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Delhi based activist Aviral Sharma says he was intimidated to cancel Hanuman Chalisa event at Durga Temple in Hauz Qazi

OpIndia Staff
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Delhi based activist Aviral Sharma says he was intimidated to cancel Hanuman Chalisa event at Durga Temple in Hauz Qazi

Right in the heart of Delhi, Laal Kuan area of Hauz Qazi has been simmering with communal tension. On 30th June 2019, a Muslim mob had desecrated a Durga temple and according to local Hindu residents, even urinated in the temple. After the desecration, several Hindu activists had pledged to ‘reclaim civilisation’. To that end, one activist, Aviral Sharma had taken to Twitter to announce that he will be conducting Hanuman Chalisa at the Durga temple which was vandalised on 30th June.


He had received several responses from people on Twitter saying that they will be joining him at Laal Kuan for the ritual.

However, though released now, Aviral was allegedly detained by the local police station where he was intimidated to withdraw the event and tweet that the event had been cancelled.

When OpIndia spoke to Aviral after he was released, he said that had started getting calls from various quarters including the DCP of Chawdi Bazaar inquiring where he lives and what he proposed to do in Laal Kuan. He also received a call from his local Police Station Gokulpuri saying that he had to visit the PS for a meeting.

Soon after the call, officers from the police station reached his residence and escorted him to the police station.

Aviral Sharma says that while he was in police detention, he was being pressurised to withdraw the invite for the event and give the police a statement in writing confirming that he would not be visiting Hauz Qazi for the planned event of conducting Hanuman Chalisa at the desecrated Durga Temple in the area. Aviral says that despite the pressure, he refused to do so and was intimidated thereafter with threats of cases being filed against him.

When he still refused to cancel the event, the police told him that they would be getting a medical test conducted, confirms Aviral. However, on route the medical test, he was unceremoniously released and dropped at his residence.

When news of Aviral’s detention surfaced, OpIndia tried to contact the SHO of Gokulpuri. the SHO flat-out refused that he even knew of any Aviral Sharma. He said that the incident is not in his knowledge that as per him, no person has been detained in connection with this proposed puja to be conducted at Hauz Qazi.

After Aviral Sharma’s release, OpIndia tried to get in touch with the SHO yet again, however, the attempt was unsuccessful.

Imminent collapse? 8 Congress-JD(S) coalition MLAs resign in Karnataka, more expected to follow: Reports

OpIndia Staff
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Imminent collapse? 8 Congress-JD(S) coalition MLAs resign in Karnataka, more expected to follow: Reports

The Karnataka government appears to be on shaky grounds yet again. According to reports, 8 MLAs of the ruling Congress-JD(S) coalition have tendered their resignation and there’s a possibility that more resignations are on the way.


Speculations are rife that as many as 13 MLAs of the ruling coalition, 11 from the Congress and 2 from JD(S) could submit their resignation on Saturday. The exact number is unclear as of now. Former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s close aide and Minister is the current cabinet, MTB Nagaraj, is also likely to resign.


There is also the possibility that the Karnataka government could collapse today as more are expected to join the mutiny. Meanwhile, Congress leaders in the state are running helter-skelter to prevent a collapse which has been appearing inevitable for quite some time.


HD Kumaraswamy has been crying frequently in public whining about the alleged misery he was enduring to keep the government functioning. Ever since the coalition materialized, it always appeared to be only a matter of time before its collapse. The massive defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections seems to have been the final nail in the coffin. If reports are to be believed, Kumaraswamy will be liberated from his suffering soon enough.

Meerut remains tense after Muslims protesting against Tabrez’s death turned violent, main accused Badar Ali arrested

OpIndia Staff
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Meerut remains tense after Muslims protesting against Tabrez’s death turned violent, main accused Badar Ali arrested

The city of Meerut has turned into a seething cauldron after Muslim groups in the city organised violent protests against the unfortunate killing of the alleged bike thief Tabrez Ansari in Jharkhand last month. Internet services were suspended on Friday in Meerut and scores of police personnel were deployed amidst heightened tension, days after the police lathi-charged violent crowd that had gathered to protest against mob violence.

On Monday, in Meerut’s Mawana area, hundreds of people had gathered near the Mosque at Mill road to hear Maulana Nafees Ahmed, who had organised a meeting for the members of Muslim community over the death of Tabrez Ansari. As a crowd of several hundred gathered near the Mosque to hear the Maulana’s speech, soon they started altercations with the police. The police had to lathi charge again to disperse the crowd.

