Human Rights Kashmir Pakistan Terrorism War

Why Rawalakot Is Burning: Exploitation Dressed as Administration

Seven are dead and an internet blackout has fallen over the hills, but the protesters in Pakistan’s Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir have refused to go home. After seventy-nine years, the territory Islamabad occupied is deciding it will no longer be ruled. Rahul Pawa | X @imrahulpawa The bridge at Khaigala is not the sort of place where states are supposed to lose their grip. It is a modest crossing in a green fold of the Pir Panjal, the kind of spot a traveller passes without noticing. Yet this past weekend the air above Rawalakot filled with tear gas and gunfire. By the time it cleared, seven people were dead, four police personnel and three civilians, with around forty injured, and the people in the road did the one thing an occupier never expects. They stayed. Days before the strike was due, the Joint Awami Action Committee had already been outlawed, dozens arrested, and the internet throttled across the region. To understand why an agitation over flour and electricity has hardened into something Islamabad now answers with bullets, you have to go back to the original sin. In October 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession that made the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir part of India, the same legal document every other prince signed. Before the ink was dry, Pakistan had already sent tribal raiders and regular soldiers pouring across the western frontier. The invaders brought violence and occupation. In Mirpur, eyewitnesses recorded a massacre so complete that, by some accounts, the overwhelming majority of a town of twenty-five thousand was slaughtered over three days that November. Hundreds of thousands fled. The land those raiders seized and held when the guns fell silent in 1949 became what Pakistan euphemistically calls “Azad” Jammu and Kashmir . There is no azadi there. There never was. What there has been, for nearly eight decades, is exploitation dressed as administration. Consider the rivers. The gorges of this territory carry some of the richest hydropower potential in South Asia, and Pakistan has exploited them relentlessly.. The Mangla reservoir drowned the old town of Mirpur and displaced its people. Pakistan draws much of its electricity from these mountains, yet the power projects sit elsewhere, depriving the region of the royalties that are rightfully its own. The current flows down to the plains of Punjab. The dignity does not flow back up. It is precisely this absurdity, a people sitting in the dark while their rivers light other cities, that has driven crowds into the streets every year since. Then came the corridor. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor was sold as a forty-billion-dollar dream, and for the Pakistan’s occupied territories it has been something closer to a second occupation. Ancestral land in Gilgit-Baltistan has been acquired forcibly, without consent or fair compensation, by the provincial government and the Pakistan army. The promised jobs evaporated as Chinese workers arrived to fill them, leaving locals dejected and shut out of the very projects carved through their valleys. Those who dare protest the corridor are booked under anti-terrorism laws and branded anti-state elements. The banks of the world lend against this land; its people are not invited to the counting house. The cost of that closeness with Beijing has reached into the region’s homes. Hundreds of men from Gilgit-Baltistan married Uyghur women from neighbouring Xinjiang, and since 2017 those wives have been swept into China’s mass detention camps, leaving husbands and children stranded on the wrong side of the Khunjerab pass. The Gilgit-Baltistan assembly passed a unanimous resolution demanding their release; the families have protested through sub-zero winters; Islamabad, unwilling to disturb its benefactor, has done effectively nothing. An occupier that will not lift a finger to bring home its subjects’ own wives and mothers has told them precisely where they stand. Nowhere was that indifference starker than in the spring of 2020. As the Wuhan-epicentre pandemic climbed into the mountains, activists described a public-health system that existed mostly on paper. Gilgit-Baltistan, they reported, had two ageing ventilators for a region of millions and had received no meaningful medical aid from Islamabad, even as the same government broke ground on the fourteen-billion-dollar Diamer-Bhasha dam. Hospitals functioned as little more than referral desks, dispatching the seriously ill down the highway to Rawalpindi to fend for themselves. A land rich enough to power a country was not worth two machines that breathe. The people have had enough. The Joint Awami Action Committee, born in 2023 from traders, lawyers, labourers and transporters, learned in 2024 and 2025 they have to voice their rights. But the demand that frightens Rawalpindi was never about groceries. It is the abolition of twelve seats in the local assembly reserved for refugees who settled in mainland Pakistan after 1947, seats the committee says mainstream Pakistani parties use to install governments in Muzaffarabad. Strip away the procedural language and the message is plain: stop rigging the house. On Sunday, 7 June, the territory’s Supreme Court ruled that those seats enjoy constitutional protection and can be altered only by amendment, dealing a blow to the movement that had been pushing against them. And so this weekend the state answered the way it always has here, with proscription, arrests, a blackout and live rounds. This is not a problem Pakistan can solve. What is failing is slower and more fatal: consent. An occupation can outlast oppressive deeds; it cannot outlast the people it claims to govern deciding, town by town, that they were never asked and no longer agree. When British MPs are rising in their own parliament to flag a communications blackout, fielding messages from constituents who cannot reach their families in the region, the cost of holding this land has begun to outrun the reason for holding it. Jinnah’s two-nation theory was an argument for Pakistan. It was never an argument for these territories Pakistan occupied with raiders and regulars, for they belonged to a state that had lawfully acceded to India before the invasion

