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Time of India
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
‘Give Modi a chance,' Shah urges Bengal voters from rally
Kolkata: Union home minister Amit Shah on Sunday took off from where PM Narendra Modi had ended his first Bengal poll campaign speech on Thursday, signalling BJP's twin strategy for the 2026 assembly election in Bengal: Focus on and retain its core Hindu-nationalist votes while trying to chip away at TMC's female support base. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Shah addressed BJP's 'Vijay Sankalpa Karyakarta Sammelan' at Netaji Indoor Stadium on Sunday, three days after PM Modi addressed a public rally in north Bengal's Alipurduar. While reaching out to the the women voters in Bengal, Shah said, "Bengal's women will not tolerate any insult to sindoor," and urged them with "folded hands" to give Modi a chance and form a govt of true "deshbhakts". Shah then took aim at Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, claiming that she had been pained when Operation Sindoor was on and "hundreds of terrorists were being killed". "It would have been better if she felt the pain when Bengalis were killed. She didn't utter a word then," he said. Shah alleged that Banerjee had tried to oppose "Operation Sindoor" and "play with the emotions of crores of women in India". "She wanted to appease her Muslim vote bank. Mamata can support Pakistan-sponsored terrorists, but we haven't finished Operation Sindoor," the home minister added. He then urged the women voters to "make her (CM Banerjee) understand the value of sindoor in the next election." "Bengal has guided the entire nation — be it in knowledge, science, spirituality, or the freedom struggle. For years, Bengal led India in every field. But then came the rule of the Communists, and after that, Mamatadidi took charge with the slogan of 'Ma, Mati, Manush'. She has now turned this great land of Bengal into a hub of infiltration, corruption, atrocities on women, crimes, bomb blasts and injustices against Hindus," Shah added and said the Banerjee-led govt's time was up. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "During elections and even after Didi's victory, hundreds of BJP workers have been brutally killed. Didi, how long will you hide them? Mark my words — your time is over. In 2026, BJP govt is coming to office in Bengal," he went on to say. The home minister asked the CM as to what she had done for Bengal. "Under UPA, Bengal received Rs 2.09 lakh crore. Under Modiji, Bengal received Rs 8.27 lakh crore in 10 years. We have a list of every single development work. BJP will release this list. But this money didn't reach the villages—it was looted by the TMC syndicate. Even if Modiji sends Rs 50 lakh crore, it won't reach the people unless BJP is in power here. To get Modiji's benefits and homes, you must bring a BJP govt in Bengal," Shah said. Calling the violence at Murshidabad "state-sponsored riot", Shah said, "state govt did not seek help from BSF despite repeated alerts from us. Finally, BSF intervened only after the court's order. Meanwhile, Trinamool netas have been accusing BSF and encouraging the rioters. The way a minister was involved, it was nothing but a state-sponsored riot." he said. Attacking the CM again, Shah said: "She opposed the waqf amendments. Who was she trying to protect?" Shah underlined the "increase" in BJP's support base in Bengal from 77 assembly seats in 2021 to a lead in 97 assembly segments in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. "In 143 seats, we secured more than 40% votes. We are not behind by much. We will have to increase our vote shares only by 4-5%. Didi's deposit will be forfeited in her own seat if she dares to conduct elections free of violence and rigging. We will not say zindabad till a BJP CM takes oath after the 2026 polls," Shah told the workers. In his 33-minute speech, Shah listed out alleged scams and corruption cases in Bengal and said that jobs of the state's youths were being sold. He claimed that in Sandeshkhali and RG Kar incidents, the CM stayed silent to appease her vote bank. Tribal and backward communities had been left out and Gorkhas were being harassed for not voting for TMC, he said, claiming no one was happy in Bengal. He promised that if voted to power, no Gorkhas will face "political vendetta". Mentioning Centre's efforts to give classical language status to Bengali, Shah assured that Hindu refugees, whose names were being deleted from voters' list, need not worry and should apply for citizenship under CAA.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
With Sindoor focus, BJP eyes TMC's core female vote bank
