The Government of India, on 1 May 2026, announced that the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra for 2026 will be conducted between June and August, in coordination with the Government of the People’s Republic of China, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs.
Kailash Manasarovar Yatra organised by the Ministry of External Affairs in coordination with the Government of the People’s Republic of China is set to take place during June to August 2026: India Statement pic.twitter.com/sU8VWbPwGW
The yatra is scheduled to be organised in multiple batches, with pilgrims travelling via designated routes including the Lipulekh Pass in Uttarakhand and the Nathu La route in Sikkim. The Ministry stated that applications would be processed through an online system, with yatris selected through a computerised and transparent process.
The announcement triggered a diplomatic response from Nepal, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs issuing a statement objecting to the use of the Lipulekh route. On 3 May 2026, the Nepal government maintained that Lipulekh falls within its territory and asserted that any activities, including the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra, should not be undertaken through the region without its consent.
In its statement, Nepal reiterated its position that areas such as Lipulekh, Kalapani, and Limpiyadhura form part of its sovereign territory, citing historical treaties and maps as the basis for its claim. It also stated that it had conveyed its concerns to both India and China through diplomatic channels and urged restraint in undertaking activities in the disputed region.
Breaking: Nepal’s Balen Shah Govt tells India, China not to undertake Kailash Mansarovar Yatra through Lipilekh since it is ‘Nepal Territory’.
Responding to the development, India rejected Nepal’s claim over Lipulekh Pass and described it as a long-standing and established route for the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal stated that the yatra had been conducted through this route for decades, including since 1954.
He further stated that India’s position on the issue remained consistent and clear, adding that Nepal’s claims were not justified and were not supported by historical facts or evidence. He described what he termed as unilateral attempts to enlarge territorial claims as untenable.
At the same time, the spokesperson emphasised that India remained open to engaging with Nepal through dialogue and diplomatic channels to address all outstanding bilateral issues, including boundary-related concerns.
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Three days before Kerala and other state election results were declared, Congress scion Rahul Gandhi was spotted at a beachfront café in Muscat, Oman. No press briefing. No official itinerary. No statement from the Congress party. The only record of the visit came from videos shot from passing cars on Azaiba Beach, clips that spread across social media within hours on 3 May 2026.
Gandhi was dressed casually – cap, sunglasses, civilian clothes. For a politician who had just delivered one of his most incendiary speeches on Indian soil less than a week earlier, the contrast was striking.
So this guy after spilling raita in Nicobar mid-election has now secretly ran away to Muscat, Oman
In late April 2026, Gandhi flew to Great Nicobar Island and publicly attacked the Indian government’s ₹81,000 crore holistic development project – a mega-infrastructure push involving a deepwater port, an airport, and strategic connectivity infrastructure at one of India’s most sensitive Indian Ocean locations. He called it environmental destruction, accused the Adani Group of land-grabbing, and demanded the project be stopped.
I travelled through Great Nicobar today.
These are the most extraordinary forests I have ever seen in my life. Trees older than memory. Forests that took generations to grow.
The people on this island are equally beautiful – both the adivasi communities and the settlers – but… pic.twitter.com/vYdBWdYfIJ
What Gandhi did not mention publicly is that Great Nicobar sits astride critical Indo-Pacific sea lanes and that the project is, in significant part, India’s strategic answer to growing Chinese naval and commercial presence in the region.
Days after that speech, he was in Muscat.
The café Gandhi visited Café Farah, also styled Caffe Farah, is operated by Al Zaman Hospitality LLC, a subsidiary of the Al Zaman Group, an Oman-based diversified conglomerate. Its Managing Director is Khalid Mohamed Zaman; a businessman whose name appears in multiple Gulf corporate registries. The café sits in the Azaiba area of Muscat, a zone known for its diplomatic density and international clientele, not a random roadside stop.
Khalid Zaman’s name surfaces in a more significant context beyond hospitality. He holds a board seat at BlueFive Capital – a private equity firm operating across Abu Dhabi, London, and Beijing, with a focus on Gulf economies and Global South investments. BlueFive made headlines in 2025 when it launched its $3 billion Onyx Fund and held its inaugural board meeting in Bahrain. Zaman has since been appointed Vice Chairman of BlueFive Leasing, a related Muscat-based entity.
The BlueFive board is where the story gets complicated. Sitting alongside Zaman is Fang Fenglei – founder and chairman of Hopu Investment Management, one of China’s most powerful private equity firms.
Fang is not simply a successful financier. He is the man who architected China’s modern investment banking infrastructure, served as non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs China, and spent two decades leveraging that position to extract far more institutional knowledge and access than Goldman Sachs originally anticipated.
Fang Fenglei founded HOPU Investments
His father was an officer in the People’s Liberation Army. More consequentially, Fang built a personal friendship with Wang Qishan, currently China’s Vice President and Xi Jinping’s most trusted political enforcer, dating back to their shared years in Henan Province.
It was Fang who convinced Wang Qishan to establish CICC in 1995, China’s first joint-venture investment bank, which Goldman Sachs helped set up.
The regulatory implications of Fang’s network are not theoretical. India classifies direct investment from Chinese private equity entities, particularly those with documented CCP political links, as requiring extreme scrutiny in strategic sectors including technology, telecom, and financial services. Hopu Investments falls squarely within that classification.
The chain of connections that online researchers have mapped runs as follows: Xi Jinping’s inner circle, to Wang Qishan, to Fang Fenglei, to BlueFive board partner Khalid Zaman, to Café Farah, to Rahul Gandhi’s unannounced visit. Every single link in that chain is sourced from public corporate filings, BlueFive Capital’s own press releases, and established biographical records. None of it is invented.
A politician who just publicly opposed India’s most strategically sensitive infrastructure project, one designed in part to counter Chinese influence, then travels unannounced to a Gulf city and walks into a café owned by a man who shares a board table with one of the CCP’s most connected financiers. No explanation offered. No press access. No timeline provided.
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The Muslim Youth League (MYL) has renewed its demand for the bifurcation of Malappuram district, with its Tirurangadi constituency committee passing a resolution proposing the creation of a new district headquartered in Tirurangadi, as reported in OnManorama.
