CPI national leaders praise armed forces for anti-terrorism efforts
CPI national secretaries K. Narayana and Syed Azeez Pasha have praised the defence forces for the successful operation against terrorist training camps in Pakistan. They emphasised the need to eradicate terrorism, regardless of religion, caste or region.
Addressing a press conference at the CPI state office here on Saturday, the duo condemned terrorism, saying it's the enemy of humanity and must be completely eliminated. They praised the Indian Army for its precision in targeting terrorist camps while avoiding civilian casualties. Mr. Pasha highlighted the success of 'Operation Sindoor', which targeted key terrorist training centres.
The CPI leaders also demanded that Pakistan stop conspiring against India and called for better diplomatic relations with world countries to unite against terrorism. Mr. Narayana emphasised the need to extradite international terrorist Masood Azhar to India. He clarified that his previous comments were distorted and that he only suggested that attack on terrorist camps in Pakistan should not cause trouble to common people.
Meanwhile, Mr, Narayana welcomed the Centre's decision on caste census but demanded a specific time frame for its completion. He urged the Central government to complete the process by the upcoming general elections and provide reservations to BCs in legislative Assemblies.
On the other hand, Mr. Narayana expressed strong opposition to the State government's organisation of the Miss World pageant, calling it shameful and a 'sign of corrupt politics' in the country. He questioned the relevance of such events when basic needs of the poor remain unaddressed. He cited examples of Lt Colonel Sophia Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh as role models, rather than beauty pageant winners.
The CPI leaders paid tributes to Agniveer Murali Naik from Andhra Pradesh, who laid down his life on the border and expressed deep condolences to his family members.
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Indian Express
41 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Decode Politics: ‘Bharat Mata', ‘Mother India', ‘Vande Mataram': As another row erupts, what lies beneath
IN THE SPACE of a week, Kerala has seen two rows break out over a portrait of 'Bharat Mata'. First, the LDF state government relocated its World Environment Day celebrations from the Raj Bhavan, claiming that the photo of Bharat Mata on display at the event was 'one used by the RSS'. But, days later, Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar paid tributes to the same image during Goa Day celebrations at the Raj Bhavan. Objecting to the use of the image at Raj Bhavan, CPI leader and Agriculture Minister P Prasad said, 'A seat of a constitutional body should not be using this.' Arlekar, who recently took over as Governor after a long period of fractious relationship between the LDF government and Raj Bhavan, hit back, saying, 'Whatever be the pressure from whichever quarters, there will be no compromise whatsoever on Bharat Mata.' State BJP leader N Hari also attacked the LDF, claiming 'they are afraid to say Bharat Mata… due to vote bank politics'. While the symbolic icon of Bharat Mata, or Mother India, has often been depicted in art, there is no official version of the portrayal. The image used at the Kerala Raj Bhavan, for instance, depicted Bharat Mata holding a saffron flag in front of a relief map of India. The Left objected to this. Another image, used by the CPI for a local party event in the middle of the row incidentally, showed Bharat Mata carrying the Tricolour. As the BJP celebrated the Left's use of the image, the party hastily withdrew the same. In the history of modern Indian art, Bharat Mata has adorned the canvas of only two artists of repute. The first was the product of the Bengal Renaissance, Abanindranath Tagore, who first visualised the Indian nation as the Mother. The second was the modernist M F Husain, whose painting of Bharat Mata was banned and trashed – and he was forced to spend his last years outside his country. The imagery first appeared in the works of artists and writers in Bengal, much before it was used elsewhere in the context of India's national movement for Independence. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's 1882 novel Anand Math contained the hymn to the motherland Vande Mataram, which became the mantra of the freedom movement, and the official song of India after Independence. The novel depicts the three faces of Bharat Mata as Goddesses Jagaddhatri, Kali and Durga. Two decades later, in 1905, after partition of Bengal under Lord Curzon, Abanindranath painted his iconic Bharat Mata, a woman in saffron robes, with a serene face and halo around her head, beads and scriptures in her hands. The revolutionary Aurobindo Ghose wrote in a letter to his wife Mrinalini Devi in August that same year: 'I look upon my country as the Mother. I adore her, I worship Her as the Mother. What would a son do if a demon sat on his mother's breast and started sucking her blood?' Mother India retained her symbolic force through the national movement, even though the metaphor often changed with the speaker who employed it. In The Discovery of India, written by him in jail in the 1940s, Jawaharlal Nehru recounted his experience when people greeted him with slogans of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. 