Bharat Environment

Victory to Mother Nature: Bharatiya Way and the Crisis of the Earth

By N. C. Bipindra As World Environment Day is observed on June 5, it is worth pausing to ask a fundamental question: why is the world scrambling to rediscover what Bharat (India) has always known? While the United Nations frames environmental protection as an urgent modern challenge, the civilisation that has flourished on the banks of the Sindhu, Ganga, Yamuna, Kaveri and Saraswati has regarded the Earth not as a resource to be extracted but as a living mother to be honoured. Sanskrit invocation Mata Bhoomi Putro Aham Prithivyah (The Earth is my mother, and I am her son) from the Atharva Veda is not a poetic metaphor. It is a way of life. Nature as the Sacred: The Scriptural Foundation Hindu Dharma has embedded environmental consciousness into the very architecture of daily living. Puranas personify every river as a goddess, every forest as an abode of divinity, and every animal as either a vahana of a deity or a manifestation of Brahman itself. Bhagavata Purana speaks of Prakriti (Mother Nature) as the manifest form of the divine feminine, deserving reverence and protection. Arthashastra of Kautilya, written over two millennia ago, laid down detailed regulations for forest conservation, protection of wildlife, and management of water bodies. The concept of Panchabhuta, the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether, is not an abstract philosophy but a lived framework that reminds every Bharatiya (Indian) that the human body and the cosmos are composed of the same sacred matter. The tradition of sacred groves, known as Dev Vans, spread across Bharat from Rajasthan’s orans to the sacred forests of Kerala and the jaheras of Jharkhand, long predating any modern conservation legislation. Every neem tree, every peepal, every tulsi plant carries spiritual significance, and this significance was the original and most effective form of ecological protection. The river was not merely a water source; she was the Mother and to pollute her was not merely an environmental offence but a sacrilege. Bharatiya Lifestyle as Ecological Practice The daily routine prescribed by the Shastras (the Dinacharya) is, in ecological terms, an extraordinarily low-footprint way of living. Early rising in tune with natural light cycles, minimal consumption, food governed by the seasons, zero-waste cooking using every part of a vegetable, the use of clay pots for water and community sharing of resources were not marks of poverty. These were expressions of a profound understanding that the Earth’s bounty is finite and must be returned to, not merely extracted from. The Paryavaran Gatividhi (Environmental Action) of the world’s largest volunteer organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has given this ancient wisdom an organised and modern expression in recent years. Inspired by the Bharatiya outlook of the RSS, the Ek Thaila, Ek Thali (One Bag, One Plate) campaign, launched during the Prayagraj Maha Kumbh 2025, aimed to make the largest human gathering on earth plastic-free and eco-friendly by promoting the use of steel plates and cloth bags as alternatives to single-use plastics. The results were not symbolic gestures. According to the RSS Annual Report 2024–25, usage of disposable items was reduced by 80% to 85%, and it is estimated that INR 3.5 crore (INR 35 million) was saved per day through this zero-budget community initiative alone. The experiment had been tested earlier: the use of pattals (plates made from leaves) was first successfully implemented during the Haridwar Kumbh in 2020, replacing single-use plastic plates entirely. The Paryavaran Sanrakshan Gatividhi (Environment Preservation Action), inspired by the RSS, recently led a cleanliness and awareness campaign across eleven ghats of the Yamuna in Delhi, with people volunteering on their own initiative and not through official summons or advertisements. The campaign carries a powerful civilisational message: that environmental protection is not the responsibility of the state alone, but a collective, community-rooted and spiritually motivated act. RSS’s Panch Parivartan (Five Reforms) programme for its centenary year identifies Paryavaran (environmental awareness) as one of five key pillars of social transformation, alongside social harmony, family strengthening, the insistence on Swa (selfhood) and civic duty. This is not environmentalism borrowed from Western discourse. This is Dharma, the eternal righteousness, in action. What the modern West discovered through ecological catastrophe, that nature has limits, that extraction has consequences, that the human being is not the measure of all things, the Dharmic traditions held as first principles, inscribed in ritual, in seasonal worship, in the very grammar of how a farmer addressed the earth before breaking it. They were articulating a cosmological fact: that the human being is not a sovereign individual standing apart from nature, but a thread woven into a living, breathing whole. Contrast with the Western World It is here that the starkest moral and political contradiction of our times must be named without hesitation. Britain, the United States, Germany, France and the broader Western bloc consumed the world’s carbon budget over two centuries of industrialisation. These nations built their wealth by relentlessly burning fossil fuels, destroying forests, polluting rivers and colonising the natural resources of the very Global South they now lecture about “sustainable development.” The Industrial Revolution was not an act of ecological innocence; it was a civilisational choice to prioritise profit over Prakriti (the primordial creative energy, or nature) and the entire planet is now paying for it. The principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities,” the acknowledgement that countries that have polluted for far longer than others must free up carbon space for poorer nations to develop, has been broadly agreed upon for decades. Yet hard commitment and investment have been consistently lacking from richer countries. The promise by rich countries to support developing nations with annual financial transfers of US$100 billion annually for climate action, which was supposed to begin in 2020, became a glaring failure, a broken pledge that has undermined global trust. Developing countries’ climate commitments are explicitly conditional on receiving not only funding but also clean technology from those richer states that will enable them to decarbonise, yet technology transfer remains an unfulfilled promise. At COP29, the new climate finance goal agreed upon, US$300 billion annually by 2035, still falls far short of what

Bharat Disinformation Hindus Misinformation Security

Why Spew Venom Against RSS & Hindus?