According to the proposal, the new district would be formed by combining the taluks of Tirur, Ponnani, Kondotty, and Tirurangadi. The existing Malappuram district would be reorganised with Malappuram town as its headquarters, comprising Eranad, Perinthalmanna, and Nilambur taluks.
As soon as the exit poll results were announced, the Muslim League revealed its true colour. 🚨
Muslim League has now come forward with a resolution demanding the division of Malappuram district.
The real aim behind the demand for a new district headquartered at Tirurangadi is… pic.twitter.com/sxoTKlchRq
The resolution stated that bifurcation would improve administrative efficiency, enable faster delivery of government services, reduce regional development disparities, and generate infrastructure and employment opportunities. It further noted that separate development policies could be effectively implemented for coastal, hilly, and urban regions under a reorganised administrative framework.
The MYL argued that Malappuram, with a population exceeding four million, remains the most populous district in Kerala, and that its size, geographical diversity, developmental imbalances, and limited administrative infrastructure have made governance increasingly difficult. It pointed out stark regional differences, including the hilly terrain of Nilambur, coastal belts such as Tirur and Ponnani, and rapidly urbanising regions like Kondotty and Eranad, adding that residents often face delays and inconvenience in accessing government services.
The organisation maintained that dividing the district into smaller administrative units had become a necessity and would ensure balanced regional development and improved governance. It also noted that the demand for bifurcation was not new, recalling that the Kerala Muslim Jamaat had earlier raised a similar demand citing public convenience.
The issue has since escalated into a wider political controversy, particularly as it emerged on the eve of election results, with the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) facing criticism over both the bifurcation demand and leadership preferences for the chief minister’s post. The presence of senior leaders, including state president Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal and general secretary P M A Salam, at the Tirurangadi event intensified the debate across Kerala.
Opposition parties, including Sangh Parivar organisations, alleged that the IUML was advancing a community-centric agenda ahead of a possible United Democratic Front (UDF) government. Activist K P Sasikala was reported as stating on social media that the political leadership in Kerala should prevent the League from gaining influence in government, warning of consequences if it played a decisive role, as reported in The New Indian Express.
Responding to the controversy, Salam stated that bifurcation was necessary given the district’s high population density, and added that other districts such as Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam could also be considered for division on similar grounds. He clarified that the IUML had not taken an official position on the matter, explaining that the resolution was passed by the Youth League constituency committee and that the party had not yet discussed it formally. He also stated that although he attended the programme, he had left after the inauguration.
Meanwhile, tensions within the UDF have reportedly increased following Thangal’s remarks suggesting that V D Satheesan was the most suitable candidate for the chief minister’s post, with him indicating that the final decision would be based on public sentiment.
SNDP Yogam leader Vellappally Natesan criticised the Muslim League, stating that it was inappropriate for the party to decide the Congress leadership and alleging that a UDF government could become a “religious dictatorship” of the League. He also warned of potential communal tensions.
Within the Congress, internal dissatisfaction has also been reported, with a senior leader indicating that the League’s stance on leadership had disrupted front-level coordination and worsened existing factional tensions.
Salam, however, rejected the criticism, alleging that the media had misinterpreted Thangal’s remarks and that attempts were being made to communalise the issue. He further stated that reports circulating on the matter were fabricated and that the Congress leadership had not raised objections to Thangal’s statement.
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In 1893, a 26-year-old Telugu man with ink-stained ambitions and a chemist’s curiosity launched a balm in Bombay. He wasn’t a doctor. He wasn’t a pharmaceutical magnate. He was a journalist who had spent time in apothecary shops, first in Madras, then in Calcutta, quietly learning how pain could be formulated into relief. His name was Kasinadhuni Nageswara Rao Pantulu. The balm was Amrutanjan. Together, they would outlast the Empire.
The Man Before The Balm
Born on 1 May 1867, in Elakurru village, Krishna district – a flat, fertile strip of the Telugu heartland, Nageswara Rao was not a man who fit into a single category. He graduated from Madras Christian College in 1891 under Dr. Rev. Miller, whose discipline produced a generation of sharp, self-possessed Indian graduates. His mind was already being shaped by the writings of Kandukuri Veeresalingam Pantulu, the father of the Telugu Renaissance, whose essays on social reform and national pride circulated in journals that the colonial press could not quite suppress.
He moved to Bombay to work at a European firm, William and Company, and rose steadily through the ranks. But salaried employment was never going to hold a man like this. He had watched too many of his people pay European prices for European medicine, for ailments that could be treated far more cheaply if only someone had the will to try.
The Yellow Formula In a Market Owned By Others
The Indian pain relief market in the late 1800s was not empty – it was occupied. Imported menthol rubs, British-distributed ointments, and brands like Vicks VapoRub (an American product that had found eager distribution channels across the British Empire) dominated pharmacy shelves and colonial households alike. These products were expensive, foreign, and carried the quiet authority of Western medicine – the implicit message being that anything made locally was inferior by definition.
What Nageswara Rao produced in 1893 was a camphor-and-menthol-based analgesic – yellow, pungent, and aggressive in the best possible sense. It smelled nothing like the odourless, “refined” imported balms. It smelled like a monsoon had passed through a eucalyptus forest. It hit harder, lasted longer, and cost a fraction of what the imported alternatives demanded. The British Patent Medicine Tax had made imported drugs expensive for ordinary Indians — Rao deliberately undercut that price point, putting effective pain relief within reach of people the imported brands had never even considered as customers.
He classified Amrutanjan as an Ayurvedic Proprietary Medicine – a categorisation that was legally precise and strategically brilliant. By proving that his ingredients were rooted in ancient Indian pharmacology while his manufacturing was modern, he navigated the complex colonial tax structure that crushed purely Western drug imports. He used the British legal system as a competitive weapon.
