A twinkle in his eyes, a spring in his feet, a song on his lips, a spade in his hand and warmth in his heart for everyone he encountered (who added up to a really large number). With that spade, Niketu Iralu planted God knows how many trees. With his friendship he planted seeds of courage in God knows how many individuals from scores of varied backgrounds. He did this for 70 years or more, including among his beloved Nagas, who loved him back and honored him. My close and dear friend Niketu died in a Delhi hospital on Aug. 18. He was 91. I mourn the departure of one who was a statesman in our difficult times and like a brother unto me.
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Anything can happen tomorrow. Still, after about 10 years of gloom, Indians are rejoicing over what happened “yesterday,” by which I mean “in the last few weeks." A big hit has been taken by Modi. By that short word I don’t just mean the man who’s been India’s prime minister for the last 10 years, and who remains comfortably in power. I have in mind a pervasive, unpleasant climate of domination, submission and fear. That has taken a hit. People in India are now speaking freely and frankly, and finding that a likely outcome is laughter in agreement or candid dissent, not a summons to the police station. It’s wonderful! One indicator of the change was Modi’s Independence Day (Aug. 15) speech from the Red Fort’s ramparts. For 79 years by now, right from 1947, an Indian prime minister’s morning address to the nation, delivered from a historic platform (built long before British rule by Shahjahan) has been on the citizen’s calendar. Millions tune in, these days on mobiles, and the prime minister makes big policy pronouncements.
Vanished Prospect
For this Aug. 15, Modi had hoped, we were told, to drum-beat a couple of constitutional amendments that might have benefited him politically but injured the delicate balance between the center and the states, and between India’s north and south. The new climate blocked him. The prospect of two-thirds of MPs voting in favor vanished from the horizon, and desired amendments had to be jettisoned.
Not just that. In the latest Red Fort address (his 13th), Modi for the first time acknowledged the place in India’s history of Jawaharlal Nehru, free India’s first prime minister, thus far the favorite whipping boy of the Hindu nationalists headed by Modi.
A second indicator of a changed climate was the public reversal of a directive from the president of the Bar Council of India, Manan Mishra, instructing Bar Councils in the different states not to enroll any students from NALSAR’s 2026 graduating batch as advocates.
NALSAR, let me explain, is one of India’s foremost law schools, located in Hyderabad. BCI is a statutory body regulating India’s legal professionals. Mishra’s extraordinary instruction followed reports of objections by NALSAR students to the school’s plan to invite India’s chief justice, Surya Kant, as chief guest at their 2026 convocation.
India’s recent and consequential Cockroach movement was triggered, many will recall, by that indiscreet remark from Chief Justice Surya Kant which appeared to liken unemployed young Indians to cockroaches. Mishra’s directive against NALSAR graduates produced an uproar. Chief Justice Kant himself joined in the criticism. He even said that to protest was a citizen’s right! Widespread criticism compelled Mishra first to “explain” his instruction and soon thereafter to withdraw it and apologize for it. Again, wonderful!
Demanding Information
Mishra, an advocate from Bihar and a BJP figure, has headed the BCI from 2012. From 2024, he has also been a Rajya Sabha MP, representing the BJP. The Cockroach Janta Party, for which the accountability of public institutions is a central plank, has demanded information on BCI proceedings that authorized chairman Mishra’s directive. There are calls for Mishra to vacate the council’s chair.
Before the July 20 crackdown on Gen Z protestors in New Delhi — which produced the robust backlash — isolated groups would indeed have sharply criticized a directive such as Mishra’s, but India would not have witnessed a country-wide uproar. Any protests on NALSAR’s campus at the invitation to Chief Justice Surya Kant would have been muted, and the chief might not have publicly affirmed the right to protest.
Be it noted that in his latest Red Fort address, Modi issued a warning about “dimaagi Naxals,” or “intellectual revolutionists.” The expression was widely seen as a reference to the CJP and its supporters, and also as an unjust reference, for the CJP has been unfailingly clear that its protests will remain peaceful. In the current moment of boldness, people outside the CJP, too, are saying, “I am a dimaagi Naxal.”
Hurdles Continue
That free discussion is now possible does NOT mean that free discussion is now normal. Let me provide a few examples of continuing hurdles. On Aug. 12, a meeting of volunteers convened by the CJP in Delhi, a union territory run by the BJP, was prevented without a formal ban. A story in The Wire quotes Abhijeet Dipke, the CJP founder, on what happened: “We were looking for a hall, but no one would rent us one. Everyone kept saying there was pressure from above… We [finally] managed to secure this hall (on the third floor of a building in Naraina in West Delhi) with great difficulty. We even have the receipt for it. However, the owners received threats this morning. They were told that if they allowed the CJP meeting to take place here, they would be hung upside down…”
The hall’s lights went out, the air-conditioning stopped, and the volunteers stepped out. They walked to a public park a kilometer away, hoping to hold their meeting there. Soon, however, the police arrived in the park, some in plain clothes. Noticing that the park’s keeper had locked its gates after their entry, CJP volunteers protested.