Self-styled Christian lobbyists’ campaign against Hindus outreach in US & Europe has not worked even with scaremongering and demonization tactics. Aniket Pingley There is a genre of writing immune to journalistic standards in gathering evidence, retaining balance and complete disclosure. It is the opinion piece. In its honest form, it declares a position and argues it. In its dishonest form, it uses the opinion format as legal exemption, a space where alarming assertions are made, dehumanising imagery deployed and contested allegations stated as settled fact, all under the protective cover of “these are merely my views.” John Dayal’s piece in UCA News, headlined, “The Indian paramilitary organization’s tentacles in the US,” is a distinguished specimen of the dishonest form. It is tactical scaremongering – calibrated to produce a specific emotional and political effect amongst a specific audience at a chosen moment in Washington lobbying calendar. The article makes claims about the RSS, Gujarat, lobbying firms, FCRA and about Indian-origin officials in the US government. I will not engage those claims here. They are matters of public record, available to any reader willing to search. Readers are capable of forming their own opinions about Gujarat 2002, Modi visa episode, Squire Patton Boggs and India’s FCRA regime. They do not need me to defend the RSS against Dayal’s version of events. What I will do is more useful: identify what this article actually is, what it is attempting at and why its final sentence, the most revealing sentence in the piece, tells the reader everything they need to know. Confession in last sentence Dayal ends his article with, “The RSS has money, access, a friendly executive environment, and the weight of geopolitics on its side, and for the moment seems able to counter the evangelical campaign.” Read it slowly. Counter the evangelical campaign. Not “respond to criticism.” Not “defend itself against allegations.” Counter the evangelical campaign. Dayal told his readers, in his own words, what this is actually about. There is an evangelical campaign, organised, funded and directed, targeting RSS in Washington DC. And, what is Dayal lamenting is that this campaign is not working. RSS is successfully countering it. This is the most important fact in the entire article and it appears in the last line, almost as an afterthought. Everything before it, the alarming language, assembled allegations, USCIRF references, lobbying firm drama, is the infrastructure in that evangelical campaign. The article is a dispatch from one side of an active lobbying contest, written by one of its participants, lamenting that the other side is holding ground. And, RSS has every right to hold its ground. USCIRF’s annual report is not scripture. It is not axiomatic truth. It is not a judicial finding. It is the output of an advisory commission whose India recommendations the US State Department has declined to act upon for six consecutive years, a fact Dayal buries in his final paragraph as if it were a footnote, rather than the most consequential sentence in his piece. American foreign policy operates on classified intelligence, diplomatic relationships and a comprehensive picture of the world that an advisory commission does not possess. What’s this Evangelical Campaign? The campaign Dayal laments, RSS is successfully countering, is a coordinated effort to have United States designate India as a Country of Particular Concern on religious freedom, impose targeted sanctions on RSS and restrict its members from entering the US. It runs through USCIRF, Congressional testimony, UN Special Rapporteur submissions and in coordination with International Christian Concern, National Association of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Its substance: Christian organisations in India are being persecuted, FCRA restrictions choke Christian churches and anti-conversion laws are religious oppression. Each of these claims deserves a question Dayal never asks: why are there so many foreign-funded Christian organisations operating in India and what precisely are they doing? The answer is not theoretical. It is on the record. Compassion International (CI), a major US-based Christian child sponsorship charity that operated in India for 48 years, provides the most precise forensic answer available. In 2017, Indian Government placed CI on “prior permission” list under FCRA, requiring explicit case-by-case approval for every financial transaction, effectively halting flow of approximately $50 million annually. The government’s case rested on CBI First Information Report and Income Tax investigation into CI’s primary Indian affiliate, Chennai-based Caruna Bal Vikas (CBV). CBV was registered under FCRA with its legally declared nature of association as “economic, educational and social.” The CBI found it had, in its own documents, “invariably indulged in religious activities.” More precisely, in CBV’s own stated long-term organisational objective, the goal was “converting poor children into fulfilled Christian adults.” That is not a characterisation by the Indian government. It is what the organisation wrote about itself. Furthermore, CI was identified as part of an organised international missionary industry focused on what its own practitioners call “10-40 Window”, a geographic band encompassing majority of the world’s Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists, deliberately targeted as a conversion frontier. This is what the FCRA regime was responding to. Not the practice of Christianity, the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala have worshipped in this land since the first century, and nobody has targeted them. What was being regulated is a specific, documented, foreign-funded, institutionally organised project of converting economically vulnerable children using charitable cover. When an organisation tells CBI investigators, through its own documents, that its goal is to convert poor children, it is not a policy concern. That is evidence. India’s state governments have enacted anti-conversion laws through elected legislative assemblies using constitutional procedures with clear majorities. These laws do not prohibit practice of Christianity. They regulate coercive, fraudulent or inducement-based conversions. Twelve states have enacted such legislation. That is Indian democratic federalism functioning as designed. Whether those laws are sound policy is a matter for Indian courts and voters, not for an American advisory commission whose mandate derives from US domestic legislation with no jurisdiction over a sovereign parliament. FCRA regime applies

Bharat Bangladesh Defence Policy Security

106

Securing Bharat the Right Way!