His marketing was pre-modern in form but post-modern in instinct. He handed out free samples at music concerts and Sabhas, letting the balm sell itself through sensation. He sponsored songs and poems about it. In a country with low literacy and high communal memory, he understood that a brand had to be felt, heard, and smelled, and not merely read. Where imported balms advertised sophistication, Amrutanjan advertised experience. The overpowering scent that the imported brands quietly mocked became its greatest asset – a sensory signature that no one who encountered it once could ever forget. For years, the word “Bombay” was pressed into every tin lid – a quiet, unapologetic declaration that this came from Indian hands, Indian soil.
By the early 1900s, Amrutanjan had done something that colonial commercial logic said was impossible: it had made Indian consumers actively prefer an Indian product over a Western one – not out of patriotic obligation, but because it simply worked better.
The Balm And The Newspaper
Amrutanjan made Nageswara Rao wealthy enough to ask the next question: what should wealth do?
His answer was to fund Telugu journalism at a moment when it was most dangerous to do so. In September 1908, he launched Andhra Patrika as a weekly from Bombay. The paper was not neutral. It was built on his fierce belief in political emancipation for India, and specifically for a separate Telugu-speaking Andhra state. When the First World War broke out and the political atmosphere shifted, he moved the paper to Madras and converted it into a daily – the first Telugu daily newspaper from Madras, rolling off the press on 1 April 1914.
In January 1924, he launched Bharati, a Telugu literary journal. In 1926, he established the Andhra Grandha Mala – a publishing house that produced books at deliberately low prices, covering modern works, classical texts, and scientific volumes, explicitly to put knowledge within reach of the ordinary man. He was simultaneously running a company, editing a daily newspaper, funding a literary journal, and running a publishing house. Every jar of Amrutanjan sold was, in some measure, funding all of it.
Mahatma Gandhi, who visited his residence in December 1932, called him “Viswadaata” – the universal donor.
Revolutionary, Prisoner, Philosopher
In 1931, Nageswara Rao was jailed for six months for participating in Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha. While in prison, he wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, arguing it was not a sectarian religious text but a universal scripture for all of humanity.
He served as President of the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee for four consecutive terms between 1924 and 1934. He established over 120 libraries across Andhra districts. He was not simply a man who made a balm and printed newspapers. He was systematically building the infrastructure of a literate, politically conscious Telugu public – one tin, one newspaper, one library at a time.
The Meeting He Chaired, The State He Never Saw
The Sri Bagh Agreement of November 1937, a foundational compact between Telugu leaders ensuring equitable development across all Andhra regions as a precondition for demanding statehood was signed at Nageswara Rao’s own residence in Chennai. He chaired that meeting.
Five months later, on 11 April 1938, he passed away.
The Andhra state he spent his entire life fighting for came into existence on 19 December 1952 – fourteen years after he was gone. That is the particular cruelty reserved for people who build things larger than their own lifetimes.
The Tin That Survived Everything
Amrutanjan became a public limited company in 1936, two years before its founder’s death. In 2007, it was renamed Amrutanjan Healthcare Limited and diversified well beyond the balm. It is still headquartered in Chennai. Vicks is now a Procter & Gamble brand worth billions. Amrutanjan is a 133-year-old company still run out of the city its founder chose.
The tin still says “Bombay.”
There is one footnote that history doesn’t quite know what to do with: chess legend Bobby Fischer once asked Viswanathan Anand to bring him Amrutanjan from India because he couldn’t find it in Iceland. A brand that a Cold War-era American grandmaster was hunting for in the North Atlantic. Nageswara Rao, a journalist, revolutionary, publisher, prisoner, philanthropist, would have appreciated that enormously.
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India is a country that, for decades, was told to wait. Wait for roads. Wait for ports. Wait for defence. Wait for bridges. The architects of that waiting were not always natural disasters or bureaucratic delays. Sometimes, they were political choices made deliberately, defended proudly, and occasionally admitted on the floor of Parliament.
The Congress party, its leaders and supporters have, over the years, opposed, stalled, or denounced some of India’s most consequential development projects. Here is the documented record – in their own words.
Ravish Kumar & Ganga Expressway (May 2026)
A video of Ravish Kumar reacting to the newly inaugurated Ganga Expressway has gone viral on social media, prompting widespread debate. In the clip, he is seen questioning the value of reduced travel time and expressing skepticism about the emphasis on infrastructure-led development in Uttar Pradesh.
In the video, he remarks, “Tell me, what will you do by reaching Prayagraj 5 hours earlier? The real enjoyment is in the road trip itself, not in reaching the destination. So why is the government building expressways and shortening people’s road trips?” suggesting that the experience of travel is more meaningful than reaching the destination faster.
🤡 रवीश कुमार अब पूरी तरह से पागल हो चुका है!
“गंगा एक्सप्रेसवे से 11 घंटे का सफर 6 घंटे में!”
रवीश: “अरे 5 घंटे पहले पहुँचकर क्या करोगे??” 😂
भाई, पूरा देश विकास से जश्न मना रहा है, तू रो रहा है कि लोग जल्दी पहुँच रहे हैं?
“An Undeveloped Border is Safer” – AK Antony, Parliament (September 2013)
No statement in independent India’s political history is more damning than this one, made voluntarily by UPA Defence Minister A.K. Antony on the floor of Parliament: “Independent India had a policy for many years that the best defence is not to develop the border. Undeveloped border is more safe than developed border. So many years, there was no construction of roads, airfields, nothing in the border areas. By that time, China continued to develop their infrastructure. Compared to us, infrastructure-wise, capability-wise in the border areas, they are ahead. I admit that. It is a part of history.”
Read that again. A sitting defence minister of the world’s largest democracy stood in Parliament and confessed that India’s official policy was to deliberately leave its borders undeveloped while China built roads, airstrips, and supply chains right up to the LAC. The result? Doklam. Galwan. Depsang. Decades of Chinese encroachment enabled, in part, by a Congress doctrine that mistook vulnerability for strategy.
“A Planned Misadventure” – Sonia Gandhi on the Great Nicobar Project (September 2025)
In a signed op-ed in The Hindu, Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Sonia Gandhi called India’s ₹92,000 crore strategic infrastructure project in the Great Nicobar Islands a “planned misadventure”: “It is being insensitively pushed through, making a mockery of all legal and deliberative processes… The collective conscience cannot, and must not, stay silent when the very survival of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes is at stake… Unconscionably, one of the country’s most vulnerable groups may have to pay the ultimate price for it.”
