Archives for 2023

 2 deaths Kerala’s Kozhikode district were caused by Nipah virus, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya confirmed on Tuesday.

A central team of experts has also been dispatched to Kerala to take stock of the situation and assist the state government in the management of the Nipah virus infection, the minister said.

The minister said he has spoken with the Kerala Health Minister Veena George on the matter.

He also said samplesto be infected with the Nipah virus, a zoonotic virus, which can be transmitted from animals to humans, from Kerala have been sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune for testing.

But, he said, as the authorities have prior experience of tackling the disease they will not let the virus spread.

This is the third time Kerala’s Kozhikode has reported deaths due to the Nipah virus. It was earlier reported in the state in 2018 and 2021.

Mandaviya said the Nipah virus cases are reported during this season.

Guidelines have also been issued on safety measures so that the virus could be prevented from spreading in humans as well as among animals, he added. 

Mandaviya also said the centre has also dispatched safety gears like PPE Kits to the state.

In a survey, the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV) has found evidence that the Nipah virus is in circulation in the bat population across nine states and one Union Territory in the country.

Apart from Kerala, the presence of Nipah viral antibodies in bats was also found in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam Meghalaya and Pondicherry.

Earlier, the state authorities had declared the two suspected deaths as ‘unnatural deaths’. Relatives of one of the deceased have also been admitted to the ICU, the Kerala health department has said. 

Following the deaths, the health department sounded an alert in the district.

The Kerala government has also set up a control room in Kozhikode and advised people to use masks as a precautionary measure.

In a Facebook post, Chief Minister said his government is viewing the two deaths seriously.

He, however, said there is no need to worry as most of those who were in close contact with the deceased are under treatment.

The Kerala health minister chaired a high-level meeting to evaluate the situation in Kozhikode and said that the entire health machinery in the district is on alert. 

JAIPUR: Fuel pumps will remain closed from 10 am to 6 pm on Wednesday and Thursday across the state, as the Rajasthan Petroleum Dealers Association has called for a strike to protest the high value-added tax (VAT) rate on fuel.

The Association has called for a two-day symbolic strike on September 13 and September 14.

The pumps will remain closed till evening. On Thursday also fuel pumps will remain closed from 10 am to 6 pm, he said.

He said that the call for a fuel pump strike was taken against high VAT rates on fuel in the state.

More than 5,700 privately operated fuel pumps across the state are participating in the strike.

A large crowd was seen at many petrol pumps on Wednesday morning, as people were not aware of the strike.

Bhati threatened an indefinite strike from September 15, if the state government failed to act on the issue.

China has once again released, a few days back, a land-border map targeting our sovereignty and integrity. It has claimed our Ladakh in the north and Arunachal Pradesh in the east as its own. There are two exaggerated lies in this narrative.

Firstly, there has never been a land border between India and China. The two countries that act as buffers between us and China are Tibet and East Turkestan. The Great Ranges of Karakoram and the Himalayas divide us and Tibet and East Turkestan.

Tibet emerged as a strong State which defeated China for two centuries but became a vassal now and then after that (like present-day Vietnam, North & South Koreas), and which was (and continues to be) the spiritual capital of the Mongols who defeated China and ruled over it, was captured by the Chinese Army after killing thousands of Buddhist monks in c. 1951. Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal head of Tibet, escaped from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, in March 1959 and took asylum in India, where he has lived since then with his followers and a Tibetan Government in exile. 

Tibetans emerged as a great force in 7 CE. The Chinese Tang Dynasty initially took no notice of them. Tang realised the grave danger when the Tibetans easily captured Chinese territories in the west and the north. Realizing that it is impossible to fight the Tibetans in the Tibet plateau, located at an average of 16000 feet, which is true even today, the Chinese decided to enter into a peace treaty with the Tibetans by paying vassalage and marrying off their princesses to Tibetan Kings. 