'Who was this Bharat Mata, Mother India, whose victory they wanted?… Mother India was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory to these people,' he wrote. The first major enunciation of the Mother India concept came in the writings of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya. 'The foundation of our nationalism is Bharat Mata,' he wrote. 'Remove Mata, Bharat will be reduced to just a piece of land.' However, this was merely a paraphrasing of what Bankim had written nearly a century ago, when he elaborated on the notion of Mother India as a woman having the characteristics of Sujala, Suphala (overflowing with water and laden with fruits) and Dashapraharana Dharini Durga (Goddess Durga with her 10 weapons), Lakshmi and Saraswati. The imagery was also used in popular media and Hindi cinema – the iconic frame of actress Nargis, with a yoke and two babies, was an unforgettable cultural intervention, in 1957's film Mother India. Several historians have pointed out that the Bharat Mata visualised by its pioneers was more a 'Banga Mata', or Mother Bengal, with the deities they invoked being Kali and Durga, often their family deities. In Vande Mataram, Bankim called upon only the 'sapt koti' or seven crore people of Bengal. The first critics of the metaphor too came from among its inventors. Fifteen years after the Partition of Bengal, in August 1920, Aurobindo underlined the limits of the slogan and sought a greater mantra: 'We used the Mantra Bande Mataram with all our heart and soul… (but) the cry of the Mantra began to sink and as it rang feebly, the strength began to fade out of the country… A greater Mantra than Bande Mataram has to come.' The first two paragraphs of Bankim's Vande Mataram were adopted as the national song after Independence. The government did not retain the verses that mentioned either 'sapt koti', or the eulogies to the Goddesses Durga and Lakshmi. The obvious reference to Bengali nationhood was removed. Almost up to Independence, few underlined the religious overtones of the slogan, and it remained an essential mantra of an occupied country, a rallying call for its people. It found little resistance from other communities until 1947, when during the Partition riots, 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' was perceived as a communal slogan, the same as 'Allah-o-Akbar'. But, barring some isolated voices against Vande Matram, Mother India remained a largely benign concept that did not attract controversy. During the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the late 1980s, however, 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' was used for communal mobilisation. Now Bharat Mata was an aggressive image, carrying swords and other weapons, and sometimes riding a tiger. The Anna Hazare movement of 2011, one of the biggest mass mobilisations of recent decades, which shook the Central government and paved the way for the emergence ultimately of Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party, used the image of Bharat Mata as the rallying point for an anti-corruption crusade. More recently, in February 2023, the Indian Council for Historical Research, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education, faced 'objections' over a photo of Bharat Mata in its office, alongside pictures of President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In early 2016, after allegedly anti-India slogans were raised at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, leading to a sedition case against its then students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said that youth should be taught to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi shot back, saying he would not chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even if a knife were put to his throat, prompting the Shiv Sena to tell Owaisi to 'go to Pakistan'. RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale then referred to Owaisi as 'anti-national' and a 'traitor'. Later, in March 2016, AIMIM MLA Waris Pathan was suspended from the Maharashtra Assembly for refusing to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', even as he said he was willing to chant 'Jai Hind'. At the time, the BJP, Congress, Shiv Sena and NCP together backed a resolution to suspend Pathan for the remainder of the Budget Session. However, weeks after the controversy, BJP veteran L K Advani called the row over the slogan 'meaningless', while Bhagwat said nobody should be 'forced' to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. In 2020, in the aftermath of the Delhi riots, former PM Manmohan Singh said the slogan was 'being misused to construct a militant and purely emotional idea of India that excludes millions of residents and citizens' while speaking at the launch of a book titled 'Who is Bharat Mata'.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Long-range precision weapons make geographical barriers irrelevant