The Great Nicobar project, comprising a transhipment port, international airport, power plant, and township, is positioned at the intersection of the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Strait, one of the world’s most strategically vital waterways. Defence analysts describe it as India’s single most important Indo-Pacific asset. A project that gives India power projection capability in the Indo-Pacific is, in Congress’s vocabulary, a “misadventure.”
“The Poor Don’t Benefit from Roads” – Rahul Gandhi, Madhya Pradesh (November 2013)
At an election rally in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, then Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi said: “It is not that we do not create infrastructure. But the opposition’s thinking is that you make roads and everything will be all right… (but) the poor don’t get benefit from the roads. Roads alone won’t give food to the child or a woman.”
He went on to describe how farmers watch aircraft from their fields while “roads and airports are used by the selective rich.”
This statement was made by a man who would go on to lead the Congress party openly dismissing road construction as a development tool. The irony: it was made in Madhya Pradesh, a state that had at that very time one of the worst rural road connectivity records in India, where villages were cut off during monsoons for months at a stretch. The people of MP needed roads desperately. Their future Congress leader told them roads weren’t the answer.
“Exorbitant and Electorally Motivated” – Congress on the Bullet Train (July 2018)
In Parliament, Congress called the ₹1.10 lakh crore Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train project “exorbitant” and dismissed it as an “election bullet train” launched, they claimed, with an eye on polls rather than public good. Congress MPs also attended protest meetings alongside farmers opposing land acquisition for the project. The Congress-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra that came to power in 2019 immediately froze land acquisition, killing years of progress.
Opposing the Statue of Unity (2018)
Congress opposed the Statue of Unity, the world’s tallest statue, honouring Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the man Congress spent decades marginalising from India’s national memory. They alleged it was built with Chinese components, prompting PM Modi to respond: “I recently came to know about Congress’s claims that Sardar Patel’s statue is China-made. They have stooped so low that they have now started mud-slinging over Sardar Patel.”
The same Congress-JD(S) government in Karnataka that called the Statue of Unity “wasteful” simultaneously proposed a ₹1,200 crore Cauvery statue which they welcomed as “boosting heritage.”
₹18 Lakh Crore in Stalled Projects – The UPA Infrastructure Collapse
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented data in May 2024 showing:
Capital expenditure as a share of total government spending fell from 23% in 2003–04 to an average of 12% between 2005–2014 under UPA
दुनिया भर में सरकारें गुणवत्तापूर्ण इंफ्रास्ट्रक्चर और परिसंपत्तियों के निर्माण के लिए पूंजीगत व्यय पर जोर देती हैं और ध्यान केंद्रित करने का प्रयास करती हैं। गुणवत्तापूर्ण बुनियादी ढांचा प्रत्येक नागरिक के लिए आराम, सुविधा और ‘Ease of Living’ लाता है।
— Nirmala Sitharaman Office (@nsitharamanoffc) May 15, 2024
Infrastructure projects worth ₹18 lakh crore were stalled between 2011-2014 alone.
India was classified among the world’s “Fragile Five” economies by 2013 – a direct consequence of chronic infrastructure neglect.
“Roads Are to Loot Bihar’s Water” – Kanhaiya Kumar on Bharatmala (March 2025)
Congress leader Kanhaiya Kumar, while opposing the Bharatmala highway expansion in Bihar, made a statement that left even his own supporters bewildered: “Construction of roads in Bihar is not infrastructure development, it is exploiting its valuable water resources.”
His claim: that the BJP was building roads in Bihar not to connect its villages and cities, but as a conspiracy to steal Bihar’s water. Roads, the most basic unit of economic development, the one thing Bihar has historically lacked and desperately needed, reframed as a plunder operation. If this is the Congress reading of infrastructure, it explains a great deal about what Bihar looked like under Congress-aligned governments for fifty years.
Dhruv Rathee Ridiculing Great Nicobar Project
Making a post on his X handle, Rathee mocked the Great Nicobar project saying, “Anyone who calls Great Nicobar as India’s Strait of Hormuz is the biggest clown “
Now here’s why he is wrong. The 6-Degree Channel south of Great Nicobar is the primary maritime corridor for vessels moving from the Suez Canal/Red Sea toward the Malacca Strait. Even though the water is 200 km wide, ships follow narrow, fixed shipping lanes for safety and efficiency meaning naval control doesn’t require blocking the entire sea surface.
With Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) assets like the BrahMos missile (range: 300+ km), India can monitor and target any vessel within that 200 km span from Great Nicobar. In modern naval warfare, 200 km is well within strike range, Rathee applied outdated logic of “cannon range” geography.
~94,000 ships pass through annually and nearly 80% of China’s oil imports transit the Malacca Strait. A credible Indian military presence at Great Nicobar enables surveillance, rapid response, and interdiction capability even without physically “blocking” the channel. Adani Group has struck a deal with Indonesia regarding Sabang Port located at the southern tip of that very 200 km channel, meaning India effectively has strategic presence at both sides of the passage.
Only someone with low patriotism would post something like Rathee did.
“Digital India is Not a Priority for the Poor” — P. Chidambaram on Digital Push (2017–2018)
Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram repeatedly questioned the government’s emphasis on digitisation in the aftermath of demonetisation and during the rollout of Digital India initiatives. In multiple public remarks and writings, he argued that India was “not ready” for a cashless or heavily digitised economy, stressing that:
“Large sections of India are not digitally literate… For millions, cash is still the only mode of transaction.”
He framed the digital push as exclusionary, suggesting it overlooked ground realities like internet access, digital literacy, and rural infrastructure.
While concerns about inclusion are valid in policy debates, the broader implication was clear: skepticism toward a nationwide digital transformation at a time when India was attempting to leapfrog into a tech-driven economy through UPI, Aadhaar integration, and direct benefit transfers.
Sonia Gandhi Opposing India’s Nuclear Power
After the 1998 Pokhran tests, Sonia Gandhi said that true power lies in restraint and not showing off power.
