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The Morning Wrap: African Students In India Call Off Rally; Muslim Boy From Sangh Parivar School Tops Class X Exam

The Morning Wrap: African Students In India Call Off Rally; Muslim Boy From Sangh Parivar School Tops Class X Exam
NEW DELHI, INDIA - MAY 31: African Student Association members and Embassy officials arrive for meeting with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj at Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan on May 31, 2016 in New Delhi, India. Sushma Swaraj said that the death of Congolese national Masonga Kitanda Olivier is painful, but stressed that is not a case of racial attack and should not be seen in that context. She said that her ministry will initiate programs aimed at sensitising locals about African students in areas where their numbers are high. Congolese national Olivier was beaten to death by three men in South Delhis Vasant Kunj earlier this month. (Photo by Ravi Choudhary/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
Hindustan Times via Getty Images
NEW DELHI, INDIA - MAY 31: African Student Association members and Embassy officials arrive for meeting with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj at Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan on May 31, 2016 in New Delhi, India. Sushma Swaraj said that the death of Congolese national Masonga Kitanda Olivier is painful, but stressed that is not a case of racial attack and should not be seen in that context. She said that her ministry will initiate programs aimed at sensitising locals about African students in areas where their numbers are high. Congolese national Olivier was beaten to death by three men in South Delhis Vasant Kunj earlier this month. (Photo by Ravi Choudhary/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

Essential HuffPost

Eight months after a Muslim man was lynched by a mob alleging that he had slaughtered a calf, a report prepared by a forensic laboratory in Mathura has found that the meat in question belonged to 'cow or its progeny'. Based on the inference of a veterinary doctor in Dadri, the police had then said that the meat 'prima facie looked like mutton'.

An eight-year-old gaming app developer met Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on his visit to India recently and didn’t shy from presenting his gaming app ‘Let There Be Light'. The game lets its players build factories, farms and earn coins if the city becomes prosperous. The young developer also told Nadella that he wanted to be the CEO of Microsoft one day.

Railways minister Suresh Prabhu, who is looking at an image makeover for the always-waitlisted Indian Railways, announced a number of changes which are set to take place from June and July. Apart from upgrading wait-listed Rajdhani passengers to an Air India flight, other changes such as — executive lounges at railway stations, 50% refund on Tatkal tickets and no extra charge on the usage of debit and credit cards — have also been announced.

Main News

Sanjay Bhandari, the controversial arms dealer and defence consultant whose premises were searched by the IT Department between in April, admitted that the email trail recovered from his computer was indeed that of messages exchanged between him, Robert Vadra and Vadra’s assistant Manoj Arora.

Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday said that the brutal killing of a Congolese man in Delhi was a criminal act, not racial. The Association of African Students in India which had earlier called for a March for Justice postponed the rally in view of the high-level meetings and assurances given for the 'safety and security' of Africans.

An eight-year-old girl, who was allegedly abducted and raped by a youth in Delhi's Kirari area, pretended to be dead to escape from the clutches of her rapist. The accused took the girl to a vacant plot in the neighbouring lane where he forced himself upon her. Scared that the man would kill her the girl lay totally immobile and ran home once he left.

Off The Front Page

Sarfaraz Hussain, a Muslim student in Assam who studies in a school run by a Sangh Parivar institution, topped the Class X exams by securing 590 marks out of 600. The 16-year-old has also won several awards in Sanskrit essay-writing and debate competitions, apart from topping the all-Guwahati Gita recitation contest two years ago. Proud of Hussain's success, the head of Shishu Shikshya Samiti in Assam, however, added that there have been other examples of Muslim students from their schools topping the Class X exams.

After comedian Tanmay Bhatt made a snapchat video of legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, the media was outraged by the 'insensitivity'. Now, Mangeshkar's sisters Asha Bhosle and Meena Khadikar have displayed their displeasure about it. The sisters said that they wanted to find out what 'Bharat Ratna's importance was in India', and that they hadn't told Mangeshkar about it, since 'her health is sensitive'.

A 40-year-old homemaker and a mother of three has become the first Indian woman to own a golden Lamborghini Huracan. Kolkata-based Sheetal Dugar drives the sleek vehicle during Club GT’s (an elite club for car owners) the Sunday morning supercar race-offs and wins every single time. Priced at ₹3.43 crore, the Huracan had a top speed of 325 kmph, and can sprint to 100 kmph from standstill in only 3.2 seconds.

Opinion

Tanmay Bhat has every right to mock singer Lata Mangeshkar and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, but a little sensitivity wouldn’t hurt, writes Baradwaj Rangan in The Hindu. "At what point does humour tip over into insensitivity... It’s troubling to note that liberals, who should know better, are getting to be as touchy as conservatives, picking on every small thing instead of laughing it off. But it’s important to recall Charlie Hebdo. There are rights and there is decorum — and even Bhat knows this. Bhat’s video is another reminder that there are two distinct Indias today. One is the Westernised India that wants India to be like the US or the UK and thinks Saturday Night Live-style skits — the kind peddled by Tanmay Bhat and his cohorts, where anything can be said about anyone — are cool," he says.

It is time we acknowledge that racism, like many related oppressions, is part of our everyday structures and institutions, writes Anuradha M Chenoy in Hindustan Times. "The reason that resistance against racism needs to be promoted is because it is a major challenge within India. It is present in the association of being ‘fair’ as an aspect of beauty. It is deeply associated with caste discrimination. Racism intersects with different kinds of exclusions and discriminations," she says.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s remarks on judicial activism are timely. The Supreme Court is increasingly, and controversially, asserting control over the executive and legislature, writes TR Andhyarujina in The Indian Express. "The public in India has now become accustomed to seeing the Supreme Court correcting government action in trifling matters which should not be its concern... In reality, no legal issues are involved in petitions; the court is only moved for better governance and administration in such cases, which does not involve the exercise of any judicial function. Jaitley’s pungent statement, therefore, should revive the debate on the overreaching jurisdiction of the Supreme Court," he writes.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.