#jnu)

the NITI AAYOG (planning commission)’s head. Amitabh Kant, says India is “too much of a democracy” and “strong reforms are needed”. This is what I call Nazism.

The Pfizer vaccine has proven to be dangerous to people with allergies.

TMC MP Mahua Moitra called the press “dui poishar press” (two cent worth press) when a reporter started hogging her in the House. A statement which is actually true, but has offended many in India.

Farmers have refused govt proposals, mostly because they are like fairy bargains promising you something, and then it ends up biting you in the ass and making your life hell. A farmer has also succumbed to the chilly December cold and has died. Meanwhile, BJP members are saying these protests have been funded by Pakistan and China. Also, all the opposition leaders will be meeting the President to request him to repeal these powers.

Due to lack of govt funding to JNU, PhD students have lost years worth of research and evidence to termites and seepage. People have gladly chosen to ignore this and the sorry state of education in our country.

We have 9.31 billion rupees (around 130 million US$) to build a new parliament building.

Evidence now proves that most ancient Indians were non-vegetarians, as opposed to the “Hindus are all vegetarians” theory.

And our favourite madwoman, K*ngana, has called these protests, where farmers are beat up by police (apparently this happening in the US is a very big deal, just not here) as riots. Also, she believes herself to be Goddess Durga’s chosen one and wants to build a temple to her.

My birthday arrives on 18th December which is next Friday. We will be leaving for the wedding tomorrow which has been shortened to a gathering of 250 people.

please don't ignore this. students are beaten up at Jawaharlal Nehru University in india and police is not protecting students. instead they're helping the goons. nobody is helping the students. a lot of students are badly injured.

It is this divisive politics and bigoted project you have to speak and act against. We have to dismantle the caste structure, its figures and everything that represents and prospers the idea of caste. In this regard, that statue of Manu in Rajasthan High Court must be brought down, all copies of Manu Smriti must be burnt just as Ambedkar burnt them, beef eating must go mainstream, beef festivals must get organised on public spaces for it was the beef that sent Dalits to the borders of villages sowing seeds of caste system. Beef eating is mentioned even in the starting texts of Hinduism - in Rigveda, a revered saint says he likes his beef tender, that of a calf. Brahmins were called killers of cow essentially because a cattle was slaughtered to feed them when they visited a house. Hinduism, that of Vedas and Ramayana isn't of vegetarianism. Original Ramayana of Valmiki has mention of so many meat dishes but later texts purged them for reasons known best to them. It was during later Shaivite tradition with Shankaracharya that campaign for vegetarianism in Brahmins and upper caste took shape and this campaign wasn't driven by ideas rooted in morality but to stop the spread of Buddhism and Jainism which propagated principles of non-violence. Even Buddhists weren't originally vegetarians, they campaigned against sacrificial slaughtering of animals which was rampant in Hinduism then and is even widespread today. Real vegetarians were Jains. As people started flocking in large numbers to these religions from Hinduism, feared Brahmins, to maintain their hegemony, started propagating vegetarianism. And so Dalits were pushed to boundaries of their villages, and thus superiority of nonsense started taking shape. Beef eating is as Hindu as Vedas are. Those who say beef eating isn't Hindu way of life are saying Vedas are anti-Hindu texts. Know this. Campaign against beef is extension of old system to create the other - dalits then and Muslims now - it is through this nonsense that they derive their strength and legitimacy from. Let them do their nonsense but let them not claim they are Hindus because eating beef is part of Hinduism as long as Vedas are termed Hindu texts, campaigning against beef eating is Brahminism, a narrow minded set of ideas whose purpose is to divide the society to maintain oppressive order. Beef is Hindu way of eating mentioned in Vedas and practised by early Hindus.

So have your beef, talk about it, hell, celebrate beef eating and while you're at it, also burn those copies of Manusmriti and take down that statue of Manu who said men are to be oppressed because they were born in different houses and women are to serve men because they are born differently or they are impure because they bleed. Take down that statue. Read Babasaheb Ambedkar. Educate, Agitate, Organize!

Jai Bhim!!

Liberty of thought, freedom of expression and dissent are all bring quashed in India. University campuses are being turned into war zones and educated masses of the country are silent spectators as the RSS fundamentalists wreak havoc. Please talk about this.

Please talk about state sponsored violence in Uttar Pradesh, the rape and torture of orphan Muslim kids at the hands of the police, of destruction of private property by the same force that exists to maintain law and order.

The forest man of India

The Majuli Island in Assam is a river Island in the Brahmaputra basin. Infact, it the largest river Island on earth. It was a part of Jorhat district before becoming India's first and only island-district in 2016.

Decades of deforestation has resulted in land erosion on this island. In one century, the island has shrunk to one-third its original size.

Majuli is also home to Jadav Payeng, who over the past 40 years, transformed 1360 acres of the Island into a "man-made" forest! He started off in 1979 with 20 seedlings. Today, this forest is several thousand trees dense and houses Bengal tigers, rhinoceros, deer, rabbits, monkeys, elephants and several varieties of birds. Jadhav is aptly called the Forest man of India.

It all began, way back in 1979, because of floods and dead snakes. There in lies a tale!

As a child, Jadav would witness annual flooding of the Brahmaputra and the resultant damage to land and property. But one day, when he was 16 years old, he saw hundreds of snakes that were washed up during the floods, lying dead on the basin. They had died because of the earth's heat, once the water had dried up. There was no tree cover to provide the necessary cooling for these creatures.

Jadhav sat down and cried, wondering how the snakes must have felt before dying, and how much time remained before humans met with a similar fate.

He asked the tribal people in a nearby village what he should do. They told him to plant trees, bamboo in particular, since bamboo could best withstand the harsh conditions of the basin. They gave him 25 saplings and some seeds too. So, under the hot sun, Jadav started planting.

Later that year, the social forestry division of the neighbouring district launched a tree plantation scheme, a few kilometers away from his home. Jadav worked in this project for 5 years. Post its completion, while all others dispersed, he continued to tend to those trees as well as expanding his own "forest."

Some time along the way, locals recognized his love for the woods and nicknamed him "Molai" - which mean forest in the local dialect. They named the "one-man-made" forest on Majuli Island the Molai Forest.

Gradually, his forest attracted visitors. First the birds came, then animals came, then the snakes came. That's when he cried again - this time out of happiness.

Jadav proudly talks about the 100 elephants that visit the forest and live there for 6 months every year. Recently, some elephant cubs were born in Molai's forest. He felt like a proud father.

Jadav and his Molai forest were hidden from the world till 2008, when forest department officials went to the area in search of a herd of 115 elephants that had damaged property in a nearby village. The officials were surprised to see such a large and dense forest in that area.

But he really came to public limelight when Jorhat-based freelance journalist and wildlife photographer Jitu Kalita wrote about him in the Assamese newspaper The Dainik Janambhumi in 2010, leading to hundreds of stories in various publications in the years that followed, as well as numerous documentary films on him. 

Felicitations came in thick and quick. The Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University named him The Forest man of India. Jadav proudly cherishes his felicitation by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.

In 2015, the Government of India conferred to him the Padma Shri - the fourth highest civilian award.

But in his heart, Jadav Payeng seems most comfortable in the 1360-acre home that he built for himself, over 41 years, which he painstakingly keeps expanding, day by day. He says he will plant trees till his last breath.