With Sindoor focus, BJP eyes TMC's core female vote bank KOLKATA: The era of "appeasement politics" in Bengal is over as BJP primes itself to form the next government in 2026 with the supportThe era of 'appeasement politics' in Bengal is over as BJP primes itself to form the next government in 2026 with the support of its core Hindu constituency and women voters moving away from CM Mamata Banerjee 's party, home minister Amit Shah said Sunday while echoing a sentiment ignited by PM Narendra Modi in north Bengal last week. 'Bengal's women won't tolerate any insult to sindoor,' Shah declared at Kolkata's Netaji Indoor Stadium. He said CM Mamata taking potshots at PM Modi amid India's Operation Sindoor targeting terrorist sites in Pakistan indicated whose side she was on. 'It would have been better if she were pained by Bengalis getting killed (in violence within Bengal). She didn't utter a word then.' Shah alleged that the recent violence in Murshidabad linked to anti-waqf law protests was a 'state-sponsored' riot. 'The state government did not seek help from BSF despite repeated alerts from us. Finally, BSF intervened after the high court's order. Trinamool netas were accusing BSF and encouraging the rioters…The CM opposed the waqf amendments. Who was she trying to protect?' The home minister said the next elections in Bengal were not only about Bengal's future, but also national security. 'Mamata Banerjee has opened the nation's borders to Bangladeshis. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Stop dit in je schoenen! Op dag 3 zakte m'n lievelingsbroek al af (ik stond paf!) Undo She is allowing infiltration. We asked her for land to fence the gaps. She isn't providing it so that infiltration continues, her vote bank keeps growing, and her nephew becomes the CM. But this is not going to happen,' he said. Shah said it was painful to see Bengal plumb the depths, first under Left Front's governance, and now TMC . 'For years, Bengal led India in every field. But then came the communists, and after that, Mamata Didi took charge with the slogan of 'Maa, Mati, Manush'. She has since turned this great land into the hub of infiltration, corruption, atrocities on women, bomb blasts and injustice against Hindus,' he said. 'During elections and even after Didi's victory, hundreds of BJP workers were brutally killed. Didi, how long will you hide them? Mark my words — your time is over.' Shah said under UPA, Bengal received Rs 2.09 lakh crore, whereas under Modi, it received Rs 8.27 lakh crore in 10 years. But the money was 'looted by the TMC syndicate', he said. 'Even if Modiji sends Rs 50 lakh crore, it won't reach the people unless BJP is in government here. To get Modiji's benefits and homes, you must bring a BJP government in Bengal,' Shah told the crowd. He later inaugurated a Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) in Rajarhat.
India.com
3 days ago
- Lifestyle
- India.com
Breakfast Trails: Famous Morning Foods Across India
Anaika Sohal May 31, 2025 In this state a healthy and hearty start of the day is done with a light fluffy dish made with flattened rice, spices, and peanuts. It's a staple South Indian breakfast where steamed rice cakes or idli is served with spicy lentil soup with coconut chutney. A favourite morning breakfast of every Punjabi, it is made from stuffed flatbread loaded with spiced mashed potatoes, usually served with curd and butter. This morning breakfast is made from spicy curry made with sprouted lentils and topped with onions, potatoes, and crunchy farsan. An ideal protein-packed morning breakfast made from protein rich green gram dosa and served with ginger chutney. This recipe is comfort food for Bengalis. It is made from deep-fried flatbreads paired with a rich, spiced potato curry. This breakfast might be heavy but it's loved by everyone, a combo of spicy chickpeas and fluffy deep fried bread served with chutney and onions. ( Image Credits: Freepik) Read Next Story
Scroll.in
3 days ago
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Ramachandra Guha: Trump's attack on US universities are a tragedy for the entire world
Growing up in the India of the 1970s, I had ambivalent feelings towards America. I admired some of their writers (Ernest Hemingway was a particular favourite) and adored the music of Bob Dylan and Mississippi John Hurt. On the other hand, I was just about old enough to remember – and never forget – how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had so energetically supported Pakistan against India (and Bangladesh) in the war of 1971. In 1980 I moved to Calcutta, and my ambivalence turned to outright hostility. Under the influence of my Marxist teachers, I became actively anti-American. I expressed private and public disdain for their brashness, their gross commercialism, their imperialist (mis)adventures in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Left to myself I would never have entered the United States of America. However, in 1985, my wife, Sujata, a recent graduate of the National Institute of Design, got a scholarship to do a Masters at Yale University. I could not stand in her way – the Yale graphic design department was reckoned to be the best in the world – but had to find a way to join her. Fortunately, I had come to know the historian, Uma Dasgupta, who then held a senior position at the United States Educational Foundation for India. With Uma di 's advice and assistance, I applied for a visiting lecturership at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, which – to my surprise – actually came through. Sujata left for Yale in August 1985. In November of the same year, this confirmed anti-American found himself outside the US Consulate on Ho Chi Minh Sarani. The counter opened at 8.30 am – I was there at seven, partly out of anxiety, and