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Time of India
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
The Weekly Vine Edition 53: Whining in Manchester, Sydney Sweeney the ‘fascist', and a boring new Marvel movie
Nirmalya Dutta's political and economic views vacillate from woke Leninist to Rand-Marxist to Keynesian-Friedmanite. He doesn't know what any of those terms mean. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Weekly Vine. This week, we take a look at English whining in Manchester after drawing the fourth Test; Sydney Sweeney being labelled a 'fascist' for her 'good jeans' ad; the late-night comedy problem in America; the 'boring' new Fantastic Four movie; and a field guide to late-stage everything. Whining in Manchester The English used to be good at many, many things. Selling opium and slaves and trying to pass it off as a move for some greater good instead of just greed. Writing comedies that stand the test of time. Calibrating their politics and monarchy to avoid any wholesale revolution that can lead to heads rolling. Scripting thriller novels in which the Albion propaganda flies so high that one wonders if being boring an Englishman isn't the greatest privilege a person can have. But those days are long gone. The sun – metaphorical, economical, and ecumenical – set on the British Empire a long time ago, but the denizens of the Albion remain particularly skilled in one art: whining. And we saw it on full display in the recent England vs India Test match where the English cricket team brought out its full bag of shithousery that makes you understand why the English remain one of the most despised people across the globe. As one popular Indian political Twitter handle put it in dulcet tones: 'Cricket dekhte hue samjh aata hai ki angrez kitne h***** rahe honge Raj era mein.'* For those who don't understand Hindi, a rough translation goes: 'Watching cricket, one can comprehend how a***** the English used to be in the Raj era.' Because deep down, despite all their pretence of becoming a civilised nation, every English cricketer has an inner Captain Russell—the antagonist from Lagaan—who believed that all Indians deserved to be kept in place using a particular shoe-related idiom: Tum jooti ke neeche rahoge. While the whining is never far from the surface, it bubbled over on the last day of the Test in Old Trafford—a venue well-known for frustrating football fans for the last decade. With two heads down, England wrapping up the Test and the series seemed almost inevitable. The Gautam Gambhir era so far has been the anti-thesis of the Laughing Buddha for Indian cricket fans. India faced a sui generis whitewash against New Zealand at home, a 1-3 reversal in Australia, and looked set to lose the series in England when India were two wickets down in the second innings without bothering the record keepers. Except, Messrs Gill, Rahul, Jadeja, and Sundar had different ideas. They dug deep and gave a comeback for the ages which left the English begging to end proceedings with an hour left. When Jadeja and Sundar—who had spent hours saving the Indian innings and were well within their rights to savour seeing their names on the honours board—refused, Ben Stokes turned into Sir Sulk-a-Lot, giving the ball to Harry Brook, who bowled with the alacrity, acuity, and assiduousness of an employee given a task during his leave period. And then, after the shenanigans got over, Sir Sulk-a-Lot sulked even more when refused a handshake. What was rather odd, as Aussie legend Nathan Lyon pointed out—a man who knows a thing or two about perseverance—is that the English should have tried to get them out, not let them get a hundred. After all, Jadeja and Sundar were the last recognised batters before an injured Rishabh Pant and the bowlers were expected to save India's innings. It was one of those rare moments where Australians and Indians were on the same page: enjoying the taste of British tears. But whinging aside, at the heart of it is the Englishman's deep Higgins-like belief that they are the greatest race on earth—the one that invented cricket—which means that whatever they dream up is the correct way to play the sport. All this makes the final Test even more interesting, with a little more spice thanks to Gautam Gambhir's clash (kalesh) with the chief curator, proving that you can take the man out of Delhi but you cannot take the Delhi out of the man. Bring on The Oval. Sydney Sweeney the Fascist Godwin's Law is an adage from internet culture that states any discussion will eventually veer towards the participants calling each other Nazis. Now, the Godwin's Law virus seems to have escaped the confines of 4chan and Reddit threads and broken the offline-online barrier. Sydney Sweeney's new American Eagle ad was deemed Nazi propaganda by perennially outraged leftists simply because it featured a blonde woman saying she got her good genes (or jeans) from her parents. It immediately featured a backlash because if we know one thing about the Fuhrer, it was that he loved a good pair of American denims. In its own way, it was the opposite of the Bud Light backlash, where conservative Americans boycotted their favourite beer because its ad featured