Smart borders management with several layers, underground optical fibre sensors, UAV surveillance to curb infiltration; Mission to deal with demographics, fence entire Bangladesh border. Vinod Kumar Shukla Nehru-Liaqat pact had provisions for Muslims migrating to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to return till December 31, 1950 if they wished to by offering them many norms that favoured them only. Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee resigned from Nehru government in protest. But this pampering combined with unabashed appeasement continued. Infiltrators, illegal Muslims and Rohigyas have never witnessed in West Bengal what they have experienced ever since BJP came to power. For West Bengal, It took too long to realise the dream of Dr Mukherjee as people were deceived by three fallacious arguments: First, if India behaves responsibly, majority in the neighbourhood would behave similarly; Second some concessions (privileges) to Muslims were necessary for confidence building and putting balm on their sores like retaining Muslim Personnel Law etc., especially by leaders like Jawahar Lal Nehru and pseudo-intellectuals who claim to be inheritors of his school of thought and Third that was subtle, unspoken but obvious that decision against Pakistan and Bangladesh even for protecting interest of Bharat may be seen as fretting Muslims impacting vote bank. Against this backdrop, their activities were overlooked which had its maximum bearing on infiltration from Bangladesh. Though it has got nothing to do with Indian Muslims rather impacting them adversely, people not only shied away from speaking against it but deny any such thing happening. Most of the border districts of Bharat along Bangladesh have been witnessing upsurge in Muslim population which is certainly not organic. Situation has gone so bad that infiltrators can be found everywhere in Bharat. On July 14, 2004, the then Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal told Rajya Sabha that there were over 1.2 crores illegal Bangladeshis in Bharat. This was bound to create controversy, so numbers were withdrawn saying that they were ‘unreliable’. This was obviously done to save Muslim vote bank of the then Congress government. The government changed in 2014 and in November 2016, the then Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju informed Upper House that there were approximately two crore infiltrators. The biggest worry is that these infiltrators are not only usurping resources, jobs but pose serious security threats to people and Bharat. The impact of demographic change is endorsed by census data. Between 1951 and 2011, Muslims grew by 4.4 percentage points to 14.2 per cent while Hindus declined by 4.3 points to 79.8 per ccnt. Hindus were 84.1 per cent and Muslims 9.8 per cent in 1951. Most frightening story is that the menace of border districts has now reached every nook and corner of Bharat from big cities to remote villages including reserve forests by encroaching government, forest, Railways, defence lands, river catchment areas and deserted historical monuments. It has made Hindus minority in nine states and Union Territories out of total 36; 200 out of 800 Tehsils and 1500 out of 6000 villages across the country. This was stated before Supreme Court through a public interest petition filed in 2020. Military intervention and diplomatic support from Bharat led to carving out of Bangladesh as over one crore refugees were given shelter in Bharat. But, the bonhomie did not last and selfish intent was exposed sooner than later with relations deteriorating even in the mid-1970s due to military junta taking reins in Bangladesh with issues like border disputes, insurgency and infiltration and water-sharing cropping up. The reason however was radical Islamic organisations especially Jamaat e Islami whose umbilical cord is still in Pakistan continued with its hate mongering. Bharat tried to improve relations by signing 2015 Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) which resolved decades-old border disputes. Both the countries agreed on Coordinated Border Management Plans (CBMP) in 2011 to curb infiltration, human trafficking, cattle smuggling and cross-border crime. But issues like equitable sharing of waters from 54 common rivers, border management and trade issues remained inconclusive. Bilateral trade reached $13.51 billion with Bharat extending Lines of Credit worth $8 billion for development of infrastructure, railways and ports. Enhanced connectivity included cross-border rail links between Agartala–Akhaura and the use of Bangladeshi ports, Chittagong and Mongla for cargo of Bharat. Besides, Bangladesh has a huge dependency, 1160 MW electricity required to be fed from Bharat’s grid. Bharat helped East Pakistan to liberate itself from tyranny of Pakistan but the irony is that radicals are unwilling to recognize the historical facts leading to formation of mukti vahini and then the liberation. A statement issued by seven-party alliance on December 19, 1984 asserted that Bangladesh came into being through a bloody war waged by its valiant freedom fighters and people. The statement said that this heroic achievement was in no way the victory of the Armed forces of Bharat over erstwhile East Pakistan. RNP Singh, a former Intelligence Bureau officer in his book ‘Bangladesh Decoded’, writes, “It is a surprise that within such a short time people of Bangladesh were swayed away by anti-India campaign without pondering over the facts that India had come to rescue them when they were virtually being butchered…” Concessions given to Bangladesh and Pakistan appear to be mistake of the then government as infiltration and many other issues still persist. Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw’s observation on Shimla Agreement who had won the 1971 war for Bharat was, “Bhutto made monkey out of India.” Whether democratic governments under Awami League or BNP or Martial Law, minorities in Bangladesh were constantly persecuted, temples desecrated, women raped, men killed and families converted as organisations like Jamaat e Islami always cocked a snook at law. Probably to avenge 1971 humiliation, Z A Bhutto kept on trying to cause differences between Bharat and Bangladesh. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was invited to attend heads of Muslim States conference at Lahore in Pakistan in 1974. For economic benefits, Awami League government started cultivating Middle-East countries. Jamaat leader Ghulam Azam prevailed upon the Awami League government to remove Constitutional obstacles imposed against