partly because when I accompanied Sujata for her visa interview in Madras there was a long line outside the American Consulate there, curving right around Mount Road all the way to the Thousand Lights Mosque. But here there was just one person ahead of me in the queue. It struck me that the Tamils were not at all anti-American, and produced engineers in far greater numbers than the Bengalis. Besides, I was due to teach from the spring term, when fewer Indians sought to go West than in the autumn. I reached Yale on January 2, 1986, and spent the next year-and-a-half expanding my mind, teaching as well as learning from my students. In retrospect, I am very glad I went to America when I did. Since I had done a PhD already, I was sure of the ground on which I stood. Meeting young Indian historians who had studied in America, I was immediately struck by how driven by fashion their work was. In the wake of Edward Said's Orientalism, post-colonialism and Cultural Studies were all the rage. In the two disciplines I knew best, history and social anthropology, sustained empirical research was not encouraged any more. Rather than spend months in the field or in the archive, these acolytes of Edward Said preferred to take out texts by dead white males from the nearest library and scrutinise them for their departures from what then passed for 'radical politics'. SHALOM COLUMBIA: The Trump Admin, led by @USEDgov and the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism (@TheJusticeDept, @HHSGov, & @USGSA), has canceled ~$400M in federal grants to @Columbia over its failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. — The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 7, 2025 The Indians of my generation who had come to America to study and teach had largely done so for personal advancement. But it was not so much for their opportunism that I shunned them; it was more that their intellectual concerns were not mine. The scholars I was attracted to worked on one or both of my subject fields – the environment and social protest – albeit in cultures and contexts other than my own. At Yale itself, I had long conversations with the environmental sociologist, William Burch, the environmental historian, William Cronon, and the ecological anthropologist, Timothy Weiskel. A senior Yale scholar whom I spoke with regularly was James Scott, who had just published what in my view remains the best of his many books, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Outside Yale, I made contact with the comparativist, Michael Adas, at Rutgers, the sociologist, Louise Fortmann, at Berkeley, and the doyen of American environmental history, Donald Worster, then teaching at Brandeis. These scholars had worked on Africa, Southeast Asia and North America, using techniques and disciplines different from the ones to which I was accustomed. And, unlike established academics in Calcutta or Delhi, these American professors were refreshingly free of hierarchy. Though much older than myself, they were happy to be called by their first names, and happy to have their ideas critically assessed too. Meeting these scholars, and reading their works, expanded my intellectual horizons and enlarged my intellectual ambitions. Like them, I wanted to publish my PhD as a book, and get on to work on a second book, and then a third. Too many Indians I knew had written a fine first book and then rested on their laurels. On the other hand, Adas, Scott and Worster all had an impressive oeuvre, notable for its depth and its diversity. That was the model I wished to follow when I came back home. One reason Sujata and I enjoyed Yale so much is that we knew that when she graduated, we would go back to our homeland. The other Indians at Yale were all desperate to stay on – which meant that they were anxious to take the right courses to get the right job that might get them a work visa and in time a Green Card. Because we had no such anxieties, we could take full advantage of all that this great university had to offer. And we made some close American friends, with whom we are still in touch. TRUMP: 'Harvard wants to fight. They want to show how smart they are and they're getting their a** kicked.' — Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 28, 2025 In the four decades since we returned from New Haven, I have been back to the US many times. Most trips have been short – a week or two – but occasionally I have spent longer spells at universities on the East and West Coasts. I have the happiest memories of a semester spent at the University of California at Berkeley, where – at this great public university – the students were as intellectually sharp yet of far more diverse backgrounds than at Yale or Stanford. I was teaching a course on Mahatma Gandhi, and the interest shown in the man and his legacy by my Burmese, Jewish and African-American students convinced me that it would be worth my while to spend the next decade (and more) researching and writing about Gandhi. I was myself entirely educated in India, and have spent the vast bulk of my life living and working in India. Yet, I owe an enormous debt to the scholars and students I have spent time with in America. And to the libraries and archives in that country too, which often