BJP's rise to prominence riding on Ram Janmabhoomi issue

News Network
November 9, 2019

New Delhi, Nov 9: The Supreme Court verdict paving the way for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya has brought to the fore the decades-old Ram Janmabhoomi movement which propelled the BJP from the fringes of national politics to becoming a dominant political force as it used the deeply emotive issue to mobilise Hindus.

Struggling to find a space in the country's politics dominated by secular parties, the BJP under L K Advani hitched its bandwagon to the temple cause in its Palampur resolution in 1989, giving a defining Hindutva edge to its politics which until then had lacked a popular cause celebre.

The issue combined with its alliance with anti-Congress parties in 1989 won the BJP 85 seats in Lok Sabha elections against a mere two in 1984.

It came to the party's rescue again in 1990 when caste politics, fuelled by the then VP Singh government's decision to adopt the Mandal Commission report on the reservation, began to dominate Indian politics.

Advani launched his famous 'Rath Yatra' from Somnath temple in Gujarat, drawing people in their thousands as his chariot rolled through the country's heartland, at times triggering communal riots as well, while the movement gained momentum.

The demolition of Babri Masjid at the disputed site on December 6, 1992, made the party a pariah in politics for a while but could not stop its rise to power.

Speaking of the movement's role in the BJP's rise, Manindra Nath Thakur, an associate professor at the Centre for Political Studies of JNU, told PTI, "It played a very important role. It gave a symbol to the BJP to fight elections as it did not have a proper symbol earlier, as the Congress had in the legacy of freedom struggle. Mahatma Gandhi was also a great symbol for Congress."

The issue gave the BJP "the symbol of Lord Ram" which it converted "into an aggressive plank in organising the Hindu majoritarian politics", he said.

Incidentally, it was the decision to put the issue of temple construction and other core contentious matters like the Uniform Civil Code on the back burner in the late 1990s in its quest to win allies to form government at the Centre that halted the BJP's political rise before the Congress ousted it from power in 2004.

It took the BJP a full decade to capture the power again after Narendra Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister, combined his aggressive Hindutva image with development plank and catapulted the party to its maiden majority in Lok Sabha in 2014 and then bettering the show in 2019.

With the apex court verdict likely to put a closure to decades-old dispute, Arun Anand, a prolific commentator and author of two books on the RSS, said the demand of a Ram temple in Ayodhya is "unarguably the longest movement in the history of any civilization".

"The mass movement that started in 1983 not only brought greater awareness about the identity of the nation but also made a huge impact in all spheres of national life. It has created a consensus on the legitimacy of the demand to construct a Ram Temple at Lord Rama's birthplace," he said.

Hindus had begun agitating to reclaim the land from 1528 before a mass movement restarted in 1983-84, he said, adding that the community fought many battles and sacrificed lives.

It will be curious to see as to what turn the BJP's Hindutva politics takes following the verdict, according to political watchers.

Thakur cautioned that if the party now takes up the issues of other disputed holy sites like the ones in Mathura and Varanasi, then it will be "dangerous" for politics.

However, if the judgement leads to the issue's resolution for good and the party moving on to matters like the economy, then things may settle.

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News Network
March 4,2020

New Delhi, Mar 4: A court in Delhi on Wednesday convicted expelled BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar of culpable homicide not amounting to murder in the death of the Unnao rape victim's father.

District judge Dharmesh Sharma said Sengar had no intention of killing the victim's father. “He was beaten in a brutal manner that led to his death,” the judge said.

The court had sent Sengar to jail on December 20 for the “remainder of his natural biological life” for raping the woman in 2017, when she was a minor.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had examined 55 witnesses in support of the case and the defence examined nine witnesses.

The court had recorded the statements of the rape survivor's uncle, mother, sister and one of her father's colleague who claimed to be an eyewitness to the incident.

Charges were framed against Sengar, his brother Atul, Bhadauria, sub-inspector Kamta Prasad, constable Amir Khan and six others in the case.

The case was transferred to Delhi from a trial court in Uttar Pradesh on the directions of the Supreme Court on August 1 last year.

In July, 2019 a truck rammed into the car the rape victim was travelling in with some family members and her lawyer.

Two of her aunts died in the incident. She was airlifted from a hospital in Lucknow and to AIIMS in Delhi.

The victim has been provided accommodation in Delhi and is under CRPF protection.

