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☆ Canadian Arrests Highlight Alleged Gang Role in India’s Intelligence Operations
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-04 | by ( Mujib Mashal | Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada accused India’s government of plotting a murder on Canadian soil — plunging diplomatic relations between the two countries to their lowest level ever — the first arrests in the killing, which came on Friday, did little to demystify the basis of his claim. The police didn’t offer clues or present any evidence that India had orchestrated the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh nationalist leader who was gunned down at the temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia, in June. What they did say was that three Indian men had committed the killing and that an investigation into India’s role was ongoing. Before the arrests, Indian officials had maintained that Canada was trying to drag New Delhi into what it described as essentially a rivalry between gangs whose members were long wanted for crimes back in India. After the arrests, a report from the CBC, Canada’s public broadcasting corporation, based on anonymous sources, also said the suspects belonged to an Indian criminal gang.

Persons: Justin Trudeau, India’s, Hardeep Singh Nijjar Organizations: Canada, CBC Locations: India, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, Delhi

☆ Modi Calls Muslims ‘Infiltrators’ Who Would Take India’s Wealth
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-22 | by ( Alex Travelli | Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday called Muslims “infiltrators” who would take India’s wealth if his opponents gained power — unusually direct and divisive language from a leader who normally lets others do the dirtiest work of polarizing Hindus against Muslims. Mr. Modi, addressing voters in the state of Rajasthan, referred to a remark once made by Manmohan Singh, his predecessor from the opposition Indian National Congress Party. Mr. Singh, Mr. Modi claimed, had “said that Muslims have the first right to the wealth of the nation. This means they will distribute this wealth to those who have more children, to infiltrators.”Mr. Modi aimed his emotional appeal at women, addressing “my mothers and sisters” to say that his Congress opponents would take their gold and give it to Muslims. Implications like these — that Muslims have too many babies, that they are coming for Hindus’ wives and daughters, that their nationality as Indian is itself in doubt — are often made by representatives of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.

Persons: Narendra Modi, ”, Modi, Manmohan Singh, Singh, Mr, “, —, Modi’s Organizations: Sunday, Indian National Congress Party, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party Locations: Rajasthan

☆ How A.I. Tools Could Change India’s Elections
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

For a glimpse of where artificial intelligence is headed in election campaigns, look to India, the world’s largest democracy, as it starts heading to the polls on Friday. An A.I.-generated version of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that has been shared on WhatsApp shows the possibilities for hyperpersonalized outreach in a country with nearly a billion voters. In the video — a demo clip whose source is unclear — Mr. Modi’s avatar addresses a series of voters directly, by name.

Persons: Narendra Modi, Mr Locations: India

☆ In a Land of Lavish Weddings, This Prenuptial Party Takes the Cake
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-01 | by ( Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When a member of one of India’s wealthiest families gets married, big-name guests and showstopping pomp and circumstance are nothing unusual. But it’s not every day that the invitees include royalty, business titans, Bollywood luminaries and Rihanna, for three days of a pre-wedding spectacular, months ahead of the actual ceremony. Mr. Ambani, 28, the younger son of Mukesh Ambani, will welcome the guests at a sprawling venue in the western Indian state of Gujarat, along with his fiancée, Radhika Merchant. Merchant, 29, comes from a family that owns health care businesses and is trained in Indian classical dance. The couple started the festivities earlier this week with a community feast: hosting thousands of people from neighboring villages and serving them Gujarati delicacies.

Persons: it’s, Rihanna, Anant Ambani, Ambani, Mukesh Ambani, Radhika Merchant, Merchant Organizations: Reliance Industries Locations: India, Gujarat

☆ Pankaj Udhas, Bollywood Singer and Maestro of the Ghazal, Dies at 72
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-27 | by ( Suhasini Raj | John Yoon | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Pankaj Udhas, a singer from India whose soulful renditions of ghazals, or lyric love songs, were a cornerstone of many Bollywood films over his decades-long career, died in Mumbai on Monday. His death was announced on social media by his daughter Nayaab Udhas. Mr. Udhas moved generations of people in India and the Indian diaspora by singing ghazals, the lyric poems that have been written for centuries in Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Turkish and other languages. He also worked as a playback singer, the term for a vocalist who recorded tracks offscreen for actors to lip-sync over. Mr. Udhas became a stalwart in the Indian music industry through both his discography of more than 50 albums and the enormous success of the movies in which he sang.