contain priceless documents on the history of India unavailable in my homeland. I therefore feel a deep sense of anguish and anger at what Donald Trump is doing to wreck the American university system. Whether conducted out of ideology or personal spite, Trump's campaign is causing enormous damage to a country he leads and claims to love. It is true that in recent decades, the American higher education system has committed some self-goals. Of these, two stand out – the capitulation to identity politics, which has greatly inhibited free discussion and constructive debate on campuses; and the decision to do away with the retirement age, so that scholars in their eighties and nineties are still there to teach (smaller and smaller) classes, maintain large offices, and retain voting rights over future appointments. That said, most of the best universities in the world are still in the US. By educating and influencing scholars from all over the world, they have enormously enhanced the country's soft power. And, perhaps more pertinently, they have nourished an apparently unending stream of scientific creativity, which has played an incalculable role in making America the most economically and technologically advanced country in the world. Before I went to Yale in 1986, I had been for some time a critic of American foreign policy. In the years since, I have retained my strong scepticism of its government's intentions abroad. All through my life, the foreign policy of the US has been characterised by a mixture of arrogance and hypocrisy. Yet its universities are another matter altogether. They are an adornment to humanity, and motivated or ignorant attacks on them should be mourned by thinking people of all nationalities.
The Wire
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Wire
In Photos: Vietnam and Its Politics Today
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Top Stories In Photos: Vietnam and Its Politics Today Shome Basu 41 minutes ago Today, the modern Hanoi carries a sense of discipline. Priority is given to farmers and workers, holding firm to the bastion of Marx's economic policies. Photo: Shome Basu. Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute now Growing up in Calcutta, I remember the slogans: 'Amar Naam, Tomar Naam – Vietnam (your name, my name, Vietnam).' The Communist regime in Calcutta cleverly renamed the street where the US Consulate is located 'Ho Chi Minh Sarani'. This has remained unchanged by the subsequent government. Ho Chi Minh is seen as a victim of American supremacy – something some Bengalis can relate to – and as a rebellious leader from Asia who could take on the West. Fifty years is a long time, but not long enough to forget. Sun, a communist and an ardent party worker in Hanoi, told me, 'We call it an American war. Vietnam fought for its defence.' The city is always bathed in red in the evenings, as communist symbolism decks the streets. With nearly 3.7 million deaths over 20 years, American exploits took a toll on both sides during the infamous war. The driving force was the US's fear of communism. But surprisingly, one sees many American tourists, and cafés displaying American brands and music. Sun said, 'We forgave but never forgot.' Today, as business booms and Vietnam becomes a market for the world, it still struggles with China over the South China Sea and, more recently, Trump's tariffs – since the country's economy is heavily based on US exports and forms part of the global supply chain economy. The shadow of communism, with imagery involving Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh) and Lenin, is still seen and felt. Today, the modern city carries a sense of discipline, with speed limits on highways and priority given to farmers and workers, holding firm to the bastion of Marx's economic policies. My images are a showcase of what modern Vietnam looks like today – especially the capital, Hanoi, and the rural areas that dominate its largely captive economy. The rice fields alone are enough to understand how the US Army lost the war. It is impossible to fight in the sultry weather, through vast swaths of rice fields, with snakes and inhospitable rains, conditions only the Viet Cong could endure, trapping numerous American GIs to their deaths. Today, the city reflects its past, but its modern look may cause one to forget that seventy years ago, a war began that only ended in 1975—creating the space to shape a modern Vietnam. All photos by Shome Basu. Make a contribution to Independent Journalism Related News The Vanquished West: 50 Years After the End of Vietnam War, a Memoir of Resistance by the Global South Vietnam War 50 Years On: How It Changed Perception of War The Many Meanings of Vietnam China, Vietnam Sign Dozens of Deals Amidst Trump's Tariff Threats By Declaring Economic World War, Trump is Pursuing an Imperial Expansion Strategy Bangladesh Cites Violation Of International Law After Mob Vandalises Diplomatic Mission in Agartala New Refugee Shelter in Austria Set on Fire as Support For Far Right Grows Toxic VX Nerve Agent Used To Murder Kim Jong Nam, Says Malaysia How the Pentagon Tried to Cure the US of Its 'Vietnam Syndrome' About Us Contact Us Support Us © Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