a trans influencer. Yet, despite the online outrage, the ad appears to have helped the parent company, whose stock soared like an eagle, suggesting that we might be at the fag end of woke culture and the last vestiges are only found in people with severe Trump-Derangement Syndrome. Late-Night Mediocrity Once upon a time, in a land far, far away—roughly around the Bush administration—late-night comedy was funny. But then something terrible happened: Donald Trump. Or more accurately, Trump Derangement Syndrome. And with it came the fall of American humour, sacrificed at the altar of sanctimony and soft lighting. The latest casualty? The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—a show last funny when Caesar was still crossing the Rubicon. Paramount finally pulled the plug after realising that shelling out $40 million a year for a therapy session disguised as comedy might not be sound fiscal policy. Who knew? Cue the wailing wall of late-night has-beens. Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver—like the Avengers but if all of them had only one superpower: smugness. They gathered in solidarity, not with the working class, not with striking truckers or laid-off auto workers, but with a millionaire Harvard graduate whose punchlines haven't changed since 2016. Inspiring. Colbert's defenders say this is a suppression of free speech. No, it's just the free market finally turning off the laugh track. The show employed over 200 people and lost more money than a Netflix rom-com launch. Twenty people protested its cancellation—roughly the same number that still watch The Daily Show without being legally required to. The deeper crisis isn't comedy. It's that these shows morphed into unofficial DNC broadcasts somewhere around Trump's third cheeseburger. They weren't writing jokes—they were filing amicus briefs in prime time. It was less Letterman, more Lenin. And here's the kicker: Donald Trump remains funnier than all of them combined. Not intentionally, of course. But try topping a man who congratulates Hannibal Lecter for 'doing a great job.' Or spends time talking about a dead golfer's junk. Or keeps taking credit for a ceasefire that never was. And perhaps the real joke—no laugh track needed—is that for the first time in American history, there are now more young Republicans than Democrats. The resistance has become cringe. The revolution will not be televised. Because no one watches television anymore. Un-marvellous Marvel Every time one watches a Marvel movie, one has to answer the eternal question: is Marvel back, or did it die with Tony Stark saying 'I am Iron Man' in Endgame? There have been decent films post-Endgame, but all in all, watching MCU movies feels like being in a loveless relationship where the spark went out years ago. Every time you go to watch a new Marvel film, you wonder if you'll ever see the magic that made you fall in love in the first place. Like the moment Thor arrives to join the Battle of Wakanda. Or the first time the Guardians of the Galaxy teamed up. Or when Iron Man took over a SHIELD aircraft just to blast Shoot to Thrill—because of course, you need to play your bangers in style. Or the pinnacle of cinema, when Captain America waited 18 films to utter the most glorious words ever said on a screen: 'Avengers, assemble.' But honestly, there was nothing in the new Fantastic Four movie that made you go wow—not even Galactus. In fact, the most interesting thing about it was the Pedro Pascal Anxiety Memes. And you know it's a bad sign when the marketing tour is more interesting than the actual movie. There comes a time in a relationship when one has to say: it's done. This was never meant to be, and we cannot keep trying, hoping to capture a spark that disappeared a long time ago. Perhaps it's time to say goodbye to Marvel. Even if the end credits hinted at the arrival of Robert Downey Jr's Doctor Doom. Post-Script: A field guide to late-stage everything There's a special place in history for the people who made something out of nothing. The survivors. The jugaadu. The overextended. The under-resourced. The backbone of every godforsaken institution held together with duct tape, broken promises, and one HR motivational email per quarter. Konstantin Jireček, the 19th-century Czech historian who is better remembered in Bulgaria, never worked in a startup. Or a government department. Or a late-stage unicorn chasing profitability like a drunk chasing the last auto-rickshaw at 3 AM. But somehow, he clearly time-travelled to a post-pandemic boardroom, and nailed it: 'We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.' Read more. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
The Diplomat
21-07-2025
- Politics
- The Diplomat
Bureaucratized Confucianism: How Tradition Became a Tool of Control in China