Persons: Pankaj Udhas, Nayaab Udhas, Udhas Locations: India, Mumbai

Ameen Sayani, a pioneering radio presenter who drew generations of listeners in India with his melodic voice on a radio show that became a national phenomenon, died on Tuesday. Born in 1932, Ameen Sayani was introduced to radio by his elder brother who was an English-language presenter. In 1952, Ameen became one of the first voices to be heard on the airwaves in Asia by starting the radio program for which he became the most famous, “Binaca Geetmala,” showcasing Bollywood music. He hosted the program on Radio Ceylon, one of the oldest radio stations in the world, based in what is now Sri Lanka. The show was later moved to All India Radio, the state-owned public broadcaster.

Persons: Ameen, Narendra Modi, Sayani’s, “, ” Mr, Rajil, Ameen Sayani, Binaca Organizations: Radio Ceylon, India Radio Locations: India, English, Asia, Sri Lanka

☆ Burglars Hit Movie Director’s Home, Then Deliver a Cinematic Plot Twist
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-17 | by ( Suhasini Raj | Mujib Mashal | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

When the thieves broke into the country home of a renowned film director in southern India, taking gold, silver and cash, they made a clean getaway. But days later, a small plastic bag appeared outside the house’s gates, stitched shut with thin sticks and containing something wrapped in a white handkerchief. Inside was a medal for a prestigious national award that the director, M. Manikandan, had won in 2021 for one of his films. With it was a brief note handwritten in Tamil, a regional language. “Sir, please forgive us,” the note read.

Persons: Manikandan Locations: India

☆ Why Farmers Are Marching Toward Delhi Again
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-14 | by ( Alex Travelli | Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Once again, India’s capital is bracing itself for a siege. Not by a foreign army but by an army of Indian farmers, streaming toward New Delhi from nearby states to protest government policies. The farmers’ march has turned the city’s main points of entry into choke points, as the federal and local police go into overdrive: barricading highways by pouring concrete and stacking shipping containers to halt the advancing tractors. The authorities have blocked the social media accounts of some protest leaders and even used drones that were once billed as an agricultural innovation to drop tear-gas grenades on the demonstrators. The scenes hark back to North India’s biggest protests of 2020 and 2021, when hundreds of thousands of farmers, mostly from the states of Punjab and Haryana, forced the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to abandon three bills meant to overhaul India’s agricultural economy.

Persons: Narendra Modi Locations: Delhi, Punjab, Haryana

In 1947, two men, both named Kundan, fled Peshawar during the bloody partition that carved Pakistan out of British India. They landed in Delhi and soon became partners in a restaurant called Moti Mahal serving food from the Punjab region. Where they diverge is on the question of which of the men should go down in culinary history. The two families both say that it was their own Kundan who invented butter chicken — the creamy, heavenly marriage of tandoori chicken and tomato gravy beloved everywhere north Indian food is served. And one of them has gone to court to try to prove it.

Organizations: Moti Locations: Peshawar, Pakistan, British India, Delhi, Punjab

☆ Cleaning Latrines by Hand: ‘How Could Any Human Do That?’
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-02 | by ( Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When he came to fully realize exactly what his parents and older brother did for a living, and what it likely meant for his own future, Bezwada Wilson says he was so angry he contemplated suicide. His family members, and his broader community, were manual scavengers, tasked with cleaning by hand human excrement from dry latrines at a government-run gold mine in southern India. “In my growing up years, I was made to feel different from the rest in school. I was not allowed to laugh at jokes, and caste slurs were thrown at me,” Mr. Bezwada said in an interview on a recent evening in Delhi. “All I wanted to know then was why was my community different, and how could I make them equal to the others?”

