Dilip Simeon's blog

Shyam Sunder Paliwal knows his way through the trees. Pushing through low branches, he reaches a shady copse where a profusion of different varieties grow. Every evening, he comes here on his motorbike to see one tree in particular, a burflower –  kadam  in Hindi – that symbolises sublime love. In the silence of the copse, he wraps both arms tightly around the slender trunk and rests his head against it, eyes closed. “This is my daughter’s,” he says. Kiran, Paliwal’s 16-year-old daughter, died in 2006 – a tragedy he marked by planting the burflower tree. He went on to channel his grief into a mission. “She meant so much to me. How could parents kill a baby girl in the womb?” He knew what used to happen in Piplantri when a baby girl was born. A family member would push a hard, jagged grain into her mouth. That would generally be enough to start an infection that led to the baby’s death. But after Kiran’s death, Paliwal, the village chief, vowed there would be no mor...

Dr DC Anjaria, independent director and former audit committee chairman of Gujarat International Finance Tec-City—GIFT City, had filed a fresh civil application demanding investigation of GIFT-City by Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), as has been ordered by the NCLT (National Consumer Law Tribunal) with respect to the beleaguered parent—Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS). Dr Anjaria's original petition had alleged that this  Rs70,000-crore GIFT-City   project had virtually been gifted away to the private sector partner, IL&FS, leading to massive losses to the government and the people. He also alleged falsification in accounts, and incorrect recording of audit committee meeting at GIFT-City. The new application has also added names of fresh respondents, including a former Whole Time Member of SEBI (Securities & Exchange Board of India).  In his civil application to the 2016 Writ petition No 260 of 2015 (PIL) filed last we...

NB: This is one of the most poisonous and thuggish regimes in the modern world.  DS Jamal Khashoggi is not the first  Saudi exile to be killed . No one today remembers Nassir al-Sa’id, who disappeared in Beirut in 1979 and has not been seen since. Prince Sultan bin Turki  was kidnapped in Geneva  in 2003. Prince Turki bin Bandar al-Saud, who applied for asylum in France,  disappeared in 2015 . Maj Gen Ali al-Qahtani, an officer in the Saudi National Guard who died while in custody,  showed signs of abuse : his neck appeared twisted and his body was badly swollen. There are many, many others. Thousands languish in jail. Human rights activists branded as terrorists are on death row on charges that Human Rights Watch  says “do not resemble recognisable crimes” . I know of one business leader who was strung upside down and tortured. Nothing has been heard of him since. In Saudi Arabia, you are one social media post away from death. A Saudi plane...

Withdraw the ordinance, forget the triple talaq bill, the Supreme Court verdict is a sufficient shield, the moderate Muslim argues -  Javed Anand It would be no surprise if on September 21, Hindus from West Bengal deserted the ruling Trinamool Congress en masse to join the Bharatiya Janata Party. The saffron party would owe this bonanza out of the blue to Maulana Siddiqullah Chowdhury, a minister in the Mamata Banerjee cabinet and state president of the religious organisation Jamiatul Ulema-i-Hind.  Chowdhury did not do much, he only made a statement. Responding to The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights in Marriage)  Ordinance , 2018, promulgated by the BJP-led government at the Centre on September 19, the mullah-minister proclaimed, “For us, our holy scripture, the  Quran Sharif , is supreme and if any constitutional provision or any law contradicts the  Quran , then our scripture will prevail and not the law or Constitution… The ordinance will have no ef...

James Raven: WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK? Reviewed by EVE HOUGHTON The history of the book does not always involve the study of either history or books. As James Raven shows in this slim, engaging volume, the question of what sort of object might count as a book remains very much up for debate. The history of the book in the Western world has traditionally made “book” synonymous with “codex” – gatherings of leaves folded or stitched together – but in Professor Raven’s geographically and chronologically wide-ranging account, it takes a variety of material forms: Chinese tortoise shells inscribed 3,000 years ago; Sumerian clay tablets impressed with cuneiform scripts; knotted string records, or  khipus , used for record-keeping by South American Incan officials. The boundaries of the book seem even less clearly defined in the era of the blog post and Kindle. Furthermore, the “history” of the book might not capture the full range and diversity of a scholarly endeavour that ...

NB : The case comes in a state with some of the highest sexual assault and domestic violence rates in the nation. The victim was an Alaska Native woman, a group that faces the highest sexual assault rate in Alaska at 42 percent. The Associated Press recently reported how Native American women face disproportionate levels of violent crime. Maybe  this judge can now hope to get promoted to the US Supreme Court. Incidentally, here's what  Clarence Thomas was up to after he made it into the hallowed circle of American justice. DS A man in Alaska who was accused of kidnapping a woman from a gas station, choking her until she passed out, then masturbating over her has accepted a plea deal that will mean he does not spend any time in prison. Justin Schneider, 34, was arrested in August after offering a woman a ride from a gas station, stopping on the side of a road, asking her to step out under the pretense of loading items into the car, strangling her until she lost cons...

The head of  Interpol , the international police agency, has been arrested after returning to his native China, according to reports, with his current whereabouts unknown.  Meng Hongwei, a former minister in the  Chinese  government, disappeared after leaving the organisation’s headquarters in  France  last week with claims in China that he was detained after arriving in Beijing. The  South China Morning Post  newspaper reported that he was “taken away” by officials “as soon as he landed back in China”, but there was no clear indication why he is under investigation and which particular security agency was holding him.  French authorities say they are investigating his disappearance and a person familiar with the investigation said the initial working assumption of Western investigators was that Mr Meng had antagonised Chinese authorities in some way and had been detained as a result. The Chinese foreign ministry and the public...