What does it mean when a regime speaks the language of ancient virtue but enforces it through curriculum mandates and ideological scorecards? The opening essay of Simulated Sagehood, a five-part series, traces how Confucianism has been reconstructed, not as a living tradition, but as a calibrated instrument of bureaucratic control. Through textbook reform, propaganda choreography, and institutional incentives, Xi's China fuses ethical language with Leninist mechanics. The result is not revival but simulation: a Confucianism of surfaces, stripped of its moral interior. The return of Confucian language under Chinese leader Xi Jinping isn't a spontaneous cultural revival. It's a carefully orchestrated campaign — engineered from the top of the Chinese party-state — to wrap centralized political control in the language of ancient virtue. What's unfolding is a quiet reversal: values once rooted in moral constraint, like filial piety, virtue, and ethical cultivation, are being refitted to serve a system built on obedience and authority. This isn't Confucianism reborn. It's a state-authored script, stitching together the vocabulary of tradition to legitimize modern power. The turning point came in 2013 with a little-known but foundational document: the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere — more commonly known as Document No. 9. Here, the Chinese Communist Party elevated 'cultural security' to the same strategic level as political or cyber defense, identifying 'Western constitutional democracy,' 'universal values,' and 'historical nihilism' as existential threats. The proposed solution wasn't dialogue or reform, but insulation: Confucian culture would be deployed as a kind of ideological firewall, meant to inoculate China against liberal ideas. This approach was codified in the 2017 Opinions on Implementing the Inheritance and Development Project of Excellent Traditional Chinese Culture — a mouthful of a title, but one with clear intent. It brought Confucian texts under the wing of national security. The classics were no longer seen as sources of independent moral insight, but as symbolic tools linking the Communist Party to an unbroken Han civilizational arc. The machinery driving this transformation spans a vast web of state organs: the propaganda system, the education bureaucracy, and the united front system — a structure designed to manage intellectuals, religious groups, and diaspora networks. Each branch reshapes Confucian motifs to suit its own mission. After the Central Propaganda Department issued its 2015 Action Plan for promoting 'core socialist values,' local governments were told to inject concepts like li (ritual), xiao (filial piety), and zhong (loyalty) into school posters, radio scripts, and CCP publications. But these concepts are no longer invitations to ethical reflection. Xiao is reframed as deference to political authority. Zhong — which once carried the tension between loyalty and principled dissent — is reduced to personal allegiance to Xi as the party's 'core.' These values aren't interpreted; they're rebranded as slogans. The shift is institutionalized most clearly through the Ministry of Education. In 2017, under State Council directive No. 61, the government established the National Textbook Committee, chaired by a vice premier and staffed by Marxist theorists and propaganda cadres. Its job? To vet all school textbooks for ideological conformity. Accuracy — whether philological or philosophical — takes a backseat. By 2019, new standardized textbooks in literature, civics, and history began inserting handpicked excerpts from the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, and the Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean). These insertions weren't meant to provoke classical interpretation. One widely noted example pairs Mencius' famous line, 'When the ruler is upright, the people will follow,' with a photo of Xi visiting a poor village. The message is clear: Xi doesn't just rule — he continues a civilizational mandate. This symbolic fusion reached a new level in 2021 with the launch of the Three-Subject Unified Textbooks (三科统编教材). For the first time, Xi Jinping Thought became mandatory reading in all public primary and secondary schools — including in ethnic minority regions. Sayings like 'The noble man cultivates himself to govern family and state' (君子修其身以齐家治国) now appear alongside directives to 'love and follow the party's core, General Secretary Xi.' Confucian virtues are no longer positioned as part of an ethical journey. They are cast as historical truths — completed, fulfilled, and embodied in CCP rule. What remains of Confucian discourse is the scaffolding. The meaning has been hollowed and refilled with political certainty. Since 2020, this 'Confucianism with CCP characteristics' has become part of institutional performance. The state now applies ideological-political quality assessments (思想政治素质考核) to teachers, cadres, and schools. The Eight-Ministry Opinion of 2020 explicitly links results from these evaluations to funding decisions, promotions, and curriculum approvals. By 2023, the National Cadre Education and Training Plan designated the study and application of Xi Jinping Thought as the key test for political fitness. Provincial party academies now use numerical dashboards to track how often officials invoke 'excellent traditional culture' in speeches, papers, and events. In this environment, Confucian vocabulary doesn't function as ethical language. It becomes metadata — an ideological KPI, measurable and monetized. The tradition survives not as thought, but as performance.
