Trump To Meet Putin? Orban Drops Peace Bombshell, Questions Hungary's EU Allies
Emmanuel Macron got caught up in another on-camera snafu with his wife, Brigitte. The French president's new awkward moment has surfaced from his recent U.K. state visit. In the clip, Macron is seen trying, and failing, to grab the first lady's arm after their royal welcome. The two initially walked with their arms linked together alongside the U.K. royals. Soon after Brigitte let go of her husband's arm and walked ahead of him. Macron later tried to get a hold of Brigitte again as camera captured the awkward attempt. Watch-
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Indian Express
2 hours ago
- Indian Express
Top 10 Netflix India movies everyone's watching right now
This film has been maintaining a strong presence in the top 10. R. Madhavan, Fatima Sana Shaikh-starrer is about a shy, docile, unromantic Sanskrit teacher Shrirenu, and Madhu who teaches French language.
The Print
4 hours ago
- The Print
Can Syria's tiny Druze minority survive West Asia's new storms? There's little hope
Little imagination is needed to understand what's driving the violence in Syria. Following the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad's dystopic regime, more than 1,000 members of his Alevi community were slaughtered in their coastal redoubts by government forces and Islamist militia. In one case, journalist Maggie Michael reported , a young man's heart was cut out of his body. His name was listed among 60 dead that included his cousins and neighbours, and six children. Even as Druze tribesmen poured in to reinforce their clan, in the summer of 1925, a French column led by General Roger Michaud was ambushed before the gates of Sweida and routed. A French officer committed suicide, historian Philip Khoury records . The first shots emerged from the bowels of the great volcanic mountain of Tell Qeni. They were likely aimed with more hope than military focus at the French Nieuport-Delage NiD.29 C.1 fighter plane, which had been surveilling Druze positions on Jabal al-Druze – the great mountain redoubt of the Druze community. The great rebellion had begun, even if the pilots hadn't noticed it. Two days later, the Druze leader Sultan al-Atrash occupied the region's second town, Salkhad, and slaughtered a column of 166 French colonial troops, laying siege to the capital at Sweida. For much of their history, the Druze have fought mainly to be left alone in their mountain redoubts—allying with Israel, or Syria, or whichever power might safeguard their interests. In 2018, more than 200 Druze were killed in concentrated attacks by Islamic State suicide bombers, as retaliation for their cooperation with the regime against the jihadists. Led by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, Druze forces have been savagely expelling Bedouin tribes from the region, following a kidnapping of a trader on the road to Damascus. There have been arguments over incendiary religious messages spread over social media. The bigger story is this, however: The collapse of the state in Syria has opened the way for genocidal ethnic-religious warfare—and the Druze want to make sure they are not on the losing end. The fighting has been intense. Entire neighbourhoods have been gutted, journalists Santiago Montag and Hussam Hammoud have reported, while Sweida's main hospital was overrun by gunmen who slaughtered its patients. And yet, the fighting is showing no signs of ending. There is a saying that the Druze like telling about themselves. As historian William Miles writes: 'When a fortune comes their way, a Christian would build a huge mansion, a Muslim would go to Mecca on pilgrimage, and a Druze? A Druze would simply buy more weapons.' Lights in the landscape Even though Indians are used to seeing West Asia as one uninterrupted wash of Islam, the reality is more complex: Like all other parts of the world, liminal communities, perched on the edge of the hegemonic faiths, light up the landscape. The Druze do not self-describe as Muslims, though their theology shares elements of Islam. The community believes in Tawhid – the unity of the divine and the human – sees time as unfolding in eternal cycles, and believes that the soul of a Druze who has died immediately reincarnates in the body of another. Loosely linked to the Ismaili offshoot of the Shia sect, the Druze have their holy text, the Rasail al-Hikma, or Epistles of Wisdom, although the Quran is also part of their theological framework. Tight ethnic and religious bonds hold the community together. The demographer Nissim Dana records that, even in relatively liberal Israel, there were just 145 cases of conversion recorded from 1952 to 2009, mainly to enable marriage to non-Druze spouses. The community is reputed to number some 1 million people, overwhelmingly concentrated in Syria, but