On the previous day, a similar crowd had gathered at the Faiz-e-Azam college and had pelted the police with stones and created a ruckus.

Tabrez Ansari was caught by the locals in the Dhatkidih village in Jharkhand on suspicion of bike theft on 18 June. He was beaten up by them before being arrested by the police. He had died on June 22. An investigation team set up by the government had concluded that Tabrez might have died due to stress-induced cardiac arrest.

Medical reports had established that no internal injury was found on Tabrez’s body, hence the police had dismissed the allegations that ‘mob-lynching’ was a cause of Tabrez’s death. However, as the media fanned ‘mob lynching’ narrative, several areas in the country have witnessed violence by Mulsim mob ‘protesting’ against Tabrez’s death.

Meerut has continued to remain tense after last week’s incidents. The Rapid Action Force and the Meerut police personnel, along with members of Provincial Armed Constabulary, were stationed in areas around Indira Chowk. Senior police officials, including Meerut zone ADG, carried out a flag march.

The police have initiated action against those involved in violent protest. More than 50 people have been arrested by the police so far. The accused have been booked under IPC Sections 148 (rioting armed with a deadly weapon), 352 (assault), 336 (act endangering life personal safety), among others. Badar Ali, allegedly the one who led the protest march on June 30, was arrested by the police from near a mall in Meerut. The police will prosecute him under the National Security Act(NSA) and his properties will be confiscated.

The SSP of Meerut, Ajay Sahni said: “As a precautionary measure, Police personnel have been deployed and patrolling carried out since 6 in the morning. The Internet services had been suspended because there were rumours of Bharat Bandh floated by some anti-social elements. However, the community members have claimed that they are not supporting the bandh.”

Similar violent protests were also reported from Agra and Surat. In Agra too, a crowd of Muslims had gathered at a Mosque and had then proceeded to pelt stones and attack shopkeepers in several areas. In Surat, a Muslim mob had gathered yesterday to ‘protest’ against Tabrez’s death. The mob had soon turned violent and had pelted stones, attacked police personnel and had also reported damaged public buses on the road.

Habitual fake news peddler Saba Naqvi pontificates after sharing fake news to mask her Hinduphobia

Jinit Jain
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Habitual fake news peddler Saba Naqvi pontificates after sharing fake news to mask her Hinduphobia

Journalist Saba Naqvi, who has often been found peddling fake news on her social media page was once again exposed for promoting fake news carried by the Caravan daily. Saba Naqvi had shared a report published by the Caravan, which alleged that a Muslim driver was tied up and cruelly beaten up for refusing to chant “Jai Shri Ram”. As it turned out, the news was a hoax. However, this didn’t stop Saba from pontificating on her Social Media page.


As soon as it was established that the news published by the Caravan is bogus, many Twitter users pointed out to her that the report she has shared is, in fact, fake. Instead of humbly issuing an apologetic tweet for her error, Saba tweeted a conditional apology, requesting the Caravan and Altnews, two notorious websites that are known for peddling fake news, to fact check the matter. Perhaps rattled by being exposed yet again as a purveyor of fake news, Saba was triggered into ranting against OpIndia and levelling outlandish accusations of being a ‘malicious communal site sharing fake news’.

There are two facets to this mental collapse. First, it is she who stands guilty of sharing communally sensitive fake news before checking sufficiently to establish the veracity of the incident. Second, it also shows the absolute faith Saba places on infamous websites like Caravan, Altnews, who are amongst the top fake news repositories in the country, requesting them to run a fact check on their own fake news articles.

The resounding victory of the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections has been a watershed moment for the liberals like Saba. Not only have they been dealt with a body blow of another 5 years of Modi at the helm, someone whom they deeply despise, they have also been acquainted with the uncomfortable truth that the people of the country no longer subscribe to their vile propaganda. However, far from being deflated by this insight, the liberals, refusing to learn from their past mistakes, have simply intensified the shrillness of their propaganda. The subterranean Hinduphobia which had been assiduously hidden has found its way out in open.