Chidambaram said that India becoming a nuclear power was against its ‘moral authority’.
During protests around the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, Sonia Gandhi backed calls for heightened scrutiny and caution, reflecting a broader Congress stance that leaned toward public anxiety over nuclear expansion. Concerns raised by Congress leaders and echoed in party positions included:
Risks to local populations
Environmental and safety uncertainties
Questions over transparency and foreign collaboration
At the time, nuclear energy was being positioned as a critical pillar of India’s long-term energy security strategy—especially to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and meet rising power demands.
The hesitation and political signaling around projects like Kudankulam fed into delays and amplified public resistance, complicating India’s civil nuclear expansion despite international agreements like the Indo-US nuclear deal.
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India is one of the most filmed countries on earth. It is also one of the most misrepresented. Over the last decade, a steady stream of Western content creators – arriving on tourist visas, armed with cameras and pre-formed narratives have turned India into a backdrop for content that ranges from condescending poverty tourism to outright racist propaganda. The pattern is consistent: arrive, film the worst, monetise the outrage, leave. And India’s Ministry of External Affairs has largely watched in silence.
The Fuentes-Woods Circus: Far-Right Comes Calling
The most brazen recent example is the planned India visit of Nick Fuentes and Keith Woods, announced when Woods posted a graphic on X reading “Nick and Keith in India – Season 2,” showing the two standing at a ghat.
This shady groyper duo is coming to India pushing the same vile agenda as Tyler Oliveira
>•• just negative propaganda and dehumanising us for views.@MEAIndia, are we even aware? Blacklist these racists ASAP.
India needs to get strict with clout-chasers who come here only to… pic.twitter.com/34g6ePUIZu
What they are doing is not ordinary tourism. Nick Fuentes is a documented white nationalist and antisemite. As recently as December 2025, he openly demanded that India be added to a US immigration ban list that includes 19 other countries, calling for Indian immigrants to stop “stealing” American jobs and college seats. He also demanded a full suspension of immigration and naturalisation from India. He has attacked Indian-origin politicians online, famously telling Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy to “go back to India”.
His co-traveller Keith Woods is a prominent figure in the “groyper” movement – a pipeline of far-right, race-essentialist content dressed up as political commentary. Notably, there are no confirmed reports of either Fuentes or Woods having visited India before – but both frequently tag and repost content trolling the country online.
The proposed trip must be read in the context of a broader anti-Indian information climate in the West. A 2026 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace survey found that since January 2025, one in four Indian-Americans have been called a slur, with respondents describing the US as the “epicentre of anti-Indian digital racism”. Fuentes and Woods are not peripheral figures in this ecosystem – they are among its architects.
Tyler Oliveira: Sacred Rituals as Gross-Out Entertainment
In October 2025, American YouTuber Tyler Oliveira filmed the Gorehabba festival in Karnataka, a centuries-old post-Diwali ritual, and uploaded it under the title “I Survived India’s Poop-Throwing Festival”.
The video stripped a spiritual Hindu tradition of all religious or cultural context, reducing it to a spectacle of disgust for a Western audience. It clocked over 5 million views on X alone.
When Indian users pushed back, Oliveira’s response was dismissive and mocking. He eventually offered an insincere apology – but kept the video up, continuing to earn from it. The template here is identical to Fuentes: provoke India, profit from the reaction, face zero consequence.
He even claimed he fell sick despite eating in 5-star hotels.
Bald and Bankrupt: Seven Years, 90+ Videos, Zero Accountability
British travel YouTuber Benjamin Rich, known as Bald and Bankrupt, has been visiting India for over seven years. He has uploaded over 90 videos on India, several crossing 50 lakh views including titles like “10 Things I Hate About India” and “Avoiding Religious Scammers and Touts in Varanasi”. In a 2024 video, he described India as the “most frustrating place to visit globally” frequently applying hand sanitizer after contact with locals in full view of the camera.
Bald and Bankrupt has been coming to India for 7 years straight, even hit the North East, and every time he drops super racist, dehumanising videos. 90+ videos, each with 50L+ views.
His ‘work’ can be best described as “colonial explorer” content – a White man rediscovering the “exotic” East for a Western audience, with local people serving as props. In 2024, a similar vlogger who runs the YouTube channel Small Brained American was caught intentionally mistranslating what Indian locals said, to make them appear foolish or hostile. In this video, Rich was accompanying him in the journey.
Rich has never been denied a visa despite years of controversy. MEA has issued him a visa, reportedly, on multiple occasions.
David Simpson: A Sovereignty Problem, Not Just a Content Problem
British-Irish travel creator David J. Simpson is in a category of his own. His Instagram bio reads “India Occ Kashmir,” the Pakistani state-sanctioned terminology for Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir. He has traveled extensively to the region, filmed content there, and openly promotes what can be described as Pakistani geopolitical propaganda on his channel.
@MEAIndia What exactly are you doing?
Foreign YouTubers like David simpson are openly using “Indian-occupied Kashmir” in their bios and freely traveling to sensitive areas in J&K.
This is a direct challenge to India’s sovereignty.
Why can’t we blacklist them and slap heavy fines?… https://t.co/zCkkb8tpyipic.twitter.com/yNGI2iVggp
This is not a matter of cultural insensitivity – it is a direct challenge to Indian sovereignty by a foreign national operating on Indian soil on a tourist visa. Under the Foreigners Act, the conditions of a tourist visa prohibit activities contrary to India’s national interest. And yet Simpson travels freely, films freely, and faces no scrutiny.
And Then There Are Others
These vloggers visit India with a very vile agenda and portray the country in an extremely poor light. And then there are others who abuse India, Indians and derogate us by way of speech and ‘standup comedy’. In this instance, ‘comedian’ Alex Stein made a hinduphobic speech in a public forum. In February 2026, he delivered a mocking performance at a Plano City Council meeting. Dressed in stereotypical Indian attire, he caricatured Hindu beliefs about cows, gomutra, and gobar, presenting them as absurd while feigning victimhood. In the name of satire, the likes of Stein resort to deliberate cultural mockery.