Persons: Bezwada Wilson, Bezwada, ” Mr, ” Locations: India, Delhi

As the trapped workers came out of the under-construction road tunnel after 17 days, the happy end to a rescue effort that had riveted India set off celebrations across the country. Gone for the moment were questions about why the 41 men had been put at risk of being entombed in the tunnel in the first place. Cameras focused on local representatives of India’s governing party, who credited the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While activists and environmentalists also watched with relief, the scenes carried another, very different meaning for them. They had long warned, in futile court cases and failed tribunal hearings, that the $1.5 billion road-widening project was dangerously destabilizing the already fragile Himalayan landscape.

Persons: Narendra Modi, “ Modi, Modi Locations: India

☆ After 16 Days, Rescue Near for Workers Stuck in Tunnel, Officials Say
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-28 | by ( Mujib Mashal | Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

After a 16-day effort to free dozens of Indian construction workers trapped inside a Himalayan road tunnel, rescuers were finally preparing to pull the men out on Tuesday as diggers labored to clear a final stretch of debris by hand, the authorities said. The rescue operation had hit repeated roadblocks, with officials ultimately trying multiple ways to reach the 41 stranded men. But a breakthrough came on Tuesday afternoon, as trained miners using hand tools made rapid progress after picking up at the point where a drilling machine had failed. “The work of putting in the pipe to rescue the workers has been completed,” Pushkar Singh Dhami, the chief minister of the northern state of Uttarakhand, the site of the tunnel, said in a brief statement on social media. “Soon, all the worker brothers will be taken out.”Syed Ata Hasnain, a member of India’s National Disaster Management Authority, gave a less definitive assessment and said that about two meters, or six feet, of drilling remained.

Persons: Pushkar Singh, ” Syed Ata Hasnain Organizations: Disaster Management Authority Locations: Uttarakhand

☆ Trapped in a Tunnel for 15 Days, With No End in Sight
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-27 | by ( Suhasini Raj | More About Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Over the two weeks that dozens of Indian construction workers have been trapped in a Himalayan road tunnel, the authorities have reported meter-by-meter progress toward reaching them and offered hopeful timelines for their rescue. Yet 15 days after disaster struck, the 41 men are still stuck. And now, as Indian officials try a new tack — drilling down through the top of a mountain — they acknowledge that the effort will take several days, if it works at all. “We feel a looming sense of doom,” said Jyotish Basumatary, whose brother, Sanjay Basumatary, is trapped inside. If it rains, “the workers’ hands would freeze,” he said by phone.

Persons: ”, Jyotish Basumatary, Sanjay Basumatary, ” Jyotish

Each notification sounded its own little alarm, but was amplified many times over when the targets identified themselves publicly. The warning on their phones, sent by Apple on Monday, seemed stark: “State-sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone,” it said in part. This week’s episode seemed to fit into that pattern for his critics and many who got the warning from Apple. Rahul Gandhi, the foremost opposition leader, said many of his confidants in the Congress Party received the notification. Mr. Gandhi added that he takes illegal surveillance by the government for granted.

Persons: Narendra Modi, Apple’s, Modi’s, Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Gandhi, “ Organizations: Bharatiya Janata Party, Apple, Party Locations: India

Purbasha Roy held her 9-year-old daughter’s hand and pointed toward the towering art installation: blooming pink buds symbolizing embryos, menstrual cups shaped to form a bouquet, fallopian tubes descending from corners of the ceiling. The work, part of a makeshift pavilion to worship the Hindu goddess Durga, was designed to break taboos in India about menstruation. And it had a clear target: A half-man, half-bull demon at Durga’s feet, an organizer explained to Ms. Roy and others, represented the “moral police” — India’s patriarchal society. The pavilion was one of hundreds, many politically pointed, that dotted Kolkata during a five-day festival called the Durga Puja, an event that brings this muggy, sleepy city alive each year as if jolted by a high-voltage current. Part Mardi Gras, part Christmas, the festival, which ended on Tuesday, is the most important religious celebration for Hindus in this part of eastern India.