Ladakh, which is part of our Jammu & Kashmir, is situated between Tibet and East Turkestan states. China is interested in Ladakh because neither Tibet nor East Turkestan have fully integrated with Mainland China, and there are continuing separatist movements in these two places. Other reasons are the invaluable water resources (great rivers like the Indus, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Salween, and Irrawaddy originate in Tibet; the innumerable glaciers make Tibet the third Pole after the North and the South Poles) and the availability of other natural resources (metals, oil and gas).

Therefore, China has unleashed suppression to keep its control there. It built a highway (G-219) to link these two disturbed places through the Aksai-Chin part of Ladakh without our permission as early as c. 1953, even when India-China relations were good. As the relationship deteriorated in c. 1962, it occupied even more of Ladakh. At every opportunity, it incrementally occupies our land there. This is known as salami-slicing. As part of this approach, it entered into an agreement t with Pakistan in c. 1963 and took over our Shaksgam Valley in Gilgit, an area of 5000 sq. km. for its security needs. It continues to aggress our Ladakh. The May 2020 attacks by China at Galwan, Depsang, Pangong Tso and Demchok were part of this strategy. 

Tibet is a very vast and aggressed part of China. It alone constitutes one-eighth of the entire land mass of China. Like East Turkestan, it was aggressed and occupied 70 years ago. As we have already seen, its natural resources, like water, which can satisfy one-fourth of the entire water needs of China, are badly needed by China. China can dominate several lower-riparian states by becoming the upper riparian of those big rivers mentioned earlier. These reasons prompted China to occupy Tibet.

In 8 CE, the Abbassid army sent by the Caliph of Baghdad established Islam in China’s northwest, where the Turkic people lived in East Turkestan. Uyghurs, as we know them today, speak Turkish and came from Central Asia. Even though the Qing Emperor captured East Turkestan in the 18th century, his rule in this faraway peripheral land of the Chinese Empire was tenuous. East Turkestan was functioning as an independent state in the early 20th century. After the Communist party took power in China on October 1, 1949, it integrated the peripheral lands such as Yunnan, Tibet, East Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria more tightly with the Mainland by aggressing them. Only in c. 1955 East Turkestan was fully integrated, when its name was changed to Sinkiang. The Uyghurs have ever since opposed Chinese rule.

Therefore, in the accompanying map, all these areas have been shown as independent states but under occupation by China. China has border disputes not only with us but with many others. It has land borders with fourteen countries. Even though it settled all the border disputes (except with India and Bhutan) by the 1990s, it continues to chafe that its lands continue to be under illegal occupation by these countries. For example, it claims the entire Siberia of its closest ally, Russia.

Apart from land border disputes, China has maritime boundary disputes with all its maritime neighbours. It claims Indonesia’s Natuna Sea, which is 1500 nautical miles from the nearest Chinese shore, as its own. Historically, China never had a name for itself. Only others call it China. Similarly, China used to notify the seas around it as the East Sea and South Sea. It was the Portuguese who, in the 16th century, renamed the South Sea as ‘South China Sea’. That stuck. Because of that name, China wants to assume total control of that sea by randomly marking nine dashes and claiming possession of that waterway. It uses its powerful Navy, Coast Guard and the unofficial Maritime Militia to enforce its control over other littorals. It has occupied islands, converted reefs into islands, stationed its Navy in these places and built missile launchers and radars. It has junked the 2016 -Award of the UN Arbitral Tribunal under the UN’s UNCLOS.

While so, India has influenced this region for over 2000 years in many ways. Without wars and aggression, India had influenced many Empires that flourished richly in this region through its religion, language, literature, epics, science, sea trade, unique products, and diplomacy. Particular examples of such great Empires are Funan in the Mekong delta of South Vietnam and Cambodia between 1 and 6 CE, the Champa in Central Vietnam between 2 and 18 CE, the Sri Wijaya of Sumatra between 7 and 12 CE, and the Majapahit in neighbouring Java between 13 and 16 CE. These thalassocracies reigned this area for 2000 years as anchors of sea trade and culture. They functioned based on the Hindu and Buddhist precepts, Sanskrit as lingua franca, the Indian Luni-Solar calendar, the ‘Chakravartin’ concept of rulership, Indian philosophical thoughts, architecture, and town planning.

