Krish Dulal, wikipedia commons, commons.wikimedia.org

The little known, and very intriguing story of the father of Nepalese democracy, and arguably its greatest modern political figure:

When India expelled the British in 1947, the Nepali people became more eager to introduce democracy to Nepal. As it was very difficult to organise a revolutionary political party inside Nepal, they used Indian territory to do so.

Now, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has a great opportunity to follow in KP’s footsteps by writing a new republican constitution. KP’s contributions to the struggle for freedom and democracy in Nepal are a grand legacy, which all of our current politicians must strive to emulate.

More: Remembering KP Bhattarai

Addressing a gathering organised on the third death anniversary memorial of leader Bhattarai here in Lalitpur on Tuesday, leader Deuba reminded that the government led by leader Bhattarai in 2047 B.S. had brought the constitution within a year. Present government can also learn lesson from him, he reiterated.

read his bio here from wiki

The Top Seven Myths debunked in 2013 according to Discovery News!

Photo Via Discovery News article

This past year was a strange one, with a variety of popular beliefs being busted. Some were welcome news: Other myths left a funk like a fart-filled balloon when they burst. Here, in no particular order, are seven popular stories and myths busted in 2013, ranging from the scientific to the sublimely pseudoscientific …

Read more at Discovery News

“This is entirely right and entirely appropriate,” Fischer said of the law. “Same-sex behavior is unnatural, it is against the order of nature: you just look at the plumbing and you can tell that, what body parts are designed for what use and you can see right away that this is contrary to nature.”

I’m sure Bryan is very familiar with said plumbing. *ahem*

*ping*

YouTube

More: Fischer Hails India Supreme Court Ruling Outlawing Gay Sex: ‘This Is Entirely Right and Entirely Appropriate’

India’s Supreme Court recently upheld a law that criminalizes homosexul behavior with up to 10 years in prison. Of course, everyone’s favorite bigot is ecstatic.

What India's Supreme Court has done is entirely right. Homosexual conduct should be contrary to public policy everywhere.

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) December 11, 2013

India's Supreme Court upheld a law passed by the elected representatives of the people. We need a Supreme Court which will do the same.

— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) December 11, 2013

Of course, India is a mostly Hindu nation. How does Fischer feel about Hindus? Do you have to ask?

[Hinduism] is a counterfeit religion,. It is an Eastern religion. It is, in essence, an occult religion. It’s a counterfeit, a false alternative to Christianity. It ultimately represents the doctrine of demons…

democraticunderground.com

But as long as those demon worshipers opress teh gays, Bryan’s cool with it I guess?

Watch the trailer for Menstrual Man here:

YouTube

Arunachalam Muruganantham had his light bulb moment when he was 29 years old, and holding a sanitary napkin for the first time.

Examining the cotton pads he was buying as a gift for his new wife, the Indian entrepreneur realized that the multinational company that produced them was probably spending cents on raw materials, and making a huge profit.

Women in Muruganantham’s village in Tamil Nadu, including his wife, would often forego these expensive pads for rags they used repeatedly through their cycles. Even more uncomfortably, sometimes they utilized husks or leaves during menstruation.

The exorbitant cost of the foreign-made pads cut into their families’ meal budget. Given a choice between fresh pads and fresh milk, they chose the latter.

A new movie, Menstrual Man, documents how, at great personal cost, Muruganantham created a cheap machine to address the persistent menstrual hygiene challenges for rural women on the subcontinent. But, as director Amit Virmani points out, the product’s traction may have more to do with social entrepreneurship than with health concerns.

[…]

Once Muruganantham had prototyped the machine, he needed testers. But his wife and other family members refused, as did girls at the nearby medical college. So Muru, as Virmani calls him, decided to become a tester himself.

He filled bottles with animal blood and attached tubes that would press the blood into his drawers as he biked and walked around town. His rural village shunned him, viewing this with suspicion. And his wife’s suspicions — that he was chasing medical college girls around town for something other than product testing — ended his marriage.

[…]

Read the rest here: ‘Menstrual Man’ Had an Idea to Help Indian Women : All Tech Considered : NPR

Crime statistics and a Gender Scorecard compiled by women’s rights activists have put chilling new perspective on an age-old social ill in India: Bride-burning and other “dowry crimes” take the life of a woman every hour.

Despite a rapidly expanding middle class, enviable economic growth and measurable strides in modernization since India’s 1947 independence, dowry deaths continue to rise year on year, as does the related plague of “cruelty by husband and relatives” — the crime defined as torture committed against women in pursuit of more marriage bounty from their parents.

