From The Hindu, August 5, 1925: International Prison Congress
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Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
Satya Pal Malik (1946-2025): He hid manuscript of tell-all book on J&K; will it see the light of day?
Following his retirement as Governor of Meghalaya in 2022, there was a recurring theme in the conversations Satya Pal Malik had with The Indian Express: the 'explosive'' content of the book he was penning on his tenure in Jammu & Kashmir, which saw its special status taken away and its split into two Union Territories. Prior to his three-month long hospitalisation, the 79-year old former Governor had revealed that as a precaution, he had moved the unfinished manuscript to an undisclosed location. Following his demise Tuesday, one of his trusted aides told The Indian Express that the book was 'almost done' but not yet finished. 'We cannot tell you where the manuscript is. All I can tell you is that much or most of the book has been written,' his aide said. Earlier, when asked about what other revelations his book would contain, such as further details of security lapses in the 2019 Pulwama attack, Malik had said, 'As far as Pulwama is concerned, it involves the lives of 40 of our soldiers. Air transport was denied to the troops and there has been no inquiry, no one has been held responsible…. all these details will be there in my book… Wait for the book, I cannot tell you everything now. But the book will be about governing J&K and about the Government's lethargy.' He had added, 'What else will be revelatory will only be known when the book is out. If I say there is a book ready, they will raid me. But I am more than half-way through and many publishers are ready to publish it. Some episodes which will be discussed at length, for instance, there will be all details about the dissolution of the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly in 2018…' During his hospitalisation in 2024, too, Malik had spoken to The Indian Express about the yet-to-be published book and how he had moved its manuscript to a safer location. The book, he said, was tentatively titled, 'The Truth about Kashmir' 'I had spoken about my tell-all book on Kashmir at a public rally and that is how people got to know about it. It was after that I realised that I should not keep the 200-page manuscript at home and the CBI raids (in February 2024) have proven me correct. There are many publishers in touch with me for the book…' he had said. Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India's most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ's Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More
The Hindu
6 hours ago
- The Hindu
India's presence amid a broken template of geopolitics
It is time for India to punch its weight and enhance its global presence at a time when global geopolitics is being reset. But, as of now, it is not moving India's way. Operation Sindoor was a reality check when many of India's strategic partners were not willing to call out Pakistan for harbouring United Nations-sanctioned terrorist groups and terrorists. It is now known that three of the perpetrators of the Pahalgam attack (April 22, 2025), who were eliminated recently, were Pakistanis belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. While India's retaliation against terror camps in Pakistan was decisive, it struggled to get this narrative out in the face of United States President Donald Trump repeatedly claiming that it was he who had brought about a ceasefire using trade as a weapon — a claim contradicted by the Government in the recent parliamentary debate. In an unkind twist, Pakistan's Field Marshal Asim Munir was invited to lunch with Mr. Trump after Operation Sindoor. However, the U.S. designated The Resistance Front (TRF), which claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). And in a welcome recognition, the report by the UN Security Council's Monitoring Team also named the TRF for the Pahalgam attack. A path with Trump-created hurdles But all is not well. On a historic day when the NISAR satellite (India-U.S. collaboration) was launched, Mr. Trump hit India with a 25% tariff. However, he made a purely trade issue, which could have been resolved in negotiations, into a geopolitical issue, threatening India by 'substantially' raising tariffs for its importing Russian oil when Ukrainians are being killed by the 'Russian War Machine.' India was being trumped especially when Mr. Trump himself is a strong votary of U.S.-Russian rapprochement. While one can dismiss this as typical Trump-style last minute pressure, he has already called on U.S. companies not to invest in India but only in the U.S., and hire only Americans. This comes on the heels of the U.S.'s lopsided security and trade deals with its Indo-Pacific allies and the European Union (EU). American tech giant Nvidia has been permitted by the U.S. to resume sales of its H20 AI chips to China, stopped earlier due to national security concerns. More time has been given to China to get the deal done. After getting bogged down in Ukraine and West Asia, the U.S. has less focus on East Asia. Consequently, if a broader geopolitical understanding between the U.S. and China on East Asia was to come about, it would constrict the space for India. East Asian countries are already hedging their bets. The U.S.'s posturing on South Asia has not helped either. Growing U.S.-Pakistan relations have again become an irritant. Even if this is a reset in bilateral relations, the U.S. has displayed astonishing insensitivity to India's security concerns by praising Pakistan for counter-terrorism efforts, and regional stability. In Bangladesh, the U.S. had gone against Indian interests in supporting the ouster of Sheikh Hasina. In Myanmar, U.S. and European support for forces opposing the military government is destabilising India's north-east. After Galwan and Pahalgam, India's hope for better understanding and coordination with the U.S. on regional security interests has been belied. Mutual trust is being rapidly eroded. Acting in concert with the U.S., the EU is targeting India's import-led energy security at a time when India is negotiating an India-EU Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement. The EU has sanctioned India's Vadinar Refinery, where Russian Rosneft has a large stake, knowing full well that stopping Russian oil into India will lead to huge pressure on oil prices. On the other hand, Hungary, Slovakia, Belgium, Spain and others are importing Russian oil, through pipelines and as LNG, by securing exemptions or under existing contracts. Europe receives 51% of Russian LNG exports. The EU's carbon border tax and digital and other trade barriers on India remain. India hopes that the recently concluded India-U.K. Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) will force the EU to climb down from its asks in its trade negotiations. China's moves All this has given China an opportunity to, once again, become active in India's neighbourhood. China has proposed new groupings and new deals to keep India out. For example, China's meeting with Pakistan and Bangladesh in Kunming on June 19, 2025 proposed formalising a trilateral initiative, but Bangladesh has not agreed. China is also helping Bangladesh revive a Second World War airbase at Lalmonirhat which is close to the Siliguri Corridor. China's support to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor was extensive. China has also standardised Mandarin names for locations within Arunachal Pradesh. And it wants to seize the future of the institution of the Dalai Lama from India. Riding on a huge trade surplus with India, China is squeezing India's crucial supply chains such as rare earths, fertilizers, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, tunnel boring machines and technical personnel. More worrying is the planned construction of China's largest dam in Tibet on the Yarlung Zangbo (Tibetan name for the Brahmaputra), which is near the Indian border. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to the Maldives has been timely given China's influence. To counterbalance an unpredictable, and even unreliable, U.S., an unresponsive EU and an aggressive China, India is carrying out a tightrope act. It has prioritised accelerating the current thaw in relations with China to reset equations after the Galwan conflict — despite there being no move towards de-escalation on the border after the initial disengagement in October 2024. Further, India should seriously rethink its stand to remain on the margins of global conflicts. India has been largely silent, if not openly pro-Israel, on the ongoing Israel-Gaza war — an unfolding multidimensional human tragedy. India was also largely silent on the recent Israel-Iran conflict and American bombings, despite important relations with both warring parties and huge stakes in the Gulf. Though it rightly abstained on the UN votes on the Ukraine conflict, its overall approach of not taking a proactive stand on world conflicts may hurt its larger interests and diminish its geopolitical clout as long as it remains on the sidelines. Operation Sindoor has shown India that if it seeks a greater engagement of its partners with its conflicts and issues, India needs to engage more with their conflicts and issues. Some argue that India should keep its head down and focus on becoming the third largest economy and that a larger geopolitical role may hurt its economic growth. The contrary is true. In a fragmenting world order, geopolitics, coercion and threats and protectionism are determining economic and technological outcomes — not most favoured nation or free trade or multilateral World Trade Organization-led trade norms. Therefore, to get its economic and technological trajectory right, India needs to get its geopolitics right. The road ahead Realising that the geopolitical space is shrinking, India is finally breaking free and has objected to the 'targeting'. It has called out the double-speak of the U.S. and the EU under the guise of safeguarding their economic interests — the EU for larger trade in goods and services with Russia than India in 2024, and the U.S. for importing Russian uranium, palladium, fertilizers and chemicals. India's call for a ceasefire in Gaza (it abstained on a similar UN General Assembly resolution two months ago), is a realisation that it needs to be assertive in global conflicts to preserve its strategic autonomy. Facing an erosion of trust with the U.S. and a U.S.-China deal, India needs to clinch an India-U.S. trade deal soon to prevent a further deterioration of relations and to persuade Mr. Trump to travel to India for the Quad summit (India-U.S.-Japan-Australia). After Mr. Trump's outburst, it is a moot point whether India will revive the RIC (Russia-India-China). However, greater engagement with BRICS (2026 summit in India), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and with East Asia (having missed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership bus), will only reinforce India's policy of multi-alignment and push back those who constrain it. No more can India just put our head down, mind its own economic business and expect to grow. That template is now broken. T.S. Tirumurti is former Ambassador/Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, New York and former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi
Time of India
8 hours ago
- Time of India
'Burn relations with strong ally': Nikki Haley slams Trump for threatening India ties over Russian oil; accuses US of giving China 'pass'
Indian-American Republican leader and former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley Indian-American Republican leader Nikki Haley criticised President Donald Trump for threatening to increase tariffs on Russian oil imports from India, warning that such a move could damage ties with a key American ally while giving China leniency. In a post on X on Tuesday, Haley took aim at what she sees as an uneven approach from the Trump administration. 'India should not be buying oil from Russia. But China, an adversary and the number one buyer of Russian and Iranian oil, got a 90-day tariff pause,' she wrote. 'Don't give China a pass and burn a relationship with a strong ally like India," she added. Her remarks came after Trump, in a press briefing Tuesday, threatened to 'very substantially' increase tariffs on Indian goods, following the 25% duty imposed just last week. He also rejected India's reported offer of zero tariffs on American goods, saying, 'That's not good enough, because of what they're doing with oil.' The White House has pointed to the growing US trade deficit with India as justification for the move, accusing New Delhi of maintaining high tariffs on American goods and limiting market access. India's continued imports of Russian crude and military hardware have also drawn scrutiny. India is now the largest seaborne buyer of Russian crude oil, importing nearly 1.75 million barrels per day in the first half of 2025, up 1% from the same period last year. While US initially welcomed India's role in helping stabilise global oil supplies, Trump now claims those purchases are helping finance President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine. India, however, has remained firm in its stance. India's ministry of commerce and industry responded to Trump's announcement by reaffirming that national interest remains the country's top priority. 'The Government attaches the utmost importance to protecting and promoting the welfare of our farmers, entrepreneurs, and MSMEs. The Government will take all steps necessary to secure our national interest, as has been the case with other trade agreements including the latest Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the UK,' the ministry said in a statement. New Delhi has also made it clear that its agriculture and dairy sectors remain off the table in any trade negotiations — a position it has consistently maintained in all prior trade agreements.