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News Network
May 20,2020

London, May 20: The current physical distancing guidelines of 6 feet may be insufficient to prevent COVID-19 transmission, according to a study which says a mild cough in low wind speeds can propel saliva droplets by as much as 18 feet.

Researchers, including those from the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, said a good baseline for studying the airborne transmission of viruses, like the one behind the COVID-19 pandemic, is a deeper understanding of how particles travel through the air when people cough.

In the study, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, they said even with a slight breeze of about four kilometres per hour (kph), saliva travels 18 feet in 5 seconds.

"The droplet cloud will affect both adults and children of different heights," said study co-author Dimitris Drikakis from the University of Nicosia.

According to the scientists, shorter adults and children could be at higher risk if they are located within the trajectory of the saliva droplets.

They said saliva is a complex fluid, which travels suspended in a bulk of surrounding air released by a cough, adding that many factors affect how saliva droplets travel in the air.

These factors, the study noted, include the size and number of droplets, how they interact with one another and the surrounding air as they disperse and evaporate, how heat and mass are transferred, and the humidity and temperature of the surrounding air.

In the study, the scientists created a computer simulation to examine the state of every saliva droplet moving through the air in front of a coughing person.

The model considered the effects of humidity, dispersion force, interactions of molecules of saliva and air, and how the droplets change from liquid to vapour and evaporate, along with a grid representing the space in front of a coughing person.

Each grid, the scientists said, holds information about variables like pressure, fluid velocity, temperature, droplet mass, and droplet position.

The study analysed the fates of nearly 1,008 simulated saliva droplets, and solved as many as 3.7 million equations.

"The purpose of the mathematical modelling and simulation is to take into account all the real coupling or interaction mechanisms that may take place between the main bulk fluid flow and the saliva droplets, and between the saliva droplets themselves," explained Talib Dbouk, another co-author of the study.

However, the researchers added that further studies are needed to determine the effect of ground surface temperature on the behaviour of saliva in air.

They also believe that indoor environments, especially ones with air conditioning, may significantly affect the particle movement through air.

This work is important since it concerns safety distance guidelines, and advances the understanding of the transmission of airborne diseases, Drikakis said.

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News Network
January 15,2020

Jan 15: Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is facing a bitter welcome during his India visit this week as the country’s antitrust regulator initiated a formal investigation just hours before his arrival and trader bodies comprising millions of infuriated small store owners announced demonstrations.

Bezos is in New Delhi for the Smbhav summit, an Amazon India event for small and medium businesses. The billionaire is scheduled to conduct a fireside chat with Amazon India chief Amit Agarwal, anchoring an event that also features Infosys Ltd. co-founder Narayana Murthy and retail billionaire Kishore Biyani, who recently sold a stake in his retail group to Amazon. Ahead of the event, Bezos paid his respects at Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial, wearing a white tunic and a rust-colored Indian vest.

The small businesses that Amazon’s CEO is hoping to endear himself to, however, are organizing in opposition. The Confederation of All India Traders announced that members of its affiliate bodies across the country would stage sit-ins and public rallies in 300 cities to raise a war cry against the world’s largest online retailer. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, the confederation’s Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal alleged that Amazon, much like Walmart Inc.-owned Flipkart, was an “economic terrorist” who engaged in predatory pricing that deprived the government of tax revenue and “compelled the closure of thousands of small traders.”

India’s e-commerce market is projected to grow to $150 billion by 2022, according to a 2018 report by software industry group Nasscom and consulting firm PwC India. Competition for this rapidly expanding sector is intensifying as Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, prepares to go live with JioMart, an online shopping platform challenging Amazon and Walmart directly. The latter’s Flipkart Online Services Pvt is also delving deeper into the countryside in its pursuit for more customers. Amazon, for its part, opened a huge office complex in the southern city of Hyderabad in September, underscoring its commitment to the country.

The Competition Commission of India said it would probe the deep discounts, preferential listings and exclusionary tactics that Amazon and Flipkart are alleged to have used as anti-competitive levers. India’s trade bodies have long argued that both retail giants were flouting rules by promoting sales and discounts through their favoured sellers, many of whom they have preexisting commercial arrangements. The regulator has ordered for the investigation to be completed within two months.

Bezos last visited India in 2014 under starkly different circumstances. During that trip, the Amazon founder wore local festive garb, rode atop a festooned truck for a photo opp and presented Amazon’s Indian unit with a giant check for $2 billion. Since then, Amazon has pledged a further $3.5 billion to expand in the country.

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