The Indian influence extended up to today’s Papua-New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean. The Indian ports were natural trans-shipment points for traders from the west and the east. The ocean-sailing Indian dhows traded between the Chinese seas and the Indian provinces known today as Bengal, Orissa, Tamilnadu, Kerala, Maharashtra and Gujarat. As Indian sailors were experts in predicting monsoon and trade winds, the sea trade prospered.

On the contrary, only in the 10th CE did the Song Empire allow the Chinese to trade across far seas. But this stopped when the Song Empire fell in the early 12th CE. Even though the Ming Empire allowed Chinese traders to cross oceans once again in the 15th CE, it did not continue for long. The French archaeologists who explored these areas from the 18th CE, aptly named them ‘Indo-Chine’ because of the deep and wide Indian influence. The aggressive and coercive behaviour of China now demands that this area be referred to as ‘Indo-China’. 

The sea around Vietnam had been known for a long time as the ‘Champa Sea’. The Filipinos have always referred to the sea to their west as the ‘West Philippines Sea’. The remainder of the sea must, therefore, for the reasons above, be rightly renamed as the ‘Indo-China Sea’. India and China have equally influenced this region for over 2000 years. This should also be a lesson taught to China, which wants to do cartographic aggression by renaming places and then claiming possession of these renamed places. 

The accompanying map reflects the changed names for these reasons. 

IMPHAL: Twenty-three MLAs in the ruling BJP-led government in Manipur have signed a resolution, pledging to protect the territorial integrity

The MLAs also resolved that they would soon proceed to Delhi to persuade the central leadership to bring a solution to the present crisis at the earliest. Interestingly, Chief Minister N Biren Singh was not among the signatories.

“It is unanimously resolved by all the undersigned members of the legislative assembly that we would stand for the territorial integrity of the state of Manipur and no form of separate administration will be agreed to by us,” the resolution read.

On Monday night, thousands of members of Youth of Manipur marched towards the CM’s bungalow to meet him, but security forces allowed only some of them past the barricades.

During their meeting with the CM, the YOM members demanded that legal action be taken against the 10 Kuki MLAs who demanded separate administration for the community in Manipur.

They also demanded the convening of a special assembly session to discuss the matter, and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in the state.

Nearly 200 people lost their lives and several hundreds were injured since the ethnic clashes broke out in Manipur on May 3 hill districts to protest against the Meitei community’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status.

Meiteis account for about 53 per cent of Manipur’s population and live mostly in the Imphal Valley. Tribals — Nagas and Kukis — constitute little over 40 per cent and reside in the hill districts.

Bhatkal: Ibrahim bin Fahim Shahbandri, a young talent from Bhatkal represented India at the International Qur’an Memorization Competition organized by the Saudi government in Makkah and secured the second position in his category.

For this remarkable feat, he has been awarded 60,000 Saudi Riyals.

This global competition witnessed the participation of 166 contestants from 117 countries across five different categories. The event commenced on August 25 and concluded on September 6 with the final session held at Masjid Haram. During this session, prizes were conferred upon the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth-place winners in each category.

Ibrahim’s educational journey began in Sharjah, where he actively participated in various Qur’an competitions and distinguished himself. Subsequently, he pursued his education up to the 10th standard at a school in Bhatkal, where he embarked on the noble endeavor of memorizing the Quran. Currently, he is an honors student at Jamia Salafia Banaras.

Ibrahim bin Fahim Shahbandri’s outstanding achievement has brought honor and recognition to his hometown of Bhatkal and the entire nation.

Mumbai: A fire broke out in a residential building at Kurla here early on Friday, but there was no report of anybody getting injured due to it, an official said.

The blaze erupted at 5.20 am in the meter box of Galaxy building located in Qureshi Nagar area of Kurla east due to a short-circuit, he said.

Local police and fire brigade personnel rushed to the site after being informed, and the fire was doused by around 7.15 am, the official said.