with pockets in Lebanon and Israel. For generations, the Druze proved willing to take extraordinary risks to protect their fragile autonomy. Late in 1895, for example, Syria's Ottoman government was presented with an opportunity to punish the Druze, after quarrels broke out with their Muslim neighbours. Together with Kurds, Bedouins, and Circassians, Ottoman troops burned down the Druze village of Majdal Shams. Though the Ottoman soldiers outnumbered the Druze two-and-a-half to one, historian Shakeeb Salih writes, they were unable to subdue the uprising. An arrangement involving amnesties and cash compensation was eventually arrived at. The inexorable forces of the market, though, brought about significant changes in the outlook of the Druze by 1925. According to Salih, the merchants and moneylenders of Damascus became frequent visitors to Jabal al-Druze and Hawran, where they financed the cultivation of crops such as gram and cereals. For their part, Druze elites began to winter in Damascus, imbibing its culture and integrating into its political milieu. Following the 1925 revolt, Khoury writes, the Druze case became a template for other nationalist movements breaking out across the Middle East, eventually leading to the independence of Syria and Lebanon. Also read: Afghanistan is starving—and its farmers are fighting to save the poppy The power game Like many post-colonial states, the scholar Joshua Landis writes, independent Syria tried to stamp its authority on the Druze brutally from 1946. The four-year rule of Adib Shishakli, from December 1949 to February 1954, resulted in the crushing of Druze local leadership. 'A new form of Druze communal consciousness took root among Druze civilian politicians and, most importantly, among Druze military officers as a result,' Landis notes. Shishkali was eventually overthrown in a coup d'etat, in which Druze officers played a key role. The Druze used their position not only to seek economic privileges from Damascus, but also to gain recognition for the wide-ranging autonomy they had enjoyed under the French. This battle was not easily won, though. The government hit back, rolling back subsidies, choking the lucrative smuggling routes into Jordan, and most importantly, destroying the profitable hashish trade. Tribal leaders such as Sultan Pasha al-Atrash found their influence diminished, just as a new, Left-leaning generation of Druze emerged. Faced with vicious ethnopolitical propaganda and economic decline, the Druze found other means to act. In 1953, Druze officers Colonel Amin Abu Asaf and Captain Mohammed al-Atrash were plotting a coup. The army, thus, became a stage for the making and unmaking of power, with Alevi, Kurds, Christians, and Druze all competing to protect their interests against the majority. Also read: What's behind Israel's strikes in Syria & who are the 'Druze' that Netanyahu has vowed to protect A grim future? For the Druze, support from Israel—where they constitute a recognised official minority—is now critical. As historian Laila Parsons notes, early Jewish Agency officials operating in Palestine saw the benefits of developing ties to local minorities, and Itzhak Ben Tzvi—later to become Israel's second president—cultivated ties with the Druze. For the most part, the Druze stayed neutral in the Arab revolt of 1936-1939. The defeat of a small Druze detachment fighting the Israeli defence forces near the settlement of Ramat-Yohanan, wrote Parsons, stilled Druze desire to interject themselves in the conflict. In the war of 1947-1948, the Druze emerged better off than their Palestinian Christian and Muslim neighbours. They now had the choice of living as minorities in a Jewish state or as minorities in an Arab state. For most Druze, the choice was simple. For the Druze left in Syria and Lebanon, though, the future likely looks very different. Israeli air power was committed to protect Sweida from Bedouin tribes attacking the Druze. Still, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is an ally of the United States and is seen as key to the suppression of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Israeli support for Druze defiance cannot, therefore, be taken for granted in the future. Even more critically, the Druze have opened themselves up to a long war with the Bedouin tribes and their Islamist supporters within Syria's new regime. Looking into the fires raging in Syria, it's hard not to see only darkness: The ethnoreligious conflicts that the Ba'ath state managed—and occasionally crushed—have returned to the centre stage of political life. The acquisition of power again involves access to guns and weapons, not political legitimacy. The genuinely federal structures that Syria's minorities demanded during their march to independence could offer a way forward. But there's little hope that a society in which jihadists see themselves as victorious will be prepared to concede it. The author is Contributing Editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