Bharat Business Economy Geopolitics International Policy Trade War World

117

Currency Conundrum

Create dedicated war chest to cushion against conflicts, defer non-priority imports, go big on dollar trades, currency swaps & non-dollar deals. K.A.Badarinath Is Bharatiya Rupee under attack? Will conversion ratio cross the psychological barrier of Rs 100 per one US dollar? Would that mean Bharat’s economy gets more susceptible or vulnerable to external currency market churns? Or, will it be oil and war? How does one make sense of rupee valuations that fluctuate wild these days? There’s a vertical divergence in Bharat on Reserve Bank of India (RBI) strategy to stem continued slide in rupee. One big section led by sixteenth finance commission chairman Dr Arvind Panagariya argue that crossing Rs 100 mark against one US dollar should not be viewed too seriously. “It’s just a number” is what Dr Panagariya wrote in his column earlier this week pushing for free fall or depreciation of rupee. Owing to continued shortages in crude oil, forward market rate to dollar was pegged at Rs 100 a piece triggering a big debate on future of Bharatiya currency. Dr Panagariya advised RBI not to defend the rupee with its huge foreign currency reserves by intervening in markets. Oil shortages and higher inflation at retail level coupled with healthy interest rates were causing free fall of rupee that crossed 97 per dollar. There’s a significant group that recommended a more conservative approach to rupee valuation. Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, an RSS inspired organization has asked RBI not to allow rupee depreciation further and touch 100 per dollar. SJM’s argument is simple: imports for domestic industry and trading community would become expensive. Cost of products and services would move up swiftly thereby impacting consumption demand and eventually hit growth. Make in India for the world campaign with self-reliance or swadeshi as motto would be hampered if rupee depreciated beyond 100 per dollar. Further slide in rupee may not be tenable politically also given that in forward markets, US dollar is already being quoted beyond Rs 100. Soaring prices of crude oil in Bharat’s diversified energy basket also had its impact. For instance, crude oil prices surge of beyond 70 per cent during April 2025 and April 2026 is something which has seriously impacted Bharat’s energy import bill. Aggregate price of crude during the period was US $ 114.48 as against US $ 67.62 per barrel in previous year. Every dollar increase in crude oil per barrel translates to over US $ one billion in import bill for Bharat. Even an aggregate US $ 85 per barrel could put pressure on budget projections for 2026-27 given that fiscal deficit would expand, subsidy bill on fuel would spike and capital investments as well as development projects spending may have to be curtailed. This provides the logic, reasoning and rationale for Prime Minister’s call for belt tightening measures that have been rolled out over last two weeks. In this backdrop, liberalists led by likes of Dr Panagariya have opposed measures like floating dollar denominated government paper or mobilization through high cost NRI deposits in dollars to shore up the reserves. Deferring payments against currency value spikes or transferring currency gains to NRIs was not an option, they argued. Better option would be to attract long term investments, defer non-priority imports and make goods and services industry in Bharat attractive in terms of ‘ease of doing business’. During financial year ending March 2026, Bharat attracted gross foreign direct investments of US $ 95 billion. But, the net inflows which discounts investment outflows, profits repatriation, disinvestments etc and interest payments was pegged at a very modest US $ 7.7 billion. Quickly expanding net FDI inflows needs to be attempted. For starters, can we target net FDI inflows at US $ 25 billion this financial year? Secondly, currency swaps in medium to long term is an idea that bankers and policymakers cannot ignore. Leveraging volatility in the currencies market and taking positions is something that needs to be done in a calibrated way. Already, currency traders have reported that RBI booked healthy margins on sale of US dollars over last one year. Apart from swaps that spread currency risks, dollar trade is something that RBI and top Indian banks must continue to minimize the adverse impact of volatility in the markets. In last one year ending April 1, 2026, RBI sold US $ 53 billion to either defend rupee or book profits. As on date, Bharat’s foreign exchange reserves are reported at US $ 688.9 billion. Expanding and diversifying Bharat’s foreign currency basket moving away from US green back is an option. President Donald J Trump may be averse to the idea of developing countries especially India ‘de-dollarizing’ its economy. But, settling trade deals in local currencies could be a big opportunity. Merchandise and services trade settlements in respective currencies can be considered beyond BRICS group. Deferring gold and silver imports by a year is not a bad option either. During 2025-26, gold import bill had crossed a whopping US $ 71.98 billion on 702 tonnes. A 24 per cent increase in gold import bill over 2024-25 is something that stares in the face. There’s no harm whatsoever for families to stagger out their gold and silver purchases given the big economic cost. Resetting or revisiting priority areas for foreign exchange deployment may be considered seriously. For instance, pharmaceutical sector is one big consumer of foreign exchange especially for ingredients to undertake production of end-use formulations. Here again, without restrictions, priority may be assigned to life saving drugs, those intermediates and formulations that are produced for re-export purposes. One big idea could be to create dedicated ‘war chest’ of currency reserves to tide over conflict situations. On lines of strategic oil reserves why not build conflict currency reserves? Only recently, during Prime Minister Modi’s brief stopover, an agreement was concluded to shore up strategic oil reserves by 36 million barrels. Each year, a chunk of RBI surpluses can be contributed to the war chest reserves. This is in addition to general foreign

