The harsh penalty one Indian state wants for spreading ‘fake news'
The proposed bill aims to punish those posting "fake news," "anti-feminist" content, or "promoting superstition," establishing special courts and regulatory committees.
State officials argue the law is necessary to address "digital information disorder" and prevent community disharmony, citing numerous incidents in coastal Karnataka.
While the federal government has taken some measures, Karnataka is the first Indian state to enact its own comprehensive legislation against misinformation.
Critics, such as the Internet Freedom Foundation, warn that the subjective nature of "misinformation" could lead to the law infringing on constitutional free speech rights.
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Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
UK's Starmer defeats wrecking amendment on welfare reform
LONDON, July 1 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Keir Starmer cleared the first hurdle in his quest to reform the welfare system on Tuesday, when lawmakers opposed to the proposed law failed to halt its progress with a so-called "reasoned amendment". Several lawmakers tabled a "reasoned amendment," used to express opposition to a proposed law, to the welfare reforms, which if it had passed would have halted the bill. The attempt failed with 328 to 149 lawmakers voting against the amendment. Lawmakers will immediately hold another vote on whether or not to progress the bill to the next stages of the parliamentary process. If the government also wins that vote, those next stages are scheduled for July 9.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
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Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple review – the many partitions of southern Asia
Earlier this summer, amid renewed tensions between India and Pakistan following a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, Donald Trump remarked that the two countries had been fighting over Kashmir for 'a thousand years'. It was a glib, ahistorical comment, and was widely ridiculed. Shattered Lands, Sam Dalrymple's urgent and ambitious debut, offers a more comprehensive rebuttal. Far from being a region riven by ancient hatreds, the lands that comprise modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar – as well as parts of the Gulf – were divided up within living memory from an empire in retreat. 'You can't actually see the Great Wall of China from space,' Dalrymple begins, 'but the border wall dividing India from Pakistan is unmistakable.' Stretching more than 3,000km and flanked by floodlights, thermal vision sensors and landmines, this is more a physical scar left by the hurried dismantling of British India than a traditional geopolitical divide. What might now seem like natural frontiers were shaped by five key events: Burma's exit from the empire in 1937; the separation of Aden that same year, and of the Gulf protectorates in 1947; the division of India and Pakistan, also in 1947; the absorption of more than 550 princely states; and, in 1971, the secession of East Pakistan. Neither ancient nor inevitable, these lines were hastily drawn in committee rooms, colonial offices and war cabinets. What makes Shattered Lands remarkable is not just the breadth of its archival reach or the linguistic range of its interviews (from Bengali to Burmese, Urdu to Konyak), but the way it reframes south Asia's history through the lens of disintegration. The son of acclaimed historian William Dalrymple, Sam nevertheless writes with a distinct sensibility. His work is shaped by a generational awareness of fractured identities, contested borders and the violence of nation-making. Where the elder Dalrymple has often chronicled the grandeur and decline of empires, the younger is more interested in how they splinter. And so, rather than treat the 1947 Partition as the singular rupture, Shattered Lands shows it to be one of many. The imperial map frayed gradually, and each unravelling left its own legacy of dispossession, nationalism and insurgency. Take Burma (now Mynamar), whose reconstitution as a crown colony in 1937 represented the first major partition of the Raj. Dismissed by many Indian elites as peripheral, Burma's separation was both strategic and symbolic. Gandhi, often invoked as a unifier, was among its supporters. 'I have no doubt in my mind that Burma cannot form part of India under swaraj [self rule],' he once wrote, aligning with the view of many Indian leaders who viewed India as Bharat, the sacred geography referred to in the epic Mahabharata, which excluded Burma and Arabia. Speaking to Rangoon's Gujarati community, Gandhi told them they were 'guests in a foreign country' despite many Burmese seeing themselves as Indian. That same year, as Burma and Aden were severed from the Indian Empire, the Congress party adopted Vande Mataram as India's national song. In equating the nation with the Hindu goddess Durga, it alienated Muslims such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who increasingly saw Congress as a vehicle for Hindu majoritarianism. The ideological groundwork for the creation of Pakistan was already being laid. Among the most poignant moments in the book is a brief account of a Bible salesman from the Naga hills who volunteers to fight in the second world war. The Nagas are ethnically Tibeto-Burman peoples native to the borderlands of north-east India and north-west Myanmar, with distinct cultural traditions and a strong sense of nationhood that long predates these modern states. When asked if he is Indian or Burmese, the man replies, 'I am a Naga first, a Naga second, and a Naga last.' The British system, designed to sort subjects into clear administrative categories, had no space for an affiliation that transcended colonial borders, and he was turned away. If there's a critique to be made, it's that Dalrymple's account remains largely anchored to the great men of history: viceroys, premiers, politicians, princely elites. While there are flickers of grassroots perspective – such as the Naga would-be soldier and Rohingya families from the borderlands – they often play a supporting role in a narrative shaped by those drawing the maps. Yet perhaps that is the point: these were top-down decisions, made in grand offices, whose human cost has still not fully been reckoned with. More significantly, Shattered Lands speaks powerfully to our present moment. At a time of widespread historical amnesia – when revisionist governments across south Asia are remaking textbooks and erasing inconvenient truths – this book reminds us how recent, contested and fragile these dividing lines are. The prose is vivid, the storytelling cinematic, and Dalrymple draws together forgotten archives from Aden to Assam. Above all, there is a refusal to mythologise, and instead a clear-eyed history that lays bare the possibilities foreclosed by the region's fragmentation. Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple is published by William Collins (£25). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Telegraph
India is an enemy, not a friend or a neutral
Today, India commissioned a new warship, the INS Tamal. She is the latest in a line of eight Talwar-class stealth frigates. Similar in displacement and length to our own Type 23 frigate, superficially at least, she has a similar array of weapons and sensors. The one exception being the BrahMos anti-ship and land attack missile, theoretically a beast of a weapon with a range over 500 miles at speeds up to Mach 3, which would be far in excess of anything we have. But there is a problem. Tamal was built by Russia in their Yantar shipyard in Kaliningrad. For those of you who follow the Indian Navy, that they have some of their ships built by Russia will not come as news. Already an aircraft carrier, 50 per cent of their submarines and the Talwar class accounts for about 20 per cent of their fleet. Many of these programmes date back decades but of course, the international climate has changed rather a lot. India's dependence on Russia for warships is at least reducing, but should it not already be close to zero? Meanwhile, India's trade in Russian oil reeks of duplicity. Despite Western sanctions, India's refiners guzzle discounted crude, often shipped by dark fleet vessels dodging and falsifying their AIS tracking. By actively engaging with this trade, New Delhi flouts global rules, reaping economic rewards while feigning neutrality. The government's coy silence on sanctioned oil flowing through Indian ports betrays a calculated dodge of accountability, undermining efforts to choke Russia's war chest. India is financing Putin's atrocities. Dark fleet ships thrive with India's tacit aid. Russian insurers secured New Delhi's nod in April 2025 to cover tankers shunned by Western firms. This greenlights sanctioned oil deliveries, breaching the G7's $60-per-barrel cap. India's lack of oversight lets these old and poorly maintained ghost ships flood its ports, with Russian crude imports hitting a 10-month peak in May. Meanwhile President Modi surveys all with eyes and mouth firmly closed. His Moscow visits in 2024–2025 saw dark fleet deals, only curbed after US prodding this January. Modi's refusal to address insurance loopholes or vessel opacity shows a man who doesn't care about right and wrong, only money. He is quite willing to finance Putin if it means cheaper oil: in this, he is an enemy of the West, not a friend and not a neutral. Militarily the dependence on Russian equipment doesn't make much sense either. We are increasingly seeing how poor some Russian kit is. I suggested that the BrahMos was an impressive missile system earlier and, on paper at least, it is. But manufacturers' brochures and warfighting reality can be very different things. Putin's supposedly unstoppable Kinzhal and Zircon weapons have both proven to be very stoppable using American made interceptors, and by no means their best ones either. To give another example, I sailed up the Elbe in company with the Tamal's sister ship, the INS Teg, on her maiden voyage back in 2012. It was very clear from my position 100 yards astern of her that she was unable to maintain the ordered speed of six knots required to keep formation. It was clear because every time she pulsed one engine to try and do so, huge plumes of black smoke belched out of her funnels and onto nearby sailing vessels. Speaking to one of her senior officers once alongside it became clear that 10 knots was her minimum sustainable speed (using just one engine) and that they had had to place sentries all the way up the funnels such was the risk of fire from the build-up of soot as they tried to move slower than that. Maybe she was running on a tank of Russian oil just to add insult to injury, I don't know. The point is, either by design incompetence, or political interference leading to the same, India had acquired a ship that was unable to move slowly through the water. This will never appear on a brochure but practically, of course, it is a serious problem: an anti-submarine frigate that cannot move slowly and quietly is not a great deal of use. Another problem is choosing a country currently that is at war to service your systems and parts. The contract to deliver the S-400 air defence units is seemingly going ahead despite the number of missiles Russia has burned through defending against Ukrainian counterattacks. And this before we get to how much less effective the S-400 has been in real life compared to the claims. Tanks, rifles, fighter jets and nuclear submarines can be added to missiles and ships on a list that looks set to endure for decades. In sum, Indian dependence on Russian weapons is slowly reducing but it could not be clearer that this isn't from any desire to do the right thing. New Delhi's unhelpful practices around illegal Russian oil are rapidly increasing. And, speaking to a recently retired senior official this morning, India's neighbours get the same message – it's India first and the rest of you be damned. Soon India is going to have to choose a side, or we're going to have to treat them the way they're basically treating us: as an enemy.
