IndianRepublic.in

Jaishankar told the General Assembly that Bharat's right to self-defence against terrorism 'will be exercised', in a speech that also put the Gulf shipping crisis at the centre of India's case for a reordered world Screengrab of UN address; Via: @sidhant on X India's external affairs minister warned the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday that his country would exercise its right to defend itself against terrorism, and that existing understandings with a neighbour he did not name could be reopened. "Yesterday, a serial practitioner of terrorism misrepresented facts before this Assembly," S Jaishankar told the general debate at the assembly's 81st session in New York. Arguments had been invoked, he said, to normalise terrorism and claim immunity from its consequences. "That will not stand." He did not name Pakistan, whose prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, had addressed the assembly the previous day. But the reference was unmistakable, ...

  At a 'Bhajan Clubbing' evening in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined an audience of young Indians for two hours of devotional songs, in a scene that says something about where the country's oldest practice is finding its newest audience Image Source: @BJP4India on X The stage lights in a central Delhi park on Friday evening did what stage lights everywhere do. They swept the crowd, caught raised hands, and threw a wash of colour over several hundred faces, most of them young. The sound system was built for a concert. The set ran close to two hours. What the crowd was singing, though, was older than the city around it. The songs were bhajans, devotional compositions addressed to Ram, to Krishna, to Mahadev and Parvati, carried on guitars and drums rather than harmonium and manjira, but with the words largely unchanged. Somewhere in the middle of the gathering, not on a dais above it, sat the prime minister. Narendra Modi arrived, probably, unannounced ...

New  Delhi has given itself until the end of 2029 to uproot the drug trade, in a country that sits on the main corridor between the world's two largest opium-producing regions Image Source: @AmitShah on X India's home minister Amit Shah has set a date for the end of his country's drug trade. By 31 December 2029, Shah recently told a gathering of state anti-narcotics chiefs in New Delhi, India will have uprooted it. The pledge is the most ambitious any Indian government has made on narcotics, and it is being made by a country in an unusually exposed position. India lies between the Golden Crescent, the opium belt spanning Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to its north-west, and the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet to its east. Between them, those two regions have supplied most of the world's illicit opium for half a century. India is the land bridge, and increasingly the market. Shah was speaking at the third national conference of Anti-...

Tributes from the prime minister, union ministers, chief ministers and the opposition mark 94 years since the birth of the man who opened up India's economy and led it with care for a decade Image Source: @RahulGandhi on X Political leaders from across India's divides paid tribute to Manmohan Singh on Saturday, which marks the 94th anniversary of the former prime minister's birth and the second since his death in December 2024. Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the nation in remembering him by stating, "Tributes to our former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji on his birth anniversary. He spent many years in public life and served the nation with dedication." Union minister Kiren Rijiju said Singh's long years of service and his contribution to public life would always be remembered with respect. Defence minister Rajnath Singh said his contribution to India's progress would endure. Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said his contributions would al...

The men who surround a girl on an empty road believe they are enforcing something that is right and noble. Until that belief is dismantled, the arrests and encounters will keep coming and nothing substantial will change in the state that was once the cradle of civilization. There is an old Sanskrit word for it: kupamanduka , the frog in the well . He has never seen the sea. He does not even know that it exists. The circle of sky above him is, as far as he is concerned, the whole of the sky, and the walls around him are the limits of the world. He is not stupid. He is not even unhappy. He simply has no way of knowing what he is missing, and no reason to suspect there is anything to miss. Representational Image: @HistoryDefined on X Large parts of Bihar are living in that well. Not the whole state, and not all of its people, but enough of them, in enough villages and towns, that the consequences arrive on our screens every few weeks in the form of a recording made by someone who thought...

 The 15-nation Caribbean Community has decided to support India's candidature for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 2028-29 term, India's foreign ministry said, in the clearest outcome yet from a week of Global South diplomacy at the UN General Assembly. The decision was conveyed at the India-CARICOM foreign ministers' meeting in New York on 23 September, held on the margins of the assembly's 81st session. India's external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, co-chaired it with Melvin Bouva, Suriname's minister of foreign affairs, international business and cooperation. Jaishankar thanked the group and said India would be a strong voice of the Global South. Image Source: @DrSJaishankar Foreign ministers from Barbados, Dominica, the Bahamas, Guyana, Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Haiti, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, and Antigua and Barbuda attended, along with Grenada's finance minister, a ...

India, the European Union and five other initial co-sponsors issued a joint declaration on Monday pledging to strengthen international cooperation and reform multilateral institutions as they warned of growing conflict, polarisation and pressure on international law. The declaration, titled A Joint Commitment to Multilateralism, International Law, Peace and Prosperity , names Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, India and Kenya as its initial co-sponsors. It commits the signatories to work together on peace, sustainable development, human rights and shared prosperity. Image from UNHighLevelWeek: Via: @DrSJaishankar The signatories expressed concern about violations of international law and the increasing use of coercion, protectionism and threats or force. They also warned that economic interdependence was being used as a source of leverage, disrupting trade, supply chains, investment and development finance. The declaration did not name any country in connecti...

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar joined the inaugural Partners for Multilateralism, International Law, Peace and Prosperity summit in New York during a series of meetings on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly. Image via: @DrSJaishankar In the first meeting of the Visegrad Group and India in a foreign ministers’ format, the two sides agreed to hold annual meetings of their foreign ministers and an annual business forum, Jaishankar said. He also listed plans for closer cooperation in technology, research, education and defence, as well as cultural exchanges and support for multilateralism. The Visegrad Group comprises Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.  After that meeting, Jaishankar shared a statement by Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár supporting India’s inclusion as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Jaishankar separately said he and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot had discussed Security Council reform, the war...

A comedian's impersonation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Rahul Gandhi's student outreach event in Indore has drawn sustained criticism from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. This has shifted attention from the recruitment and examination grievances that students raised on the same stage. The leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi held the "Chhatron Ki Goonj" programme in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, on Saturday. According to the Congress transcript of the event, Rahul Gandhi said similar programmes had been held in Kota, Dehradun and Pune, and that the Indore edition was built around the theme "system versus students". Image Source: @RahulGandhi Students who came on stage described delays in state recruitment. Akhil Bharti Kranti, an aspirant for the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission examinations, said 13% of posts had been held back in recruitments over the past eight years, and that candidates were cleared through preliminary, main...