Over 250 Trade partners across circles rewarded for their contribution to the business

Bengaluru: Aircel, one of the leading innovative mobile service providers in India, successfully executed ‘Lakshya 2.0’ program for the year 2016 to reward its top performing trade partners in India. Under this trade partner engagement program, 256 channel partners across circles were flown/taken for a 3 days fully-paid trip to ‘land of beaches’ Goa. ‘Lakshya 2.0 was aimed to acknowledge partners such as Sales Employees, Distributors and FOS, who achieved over 100% target in a period of 3 months.

The program offers its winners comprehensive line up of benefits including International Travel, Domestic trip, Gold/Silver Coins & Laptops among other things, while maintaining strong relationships with retailers and distributors.

Commenting on the program, Anupam Vasudev, Chief Marketing Officer, Aircel said, “We ensure that we maintain strong bonds with our trade partners by spending considerable time with our retailers and distributors in motivating, educating, training and addressing their queries as they are a vital link between us and the consumers. In order to establish and build relationships with the channel and partner community, we organize a variety of programs and offers, one such initiative is Lakshya2.0”.

He further added that, “We are pleased with the results of Lakshya 2.0 and would like to thank our trade partners for their endless support. We value the relationship we share with them and appreciate their commitment towards the Aircel family. We are happy that the program was welcomed with a lot of enthusiasm by our trade partners”.

Aircel has always strived to engage and bond with its trade partners through different measures. The program was aimed to connect with the trade partners and inspire them to work hard and achieve their targets. It was one of the most appealing initiatives of Aircel which motivated the trade partners to outperform themselves and raise the bar for quality performance. Aircel is committed to the growth of its partners by empowering the trade community to provide customer rich experience.

New Delhi: Historian Audrey Truschke refuses to buy the argument that Aurangzeb razed temples because he hated Hindus saying it has roots in colonial-era scholarship, where positing timeless Hindu-Muslim animosity embodied the British strategy of divide and conquer.

In her new book, she also says that had Aurangzeb’s reign been 20 years shorter, he would have been judged differently by modern historians.

Truschke, an assistant professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University in Newark and an avid follower of Mughal history, New Jersey, has now come up with a new biography on Aurangzeb.

“Aurangzeb: The Man and The Myth”, published by Penguin Random House, takes a fresh look at the controversial Mughal emperor.

According to Truschke, Hindu and Jain temples dotting the landscape of Aurangzeb’s kingdom were entitled to Mughal state protection, and he generally endeavoured to ensure their well-being.

“By the same token, from a Mughal perspective, that goodwill could be revoked when specific temples or their associates acted against imperial interests. Accordingly, Emperor Aurangzeb authorised targeted temple destructions and desecrations throughout his rule,” she claims.

“Many modern people view Aurangzeb’s orders to harm specific temples as symptomatic of a larger vendetta against Hindus. Such views have roots in colonial-era scholarship, where positing timeless Hindu-Muslim animosity embodied the British strategy of divide and conquer,” she writes.

She says there are, however, numerous gaping holes in the proposition that Aurangzeb razed temples because he hated Hindus.

“Most glaringly, Aurangzeb counted thousands of Hindu temples within his domains and yet destroyed, at most, a few dozen. This incongruity makes little sense if we cling to a vision of Aurangzeb as a cartoon bigot driven by a single-minded agenda of ridding India of Hindu places of worship.

“A historically legitimate view of Aurangzeb must explain why he protected Hindu temples more often than he demolished them.”

Truschke argues that Aurangzeb followed Islamic law in granting protection to non-Muslim religious leaders and institutions.

“Indo-Muslim rulers had counted Hindus as dhimmis, a protected class under Islamic law, since the eighth century, and Hindus were thus entitled to certain rights and state defences.

“Yet, Aurangzeb went beyond the requirements of Islamic law in his conduct towards Hindu and Jain religious communities. Instead, for Aurangzeb, protecting and, at times, razing temples served the cause of ensuring justice for all throughout the Mughal Empire.”

Truschke claims state interests constrained religious freedom in Mughal India, and Aurangzeb did not hesitate to strike hard against religious institutions and leaders that he deemed seditious or immoral.

“But in the absence of such concerns, Aurangzeb’s vision of himself as an even-handed ruler of all Indians prompted him to extend state security to temples.”

She says Aurangzeb had 49 years to make good on his princely promise of cultivating religious tolerance in the Mughal Empire, and he got off to a strong start.

“In one of his early acts as emperor, Aurangzeb issued an imperial order (farman) to local Mughal officials at Benares that directed them to halt any interference in the affairs of local temples.”

Truschke claims that political events incited Aurangzeb to initiate assaults on certain Hindu temples.

She also argues that if Aurangzeb’s reign had been 20 years shorter, closer to that of Jahangir (who ruled for 22 years) or Shah Jahan (who ruled for 30 years), modern historians would judge him rather differently.

“But Aurangzeb’s later decades of fettering his sons, depending on an increasingly bloated administration, and undertaking ill-advised warring are a hefty part of his tangled legacy. Thus, we are left with a mixed assessment of a complex man and monarch who was plagued by an unbridgeable gap between his lofty ambitions and the realities of Mughal India,” she writes.

(Agencies)

New Delhi: The campaign of a Kargil martyr’s daughter against the ABVP today drew controversial reaction from BJP leaders with Union minister Kiren Rijiju wondering who was “polluting” her mind and another comparing her with wanted gangster Dawood Ibrahim.

Pratap Simha, BJP MP from Mysuru, tweeted, “At least Dawood did not use the crutches of his father’s name to justify his anti-national stand.”

His tweet came as the campaign of Gurmehar Kaur went viral online with her photograph in which she said, “Pakistan did not kill my father. War killed him.”

To mock her, Simha also posted a photograph showing Dawood with the message, “I didn’t kill people in 1993. Bombs killed them.”

Rijiju also took to Twitter to take a dig at her. “Who’s polluting this young girl’s mind? Strong armed forces prevent a war. India never attacked anyone but a weak India was always invaded,” the minister of state for Home Affairs said.

Talking to reporters, he later said, “One should not say things which could demoralise the countrymen and the forces. Everybody has freedom but that does not mean that you raise slogans to weaken the country.”

24-year-old Kaur, daughter of Kargil martyr Captain Mandeep Singh and a Delhi University student, had started a social media campaign “I am not afraid of ABVP” following the violence at Ramjas college. Her campaign has gone viral and received support from students across various universities.

(Agencies)