India Archive

Elle India publisher Arif Ayyub has been going on an unhinged rant against the Saudi and UAE royal families after a Saudi-led coalition retaliated against the Islamist Houthi movement in Yemen for carrying out a deadly drone attack in United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Attacks on Hindus and Hindu Dharma, both in Bharat and overseas, are frequent and unrelenting. In many regions of the world, this persecution is like a genocide slowly unfolding before our eyes. For decades, the true depth and breadth of these attacks, driven by disturbing anti-Hindu bigotry, have been ignored by the world.

The Delhi anti-Hindu riots that shook the capital city of India, Delhi, just as the then USA President Donald Trump was visiting, was a stark reminder of just how fragile India’s internal security is, with bloodthirsty mobs, protected by a deeply entrenched ecosystem, looking for a reason to unleash violence against Hindus. The first murder during the violence that erupted on the 23rd of February with Muslim mobs running rampage was that of Ratan Lal. Soon after him, Dilbar Negi, a young daily wager, was brutally murdered. His hands and legs were chopped off before he was burnt to death.

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that a grand statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will be installed at India Gate on the occasion of his 125th birth anniversary, British author and journalist Tunku Varadarajan tried to tarnish the image of India’s iconic freedom fighter.

Popular video streaming and production company, Netflix, has recently witnessed a massive slump in the growth of its subscriber base. This has led to a slow start at the onset of the year and a fall of 21.79% in share value to $397.50 as of January 21, 2022.

On December 10, a man named Anil Arora was arrested in Punjab for allegedly hurting the sentiments of the Sikh community by making derogatory remarks against Shri Guru Nanak Dev Ji and his father, Kalyan Chand Das Bedi. Arora was arrested from Panchkula, Haryana, on the intervening night of December 8 and December 9. The arrest pertains to a Clubhouse discussion, a voice-based social media app, where Anil Arora ended up making certain statements after provocation from several Khalistanis abusing Hindus.

Maulana Tauqeer Raza Khan, Congress’ latest favorite Maulana who has bayed for Hindu blood in the recent past has now threatened a TV anchor because he failed to answer some tough questions posed to him. In an interview with News18 India TV anchor Aman Chopra, Maulana Tauqeer Raza Khan threatened to cause bodily harm simply because he was unable to answer the questions posed to him.

On January 20, Gurpatwant Singh Pannu of the Khalistani terrorist organization Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) released a video urging “Kashmiri Freedom Fighters” to ‘leave valley – reach Delhi’ to sabotage Republic Day. SFJ’s Pannu has called the anti-India separatists and terrorists “freedom fighters” in the video and the statement was on the line of Pakistan’s ISI’s call of ‘now or never’ for Khalistan.

Earlier this month I spent a five days in South Gujarat, specifically Surat and Bharuch where I got to speak to a young woman Pooja (name changed), who had been the victim of grooming jihad herself when she was a minor. She put her faith in me and narrated her ordeal in hopes that her story will perhaps help other victims to get courage that there is still hope.

Bharuch, on the mouth of river Narmada, is about 200 km from Ahmedabad. I have very early memories of visiting the place with family. My grandmother was born and brought up in Bharuch and I have grown up hearing stories of how she had seen Gandhiji walk towards the Dandi beach on the historic Salt March in 1930.