Just like the posters of Hanuman unwarrantedly attracted liberal scorn, and were vilified as being signs of aggressive Hinduism and religious chauvinism, now the Liberal brigade is deviously co-opting the spiritually edifying chants of “Jai Shri Ram” and connecting them with any untoward incident occurring with the minorities, only to paint a gloomy picture of the country under PM Modi’s rule. Most of the times, there are no communal undertones to these unfortunate stray incidents where people from minority communities are attacked but liberals like Saba Naqvi give it a spin to portray it as a communal atrocity, thereby betraying her Hinduphobic mindset and making the Hindus feel mortified about their own religion.

The perpetual denigration of Hindu ideals and beliefs, especially in cases where the victim belongs to a minority community, is intended to serve two purpose- To extenuate the victim of any criminal wrongdoing that must have invited the wrath of his assailant and the instant mortification it engenders among Hindus that discourages to seeNk legal remedy against the victim for his/her alleged crime.

In the Pehlu Khan murder case, many witnesses have alleged that Pehlu and his sons were habitually involved in acts of cow smuggling. However, the liberal coterie whipped up the frenzy of beef and cow vigilantism to reduce Pehlu Khan and his son’s culpability and send Hindus on a guilt-ride that a man from a minority community was attacked and killed for upholding the Hindu religious belief of cow protection. Liberals didn’t even spare the law enforcement agencies when Pehlu Khan and his sons were charge-sheeted for cow smuggling.

Similarly, a few days back liberals had floated fake news of a man being beaten for refusing to chant “Jai Shri Ram”. It was later revealed that the incident had no religious connotation and the CCTV recording unveiled how it was actually a scuffle between few men and the argument turned into push and shoving in which his cap fell down. The CCTV footage showed how no one had deliberately removed his skullcap. And how even his initial complaint never mentioned that he was forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. After casting smear on the noble Hindu belief of cow protection, disparaging ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is the latest hack embraced by the detractors to further their anti-Hindu propaganda.

This is not the first time when Saba Naqvi has shared fake news and blatantly indulged in peddling Hinduphobic propaganda. In 2018, she had shared old fake news from 2015 where she asserted that a Dalit man was murdered for entering a temple in Uttar Pradesh. The news, firstly, was from 2015 when Akhilesh Yadav was Chief Minister. Secondly, the man was murdered by a drunk and not because he entered the temple. However, this did not deter Saba from exploiting the caste fault-lines by trying to pit Dalits against Hindus.

Apart from this, Saba in 2015 had also written a manifestly sexist piece on BJP leader Smriti Irani foreboding that she would be very soon “cut to size” by the top mandarins of the party. This obviously that didn’t age well as it is evident from the fact that Smriti Irani defeated the Congress PM candidate Rahul Gandhi on his home turf Amethi. Her emphatic victory is a testimony to the fact that BJP’s top echelons placed unswerving faith on Smriti’s capabilities, in stark contrast to Saba’s unfounded misogynist assertions.

From sexist jibes against a woman BJP leader to unabashed Hinduphobic contentions, Saba Naqvi has come a long way in her otherwise lacklustre journalistic vocation. However, she has been remarkably successful in transforming herself into a poor man’s Rana Ayyub by using seemingly non-communal incidents to perpetuate her abhorrence for Hindus and Hinduism.

Rahul Gandhi, your resignation is fooling no one, it is an exercise in power without responsibility

Ashish Shukla
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Rahul Gandhi, your resignation is fooling no one, it is an exercise in power without responsibility

Rahul Gandhi is going nowhere. His resignation is an exercise in power without responsibility. True to his lineage, Mr Gandhi feels that he could fool all the people all the time.

Rahul Gandhi resignation letter leaves no one in doubt that Rahul Gandhi has quit as president for good. It also leaves no one in doubt that as a loyal worker, he would continue to work for the Congress against BJP and RSS who are in conflict with his idea of India.

He may or may not be president till July 10 when the Congress Working Committee (CWC) is likely to be dissolved and a new one formed. An interim president, Sushil Kumar Shinde or Mallikarjun Kharge, both nearing 80, would be asked to usher in a new Congress. Nobody gets a penny for predicting that Sonia Gandhi and her kids, Rahul and Priyanka, would be a part of it regardless of the resignation letter. Nobody would receive a dime too for predicting that the likes of Anand Sharma and Ghulam Nabi Azad, would still be doing the errands for them.

