because of "alleged" cow carcasses reported, leading to riots, leading to the death of a policeman. The machine works perfectly.
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Reminder that the commentariat spent 10 years deriding and attacking the National Advisory Council – a group of the most accomplished Indians who understood poverty, migration, hunger and rural administration, who advised the chairperson of the UPA. (1).
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Delhi High Court has given bail to Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal and Asif Iqbal Tanha. A reminder that this bail order, shamefully delayed, does not return a lost year of their lives – or lost hours with people they love, whom they will not see again.
Natasha Narwal, a young activist leader held in jail, has lost her only parent to Covid. She could not speak to him before he died. Last August, the imprisoned activist GN Saibaba was refused a video call to see his dying mother one last time. A video call. /n.
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(3) Instead it was overseas intelligentsia (from the Left) who gave the anti-Emergency movement early moral support. But Sangh leaders like Makarand Desai also lobbied @nytimes & other Western papers to editorialise on the silencing of dissent & capture of the judiciary in India.
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(2) This is the channel's established tactic with public figures, but harassing students would be a new low. An immediate condemnation from the BJP MP from Aligarh also suggests a set-up.
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We're all tweeting about #TanushreeDutta, but ten years late. Right now, #HNLU students are trying to defend themselves against lecturers who single out women students to dance in class for attendance. These men are protected from due process by a disgraced VC. Spread the word.
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Elektro-L 1 is in geostationary orbit, so it holds its position over the Indian Ocean as we turn and turn before the sun.
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Anytime a debate kicks off about public transport in Indian cities, I think of a scene I saw on a late summer evening in 2006 (when I still used buses). I think it was route 422, going past Nizamuddin down to Badarpur Border. (1/n).
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All the foreign visitors acquitted. Naturally. Congratulations to their advocates - and smdh at the media that fell for this vicious distraction campaign (Looking at you @IndiaToday ).
Awaiting #Judgement on #TablighiJamaat Markaz case fixed for 15/12/20.
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Every day I marvel at the guts of Indians who report, protest or just go about their daily work without the protection of a name like mine. Especially the first name. In daily interactions, even by text, I get to issue my religion and caste for extra safety, license and access.
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This video has been viewed 1.2 million times in 24 hours. @KhanumArfa with @kanhaiyakumar #KanhaiyaKumar
You may have seen a lot of videos on or about @kanhaiyakumar’s Begusarai campaign but trust me, you do not want to miss these riveting 20 minutes! With @khanumarfa via @thewirehindi @TheWireMarathi @livewire @TheWireUrdu @thewire_in.
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SM and tech giants need to realise that they have spent a decade enabling a vicious, anti-liberal political culture that is only getting ready to turn around and bite them.
Confirmed: Delhi Police is raiding Twitter India offices for not removing the "manipulated media" tag from Sambit Patra's tweet that carried manipulated and fake letterheads of the Congress party. The Modi-Shah duo will bring more disrespect to India than anyone else in history.
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The courage of lone voices like @ajaishukla, challenging the spin that all was well on the LAC. All week he was battered on trash TV @TimesNow as a "pro-China voice", but held his ground. Now India contemplates its first LAC combat casualties in 45 years.
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Embarrassing. This is how the Modi govt selects private "Institutes of Eminence" in higher ed. 👍 if owned by Ambani - even if the university doesn't exist yet. 👎 if anyone *associated* with the univ has supported @theWire_in. Not joking:.
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Of India's hundreds of thousands of Covid 19 deaths, this could be the most emblematic. A young woman who led protests to defend an inclusive, Constitutional India is imprisoned on charges of leading a deadly communal pogrom. /n.
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