The Bigger Picture
These creators do not operate in isolation. They feed an already hostile information ecosystem about India in the West. Videos that portray India as filthy, chaotic, and its people as either pitiable or laughable directly contribute to this climate.
India absorbs millions of tourists annually. It cannot and should not close its doors. But there is a meaningful difference between a tourist who visits and a content predator who arrives with an agenda. Three American missionaries were correctly told to leave India within two weeks for distributing pamphlets. It is time the same standard is applied to those who distribute something far more damaging: a carefully packaged, algorithmically amplified lie about who we are.
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Karnataka’s Congress government has packaged the Rohith Vemula Prevention of Discrimination, Exclusion or Injustice Right to Education and Dignity Bill, 2026 as a landmark anti-caste legislation. The premise is politically convenient and emotionally loaded: caste discrimination on Indian campuses is systemic, widespread, and demands urgent legislative intervention. That claim is the entire foundation on which this Bill rests. And on that foundation, the Karnataka Congress government has constructed a legal architecture that is not merely flawed, but dangerous.
The Presumption of Guilt Is Baked In
The most dangerous feature of this Bill is not what it prohibits, it is how it adjudicates. The equity committee, which is the primary redressal body, is mandated to have at least 80% of its members from the SC/ST community. The presiding officer must also be from the SC/ST community. There is no provision requiring any member to have legal training. There is no requirement for impartiality beyond community identity.
This is not a committee. It is a tribunal constituted on the basis of group identity, sitting in judgment over disputes involving that same group’s interests. In any functional legal system, this would be considered a structural conflict of interest. A judge with a personal stake in the outcome recuses himself. This Bill makes such a stake a qualification for appointment.
If a non-SC/ST faculty member is accused, by a student, by a colleague, by anyone, they will face a body in which 80% of the decision-makers share the identity of their accuser. The Congress government calls this equity. Any honest reading of jurisprudence calls it a predetermined verdict.
“Unintentional” Discrimination – A Clause That Criminalises Ignorance
The Bill defines discrimination to include “unintentional acts or omissions” that adversely affect SC/ST individuals. Read that again. You do not have to mean to discriminate. You do not have to know you discriminated. The mere fact that your action or your inaction produced an outcome that someone from a marginalised community found adverse is sufficient to constitute discrimination under this Bill.
A professor who grades strictly and fails an SC/ST student. A department head who assigns project teams without demographic consideration. A canteen manager who runs out of a particular dish. Under a sufficiently motivated reading of this Bill, any of these could constitute “unintentional discrimination.” The Bill provides no threshold of intent, no standard of reasonableness, no burden of proof on the complainant to demonstrate that the act was motivated by caste animus.
This is not law. It is a blank cheque for complaint issued in the name of justice, cashed at the expense of the innocent.
SC/ST Alone Are Victims By Default
The revised Bill appears to define “aggrieved person” exclusively as SC/ST individuals, excluding other communities from its protective scope. Earlier drafts and media coverage had left this ambiguous, creating the impression of a broader applicability. If this reading holds in the final text, it narrows the Bill’s reach considerably. From a practical standpoint, a narrower scope also means a narrower weapon. The most dangerous provisions of this Bill: the 80% SC/ST equity committee, the unintentional discrimination clause, the pre-verdict suspension would apply only within a defined set of complaints rather than as a blanket mechanism deployable by any student against any faculty. This does not fix the Bill’s structural problems. It merely limits the radius of damage. It is not an improvement worth applauding. It is the difference between a bad law and a catastrophic one and that is a distinction worth making honestly, even if it offers little comfort.
What If The Perpetrator Is The One With A Caste Certificate?
The Bill operates on a single, unexamined axiom: that SC/ST individuals are always the victim and never the perpetrator. It does not entertain, not even as a theoretical possibility, the scenario where an SC/ST student or faculty member discriminates against, bullies, or excludes a General Category peer. The Bill’s drafters have not asked this question. They have not commissioned data on it. They have not studied it. And that absence is not accidental, it is the foundational assumption the entire legislation is built on: that oppression is a one-way street, permanent, structural, and incapable of reversal at the individual level. A General Category student can also be discriminated against – be it taunting them or mocking them about their religious markers, cutting off janeu/shikha etc.
The General Category student has no standing. The law simply does not see them. This is not social justice – it is a legal blind spot elevated to policy. The assumption that oppression flows in only one direction, permanently and without exception, is not sociology. It is mythology. Discrimination is a behaviour, not a birthright and a law that criminalises it selectively based on who the perpetrator is does not fight caste. It enshrines it.
30 Prohibited Actions – Vague Enough to Mean Everything
The Bill lists 30 prohibited discriminatory actions. Several of them are so vague as to be functionally limitless:
“Asking questions that probe social background or family occupation in a discriminatory or humiliating manner” – Who decides what is discriminatory or humiliating? The committee. The same committee that is 80% SC/ST. A professor asking a student about their academic background during a viva could be reported.
“Curriculum content that glorifies certain castes or demeans SC/ST communities” – This is a direct threat to academic freedom. Who decides what “glorifies” a caste? Sanskrit texts or its random and rough english translations? Classical literature? historical documents, religious philosophy? – All of it becomes potentially actionable under a sufficiently motivated interpretation. This clause alone could be used to purge entire disciplines from university syllabi. It does not protect students. It hands ideological gatekeeping to a committee with no legal accountability.
“Forcing participation in religious or cultural events against a student’s beliefs” – Applied selectively, this becomes a tool to disrupt traditional university cultural activities, college festivals, and religious observances that form the lived cultural reality of the majority of students on campus. The Bill provides no reciprocal protection for students whose cultural practices are disrupted or dismissed.
“Restricting the reporting of unfair practices” – This is so open-ended as to be meaningless as a legal standard. Any pushback against a frivolous complaint, any request for evidence, any challenge to a complainant’s credibility could be framed as “restriction of reporting.” The accused has no equivalent protection against false or malicious complaints anywhere in this Bill.
