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Letters

Dalit Vote Matters
The Opposition, sensing an opportunity to further its claim to be a champion of the Dalits, has opened the battle on many fronts in the wake of the home minister’s slip.

Ambedkar is no less than a god to his followers who constitute about 17 per cent of India’s 968 million voters and hence even an allusion to ‘God’ in the debate on the Constitution, of which he was the principal architect, became the tinder that set the issue on fire whose repercussions are hard to gauge now.

Truth to tell, Ambedkar’s political and social influence on Indian society has far outgrown the social justice movement he propounded to empower the suppressed and the backward who, being on the lowest rung of India’s reprehensible caste system, suffered the worst of the discrimination. Only slavery in the West could have matched the caste system’s dehumanising effect on society.

And yet the man who opposed M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru when it came to matters of principle was not so much honoured in his lifetime of contribution as a battler of the reviled ancient caste system. Neither the Congress under Nehru, which could not fully support Ambedkar’s fight on the highest principles and ideals — and so he resigned as law minister, nor the BJP, which has been prone to claiming his legacy in modern times, are the real inheritors of Ambedkar’s valiant fight for social justice

It is ironic that the two major national parties, the BJP and the Congress, which cannot claim absolute reverence to the principles enunciated by Ambedkar, are facing each other head-on about Ambedkar and the Dalits whose cause he championed throughout his life. The entire narrative in the Constitution debate seemed to be showing each other in poor light when it came to dealing with the history of Ambedkar.
DC

No Body Bags to Bury the Dead
Israeli troops killed at least 22 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on December 15 in airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents.

They said at least 11 of the dead were killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City houses, nine were killed in the towns of BeitLahiya, BeitHanoun and Jabalia camp and two were killed by drone fire in Rafah. They have no body bags to bury the dead.

Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in the three towns. The Israeli army has been operating in the towns for over two months.

In BeitHanoun, Israeli forces besieged families sheltering in Khalil Aweidaschool before storming it and ordering them to head towards Gaza City, the medics and residents said.

Some witnesses reported “severe injuries” among those who survived the attacks further north.

“They have nowhere to go because the Israeli military forces are encircling the area with tanks and armoured vehicles, and hammering the school with heavy artillery”.

A family of four were among those killed, including two children, after the classroom where they were sheltering took a “direct hit” from Israeli artillery fire that arrived without prior warning, the outlet reported.

On Dec. 5, Amnesty International released a 296-page report—featuring interviews with survivors and witnesses of Israel’s large-scale campaign of bombing, displacement, arbitrary detention, and destruction of Gaza’s agricultural land and civilian infrastructure—that conclude what l Israel has been doing in Gaza amounts to genocide.

“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” said AgnèsCallamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, upon release of the document.

As the weekend’s latest roster of death and injuries suggests, it has not stopped.
Jon Queally, Al Jazeera

Violence Against Christians
Incidents of violence against Christians in India are sharply increasing year on year since 2014. As per the complaints received on the United Christian Forum [UCF] Helpline there were 127 in 2014, 142 in 2015, 226 in 2016, 248 in 2017, 292 in 2018, 328 in 2019, 279 in 2020, 505 in 2021, 601 in 2022, 734 in 2023 and in 2024 till November end – 745 incidents respectively. This means many other incidents which may have happened, but were not reported on our hotline, are not included in the total number.

Once again, no numbers of human and church attacks from Manipur have been included. Last year too, the tragic violence and bloodshed, as well as over 200 churches which were demolished in Manipur were not added to the UCF figures.

According to a report published by PUCL, the local police collude with violence perpetrators and turn a blind eye to offences committed against Christians. In addition, the constitutional rights of Christians are being denied systematically. There has been no Christian member in the National Commission for Minorities and National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions for over five years now. Similarly, state minority commissions too are not getting Christian memberships filled up.

There is a petition pending before the Supreme Court of India calling for strict action against vigilante groups that are engaging in anti-Christian violence in India. Sadly, after initial hearings in 2022 the petition has not come up for hearing again.

There are politically motivated anti-conversion laws in 12 states of India. In the recent amendment bill of Uttar Pradesh, which is identical to those under statutes such as PMLA and UAPA, the Supreme Court observed this could be against Article 25.  
United Christian Forum, India (UCF India)

Russia-Ukraine War
Ukraine’s secret service SBU assassinated Igor Kirillov—the head of Russia’s chemical and biological weapons defence programme. It marks the high-level killing of a Russian military official inside Russia since the start of the war in 2022; Russia has vowed to retaliate.

The 54-year-old general died after a bomb detonated on an electric scooter in Moscow, shattering windows on residential buildings nearby. Kyiv had charged Kirillov in absentia the day before, tying him to over 4,800 alleged cases of chemical weapons deployment in Ukrainian territory. Kirillov was separately known for publicly accusing the US of a biological weapons programme in Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, Russia detained a 29-year-old Uzbek national who had confessed to planting and detonating a bomb which killed the General. He further confessed that Ukraine had offered him$100,000 and residency in a European country.

Russia lost over 1,520 soldiers per day last month, according to UK estimates, and is believed to be struggling to replenish its ranks. Russia is relying in part on North Korean troops to counter Ukrainian forces in Kursk.
A Correspondent

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Vol 57, No. 28, Jan 5 - 11, 2025