For a month and a half, since the 2019 results came in and a Congress-mukt Bharat became a reality—they don’t have a single seat in 16 states—the resignation drama has been an attempt to trade ridicule with sympathy. To hide the stink of a rotting corpse, a whiff of nostalgia has been floated. The young prince charming, all of 49, a bachelor who forsake good things in life and fought for his idea of India. The one who took on the might of Modi, BJP and RSS; who fought even as one by one all institutions were taken over, who traded hate with his brand of love, was an individual against the entire system.

Sure, the drama is well orchestrated. Before you could blame him for his party’s defeat, for his own humiliation in Amethi, for believing anti-Modi tirade would make up for the deficit in vision, for refusing allies only because a few states fell in his lap before the 2019 polls, for courting Hindus and losing his Muslim votebank, Mr Gandhi took the sting out of the horde at his gate by showing he is disarmed. How could you now punish a man who has swung an axe on his own neck?

Make no mistake: Gandhis are only worried about themselves, not about Congress or India. It’s only a bail which is standing in between Gandhis and jail. Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra has the additional worry on her husband, Robert Vadra meeting the same fate. They are pariahs even to Mamata or Mayawati or Akhilesh Yadav. Muslims no longer trust them. Shunned by the public, ostracized by politicians, they can only worry about their skin.

Gandhi’s letter would’ve been hilarious if it was not tragic. He claims every institution in the country—judiciary, press, election commission etc—has been taken over by the Modi government. That’s not music to the ears of the judiciary who intervened at midnight to allow Congress the batons of Karnataka. Which suffered the indignity of impeachment. The mainstream press which never wrote a single word against Gandhi. Election Commission which was reluctant to allow repolling in West Bengal.

“It’s now clear that our once cherished institutional neutrality no longer exists in India,’ Really? Was judiciary or press neutral during the Emergency? Or the august office of president? Who overturned Supreme Court on Shah Bano case? Who had taken over India’s institutions in the past?

In many ways Rahul Gandhi is inconsequential. He is an individual busy saving his skin. The bigger question is who saves Congress? Who saves the Grand Old Party when its’ very saviours are busy digging up its grave.

With the same ‘zor se bolo’ story to tell, were Kunal Kamra and Mahua Moitra traveling in the same plane and experienced the same turbulence?

Sanghamitra
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With the same ‘zor se bolo’ story to tell, were Kunal Kamra and Mahua Moitra traveling in the same plane and experienced the same turbulence?

Indian secular liberal brigade has finally seen another ray of light in the long night of Saffron reign. Mohua Moitra is the new liberal icon for the brigade to celebrate. After the scarcity of human resources that have been created after Kanhaiya’s loss, Hardik’s conviction and nobody taking Gurmehr Kaur seriously, Moitra might as well be the answer to all their hopes and dreams now.

The thunderous claps and combined hailings dimmed a little after allegations surfaced that Moitra might have plagiarised the speech that made her so famous. Moitra slipped a little further as she kept on with the screaming and ‘Mamata Banerjee-ish’ behaviour when journalists tried to question her over the plagiarism allegations. Trying to bring a privilege motion to bully a media house and its editor for questioning her after screaming about alleged fascism and media gagging in the country did not help her stand either.

Now, a rather unexpected claim has surfaced. Twitter user Rishabh Sharma shared a video clip where self-proclaimed stand up comic Kunal Kamra is seen uttering the very same few lines as a ‘joke’ that Moitra has passed off as a ‘personal experience’ to prove her point.


Kamra, in a stand up show, is seen telling one of his ‘jokes’ where there was a turbulence inside a plane and an old Hindu uncle untied his seat belt, stood up and shouted “Zor se bolo….”, the first part of the colloquial Hindu slogan where ‘Jai Mata Di’ follows next. Kamra then stated that in the same plane, a similarly old Muslim man was sitting and thinking what would have happened if he had shouted ‘his’ slogan, a sly reference to what usually happens after a sudden loud slogan that sounds a lot like ‘Ola Ho Uber’.

In her interview to Barkha Dutt on Tiranga TV, Moitra is seen making the claim that the same incident was one she had experienced herself, just like she had claimed on the same show that the parliament speech had ‘come from her heart’. Only Moitra did not present it as a joke like Kamra. She presented it as a real concern to claim how Muslims are treated differently.

The video clip has sparked Twitter reactions because Moitra, again quoting her fellow Amreeki left winger Martin Longman had stated that ‘Right Wing a%$holes are same in every country.’