Bharat China Geopolitics Politics United States

112

G-2 Emerge to Bharat’s Discomfort

Trump – Xi Beijing Summit 2026 resets US – China ties, calibrates business deals involving Boeing & chips pushing Bharat to look for its own rhythm. N. C. Bipindra The two most powerful leaders on earth met in Beijing on May 14 and 15, 2026. The world watched. So did New Delhi. This was only the second face-to-face summit of Donald Trump’s second term and first US presidential state visit to China since Trump himself made the trip in 2017. Trump-Xi summit was billed as a potential turning point in one of the most consequential bilateral relationships in modern history. In the end, the outcome was largely characterised as stabilising rather than transformational, heavy on symbolism and light on substance. But for India, even a modest recalibration between Washington and Beijing carries profound strategic implications. Most significant conceptual outcome of the summit was the agreement by both sides to build a “constructive China – US relationship of strategic stability,” according to Beijing’s official readout. Xi Jinping framed this as a governing framework for next three years, a deliberate attempt to convert Trump’s transactional deal-making instincts into a more durable operating baseline for US-China relations, one that would constrain even the next American president. On the economic front, the leaders agreed to preserve and extend the fragile trade truce brokered in South Korea in October 2025. In Beijing, China committed to purchasing at least $ 17 billion in US agricultural goods annually through 2028 along with soybean purchase commitments made in October 2025. China agreed to buy 200 Boeing aircraft, notably fewer than 500 planes Trump had floated ahead of the visit contributing to four per cent drop in Boeing shares. The US readout mentioned Chinese commitments to address shortages of rare earth elements including yttrium, scandium, neodymium, and indium. Beijing’s readout was conspicuously silent on this. Reports also emerged that US approved around ten Chinese technology companies to purchase Nvidia’s advanced H200 chips sending tech stocks higher though the sales may not fully materialise given China’s push for domestic semiconductor self-sufficiency. Xi reserved his sharpest language for Taiwan, warning that mishandling the issue would put the US – China relationship into “great jeopardy.” While American readout of the summit did not mention Taiwan at all which in itself is a striking omission, Trump later revealed an in-depth conversation with Xi about potential US military involvement in a possible Taiwan Strait crisis. Taiwan, meanwhile, has been watching nervously for any signs that Trump might soften US policy commitments in exchange for Chinese concessions elsewhere. Regarding Iran war which had delayed the summit by over a month, both sides agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open and that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons. Xi expressed China’s willingness “to be of help” in brokering a resolution and pledged not to send military equipment to Iran. However, Beijing’s public readout declined to echo many of these commitments and no breakthrough framework regarding Iran emerged. China may exert quiet influence on Tehran in the coming weeks but little will be visible publicly. Perhaps most concrete outcome was the agreement to meet again. Xi is invited to Washington for an official state visit on September 24, his first in more than a decade. Further meetings in Shenzhen in November and at G-20 in Miami in December are also on the calendar suggesting both sides see the diplomatic channel as worth maintaining, even if the substantive gaps remain wide. For India, the Beijing summit is not a bilateral event happening at a comfortable distance. It is a direct variable in New Delhi’s most sensitive strategic calculations. India has long benefited from US-China tensions. Washington’s pivot to position India as a counterbalance to China in the Indo-Pacific brought strategic partnerships, defence technology transfers, and elevated India’s role in the Quad alongside the US, Japan, and Australia. But India now has a different worry: the revival of a so-called “G2” dynamic, a Washington-Beijing axis that sidelines middle powers like India. The three-year “strategic stability” framework agreed in Beijing feeds this anxiety precisely. One of the most tangible economic stakes for India is its emergence as an alternative manufacturing and sourcing destination for Western companies seeking to reduce China exposure. If US – China tensions ease significantly and particularly if American firms are incentivised to re-engage with China through summit-level deal-making, the urgency for supply-chain diversification toward India could diminish. The Nvidia chip deal and Boeing order, if they solidify, signal willingness in Washington to deepen commercial ties with Beijing rather than decisively redirect them. The relationship between Washington and New Delhi has itself been under strain. Trump’s administration imposed punitive secondary tariffs on India over its purchases of Russian oil even as China continued buying the same oil without an equivalent penalty. The diplomatic fallout pushed India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to engage more openly with Beijing and Moscow including at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. Xi’s declaration that it is “time for the dragon and elephant to dance together” was not just rhetoric. It was a strategic signal that Beijing sees an opportunity in India’s alienation from Washington. China’s dominance over rare earth processing remains one of India’s most pressing concerns. Beijing controls the midstream supply chains for minerals critical to semiconductors, defence systems and clean energy technology. The summit’s ambiguous outcome on rare earth access, acknowledged by Washington, ignored by Beijing leaves this leverage firmly in Chinese hands. For India, which is developing its own rare earth processing capacity but remains years from self-sufficiency, a US – China deal that quietly restores Chinese mineral exports to American firms could undercut the very supply-chain diversification argument that benefits Indian industrial ambitions. The South China Sea, a flashpoint that directly concerns India’s maritime interests and regional partners in ASEAN, was largely absent from public summit readouts. The lack of any strong US statement on freedom of navigation or territorial integrity in the region may embolden Chinese assertiveness, directly affecting Indian interests in maintaining a rules-based Indo-Pacific

Bharat Hindus Judiciary Leadership Policy

126

Bhojshala Verdict: Constitutional and Historical Perspectives

On May 15, 2026, the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court delivered a historic decision recognizing the Bhojshala complex as the temple of Goddess Vagdevi (Saraswati), overturning 2003 dual-use arrangement barring namaz on Fridays inside the site. Court established an evidence-based system for resolving heritage disputes based on the ASI’s 2024 scientific study, historical evidence connecting the site to Raja Bhoj’s Paramara-era Sanskrit learning center and the persistence of Hindu worship while allowing the Muslim community to seek alternate site for a mosque in the Dhar area. The decision, which prioritises historical and archeological evidence over administrative compromise, is a significant development in India’s heritage jurisprudence.