Persons: Purbasha Roy, Durga, Roy, ” Locations: India, Kolkata

☆ Uncertainty ‘Is Killing Us’: Sikhs in India Are in Limbo Amid Canada Dispute
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-24 | by ( Suhasini Raj | More About Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Now Mr. Singh is simply afraid to go, suspecting that flights might be canceled in coming weeks, leaving him helpless in Canada. “It hurts, this cold war, and there is an uncertainty now which is killing us,” Mr. Singh, a farmer who had hoped to explore business opportunities with extended family in Canada, said dejectedly. Each of their sentences, each word of our leaders, is affecting the lives of each one of us. Known as India’s breadbasket, Punjab is a majority-Sikh state where the average income is about $2,080 a year. It has a special relationship with Canada and a special place in the hearts of Sikhs like Mr. Singh.

Persons: Singh, ” Mr, breadbasket Organizations: Boeing Locations: Canada, Punjab

The allegation was a bombshell: that India had been involved in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil in June. Canada’s prime minister leveled the charge on Monday, and an all-out diplomatic war soon followed. Canada pressed its allies to come together to challenge India, with statements of concern issued in Washington and Canberra, Australia. India moved to expel a top Canadian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move, and Indian officials lined up to air grievances with Canada. But behind the plunge in relations to what officials and analysts called the lowest point ever were years of diplomatic tension.

Persons: Canada’s, Canada — Organizations: Canadian Locations: India, Canada, Washington, Canberra, Australia, Canadian, Britain, United States, Punjab

☆ Who Was the Man Whose Killing Canada Says India Instigated?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-19 | by ( Suhasini Raj | More About Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Sikh separatist whose killing in British Columbia this summer has suddenly set off a major diplomatic dispute between Canada and India was a prominent advocate of the creation of an independent nation, Khalistan, that would include parts of India’s Punjab State. Decades later, the Indian government declared him a terrorist, accusing him of plotting a violent attack in India linked to his advocacy. And in June, two masked assailants killed him in front of a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, a city on the border with Washington. Mr. Nijjar was born in the district of Jalandhar in the North Indian state of Punjab. In Canada, he married, had two sons, worked as a plumber and became the president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, a temple in Surrey, in 2020.

Persons: Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Nijjar, Nanak Locations: British Columbia, Canada, India, India’s Punjab State, Surrey, Washington, Jalandhar, Punjab

While a major climate policy breakthrough appears unlikely at the G20 summit this weekend, experts do expect less-wealthy countries to continue pressing richer ones to provide more climate financing. Last year, rich countries agreed at a climate summit in Egypt to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by pollution from wealthy nations. “Ambitions for climate action must be matched with actions on climate finance and transfer of technology,” he wrote. But a meeting of climate ministers from G20 countries in India earlier this summer failed to produce consensus on climate-mitigation targets. There was some progress on climate finance at a G20 summit in Rome two years ago, where leaders said they would end the financing of coal power plants overseas.

Persons: Narendra Modi, ” Organizations: European Union Locations: United States, Egypt, Tuvalu, Chad, Pakistan, Pacific, India, Paris, Rome

While a major climate policy breakthrough appears unlikely at the G20 summit this weekend, experts do expect less-wealthy countries to continue pressing richer ones to provide more climate financing. In an article published in Indian newspapers on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India appeared to signal that climate finance would be a priority this weekend. “Ambitions for climate action must be matched with actions on climate finance and transfer of technology,” he wrote. But a meeting of climate ministers from G20 countries in India earlier this summer failed to produce consensus on climate-mitigation targets. There was some progress on climate finance at a G20 summit in Rome two years ago, where leaders said they would end the financing of coal power plants overseas.