It is, however, a matter of grave concern. How did all so-called left-wingers and anti-BJP opinion cum joke makers ended up in the same plane at the same time to experience the same turbulence? Kunal Kamra claims that he did not hear any person answered ‘Jai Mata Di’ to the Hindu uncle. But the situation is far too specific to have happened in two different instances.

Maybe Moitra was seated closer to the Hindu uncle and thus heard the ‘Jai Mata Di’ and Kamra was sitting too far back to hear anything. He just heard the Muslim uncle ‘thinking’ whether he should get up and shout ‘his’ slogan too. Both Kamra and Moitra however, being true seculars, had the first knee-jerk thought process of thinking about the Muslim uncle shouting ‘his’ slogan the moment they heard a communal slogan like “Zor se bolo..”

Coincidences and odds notwithstanding, the concerns raised by Kunal Kamra are very real and very scary indeed. People around the world are so consumed with hatred and so brainwashed by the RSS that a Muslim person suddenly standing up and shouting something that sounds like ‘Ola Ho Uber’ is bound to generate the same reaction.

There were even social experiments done over this. One that had irked the secular liberals very much. Experiments that show exactly how people react when they suddenly hear something that sounds like ‘Ola Ho Uber’.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q7HfxG19E8]

The fears are not exactly misplaced though. There is an actual concern among people that a person suddenly shouting something that sounds like ‘Ola Ho Uber’ might just blow up the next moment. The last time such slogans were heard inside a plane, the planes ended up crashing into New York’s twin towers.

In case ‘secular liberals’ might argue that these claims are false, the people who blow up also make videos to educate the general public before strapping on the vests that blow up. Pulwama bomber Adil Dar’s video in this regard was very clear and specific too. The bombers who recently blew themselves up killing over 300 people in Sri Lanka also had made videos and released social media posts to explain why they did it, and it had a lot to do with words that sounded like ‘Ola Ho Uber’.

Here is how the real purpose of the ‘Lynchistan’ narrative was to provoke actual violence

Abhishek Banerjee
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Here is how the real purpose of the ‘Lynchistan’ narrative was to provoke actual violence

Yesterday in Surat.

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How ironic that a “rally against mob lynching” incidents would consist of an angry mob attacking policemen?

Such violence is the natural culmination of a very calculated effort by anti-Modi liberals to build up hatred by stringing together a narrative of India being a place where minorities are lynched.

India has always had a weak law enforcement system. Our cops are poorly trained, generally unmotivated and our police to citizen ratio is one of the lowest in the world. The simplest of cases drag on in our courts for decades with no end in sight. Naturally, people in India don’t have much respect for the system. A sad corollary of this is that people in India sometimes resort to mob justice against those they perceive to be criminals.

This is a failure of the state and it certainly should be addressed. But liberals saw an opportunity in this chronic weakness of the Indian state. They decided to string together isolated incidents where Muslims were victims and made up a whole narrative that there is some kind of coordinated targeting of the Muslim community. The unfortunate victims became household names, with the facts of each case garnished from imagination and sprinkled “liberally” with lies.

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By the time the truth comes out, the truth no longer matters.

The campaign was initially intended to rally the ragtag “civil society groups,” who had fallen out of favour after the new Modi led BJP assumed power in Delhi. Their hope was to guilt trip the common Hindu. To their dismay, however, they discovered that things had changed in India. The common Hindu saw right through their half-truths and hypocrisies. Campaigns like “Award Wapsi” became the punchline for internet jokes and humour.

That’s when the liberals changed strategy and began playing in two other markets that Indian Hindus could not influence easily. The first was the “export market.” With the so-called first world still insecure about India’s rise, there was a lot of room in Western newspapers and media outlets for badmouthing India and Hindus. Uninformed foreign audiences could easily be fed the worst about India. And the revenue would be coming in much coveted $$$.

The second market is where it gets even more serious and dangerous. Pumping up the anger among Indian Muslims. In some ways, the lies about “Lynchistan” are even more dangerous than lying about riots. A riot is limited to a geographical area. Here, Indian Muslims are being pumped with lies that anybody anywhere could be under threat.

This is from Malegaon a few days ago.

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The killing of Tabrez Ansari in Jharkhand is again an example of a real event picked up and fitted into a false narrative.