“We didn’t order him,” the police insisted. After a while the gates were opened, and a short discussion took place, but Dipke and his colleagues appear to think that another round of CJP protests is inevitable.
On Friday Aug. 14, i.e. a day before Independence Day, students and teachers of Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, one of Delhi’s (and India’s) best-known high schools, were all set to listen to Zoya Hasan, one of India’s eminent scholars, as the chief guest at an event linked to Independence Day. However, a crowd of Hindu nationalists gathered outside the school, protesting. Her offence? She was a Muslim. The police arrived, and at the last minute the school felt compelled to request Professor Hasan not to enter. The chief guest! The next day, mercifully, many students and their parents heard Professor Hasan online.
Stopping Free Speech
Here’s a question that will NOT be answered by Delhi police’s boss, India’s home minister Amit Shah, or by Modi: Instead of pressurizing the school, why didn’t the police ask the protesters to remain peaceful or go away?
Four days before this display of intimidation, another bunch of agitators disrupted a student meeting elsewhere in New Delhi, at the famous Jawaharlal Nehru University, where another reputed professor, Uma Chakravarti, and Harsh Mander, the former civil servant and courageous human rights defender, were discussing a newly published book on Adivasis by Umar Khalid, the former JNU student who has now been in prison for six years without being tried.
In West Bengal, Janab Mafik, father of Abdul Hafeez, a CJP volunteer, died on Aug, 16 from injuries sustained in physical attacks by men angered by Abdul Hafeez’s participation on Aug. 13 in an event titled School Theek Karo (Fix the School) in the Karisunda area of Bankura district. The fixing of India’s broken schools is a major demand of the CJP, which directs attention to the tiny percentage (around 2.5%) for education in the Indian government’s budget.
Abdul Hafeez and his father were both violently attacked after the son visited a government school. Reacting, the CJP’s Saurav Das has said: “This is an extremely condemnable act. We are running a campaign focused on improving government schools, something that people of all political ideologies should support. Yet, these BJP goons engage in such incidents to intimidate and threaten people.”
Commented CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke: “We will not be silenced and intimidated. CJP stands firmly with Abdul and his family. We demand the immediate arrest of those responsible for his father's death.”
Assaulting the Critically Injured
After visiting Abdul, his mother, and other relatives in their home, the CJP’s Ashutosh Ranka told the media on Aug. 17 of violent assaults on Abdul and on his critically injured father when they were on their way to hospital, and of the absence of any protection from West Bengal’s police. If the state’s BJP government does not arrest and charge the attackers, the CJP will launch an action in the area, added Ranka. “We’re not afraid of any goondas,” he said.
Abdul Hafeez told the media that the only compensation he wants for his father’s murder is a good school in the village named after him.
Indian Express carries (Aug. 18) this story by Soumyarendra Barik on directions by the Indian government for restricting online content.
“One blocking order, on an average, every 68 seconds. Around 1,275 every day. Nearly 1,95,000 in just five months.
“That was the surge in state-backed directions seeking to restrict online content sent to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July this year, according to data accessed by The Indian Express.”
Amazing Reluctance
Not having anything helpful or new to contribute, I haven’t written for a while either on the insane war between Russia and Ukraine or on the continuing U.S.-Iran hostilities. But I cannot contain my amazement that a U.S. president is reluctant to express sympathy for the thousands of U.S. service personnel who have remained deployed in international waters on the USS Abraham Lincoln for more than 260 days.
Here’s what The Hill of Washington DC reports in a story by Tara Suter:
“Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) on Sunday (Aug. 16) expressed anger over President Trump’s reaction to reported conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
“I mean, not only are these conditions and the reports of the conditions heartbreaking, the response of the president of the United States pisses me off. And it should piss all of us off,” Moore, an Army veteran, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on ‘State of the Union.’
“On [Aug. 14] Trump disagreed with the idea that family members of sailors and troops on the USS Abraham Lincoln were worried over the state of the aircraft carrier.
“‘No, they’re not,’ Trump told reporters when questioned about reports that highlighted the deteriorating conditions.
“‘That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and is being replaced with another very similar ship,’ Trump added, confirming that the U.S. was moving another aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, to the Middle East to replace the USS Lincoln.
“In November, the Lincoln deployed from San Diego and has remained out at sea uninterrupted for more than 260 days.”