Suspension Before Verdict: Punishment as Process
The Bill allows the equity committee to recommend the suspension of the accused while an inquiry is pending. This means that a faculty member or student against whom a complaint has been filed, not proven, not even substantively examined, can be removed from their position, their campus, their livelihood, before any finding of guilt.
In Indian universities, where institutional politics, departmental rivalries, and personal vendettas are endemic, this provision is a loaded weapon. A senior professor with a dispute with a junior SC/ST colleague. A student who failed an exam and wants revenge. A political student union looking to neutralise an inconvenient voice on campus. The complaint mechanism this Bill creates is tailor-made for weaponisation and the Congress government, which drafted it, knows exactly how campus politics works.
And once suspended, even if eventually exonerated, the reputational damage is permanent. In academia, where reputation is currency, a pending discrimination complaint follows you for the rest of your career. The Bill offers the accused no compensation, no apology mechanism, no remedy for wrongful suspension. Exoneration, if it comes, comes quietly. The accusation echoes forever.
What Honest Anti-Discrimination Law Looks Like
A genuine anti-caste discrimination framework would:
Take in complaints of all castes and categories
Require independent, legally trained adjudicators with no community stake in outcomes
Define discrimination with intent as a necessary element, not merely adverse effect
Prohibit pre-verdict suspension without a high evidentiary threshold
Provide equal remedies for false complaints because a law that protects only one party is not a law, it is a weapon
Be built on documented evidence of institutional failure, not political messaging
Karnataka deserves better than this. Its students deserve a campus environment governed by law, not by the identity of whoever sits on the complaints committee.
A law that cannot be applied fairly is not a law. It is a power transfer. And power transferred without accountability, regardless of which direction it flows, regardless of how noble the justification, has only ever produced one thing in this country: more injustice, with better branding.
Why This Bill Is Dangerous
This Bill is dangerous not because of what it claims to fight but because of how it fights it. It creates a parallel legal system inside university campuses – one where the adjudicating body is constituted on identity, not impartiality; where unintentional acts are punishable without proof of intent; where suspension precedes verdict; where vague prohibitions covering curriculum, conversation, and cultural practice are left to an unqualified committee to interpret. Every one of these provisions is an invitation to abuse. Individually they are flawed. Together they are a machine for institutional vendetta dressed as justice. That is what makes this Bill dangerous – not its name, but its architecture.
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With voting for the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections completed on April 23 and counting scheduled for May 4, a series of statements and developments from within the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) alliance are drawing attention to a consistent underlying theme: key allies appear to view the party as reliant on coalition support rather than capable of securing power independently.
While some post-poll surveys suggest the DMK alliance could return to power, reactions from allies including the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), Indian National Congress, and Communist Party of India (Marxist) indicate expectations of negotiation, pressure, and post-poll bargaining.
DMDK: Open to Power-Sharing Signals
DMDK general secretary Premalatha Vijayakanth struck a confident tone about the alliance’s prospects but avoided ruling out post-result negotiations.
Responding to questions on a possible hung assembly and power-sharing, she said, “Everyone has worked well in the election field. I will answer this question after the 4th.”
Her refusal to commit before results, coupled with DMDK’s relatively high seat allocation – 10 constituencies and a Rajya Sabha berth has been seen as leaving room for leverage depending on the outcome. At the same time, she asserted, “Our alliance will win decisively, and MK Stalin will once again become Chief Minister.”
Congress: Friction, Demands, and Exit Signals
Tensions between the DMK and Congress have been visible both in negotiations and public messaging.
Seat-sharing talks saw Congress demanding 33-41 constituencies while the DMK held firm at around 25, leading to prolonged deadlock. Senior Congress figures, including Manickam Tagore, publicly criticised what they described as a “disrespectful” approach by DMK leaders. Internal dissent also emerged, with sections of the party exploring alternatives, including possible alignment with Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam.
Reports of cold interactions between Rahul Gandhi and MK Stalin during the campaign, along with the absence of joint rallies, further added to perceptions of strain.
Ground-level signals suggested dissatisfaction among Congress cadres, with indications that some may not have fully backed the alliance in closely contested constituencies.
VCK: Internal Unity Issues During Campaign
VCK leader Thol. Thirumavalavan acknowledged coordination issues within constituencies during the campaign, even as he defended overall organisational efforts.
He said, “Except for a few constituencies, there is information that comrades in a few constituencies did not work in unity. Information about this is being gathered.”
The admission came amid broader discussions about seat-sharing dissatisfaction and candidate changes within the alliance, reinforcing perceptions of uneven ground-level cohesion.
CPI(M): Explicit Statement on DMK’s Dependence
The most direct articulation came from the CPI(M), where senior leadership openly stated that the DMK cannot secure victory on its own.
Party leader P. Shanmugam said that under current political conditions, it is not possible for the DMK to win on its own and that it must rely on an alliance as it did in 2021.
At the same time, CPI(M) pushed for a larger share of seats, insisting it could not accept fewer than six constituencies, while also indicating it may contest independently in some areas depending on negotiations.
More recently, former CPM state secretary Balakrishnan said, “Despite the various opinion polls that have been cited regarding this election, I want to convey that the Secular Progressive Alliance is set to achieve a notable victory, and the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) is in a position to form the government again in Tamil Nadu. And it is not just the opinion polls, even when we went out for election campaigning and gauged the public mood, we are confident that the Secular Progressive Alliance will win a resounding victory. We want to congratulate the DMK government on forming the government once again. But at the same time, we need to patiently wait and watch what kind of governance and policy the DMK is going to follow going forward. Even during this election, we repeatedly insisted that at least six seats must be allocated to the Marxist Communist Party and the Communist Party of India, but the DMK leadership did not accommodate that. The truth is that the DMK has refused to give the Left parties the recognition they deserve. Nevertheless, on the principle that BJP should not be given a foothold in Tamil Nadu, we contested the election by joining this Secular Progressive Alliance. Till the very end, without any friction or shortcomings, we fought this battle as part of the alliance that opposed the BJP. So, what kind of governance this winning government will deliver, that remains a question mark. The reason is that even today, there is a state of restlessness among youth in Tamil Nadu. The demand to permanently regularize their employment has existed for a long time, but the previous DMK government also failed to fulfill it. Similarly, no meaningful steps were taken to address unemployment either. Even now, Tamil Nadu ministers are boasting a great deal about this year’s government statistics, they are proudly claiming that Tamil Nadu has once again achieved double-digit growth. But instead of acknowledging that the fundamental reason behind this double-digit economic growth is the labour and toil of the working class in Tamil Nadu, the big question remains, what is our government giving back to those workers who are generating this double-digit production and growth? Compared to any previous election, in this election we can see a great awakening among the youth. Usually, during elections, youth would be elsewhere. But this time, unlike before, there is a wave of enthusiasm among youth, a political awareness that Tamil Nadu needs a change has emerged.”