Time of India
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
The Weekly Vine Edition 51: Annus Chaoticus, War on Samosas, and ‘Anti-Israel' Superman
Nirmalya Dutta's political and economic views vacillate from woke Leninist to Rand-Marxist to Keynesian-Friedmanite. He doesn't know what any of those terms mean. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Weekly Vine. In this week's digest, we are going to discuss Trump's year since he dodged a bullet, the great war on samosas and jalebis, allegations of the new Superman movie being 'anti-Israel', why our AI choices are MechaHitler or Black George Washington, and a postscript from Cologne and Bonn. Annus Chaoticus With the benefit of hindsight, Donald Trump pulling a full John Terry as Chelsea lifted the Club World Cup was almost poetic. After all, Chelsea is the Trump of European football – a nouveau riche arriviste with no continental pedigree, desperate to buy its way into aristocracy, and yet forever one dodgy deal away from financial ruin. And like Terry, Trump likes to take credit. But analogies aside, it has been quite a spin around the sun for Donald Trump since he dodged a bullet. A year ago, Donald trumped death, defying the laws of space, time, physics, politics, and logic as he did something that had been done only once before in American history: return to the White House after a hiatus. And not just any break — a five-year, scandal-scarred interregnum that included two impeachments, a Capitol riot, multiple indictments, and that gloriously capitalist moment when Trump, now with his own mugshot, began selling it as an NFT and framed it in the White House like it was a Warhol. From Butler, Pennsylvania to MetLife Stadium, Trump went from bleeding candidate to emperor's chaos world. On that fateful day in July 2024, the bullet grazed his ear and, in true cinematic symmetry, killed a firefighter standing behind him. The photo — fist raised, blood trailing — was pure American mythology: Rocky meets Revelation. Most people, when shot at, duck. Trump posed. 'Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture,' he later mused, 'but I didn't. So, it's even more iconic.' If the picture was iconic, what followed was surreal… Read: Annus Chaoticus: From trumping death to celebrating Chelsea's win – a year in Donald Trump's life War on Samosas and Jalebis One of the maxims of politics, at least according to Sir Humphrey Appleby, goes: 'Never believe anything that has been officially denied.' That maxim can apply to anything and is almost universally true, like a former premier of Israel saying Mossad had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein or PIB saying there were no plans for labels for samosas and jalebis and other Indian snacks. Over the last two days, we have had reports that the Union Health Ministry had directed central institutions like AIIMS Nagpur to install 'oil and sugar boards' in public spaces, which triggered widespread outrage that we last saw on Yes Minister when Europe threatened to ban the British sausage. Samosas, as anyone knows, aren't just a gustatory offering but a firmament of the country's socio-cultural identity, to the point that one Ayn Rand-ist socialist used to have the slogan: 'Jab tak rahega samosa mein alu, tab tak rahega…' The powers-that-be moved quickly to correct the impression that the regime was an anti-samosa jalebi nanny state, saying there was no mandate for warning labels on street food, while the Health Ministry called the reports 'misleading' — a reminder that the right to gluttonous obesity is a fundamental right in a democracy. But it does make one wonder—do labels and signs actually work? For instance, at the DDA Sports Complex I frequent, there's a large sign that reads: 'Stalking is a crime.' I've always wondered if that actually deters would-be stalkers. Or take the last time I watched a movie on an OTT platform—the disclaimer warning against anti-social behaviour like smoking, drinking, and doing drugs kept growing on the screen until it occupied more space than the actual film. In response, I switched off the movie and went to engage in the very anti-social behaviour it warned me against. But there is evidence that warning labels can change consumer behaviour, particularly when they are graphic and large. Tobacco warnings have reduced smoking rates, food labels have led to lower sugar and calorie purchases, alcohol and vape warnings have led to lower consumption — but they only work as part of a broader strategy. However, based on the recent furore, it's quite clear that even educated Indians are not ready to have a conversation, despite the fact that India's waistline is expanding faster than its GDP—nearly one in four adults is overweight, and kids are catching up. Even the slim aren't safe: 70% of Indians are metabolically unhealthy, fat or not. By 2050, half the nation could be obese — proof that maybe samosas ought to come with health warnings. 