This particular rally at Malegaon was peaceful, but the false narrative was disseminated among the crowd of lakhs. Listen to the speeches as reported by The Indian Express: “The crowd was also asked to spread the message among Muslims that the “victims of lynchings should not show helplessness in chanting Jai Shri Ram; instead, they should die by taking the Sahadat”.”

This poison drip of lies has been fed to Indian Muslims for so long that violent reactions are coming in all over the place. On Eid day, a mob in Delhi threw stones and wrecked DTC buses in “retaliation” against what they thought was a deliberate disruption of their prayers.

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The facts? A car thief ran into the crowd while trying to get away in a vehicle he had stolen!

Then, there was the shocking incident in Chandni Chowk in Delhi, where a Durga Temple was vandalized.

And now Surat, where police have been attacked.

Since the day Modi came to power, a certain group of “liberals” has been anguished, trying to create violence so as to justify their doomsday predictions. And they don’t care if the nation burns down. As Modi spends more and more years in office and there is no actual evidence of systemic injustice to minorities, they are investing with more and more conviction into the “lynchistan” narrative of stringing together disparate events.

It is hard to say how to counter this narrative. Because this is purely an “information war.” Where it is very easy for liberals to mount a rhetorical offensive and accuse the other side of being insensitive to real victims of real crimes. The liberals enjoy the clear advantage in both theatres where this information war is being fought: foreign audiences who do not know anything about India and would like to believe the worst about us. And Indian Muslims whose victimhood complex has been carefully nurtured for seventy years.

There is only one thing the government can do, which it must. That enforces the law strictly. Those who rioted in Delhi on Eid day should have been punished severely. The same goes for the incident in Chandni Chowk and the latest incident in Surat. I am not sure it will arrest the fake narrative being spread about “Lynchistan”, but maintaining the rule of law is a must. On that, there can be no compromise.

World Cup Preview, India v Sri Lanka: A contest between Malinga and Bumrah

Ritesh
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World Cup Preview, India v Sri Lanka: A contest between Malinga and Bumrah

A legend playing his last World Cup, and his disciple playing his first World Cup will face each other in the last league of their teams. Malinga and Bumrah have played a lot for Mumbai Indians, and Bumrah learned a lot from Malinga about bowling yorkers after yorkers. It will be a treat for fans to watch them bowling against each other.

India, already qualified for the semis would be looking to win the match so that they can top the points table and hope South Africa to beat Australia. That would help them to play New Zealand in the semis, a weaker team than the host nation England. But, if you want to win the World Cup, you have to beat every good team in the competition.

Sri Lanka has nothing to lose, but they have a chance to end the tournament on a good note, beating India would give a lot of confidence to this inexperienced team. Malinga is playing his last World Cup match, and this should motivate the team to win the game for him.

A bright sunny day is expected for the day at Leeds.

Players to watch out

Rohit Sharma has scored 2 of his 3 ODI double hundreds against Sri Lanka and the kind of form he is in; there could be another double coming up. Rohit (544) also must be eyeing to surpass Tendulkar’s record of most runs (673) in a World Cup edition.

Bumrah has not taken a lot of wickets, but his accurate bowling helped other Indian bowlers to pick wickets. He is also on the verge of taking 100 ODI wickets for India.

India v Sri Lanka in ODIs:

Overall: Matches 158, India Won 90, Sri Lanka Won 56, Tied 1, No Result 11

World Cup: Matches 8, India Won 3, Sri Lanka Won 4, No Result 1

Recent Form (most recent first): India W L W W W, Sri Lanka W L W L NR

ICC Rankings: India (2), Sri Lanka (8)

Upcoming Records:

Rohit Sharma has scored 874 runs in World Cup and needs 126 more to become the fastest player to reach the 1,000 runs milestone in World Cup. Rohit has played 15 innings so far while Tendulkar and AB de Villiers took 20 innings each.

Jasprit Bumrah has taken 99 wickets and needs one more to reach the 100 wickets milestone in ODIs.

Squads:

India: Virat Kohli (capt), Jasprit Bumrah, Yuzvendra Chahal, Shikhar Dhawan, MS Dhoni (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Kedar Jadhav, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Vijay Shankar, Rohit Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav.

Sri Lanka: Dimuth Karunaratne (capt), Avishka Fernando, Suranga Lakmal, Lasith Malinga, Angelo Mathews, Jeevan Mendis, Kusal Mendis (wk), Kusal Perera (wk), Thisara Perera, Nuwan Pradeep, Dhananjaya de Silva, Milinda Siriwardana, Lahiru Thirimanne, Isuru Udana, Jeffrey Vandersay.