NEW DELHI: India's use of long range precision-guided munitions like the Scalp and BrahMos missiles launched from fighter jets to strike targets on the ground in Pakistan, without crossing the border during , show geographical barriers have become almost meaningless, chief of integrated defence staff Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit said on Wednesday. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The senior IAF officer, speaking at a seminar here, also underlined the critical role of real-time situational awareness and 'deep surveillance' in contemporary conflicts, while stressing that advances in technology have fundamentally altered the relationship between distance and vulnerability. 'When we look at global conflicts commencing from Armenia-Azerbaijan to Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas and to our own experiences in Operation Sindoor, one truth emerges with crystal clarity: the side that sees first, sees farthest and sees most accurately, prevails,' Air Marshal Dixit said. The existing principles of war are being challenged, with new ones emerging rather rapidly. 'Earlier, the horizon marked the limit of immediate threat. Today, precision-guided munitions like the Scalp, BrahMos and Hammer have rendered geographical barriers almost meaningless, as strikes with beyond visual range air-to-air missiles and supersonic air-to-ground missiles have become commonplace,' he added. Referring to China's military space program expanding from operating just 36 satellites in 2010 to over 1,000 by 2024, with over 360 of them dedicated to ISR (Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) missions, Air Marshal Dixit said Beijing's creation of an independent aerospace force last year signals its recognition of space as the ultimate high ground in modern warfare. 'Yet, even as we acknowledge these challenges, we must also celebrate our own remarkable achievements. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Operation Sindoor demonstrated that indigenous innovation, when properly harnessed, can match and even exceed international benchmarks,' he said. Towards this end, he cited the success of the IAF's Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS), integrated with the Army's AkashTeer system, in compressing the sensor-to-shooter timelines and ensuring effective air defence during Operation Sindoor. 'Not a single Pakistani aircraft breached our airspace, while our precision strikes successfully degraded their air defence capabilities and aerial infrastructure,' he said. With weapons capable of striking targets hundreds of kilometers away with pinpoint accuracy, he said, 'This new reality demands that we extend our surveillance envelope far beyond what previous generations could have even imagined. 'We must detect, identify and track potential threats not when they approach our borders, but when they are still in their staging areas, airfields and bases, deep within an adversary's territory. This existed as a concept even earlier but today we have the means to realise it,' he added.
India Gazette
an hour ago
- India Gazette
Both parties trying to get votes of pro terrorist and communal organisations: V Muraleedharan slams Congress and CPI-M ahead of Nilambur by polls
Malappuram (Kerala) [India], June 12 (ANI): Hitting out at Congress and CPI-M ahead of the Nilambur assembly by-polls, BJP leader V Muraleedharan alleged that instead of raising common issues, both parties are trying to get votes from pro-terrorists and communal organisations. He highlighted that the election became necessary due to the resignation of the MLA, who had said that the Kerala CM is 'protecting' the underground elements and smugglers. 'Instead of raising key concerns of Nilambur and Kerala, both the Congress and the Communists (CPI-M) are trying to get the votes of pro-terrorist and pro-communal organisations... This election was necessitated due to the resignation of an MLA who said that the Kerala CM is protecting underground elements and smugglers', V Muraleedharan told ANI. The former Union Minister said that instead of discussing issues, both Congress and CPI-M are after the votes of Jamaat-e-Islami, whose motto is to form religion-based governments. He also alleged that the Congress created a misunderstanding about the stance of the Indian government over Israel and said that both Congress and CPI-M are supporting Hamas. 'Instead of discussing this issue, both parties are after the votes of Jamaat-e-Islami, whose motto is religion-based governments. Congress is also trying to create a misunderstanding that the Indian Government has changed its stand on Israel. Both (Congress and CPI-M) are trying to get the support of those elements who support Hamas', V Muraleedharan said. The election for the Nilambur seat was necessitated after the resignation of PV Anvar, an LDF-backed MLA, who stepped down in January after making several allegations against the Left government in the state, including claims of RSS influence in the home department and the framing of Muslim youth in false cases. The election will be held on June 19, and the counting is scheduled for June 23. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) have fielded Michael George as their candidate from the Nilambur assembly constituency in the upcoming bypolls. (ANI)