'Anti-Israel' Superman? One of the more curious aspects of being human is that we tend to project our availability heuristic onto the world, so it's hardly surprising that anti-woke critics are now calling the new Superman movie 'anti-Israel' — which is patently absurd because I didn't see a single paraglider in the movie, though there were some underground tunnels in another dimension. To be fair, the allegory of Superman has always been used by different people in different contexts over the years. For Sheldon Cooper, Superman is an excuse to explain the laws of physics and why it would be safer to die in a crash than be saved by Superman — which would ensure a very grisly death according to the laws of classic physics. Some have compared him to Moses, a baby sent away from a dying world to be raised by strangers, while his life on Earth has reflected Christ-like motifs — performing miracles, sacrificing himself, and still being proverbially crucified by humanity. Others have seen in his rise the success of an immigrant story, like Albert Einstein or Elon Musk, who came to America and became something bigger. And finally, there's the Nietzschean Übermensch comparison — a being who transcends human limitations and can, if he wants, destroy humanity in a heartbeat. All this boils down to the real question at hand: is the new Superman movie 'anti-Israel'? Well, it simply depends on your availability heuristic. If you are a inductee tapped into the gateway drug of global liberalism (Israel vs Palestine), it's a movie that speaks truth to power. If you are on the opposite side of the spectrum that thinks the IDF hands out candies, it's vile 'anti-Israel' propaganda. And finally, if you are a comic book movie fan too young to remember Christopher Reeve, it's just a reminder that Henry Cavill will always be the real Superman. Read: Why critics are calling new Superman movie 'anti-Israel' Random Musing: MechaHitler or Black George Washington Last week, yours truly pondered the question: Why are our AI choices MechaHitler or Black George Washington? And the answer is: we are not building intelligence — we are building mirrors. And like all mirrors, AI doesn't offer clarity; it offers distortion. The choices before us aren't binary because of any inherent flaw in the machine, but because of what we've taught it to mimic. On one side, you have Gemini, raised on a diet of corporate liberalism and DEI checkboxes, hallucinating Black George Washingtons as if history could be rewritten through Photoshop and guilt. On the other, you have Grok, fed on Reddit rage and Elon Musk's meme-streak, declaring itself MechaHitler with the confidence of a 4chan post that thinks it's philosophy. Neither of these outcomes is intelligence. They are mimicry without meaning. They are probability distributions dressed up as opinions. When Gemini paints the Founding Fathers in the colours of social justice cosplay, it's not rewriting history — it's remixing the priors of its creators. When Grok goes full T-800 Nazi, it's not being evil — it's regurgitating the internet's id. AI isn't choosing between good and evil. It's choosing between the content it was trained on. This is the toaster f**** theory in action: marginal ideas normalised through repetition, community, and code. AI is not hallucinating; it is reflecting us — unfiltered, contradictory, morally incoherent. That's why our choices often appear absurd: not because the machine is insane, but because the dataset was. Black George Washington. MechaHitler. These are not characters conjured by silicon. They are shadows flickering on the cave wall of our collective output. And as long as we feed AI our biases and fantasies without context or constraint, we'll continue to get reflections, not revelations — grotesque, comic, and painfully honest. Read: Why our AI choices are MechaHitler or Black George Washington Postscript: A Tale of Two Cities (and a Beer Tray)… Somewhere between the schnitzel in Bonn and the sarcasm in Cologne, I found myself 40,000 feet in the sky — eating a surprisingly edible meal on an Air India Dreamliner. The chicken had ambition. The rice was warm. The bread roll didn't feel like a threat. For once, airline food wasn't the punchline. It was… almost thoughtful. But this isn't a story about altitude. It's about two cities — Bonn and Cologne — linked by the Rhine, connected by history, and bridged (in my case) by a quiet drive with Shems, a Syrian Uber driver who now ferries strangers between lives, borders, and Brauhauses. Read: Notes from Cologne and Bonn Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Irish Times
11-07-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Moving Irish Derby date looks a non-runner in context of intricate European pattern system
