Was a time when only violence depicted sympathetically on screen was against the moneylender or landlord (Mother India/Ganga Jamuna) fr ownership of land/rights. Now Bollywood in its neoliberal-Hindutva phase does so only for staking ownership over women's body or communal honour

Amanda Seyfried says her life right now is “interesting” and “everything that’s happening is meant to happen” at the #AcademyMuseumGala

यौन उत्पीड़न, कपड़े खींचना और निजी अंगों पर हमला - लोकतंत्र के लिए आवाज़ उठाने वाली छात्राओं और महिलाओं के साथ दिल्ली पुलिस की बर्बरता शर्मनाक हदें पार कर रही है। यह सब आवाज़ों को दबाने की उस साजिश का हिस्सा है, जिसमें इतना डरा दो, इतना अपमानित करो कि कोई दोबारा सवाल उठाने की हिम्मत ही न करे। मोदी-शाह जानते हैं कि जिस दिन सत्ता हाथ से गई, उस दिन उनकी मनमानी की कहानी खत्म। उनका यही डर पुलिस तक पहुँचता है और हिंसा बनकर देश के युवाओं और महिलाओं पर टूट रहा है।

A sad-looking, frowning young man was by himself in the foreground, dressed as a clown. His mask was up, and his face showed his humiliation. - Delmore Schwartz, “The Track Meet”

A cartoon by Avi Steinberg. See more toons from this week’s issue: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/xa…

Today's top headlines:

This past weekend, thousands of anti-government protesters were arrested in New Delhi. A movement that began several months ago, and was initially focussed on demands to reform India’s education system, has now centered itself around the government’s decision to remove more than 100 million people from the country’s voter rolls. “By sheer numbers, this is one of the largest-ever exercises of disenfranchisement in the history of the world,” Yogendra Yadav, an activist and political scientist says. Read Isaac Chotiner’s full conversation with Yadav about the widespread unrest in Narendra Modi’s India and the aggressive action taken by a panic-stricken regime that knows it is losing popularity: newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/i…

Wrong day to drag Democracy in a sentence. Look at the reactions 🤯🤯👇🏼👇🏼

Surya Dev rises every day dispelling the darkness of the night! Meanwhile our CJI Surya Kant rises everyday pushing judiciary into deep darkness!

PHOTO OF THE DAY ♥️ Courtesy, @the_hindu @shashiskashyap

A GenZ was attempting to give a ‘Batman Mask’ to Rahul Gandhi Ji and it has finally reached to him… GenZ and Youth know who is the one fighting for them..🫡

Electric scenes near the Supreme Court where Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Neha Bora, Supriya Sule & several opposition leaders atop a bus waving to thousands of people. #GyaneshMustResign #Delhi #protest #SupremeCourt #Opposition @neha_aisa #photojournalism Copyrighted photos.

As Connaught Place practically taken over by protesters, surreal to think that this very place was completely empty -- locked down with tens of thousands of security forces, barricades, goons just a couple days back.

Keep everything aside: 99% of Modi Bhakts support him only for this, though the educated ones feel ashamed to accept it openly (from real handles). Yes, this includes your family Boomers and Gen X. See it for what it is. A lust for annihilation of the other.

This has to be amongst the most sinister visuals of what is unfolding in Delhi. The police is informed by reporters about unidentified persons in a car with sticks/lathis and yet the car is allowed to drive away! Think about it for a second. A planned peaceful protest against election roll fraud is prohibited because the police cites the fear of violence and invokes a section of the law prohibiting gatherings of more than four people in central New Delhi. The police arrest individuals for speaking to reporters or looking like they are protestors even though they are not raising slogans, carrying placards or weapons of any kind. But when unidentified persons with a horde of weapons in their motor car are spotted hanging around in this prohibited zone, the police makes no attempt to establish who they are let alone detain them. Instead they are allowed, indeed, encouraged to escape! I do believe we are now at the public-private partnershipstage of fascism. With lumpens being given free reign to attack those standing up for democracy.

Gujarat Model getting exposed !

This photo by Raju Shinde of @HTMumbai is heartbreaking, angering and iconic. I don’t know if on the next day, HT carried it as the lead image on Pg One but if I were there, this one was a no brainier. #photojournalism #CJPprotest #Mumbaiprotest #HindustanTimes

Shyam Meera Singh detained at CP after being heckled and abused by Hindutva activists. @scroll_in

“Somebody – we don’t know who – decided that a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters had to be conducted. The Election Commission of India (ECI) told RTI activist Anjali Bharadwaj that it did not have minutes of any meeting that decided upon the SIR.  “Somebody – we are now piecing this together – decided that Form 6 would be given to new voters to register during SIR but it would be altered so that they cannot do so without proving that their grandfather was also on the voter list decades ago.  “Somebody – and we don’t know who – invented a tool called ‘logical discrepancy’ and wrote algorithms to eliminate voters for 11 different reasons. More than 13 crore names were deleted from India’s electoral rolls thus. “But we do know who built the digital system which helped that somebody do all this. It’s not a government department or company. It is a private company – Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – whose parent group had, in the very years that it was building that system, become the single largest identifiable funder of the party running the government the system serves. “None of that, by itself, proves wrongdoing. Companies build government software everywhere. In fact, TCS itself has done a tremendous job of building and running India’s passport system. “Companies donate to ruling parties everywhere the law permits it. What is unusual is the scale of the overlap, the choices made by TCS – or thrust upon it – in building the system, and how little of it has been publicly examined.” Truly outstanding piece by S Raghotham connecting the dots…