Today on Thursday, January 20, 2022

• Toyota announces Hilux, its maiden ‘Lifestyle Utility Vehicle’ in India 
• Significantly less deaths in 3rd COVID-19 wave: Government 
• India drop to third place in ICC Test rankings, Australia on top after dominant Ashes 
• Kamala Harris will be his running mate in 2024, says President Biden 
• Extended range BrahMos flight-tested 
• Andy Murray out in 2nd round at Australian Open 
• Mixed reality can offer health, safety benefits to first-line workers: Microsoft 
• Talking of, fighting for rights in 75 years of Independence kept India weak: PM Modi 
• India successfully test-fires Brahmos missile 
• Banaras Hindu University opens course on Hindu studies 
• Supreme Court upholds validity of OBC quota in NEET admissions 
• Walmart invites Indian sellers to join its marketplace to serve U.S customers 
• White House warns Russia on invading Ukraine after Biden seems to suggest small incursions will be tolerated 
• Kriya Medical Tech gets ICMR approval for COVID-19 testing kit 
• UAE terror attack blatant violation of international law: India 
• 5G rollout: Boeing clears Air India’s U.S. flights 
• Microsoft strides into the gaming metaverse 
• Pakistan woman sentenced to death for sending 'blasphemous' messages 
• U-19 WC | COVID-hit India stroll into QFs after beating Ireland; Australia win too 
• Recognise ‘Hinduphobia’ and violence against Buddhists, Sikhs too: Indian envoy to U.N. 
• Release political detainees in wake of growing Omicron wave: Hurriyat 
• Three of Tonga’s smaller islands badly damaged by tsunami 

Banaras Hindu University opens course on Hindu studies

The course would make the world aware of many unknown aspects of Hindu Dharma and help in taking its teachings to more people, says BHU rector V.K Shukla

“Hinduism & Brahmanism,” “Hindu of Foreign Origin” and “The antiquity and the meaning of the term Hindu.” These are subjects of some of the lectures due to be attended by students in the inaugural week of the launch of a new course, M. A Hindu Studies, by the Banaras Hindu University (BHU).

This was the first such postgraduate programme offered by any university in the country, the central varsity said.

In the first batch for the course, the university admitted 45 students, including a foreign student.

The “inter-disciplinary programme” course was in line with the New Education Policy 2020, said rector V.K Shukla. The course would make the world aware of many unknown aspects of Hindu Dharma and help in taking its teachings to more people, he said.

The lecture sessions for the first week of the course also has as subjects, “Evolution of Hindu Dharma”, “What is Hindu Studies” and “Indian Epistemology & Metaphysics.”

Vijay Shankar Shukla, director, Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, underlined the need to have such a course and said that the idea behind this went back to 18th century scholar Ganganath Jha and “travels through time to Mahamana [Madan Mohan Malviya].”

“However, the link was broken for some reasons. But, with the initiation of this course the goal appears to have been achieved,” he said.

The course under Faculty of Arts would be conducted in collaboration with the varsity’s Department of Philosophy and Religion, Department of Sanskrit and Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology.

Recognise ‘Hinduphobia’ and violence against Buddhists, Sikhs too: Indian envoy to U.N.

India’s Ambassador to the United Nations says global terror strategy is selective, urges against adding right wing extremism, violent nationalism to anti-terror resolutions

Calling for the United Nations to recognise ‘Hinduphobia’ along with other acts of religious hatred against Buddhism and Sikhism, India’s U.N. envoy T.S.Tirumurti said that the U.N.’s latest Global Counter-Terrorism strategy passed last year is full of flaws and is selective, and could reverse gains from the global consensus in the “war on terror” post 9/11. In remarks indicating the government’s discomfort with new terms being added to the definition of terrorism, he also said that terms like “violent nationalism” and “right wing extremism” must not be included to resolutions on terrorism, as they would “dilute” them.

“In the past two years, several member states, driven by their political, religious and other motivations, have been trying to label terrorism into categories such as racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism, violent nationalism, right wing extremism, etc. This tendency is dangerous for several reasons,” Mr. Tirumurti said, delivering a keynote address at a virtual conference organised by the Delhi-based Global Counter-Terrorism Centre (GCTC), where he said he spoke as Ambassador of India to the U.N. and not in his capacity as Chair of the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) at the U.N. Security Council for 2022.

India assumed the chair of the CTC this month, and Mr. Tirumurti’s strong remarks suggest that India will oppose any expansion of the terms that are included in the UNSC’s discussions on terrorism, until it demits the UNSC seat in December this year.

Mr. Tirumurti pointed out that only religious phobias against “Abrahamic religions”: Islam, Christianity and Judaism had been named in the “Global Counter Terrorism Strategy’s” 7th review passed by the U.N. General Assembly in June 2021. “The emergence of contemporary forms of religiophobia, especially anti-Hindu, anti-Buddhist and anti-Sikh phobias is a matter of serious concern and needs attention of the U.N. and all member states to address this threat,” Mr. Tirumurti said, without mentioning any examples.