Persons: Narendra Modi, ” Organizations: European Union Locations: United States, Egypt, Tuvalu, Chad, Pakistan, Pacific, India, Paris, Rome

☆ Making Sure 1.4 Billion People Are Very Aware India Is Hosting the G20
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-05 | by ( Suhasini Raj | More About Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In cities across India, the beaming face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi adorns giant posters promoting the country’s G20 presidency. A hundred national monuments, including the Red Fort in Delhi, were illuminated with the G20 logo to encourage people to post selfies. But India, and its governing party, were primed to capitalize on the moment. Mr. Modi has seized on the G20 presidency as confirmation and celebration of India’s ascent — a rise to which he has fused his own image — as he seeks a third term in an election early next year. “That India has arrived on the world stage will go strongly in his favor with the electorate.”

Persons: Narendra Modi, Modi, ”, Neerja Chowdhury Organizations: Democracy Locations: India, Fort, Delhi

☆ At Least 26 Die as Bridge Collapses While Under Construction in India
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-23 | by ( Suhasini Raj | More About Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

At least 26 workers were killed on Wednesday after the collapse of a bridge that was under construction in the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, officials said. Several other workers were feared trapped under the wreckage, the Indian news media reported. Sabyasachi De, a spokesman for the North East Frontier Railway, said that Mizoram State had taken over a rescue operation and that the construction was a project of the federal railways ministry. “Most northeastern state capitals are not connected by the railways, so this bridge was part of that connectivity project,” he said. Mr. De said that a gantry, rather than the entire bridge, fell while being set atop the bridge’s piers.

Persons: Sabyasachi, ”, De Organizations: North East Frontier Railway Locations: Indian, Mizoram, Mizoram State

In June, 11 women who work together as sanitation laborers in India pooled their money to buy the equivalent of a $3 lottery ticket because they could not afford the cost individually. Last week, they won. The jackpot was $1.2 million, or more than $700,000 after taxes — an enormous sum for workers who spend their days collecting household waste and building public toilets. Lottery drawings are famous feel-good stories because they make people rich overnight, but these winners may be among the most deserving in history. “I’m swimming in debt, so this money will be a big relief,” said one of the winners, Leela K., 50, a mother of four daughters.

Persons: ”, Leela K, “ Locations: India

“The fact that there are these weapons which are at large — massive number of sophisticated weapons — is a very huge risk to our national security,” Mr. Gogoi said in an interview. Mr. Modi’s silence, analysts said, reflects how crucial his brand is for the calculations of his governing party, known as the B.J.P., around next year’s general elections. Amit Shah, Mr. Modi’s home minister, visited Manipur last month, and told Parliament last week that he was willing to have a discussion on behalf of the government. Since India’s founding as a republic seven decades ago, its northeast has been rife with insurgencies rooted in tribal and ethnic grievances. Successive national governments have prioritized connections through the northeast that could expand trade with neighboring Bangladesh, Myanmar and Southeast Asia more broadly.

Persons: Mr, Gogoi, Amit Shah, Modi’s, Modi Organizations: Party Locations: Manipur, Meiti, New Delhi, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Southeast Asia

☆ Monsoon’s Fury Sours Romance of Wet Season Travel in India
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-26 | by ( Suhasini Raj | More About Suhasini Raj | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Akash and Parvani Kapadi drove up pine-covered forests to a hill town in northern India with a view of the snow-capped Himalayas. In their hotel room, the gentle pitter-patter of monsoon rains on the roof set the stage for a week of romance — away from the heat and grime of the city. But the drizzle turned into a downpour and did not let up for days. “We were fearful that the honeymoon may result in a tragedy,” Mr. Kapadi said. Because of climate change, the wet season is forecast to get even more violent and erratic.

Persons: Parvani Kapadi, ” Mr, Kapadi, “, — Locations: India

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