New Delhi: The #MeToo wave in the Malayalam film industry and the Kolkata rape-murder emerged as headliners in The New York Times over the weekend.
Before #MeToo upended Hollywood, India tried to do it first, the NYT points out in a report on the movement in the Kerala film industry. It posits the recently released Hema Committee Report as a second wind to the movement in Kerala for equitable working conditions and justice for sexual assault and harassment within the film industry.
The NYT also contextualises the release of the Hema Committee Report and its galvanising effect on the heels of the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital. In the backdrop of the latter, another NYT report looks into the working conditions of medical workers across India, pointing out overcrowded hospitals and gruelling shifts to overwhelmed doctors and angry patients.
The Washington Post, in a report last week, focused on the upcoming Kashmir elections, the first in a decade.
Summarising the polls, the Post underlines that Kashmir is a region now directly governed by the central government. “The elected assembly will only have nominal control over education and culture,” it says.
“Kashmir’s statehood status has to be restored for the new government to have power. Even Kashmiri pro-India parties, like the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party, have vowed to politically and legally fight for the return of Kashmir’s semi-autonomy,” it adds.
Global editorials, meanwhile, positioned India, on the one hand, as a staunch American ally and as an independent powerhouse on the other.
In global editorials and opinion pages, India’s exact position on the world stage continues to bewilder. On one hand, India is a staunch American ally, ready to step onstage and assist the American actor whenever necessary. On the other hand, India is done waiting in the wings and is inching closer and closer to the spotlight.
For instance, a Washington Post editorial suggests in a refreshing take that “rich and poor countries can fight climate change together”. The onus, the Post says, is on the US to encourage the development and spread of technologies that will accelerate decarbonisation across developing countries.
“US politics are still stuck on the notion that contributing to decarbonization in India and Bangladesh is foreign aid — a favor — rather than a contribution to the well-being of all humans, including Americans,” it points out. The US, it suggests, would do better by the climate by encouraging the deployment of green technology outside its borders — the question is whether India or Bangladesh would take it. India, here, is neatly slotted into the ‘poor country’ category alongside Bangladesh — a comparison that would cause Indian nationalists to shudder.
In an essay on the perils of isolationism in Foreign Affairs, arguing that the world still needs America, and vice versa, former United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice calls India a key American ally that Chinese territorial claims have challenged. Rice writes that India, through its membership in the Quad, is “cooperating closely with the US military and emerging as a pivotal power in the Indo-Pacific”.
To Rice, India is an important means to end — except India definitely needs America just a little bit more than the other way around.
In the South Asian neighbourhood, the United News of Bangladesh ran a story quoting Michael Kugelman’s speech in a webinar. Kugelman, Director of the South Asia Institute at Wilson Center in Washington D.C., says Bangladesh cannot afford to lose India and should “very carefully” pursue “workable relations” with India. The piece includes Kugelman’s suggestions on what the Mohammed Yunus-led interim government should do about India.
“Don’t unthinkingly succumb to the temptations of populism,” Kugelman cautions. “There is, as we all know, extensive levels of anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh. One can understand why.”
Suggesting “rich and poor countries can fight climate change together”, an editorial in The Washington Post asserts that the onus is on the US to deploy green technology beyond its borders but questions whether India will accept any movement in this direction.
“US politics are still stuck on the notion that contributing to decarbonisation in India and Bangladesh is foreign aid—a favour—rather than a contribution to the well-being of all humans, including Americans,” it points out, suggesting more climate-proactive steps in what it calls ‘poor’ countries such as India or Bangladesh.
But that’s the only whiff of anti-India sentiment in this news cycle.
On a different note, the Kyiv Post, on Monday, lavished praise on Prime Minister Modi for his Ukraine visit, highlighting his ‘warm hugs’, prayers, and commemorative soft toys for all the children who died in the war with Russia.
While mentioning that the White House has called India a strong strategic partner, the opinion piece references Kugelman’s assertion that the Kyiv visit shows India’s “strategic autonomy” and that it “isn’t in the business of placating Western powers”. Besides underlining India’s emerging role as a voice for the Global South, the piece emphasises India’s influence over Russia.
Moving slightly eastwards, the South China Morning Post this week took note of India’s cheetah experiment and US-India relations.
Acknowledging the Modi government’s diplomatic efforts with multiple African nations, an SCMP report dives deep into how the world’s first intercontinental translocation of wild cats is on the “verge of collapse”.
Another SCMP report describes India’s recent defence agreements with the US as New Delhi pulling off a “miracle”. It signals America’s “deep commitment” to South Asia—vis-a-vis India—as the Chinese military footprint expands.
But enough of what India’s doing in the present — even global media can’t resist taking a dip into India’s glorious past.
Taking a step forward, The Guardian, on Monday, ran an excerpt from William Dalrymple’s latest book, acknowledging the significant role of ancient India in shaping the West.
In the excerpt from The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, Dalrymple writes that the British education system unfairly attributes ancient mathematical innovation to the Arabs when they had taken these concepts from the Indian civilisation. He blames the lapse on the “lingering legacy of colonialism, and more specifically, Victorian Indology, which undermined, misrepresented and devalued Indian history, culture, science and knowledge”.
“Out of India came not just pioneering merchants, astronomers and astrologers, scientists and mathematicians, doctors and sculptors, but also the holy men, monks and missionaries of several distinct strands of Indic religious thought and devotion, Hindu and Buddhist,” Dalrymple further writes.
The excerpt finally asks the question that seems to be the cornerstone of all Indian foreign policy talking points — and New Delhi dinner parties — alike.
The excerpt ends with: “The only questions are whether it is India, China, or the US that will dominate the world by the end of this century, and what sort of India that will be”.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
Also read: Hema Committee tears down Kerala’s progressive image. Malayali men are still just men