Time of India
5 hours ago
- Time of India
Jane Austen's worlds of sweetness conceal a dark chapter of slavery
On January 24, 1809, Jane Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra that their brother Charles, a Royal Navy officer, had almost captured an enemy ship. 'A French schooner, laden with sugar, but bad weather parted them,' she wrote. If he had brought it to a British port, he would have received a share in its lucrative cargo . Austen lived from December 16, 1775, to July 18, 1817, and the 250th anniversary of her birth is a big occasion. All her novels, even unfinished works, have been repeatedly adapted for TV and film, including Indian films like Aisha and Kandukondain Kandukondain . Many writers have produced alternate or extended versions, and a whole genre of fiction has been built on her Regency England world. All this will be celebrated this year, often with food inspired by the dishes she mentions. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Select a Course Category Artificial Intelligence Public Policy PGDM Operations Management MCA Data Analytics Product Management healthcare Technology CXO MBA Finance Data Science Others Data Science Degree Digital Marketing others Cybersecurity Healthcare Design Thinking Management Project Management Leadership Skills you'll gain: Duration: 7 Months S P Jain Institute of Management and Research CERT-SPJIMR Exec Cert Prog in AI for Biz India Starts on undefined Get Details Sugar is never mentioned directly in the novels, yet is central to this world. It sweetened the tea and cakes the characters are always consuming, a real change from an earlier era where sweetness mostly came from honey or fruits. Sugar first came to Europe along with Asian spices, and was treated like a spice itself, expensive and for the rich . by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Knee Pain? Start Eating These Foods, and Feel Your Pain Go Away Undo The 18th century growth of plantations in Caribbean colonies made sugar affordable for middleclass families like the Austens. It was still a luxury, which is why Charles would have profited, but it was now imperative. Austen's letters include relief that the guests have left, because of the cost of tea and sugar for them. Another sign of change comes from a letter in 1816: 'We hear now that there is to be no honey this year. Bad news for us.' Sugar was displacing this most ancient source of sweetness. Yet, sugar was controversial. Caribbean plantations used slave labour and this abuse was becoming harder for the professedly pious British to ignore. The problem wasn't just consuming sugar, but the fact that the profits of the trade financed the lifestyles of Austen's world. This tension surfaces in Mansfield Park , where Fanny Price, the impoverished heroine, lives with her uncle who owns a plantation in Antigua. But when she asks him about the slave trade, 'there was such a dead silence!' Austen has been criticised for not writing more about such issues — which has drawn counter criticism for imposing current values on a past era. It would be sad to cancel her works for this reason, but it is fair to look at their financial compulsions. Sense And Sensibility , her first published novel, opens with a brutal dissection of the finances required to support a family like Austen's, and there are other hints of harsher realities behind their lives. For example, the reason women of that time valued fine Kashmir shawls wasn't just for their warmth and beauty; clothes were among the few possessions women could directly control, and the discreet secondary market for such shawls says a lot about hidden hardships. India became involved in the slavery debate in 1790 when the first load of sugar from the subcontinent arrived in London. Abolitionists who were agitating for the end of slavery, celebrated this as a way to undermine slave-produced sugar. Ulbe Bosma, in The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia , quotes Elizabeth Heyrick, a prominent activist, arguing in 1824 that the sugar boycott, which abolitionists had tried to promote, was no longer needed: 'We only need to substitute East India, for West India sugar.' The East India Company was no friend of progressive activists, but an unlikely alliance seemed possible over sugar. This never quite worked out, mostly because of the influence of West Indian planters, but Indian sugar found other markets. Bosma notes that much went to Germany where the Schröder family built a trading empire on sugar, then diversified into the financial management firm that still exists. And when slavery ended, plantation owners imported Indian indentured labour, continuing the cruelties that sweetness concealed.