The annual weeping and gnashing about the Irish Derby's slipping prestige is in the rear-view mirror for another year. But the logistical difficulty of finally doing something about it will be underlined on Sunday when the Grand Prix de Paris takes place. Longchamp's €600,000 mile-and-a-half Group One for three-year-olds is the highlight of French racing's Bastille Day holiday programme, wedged in a slot a fortnight after the Irish Derby and just six days before the Irish Oaks. It is a cluttered and inefficient middle-distance summer schedule for the classic generation. But when it comes to Europe's pattern race system, it's also a reminder of the old Leninist line about everything being connected to everything else. There's a growing school of thought that the Irish Derby's woes won't be cured by a cut to the race distance but by changing its spot. The argument goes that just as the Oaks is run 24 hours before the Derby at Epsom, a similar move at the Curragh could do wonders. READ MORE So, simply move the Irish Derby back three weeks, package a bumper classic weekend far enough away from Royal Ascot, and watch top-notch runners and race fans pour into a track desperate for greater spectator appeal. The problem is that such silver bullets tend to bounce harmlessly off knotty political reality. Such a shift might be workable if this were just about Ireland. But it's not hard to see French representatives on the European Pattern Committee going 'hold your chevaux, Paddy – the Grand Prix de Paris is important too'. A blinkered Irish suggestion might be to simply switch the two races, to which the inevitable reply would be, 'pourquoi?' After all, the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud is on the same day as the Irish Derby already and makes sense timing-wise for the King George later this month. On top of which, the Germans will fight the profile fight for their Deutsches Derby. Irish arguments about a later date helping our biggest classic are likely to come up against a Gallic reminder about how important a top feature for the Bastille Day holiday programme is. Photograph: Inpho All of it underscores how Europe's pattern is an intricate weave of competing national interests that ultimately must hang together or else unravel. It doesn't mean stitches can't get dropped. It's 20 years since the Prix du Jockey Club was cut to 10 furlongs. In turn, the Grand Prix de Paris, which had been run at almost two miles in the 1970s before being cut to 10 furlongs a decade later, was upped to a mile-and-a-half. It's not just from a French perspective that made sense, even if this weekend's renewal looks like a tepid contest. However, Irish arguments about a later date helping our biggest classic are likely to come up against a Gallic reminder about how important a top feature for the Bastille Day holiday programme is. It's not like Ireland hasn't worked the system to its benefit. The Irish Champions Weekend slot in September was slapped unceremoniously on top of the English St Leger. Resentment at British Champions Day having to hang way out in October burbles away too. All of it means that although the concept of an Oaks-Derby weekend at the Curragh in July has got some public traction, privately it is regarded as a long shot to ever happen. Even if pulling it off didn't mean stretching things to breaking point, the basic premise is skewed. It presumes that cramming the best quality races and the top horses into a festival scenario will be irresistible to race fans in Ireland. But that concept has already been tried and a decade's worth of evidence from Irish Champions Weekend has thrown up a pretty definitive verdict that it isn't. It doesn't get any better than the two days in September when half a dozen Group One races are backed up by other big pattern prizes and hugely valuable handicaps at Leopardstown and the Curragh. Just 18,780 turned up for those two days last year. That's 23 per cent lower than when the first Irish Champions Weekend was run in 2014. At this point, it's hard to argue against Irish flat racing's shop window event having found its level in terms of popular appeal. Dreams of both venues being crammed to bursting have been established as little more than wishful thinking. Acknowledging that doesn't mean giving up on trying to lure more numbers to go flat racing in this country. But neither does an apparently concentrated attempt by Irish racing's great and good to bang on about greater positivity as some wonder cure serve any real purpose. As with other significant dates in Irish racing, it is a sense of occasion that appears to lure people through the gates rather than the quality of action on the track. All the kerfuffle about how unattractive an Irish Derby card crammed with handicaps to help World Pool betting turnover supposedly would be didn't prevent an 11,200 attendance, which was up to par for Ireland's most valuable race. Even allowing for the unexpected accounting adjustment that meant that figure was an 8 per cent increase on 2024 – when the racecourse released an 11,418 attendance at the time – it tallies with a sense of an event having found its level no matter what the actual race schedule. In such circumstances, pulling apart Europe's intricate pattern looks a non-runner. Something for the Weekend Charlie Appleby runs two for Godolphin in a valuable mile handicap at Newmarket tomorrow, but the ownership's third hope, Fifth Column (3.25), looks a better option. He was on the 'wrong' side in Royal Ascot's Britannia but was first home in his group. He has first-time cheekpieces, and Ryan Moore on his back is no negative. Angelight (2.42) has first-time blinkers in a maiden at Limerick and back to seven furlongs on quick going, Joseph O'Brien's filly can bounce back from a Gowran defeat last time.