Bharat Disinformation International Media Misinformation News World

168

The Oslo Press Incidents

On 18 May 2026, Norwegian commentator Helle Lyng of Dagsavisen heckled Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a joint press appearance with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in Oslo. That same morning, Aftenposten, Norway’s newspaper of record, had published a curtain-raiser caricature depicting Modi as a snake charmer. This report situates both incidents within four interlocking structures. First, a colonial visual grammar with documented antecedents in The New York Times (2014) and La Vanguardia (2022). Second, the methodology of the World Press Freedom Index, on which India’s 2026 ranking of 157 of 180 rests: a sentiment survey of selected respondents per country, applied to a press environment of 146,045 newspapers, 903 broadcasters, and 22 official languages. Third, the transatlantic funding ecosystem that sustains and shapes Europe’s India narrative, traced from George Soros’s Open Society Institute and Norway’s Fritt Ord in 2008, through the Rausing-Baldwin estate’s Arcadia commitment in 2021, to the European Commission’s emergence as the largest single donor by 2025. Fourth, Norway’s own documented record of Norwegianization, assimilation, and abuse against Native and minority populations, audited by the Storting in November 2024, ongoing in the Fosen case, and recorded in approximately sixty-five Barnevernet judgments at Strasbourg. The report concludes that the index, the journalist, and the publication that converged on Modi in Oslo are not three independent witnesses but three institutional outputs of one ideologically coherent ecosystem, and that India’s response that evening exposed that ecosystem for what it is. Download & Read Full Report:

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136

Artificial Intelligence: Dronacharya of Our Time

Siddharth Sehgal In Mahabharata, Eklavya, if explained in modern terms, was an archery aspirant from a disenfranchised section of society at the time; he wanted to study under Dronacharya, who only taught the princes from the royal household. So he took it upon himself to master the art under the symbolic tutelage of Dronacharya’s statue that he carved. His story highlights three key points that are relevant to current context. First, an underprivileged background cannot hold someone back if they have the dedication and will to put in the effort. Second, someone’s background can impede his or her progress despite the talent, an unfortunate fact that is true to this day. Third, Dronacharya was the “technological advantage” of his era that enabled students like Arjuna, Bheema and Duryodhana to excel in warfare. AI is the technical advantage today and it increases asymmetry in favour of students who have access to this technology and can leverage it in the exam-heavy Indian education system. Consider a scenario: a son or daughter of a tech executive who is preparing for NEET will be able to augment his exam preparation using Large Language Models (LLMs) like Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini; whereas son of a poor farmer in Madhya Pradesh may have limited access to devices like laptops or mobile phones and may not be aware of maximizing output from an AI app. This is where the gap between students from haves and have-nots becomes significant when we consider the fact that we have millions of families in Bharat that live below the poverty line. In fact, speaking from personal experience of preparing for a certification exam, I realized that my preparation time was reduced by half when I started interacting with LLMs to work on my weak areas. The model not only corrected mistakes but provided specific inputs on how I can try other ways to improve my performance. In a sense, it became my Dronacharya, so imagine the difference this technology would make in the hands of those who know how to use it. Another element in this unlevel playing field is the Education ecosystem itself. Schools in many tier-2 and tier-3 cities, towns, and villages have challenges related to the availability of technical labs; moreover, AI education is far from embedded into the education system, and teachers and educators are not adequately trained or equipped to guide students on these emerging technologies. Majority of these models are trained in English though that is changing lately by the emergence of native Indian models and inclusion of Indian languages in mainstream models’ training data, but still, the volume of knowledge base available in English language in the training data is vast when compared to other languages. So, writing prompts in English is the default choice if someone wants to extract insights on any given issues. Plus, prompts and engagements from users all over the world enrich the training data available in English. In essence, students who have completed senior secondary education in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Assamese or any other language other than English may find a steeply inclined learning curve when it comes to catching up in the AI space. International schools in tier-1 cities like Gurgaon and Mumbai, ed-tech companies and coaching institutions are already taking initiatives in these areas to give their students an edge in the hyper-competitive entrance exam domain. They have means to buy expensive subscription for their students that has more services like image and content generation. The concern here is that technology is evolving at a pace that our education system can never catch up with and it presents a risk not only to our society but it has long-term consequences to our economy, safety and development. One sometimes find it ironic that government officials like District collectors, Magistrates and Police Commissioners are essentially selected on virtue of clearing an exam or two that has little to do with individual abilities like leadership, teamwork or communication skills. People worry about AI regarding more near-term problems such as job losses but it is changing the way we learn, rationalize and think. Countries that embrace this technological revolution will reap tremendous benefits for their citizens. We need to rethink the exam system as a whole; it has to go through an underlying transformation towards learning based structure rather than an exam-ranking system. (Author works in the AI field and holds an MBA from INSEAD)