Amartya Sen courts controversy again, says Jai Shree Ram is an ‘excuse to beat up people’ and not ‘Bengali culture’

OpIndia Staff
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Amartya Sen courts controversy again, says Jai Shree Ram is an ‘excuse to beat up people’ and not ‘Bengali culture’

Nobel Laureate and leftist intellectual Amartya Sen has stated that the chant of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is not associated with Bengali culture. Speaking at an event in Jadhavpur University last evening, Sen reportedly asserted that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is merely an excuse to beat up people.


Sen furthered that it is Maa Durga and not Shri Ram that is omnipresent in the lives of Bengalis. He added that the celebration of Ram Navami is gaining popularity only recently and he has never heard of it before.

To prove his point, Sen quoted his 4-year-old granddaughter. He stated that when he asked his granddaughter who is her favourite deity, she replied that it is Maa Durga.

Sen’s statement came at the backdrop of the slogan’s widespread usage in the state during the elections. Ruling TMC and CM Mamata Banerjee had shown a disdain towards the slogan and there were instances where CM Mamata Banerjee had got down from her vehicle to threaten people who had chanted the slogans.

TMC government had also tried to jail people for chanting the ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogan. Mamata Banerjee had stated that the slogan is inciting violence and it does not belong to Bengal.

Journalist Pritish Nandy had also earlier attempted to claim that the slogan Jai Sri Ram does not belong to Bengal.

The attacks on the chant of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is not limited to Amartya Sen and Mamata Banerjee though. After repeated attempts to set a mainstream media narrative that the people chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ are not common public but BJP and RSS supporters, there have been many cases where Muslims have claimed that they were beaten up for not chanting the slogan, only to be proven false after investigation.

The recent incident where a Kanpur based auto driver Aatib claimed that he was thrashed by people for not chanting Jai Shri Ram’ turned out to be false after the police found that it was only a drunken brawl and the claims of the auto driver were false.

It is notable here that Amartya Sen has been in the news for lying and obfuscating about the NDA government’s 10% reservation bill. He is also one of the so-called secular liberals who often complain about the ‘rising intolerance’ level in the country. Though it is not clear why a self-proclaimed supporter of tolerance has decided to be intolerant towards the popular Hindu chant of ‘Jai Shri Ram’.

Muslim majority Tunisia bans Niqab in government offices for security reasons after the dastardly terror attack in June

OpIndia Staff
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Muslim majority Tunisia bans Niqab in government offices for security reasons after the dastardly terror attack in June

Tunisia, the Noth African country’s Prime Minister Youssef Chahed signed a government circular “banning access to public administrations and institutions to anyone with their face covered for security reasons,” his office said. The premier court of the Muslim majority country enforced a ban on the niqab in government spaces citing security reasons.

The niqab is a garment that covers the entire face except for the eyes. This ban on the Niqab in government officers comes after the dastardly double suicide bombing on 27th June.

On 27th June, terrorists had carried out 2 fatal suicide bombings in quick succession against security forces in the capital city of Tunisia injuring several and killing at least 1 police officer. This was the second such suicide bombing in Tunisia in the past 9 months.

In February 2014, the interior minister of Tunisia had told the security forces to put up measures to supervise the wearing of the niqab so terrorists and Jihadis don’t use it to escape the law.

The reactions in Tunisia were mixed, as per reports in AFP. While some said that the government had the right to restrict the use of niqab, others said that it was a matter of personal choice.

“We are for the freedom to dress (as one pleases), but today with the current situation and the terrorist threats in Tunisia and across the region we find justifications for this decision,” the league’s president Jamel Msallem told AFP. He said the ban should be repealed as soon as “a normal security situation returns in Tunisia”.

Tunisia is a Muslim country with Islam being the state religion. The government of the country is considered the ‘Guardians of Islam’ and the constitution requires the president of the country to be a Muslim.

During the reign of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s longtime autocrat, any outward show of religion, even Islam, was not tolerated in Tunisia but the situation changed after the ‘revolution’ of 2011. The ban on such religious symbols was lifted post-2011, however, after the terror attack of 2015, there were calls to re-impose the ban on the niqab.

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