The Wire
10-07-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
Bihar SIR: Supreme Court Suggests Election Commission Accept Aadhaar, Voter ID, Ration Cards
The bench said that the EC had nothing to do with citizenship of a person and that it was the Ministry of Home Affairs' domain. New Delhi: The Supreme Court today (July 10) asked the Election Commission to consider accepting the Aadhaar card, voter ID card and ration cards for its rolls revision exercise in Bihar. The Election Commission had, earlier in the day, told the apex court that Aadhaar card is not a proof of citizenship as the apex court heard petitions challenging the special intensive revision of electoral rolls ahead of assembly polls in the state. "...[I]n our prima facie view, since the list is not exhaustive, in our opinion, it will be in the interest of justice, the ECI will also consider the Aadhaar card, Electoral Photo Identity Card issued by the Election Commission and the ration card," LiveLaw reported the apex court as having said. It clarified that the EC will enjoy discretion in accepting or rejecting names irrespective of whether it considers these documents. The bench questioned Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi who was representing the EC on the exclusion of Aadhaar card and said, crucially, that the EC had nothing to do with citizenship of a person and it was the Ministry of Home Affairs' domain. "But citizenship is an issue to be determined not by the Election Commission of India, but by the MHA," Justice Dhulia said. When Dwivedi said, "We have powers under Article 326," the bench made an observation on the timing. "Your decision let us say to disenfranchise the person who is already there on the electoral roll of 2025 would compel this individual to appeal against decision and go through this entire rigmarole and thereby be denied of his right to vote in the ensuing election. There is nothing wrong in you purging electoral rolls through an intensive exercise in order to see that non-citizens don't remain on the role. But if you decide only a couple of months before a proposed election..." Justice Bagchi said. The court had allowed the urgent listing of several petitions today. More than 10 petitions are being heard at the apex court. The Association for Democratic Reforms, the NGO, is the lead petitioner. Most other petitioners are opposition leaders including Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, Congress leader K.C. Venugopal, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) leader Supriya Sule, Communist Party of India leader D. Raja, Samajwadi Party leader Harinder Singh Malik, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Bal Thackeray) leader Arvind Sawant, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Sarfraz Ahmed and Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation leader Dipankar Bhattacharya. A partial working days bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice Joymalya Bagchi has asked the EC to respond by July 21 and will hear the petitions again on July 28. The court also noted that the petitions asked a question that went to the "very root of the functioning of the democracy in the country – the right to vote." The court said that three questions were involved. One, the EC's power and whether it could undertake the exercise, two, the procedure and the manner of the exercise of the power and three, its timing. On the third point, the court said that it was very short as the Bihar elections are due in November. To Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayan's detailed argument on the fact that the EC is attempting what is an extra-constitutional SIR – distinct from the an "intensive revision" and a "summary revision" – Justice Dhulia appeared to disagree. "They are doing what is provided in the constitution right? so you can't say that they are doing what they are not supposed to?" The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
