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The Morning Wrap: BJP's Excuses In Gorakhpur; PM Modi's Solution For Kashmir

Our selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
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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.

After last week's tragedy of child deaths in Gorakhpur, BJP leaders have been desperate to find excuses to defend the Uttar Pradesh government and the party itself. If the ruling party can't ensure public good, does it have the moral right to collect taxes? G Pramod Kumar asks.

In case you missed it, here's how we commemorated India's 70th Independence Day: by revisiting the story of a Muslim woman and her awakening into feminism, retrieving the history of the partition through objects and remembering personal testimonies stashed away in the collective memory of our families.

In spite of the Central government's circular informing the states of the most patriotic ways of celebrating Independence Day, Bengal, under Mamata Banerjee, defiantly rejected all the suggestions and decided to walk it alone. Here's Sandip Roy's take on the controversy.

According to Indian sources, a scuffle broke out between Indian and Chinese troops in the disputed Doklam plateau near Sikkim after soldiers from the People's Liberation Army of China tried to break into the area on the Indian side.

In his Independence Day speech to the nation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made several statements that his government, especially his party leaders ruling various states, may be held to account for in the coming months. But the most radical of these remarks was his suggestion to defuse the Kashmir crisis through hugs, not bullets.

In the states, the chief ministers, in their Independence Day speeches, made several appeals and pledges to their people, from taking stronger steps to eradicate communalism to help fight the menace of deadly diseases by becoming proactively involved in the Swachh Bharat mission, their views were manifold.

US President Donald Trump doesn't like to retract statements, even ones made in folly, as he proved once again with his comments about the violence that broke out in Virginia. He maintained that the blame for the rally taken out by white supremacists that led to the clashes belonged to both the parties involved.

Defying the order of the Uttar Pradesh government to sing the national anthem on Independence Day, some madrassas in Kanpur, Meerut and Bareilly hoisted the tricolour to the tune of Saare Jahan Se Achchha.

More than fifty years after he brought the Green Revolution to India, MS Swaminathan, the architect of the movement, spoke to The Hindu about the crisis faced by Indian's agriculture at the moment.

Analysing PM Modi's Independence Day speech to the nation, Ashutosh Varshney points out in The Indian Express his emphasis on growth and neglect of the rise of communal violence across the country.

Centralising recruitment, through the formation of an All-India Judicial Service along the lines of the All India Services, will not address the multiple problems in the judiciary, writes Alok Prasanna Kumar in The Hindu.

In light of the Gorakhpur tragedy involving the deaths of children, Pratap Bhanu Mehta asks in The Indian Express if it is too late for India, turning 70 this year, to recover its humanity.

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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.