In comments that appeared to counter recent criticism in western press of “right-wing” ideology in India, the envoy said that putting “labels” to “so-called” threats was “misleading and erroneous”.

“It is important to understand that in democracies right-wing and left-wing are part of the polity primarily because they come to power through the ballot reflecting the majority will of the people and also since democracy by definition contains a broad spectrum of ideologies and beliefs,” Mr. Tirumurti said, adding that national or regional narratives must not become part of global narratives.

Mr. Tirumurti said that attempts to characterise the motivation behind terror groups were another danger that could take the world “back to the pre 9/11-era” where groups were labelled as “your terrorists and my terrorists”. At the UNSC, India also chairs the 1988 Taliban Sanctions Committee, and would have to preside over any requests on easing or waiving sanctions against Taliban leaders.

“Terrorists are terrorists; there are no good and bad ones.Those who propagate this distinction have an agenda. And those who cover up for them are just as culpable,” he said, calling on the Security Council “to be on guard against new terminologies and false priorities that can dilute our focus”.

Supreme Court upholds validity of OBC quota in NEET admissions

The Supreme Court on Thursday pronounced its decision upholding the constitutional validity of providing 27% quota to Other Backward Classes (OBC) in NEET All India Quota (AIQ) seats for undergraduate and postgraduate medical courses, saying “reservation is not at odds with merit.”

A Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud observed that ‘merit’ could not be narrowed to the limit of success in open competitive exams. The merit of a person was a sum total of “lived experiences” and his or her struggle to overcome cultural and social setbacks.

Conduct CMC admissions after counselling by Selection Committee, says Supreme Court

“Merit cannot be reduced to narrow definitions of performance in an open competitive examination, which only provides formal equality of opportunities. Current competencies are assessed by competent examinations but are not reflective of excellence, capability and potential of an individual, which are also affected by lived experiences, individual character, etc,” Justice Chandrachud read out from the judgment.

Victory for States

In a significant victory for States such as Tamil Nadu, the court confirmed their power to make “special provisions” and provide reservation in educational admissions, whether in aided or unaided institutions, and government jobs for the advancement of “any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes”.

Reading out excerpts from the judgment, Justice Chandrachud said the power of the State governments to provide reservations under Article 15 (4) and (5) of the Constitution was not an “exception” to Article 15 (1), which enshrines the mandate that “the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them”.

The court held that the power of the State government to craft reservation for the OBC amplified the principle of “substantive equality” manifested through Article 15 (1).

Exams did not reflect how social, economic and cultural advantages that accrued to certain classes contributed to their success in them, the court noted.

“Examinations are not a proxy for merit. Merit should be socially contexualised and re-conceptualised... Reservation is not at odds with merit but furthers its distributive impact,” Justice Chandrachud observed.

The court reasoned that material affluence of certain individual members of a socially backward group or ‘creamy layer’ could not be used against the entire group to deny it the benefits of reservation.

“It may be that individual members of an identified group which are being given reservation are not backward or individuals belonging to non-identified group may share characteristics of a backward group with members of an identified group. The individual difference may be a result of privilege, fortune and circumstances but it cannot be used to negate the role of circumstances,” the court explained.

The court further confirmed that there was no need for the Centre to have got the prior consent of the Supreme Court before introducing OBC quota in the AIQ seats under NEET. The petitioners, several NEET aspirants, had argued that since the top court had limited reservation to 50% in the Indira Sawhney judgment, the government should have first applied to the court before tinkering with the quota calculations.

‘Policy decision’

“Providing reservation to AIQ is a policy decision that would not be subject to judicial review,” the court underscored.

The court also rejected the argument made by the petitioners that the Centre changed the “rules of the game midway”, well into the middle of the NEET admission process.

“The government introduced OBC/EWS quota before the counselling. Thus, it cannot be said that the rules of the game have been changed. Reservation would be notified by the counselling authority before the beginning of the counselling process. Therefore, the candidates applying for NEET PG are not provided any information on the distribution of the seat matrix. Such information is provided by the counselling authority only after the counselling session is to begin,” the court reasoned.

The judgment was based on petitions filed by doctors in August 2021 against a July 29, 2021, notification issued by the Directorate General of Health Services of the Ministry of Health implementing 27% and 10% reservation for OBC and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), respectively, while filling up 15% undergraduate and 50% postgraduate AIQ seats under NEET.

This part of the judgment concerning the OBC quota provided in the July 29, 2021 notification is final. Questions on the validity of the 10% quota for the EWS would be heard finally in the third week of March.

Meanwhile, on January 7, the court had allowed NEET counselling for 2021-22 admissions for AIQ seats to proceed in accordance with the July 29, 2021, notification in order to solely ensure there is no "dislocation" in medical admissions this year when the need for doctors is more due to the pandemic.

The ₹8 lakh gross annual family income limit criterion for identifying EWS, as originally notified by a January 2019 official memorandum and recommended for retention by the government-appointed former Finance Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey-led Expert Committee on December 31, 2021, would be implemented for the admission year 2021-2022.

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