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128

Pragmatism Over Ambition

BRICS currency may not be shelved all together. Non-dollar settlements, digital currencies, regional payment gateways to take precedence. N. C. Bipindra A common BRICS currency is an idea that once symbolised the grouping’s ambitious challenge to dominance of US Dollar. The common BRICS currency was proposed to reshape the global financial order apart from geo-political realignments. But the geopolitical climate is rapidly going downhill, what with the West Asian conflict engaging global attention over last two-and-a-half months now. The diverging national interests of BRICS nations are compounding the challenge. This divergence is exposing deep structural limits of the group’s common currency proposal. Instead of accelerating toward a unified currency for the 11-nation grouping, BRICS members are increasingly moving more toward a fragmented but practical financial system built around national digital currencies and local-currency trade settlements. BRICS originally with just four members in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, has grown to include South Africa (and hence became BRICS from BRIC). The BRICS now includes world’s major energy producers and regional powers, essentially positioning itself as a counterbalance to the G7, which is unwilling to accommodate other major economies within its architecture. The expanded BRICS has repeatedly discussed reducing dependence on US Dollar in trade settlements. Yet, despite the strong rhetoric from nations like Russia and China, a consensus among the member states is elusive. There is no real agreement on creating a single BRICS currency notwithstanding the Delhi declaration that had the currency as a big selling point for the group. The latest instability in West Asia, a major energy-producing region, has only complicated the situation. The conflict-driven volatility in oil markets, sanctions risks, supply chain disruptions and currency instability have all highlighted a basic geopolitical reality. BRICS economies are too diverse in structure, political orientation, and monetary priorities to surrender sovereignty over currency policy. Unlike the Eurozone, BRICS lacks integrated fiscal systems, coordinated central banks or a unified political architecture for it to move towards a common currency. Without these foundational similarities, a common currency would risk becoming economically unsustainable. The changing geopolitical environment is especially significant for Bharat. New Delhi has historically and consistently supported multi-polarity in geopolitical order. India has also emphasised greater use of local currencies in trade, particularly in energy transactions, such as with Russia and Iran. However, India has remained cautious about any arrangement that could disproportionately strengthen China’s financial influence within BRICS. With tensions across West Asia and Europe intensifying and global markets becoming more unpredictable, India may increasingly rethink the feasibility of a BRICS currency altogether. India’s concerns with a single BRICS currency are not just political. Adapting to a unified BRICS currency would require India to significantly align its monetary policy, exchange-rate management, and reserve coordination. India’s economy operates under vastly different conditions than those of China, Russia, Brazil, or South Africa. India’s inflation management, capital controls, banking regulation, and trade priorities differ sharply from those of the other BRICS nations. In times of geopolitical crisis or a pandemic situation like COVID-19, nations typically prefer stronger control over domestic monetary tools rather than less. This explains why an alternative model, such as digital national currencies for intra-bloc settlements, is gaining traction inside BRICS. Instead of replacing sovereign currencies with a single BRICS unit, member states are increasingly exploring Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and bilateral payment systems that bypass the Dollar without requiring full monetary union. China’s digital Yuan initiative remains the most advanced example of the CBDC. Russia has accelerated the development of digital payment systems after Western sanctions. India, meanwhile, has actively tested its own digital Rupee infrastructure through the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). These developments in CBDCs suggest that future of BRICS financial integration may be technological rather than monetary. Under this evolving framework, BRICS nations could settle trade in their own currencies using interoperable digital platforms. For example, energy exports could be priced in Yuan, Rupee, Rubble, or other local currencies, depending on bilateral arrangements. Such a system would gradually reduce exposure to US Dollar, while avoiding the political and economic complications of a shared currency within BRICS. This approach offers several advantages to BRICS nations. One, it preserves monetary sovereignty for all its member states. Two, it lowers transaction costs and reduces vulnerability to sanctions. Three, it allows nations to deepen financial cooperation incrementally rather than through a risky “big bang” currency union. President Donald J Trump had been fuming on the very idea of BRICS currency and threatened to slap huge imposts on member countries in case they moved ahead. Though US dollar continues to be the major preferred currency to settle transactions, it’s slowly losing sheen. President Trump expects that a strong alternative BRICS currency would dampen the US dollar’s primacy as the major international paper. Till now, US Dollar remained the most deeply embedded in global financial system due to scale of the American economy, liquidity of US financial markets, and institutional trust surrounding Dollar-denominated assets. Even nations critical of American financial influence continue to rely heavily on US Dollar reserves and US Dollar-based trade mechanisms. Therefore, future of BRICS currency project depends less on political declarations and more on whether the grouping can build a credible financial infrastructure capable of rivaling the existing US Dollar system. At present, BRICS lacks the institutional cohesion needed for such a transformation. Moreover, internal contradictions within BRICS remain substantial. China and India continue to compete strategically and militarily in Asia. Russia’s economy faces sanctions-driven isolation. Newer BRICS members have differing alignments with the West and varying levels of dependence on US Dollar-based trade. These realities weaken possibility of a unified BRICS currency. Current West Asian conflict-induced instability may further reinforce caution among BRICS members. In periods of geopolitical uncertainty, investors and governments typically gravitate toward stable and liquid reserve currencies. And, the US dollar still dominates that space. Even today, oil exporters exploring non-Dollar trade continue to benchmark much of global energy commerce in US Dollars, because of market familiarity and financial stability. But this doesn’t

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