“இடதுசாரிகளுக்கு திமுக உரிய அங்கீகாரம் தர மறுத்துவிட்டது… மாற்றம் வேண்டும் என்கிற மிகப்பெரிய எழுச்சி இளைஞர்கள் மத்தியில் ஏற்பட்டிருக்கிறது”- சிபிஎம் முன்னாள் மாநிலச் செயலர் கே.பாலகிருஷ்ணன்#DMK | #CPM | #TNElectionpic.twitter.com/CBLcRsPGJI
Taken together, the statements from DMDK, CPM, Congress, and VCK form a remarkably coherent picture – one that the DMK’s own allies appear unwilling to say out loud but unable to conceal. CPM said it plainly: the DMK cannot win alone. Premalatha said she would answer questions about power-sharing “after the 4th.” Congress cadres are reported to have voted against the alliance in some seats. VCK flagged poor ground coordination.
The DMK’s Secular Progressive Alliance is less a united front and more a coalition of self-interested parties who each believe they are indispensable to the outcome and are already positioning themselves for what comes after May 4.
Whether that outcome is a clean DMK majority, a hung assembly, or something in between, one thing is clear: the allies have already begun counting what they are owed.
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Chief of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), Thol. Thirumavalavan, addressed concerns over candidate selection and internal coordination during the ongoing election process, stating that changes were driven by the need to accommodate new entrants as the party expands.
Reviewing election preparedness, Thirumavalavan said, “On behalf of our party, election work committees have been appointed in all assembly constituencies, and comrades have been working constituency-by-constituency in an organized and excellent manner. Except for a few constituencies, there is information that comrades in a few constituencies did not work in unity. Information about this is being gathered. I convey my appreciation and gratitude to all the comrades who worked on the ground.”
He acknowledged reports of limited internal coordination in certain areas while maintaining that overall campaign work has been structured and effective.
On the issue of candidate selection, Thirumavalavan pointed to rising expectations within the party. He said, “Assembly elections happen once in five years and in every election, many people expect that they will get an opportunity in general constituencies this time. When that opportunity is not given, their disappointmen, this has become a recurring story. Therefore, changing candidates in general constituencies has become unavoidable. Not just in general constituencies, but overall because when we get very few seats, we cannot set aside the position that we must also give opportunities to new people. That demand is rising strongly.”
He further described how internal competition has grown over successive elections, stating, “As the party grows stronger and moves closer to power, the competition among frontline leaders intensifies. In 2001, I had to search with great difficulty for people to put up as candidates. Even in 2006, very few competed for candidacy from us. But in 2011 it increased. In 2016 it increased further. In 2021, competition further grew, roughly ten people competing per constituency.”
Explaining specific decisions not to renominate certain leaders, he said, “The compulsion to take a stand that we must give opportunities to new faces has become necessary. It is on that basis that I could not give an opportunity this time to our brother Shanawaz, who had won in a general constituency, and to our brother SS Balaji.”
Addressing speculation surrounding these decisions, Thirumavalavan added, “But various reasons for this have been stated and debated by many on social media. That is not the truth. None of those reasons are true.”
A televised political debate has triggered fresh discussion around the ideological positioning of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), after party spokesperson Saravanan described the party as the “only saviour of Hindus,” even as previous remarks by Udhayanidhi Stalin on Sanatana Dharma continue to be debated.
The exchange occurred during a live discussion where the anchor questioned Saravanan about actor-politician Vijay visiting religious places including dargahs, churches, and temples.
The anchor asked Saravanan, “You’re a rationalist party, right? Your chief minister says you don’t believe in God. What is this man (Vijay) doing going to Dargah, to church, to Tiruchendur? What is he doing?”
Responding, Saravanan said, “Yeah, I don’t know what is running in his mind. But that’s his personal choice.”
When further pressed on whether the visits were political, he replied, “I don’t know. Probably you should have invited some of the TVK’s spokespersons. I don’t know why you’re not.”
The anchor responded that TVK representatives had been invited but did not participate. Saravanan added, “Put it out there. So they’re hiding. They’re into hiding.”
When asked if their absence indicated electoral weakness, Saravanan stated, “Absolutely. Why else would they hide? All along they were there saying ‘we are going to win.’ Now they are nowhere to be seen.”
He then shifted to a broader argument on inclusivity, stating, “This is one aspect. The other aspect is when we speak of inclusivity. Inclusivity is not about going to temples. Inclusivity is about staying with them when the going gets tough. That is what we did. That is what our leader M. K. Stalin did, when churches were attacked on December 25th, it is our leader who condemned it. Nobody else did that from Tamil Nadu.”
He continued, “When mob lynching was taking place, it was our leader M.K. Stalin who condemned it. He went to the IUML conference and said Muslims are safe here in Tamil Nadu and we will always protect their interests.”
Saravanan then made a notable claim about the party’s position on Hindu interests, stating, “And when it comes to Hindus, DMK is the only saviour of Hindus – we are the ones who provided 69% reservation. Who is benefited by that? The Hindus from Tamil Nadu. That is called inclusivity.”
A party whose Deputy Chief Minister, son of a sitting chief minister went on record to say “Sanatana Dharma is like dengue, malaria and needs to be eradicated”, at an event that was titled ‘Eradicate Sanatana Dharma’ conference back in September 2023 – Saravanan who claims that DMK is the saviour of Hindus comes from the very same party.
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