India’s National Crime Records Bureau last week reported that 8,233 Indian women were killed in 2012 in dowry-related violence, or nearly one per hour. The incidence of dowry deaths grew by nearly 3% over the previous five years, and torture at the hands of a husband or family increased by 5.4%, with 99,135 cases reported by survivors in 2011.

The scope of the problems is likely to be wider than the statistics suggest, as many women and their parents are reluctant to seek prosecution for fear of scandal that would destroy their other daughters’ chances of getting married, analysts say.

Sociologists and women’s rights advocates attribute the disturbingly persistent trends to rising consumerism in India, where once-scarce and unaffordable goods like appliances and motor vehicles are now available but still beyond the reach of many families.

Bride-burning and other fatal attacks over disappointing dowries began tapering off after independence as education and income levels began a slow rising trend, said Vishakha Desai, a former president of the Asia Society and professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

More: India ‘Dowry Deaths’ Still Rising Despite Modernization

In the past seven days, we’ve seen a major terror attack on Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad Iraq where 500 prisoners, including senior members of al Qaeda were freed by terrorists, and now we’ve got reports of a major attack on a prison complex in Pakistan has meant several hundred more terrorists and Taliban have been freed.

Pakistani Taliban disguised as policemen attacked a prison in the country’s northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan, freeing more than 300 prisoners late on Monday.

The jail officials said that several of the prisoners, four security personnel and two assailants were killed in the attack. The prison was housing at least 5000 prisoners, 250 of them hardcore militants.

Malik Qasim Khattak, advisor to the ministry of prisons, said that around 50 to 60 gunmen attacked the jail with bombs and guns before entering into the detention facility. “They detonated about 60 bombs inside the facility which caused the collapse of prison wall. The assailants succeeded in freeing more than 300 prisoners,” Khattak said, adding that the militants blew up two electricity transformers which created complete darkness.

While accepting responsibility for the attack, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had claimed that their attackers had freed around 300 inmates.

Bill Roggio indicates at least 30 of those escapees were hardcore militants. Roggio further indicates those responsible are the Ansar al Aseer, a joint Taliban and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan unit that has been designated to free imprisoned jihadists.

At the time of the attack on Abu Ghraib (now called the Baghdad Central Prison), I warned that those freed would not only rejoin the insurgency in Iraq, but could spread across the region causing mayhem in Syria’s civil war, or spark violence in Jordan, Egypt, or Turkey.

Now, we’ve got a second high profile incident involving attacks on detention facilities where high value al Qaeda and/or Taliban prisoners have been held - in a single week.

That doesn’t just happen out of thin air, though this is not the first time that the Taliban have attempted attacks on detention facilities with the goal of freeing Taliban/ and/or al Qaeda leadership. It’s part of a long term trend to bolster their numbers by taking on a major offensive. High profile attacks against detention facilities would do the trick.

The breakout in Pakistan means that terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the frontier provinces that are nominally under Pakistani control are likely to be emboldened to carry on further attacks, including against detention facilities. They may also seek out attacks against the ISAF in Afghanistan, the supply lines, as well as India. This doesn’t bode well for those countries as the terrorist attacks have largely resulted in significant civilian casualties.

India and China have ended a three-week standoff on a windswept Himalayan plateau where they fought a war 50 years ago by agreeing to pull forces back to positions held before the confrontation, India’s foreign ministry said on Monday.

The two countries packed up tents and left the disputed patch on the 5,000-metre-high (16,000-foot) Depsang Plain late on Sunday. But it had not been clear how far they had withdrawn.

Neither side has given details of the terms of the deal.

More: India Says China Agrees Retreat to De Facto Border in Faceoff Deal

In 1950, the Survey of India issued a map of India showing the political divisions of the new republic. While the border with Pakistan was defined as it is now, including the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir area, the borders with China were depicted differently. In the east, the McMahon Line was shown as the border, except in its eastern extremity, the Tirap subdivision, where the border was shown as “undefined.” In the Central sector of what is now Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and the eastern part of Jammu & Kashmir, including Aksai Chin, the boundary was depicted merely by a colour wash and denoted as “boundary undefined.”

UNILATERAL ACT

In March 1954, the Union Cabinet met and decided to unilaterally define the border of India with China. The colour wash was replaced by a hard line, and the Survey of India issued a new map, which depicts the borders as we know them today. All the old maps were withdrawn and the depiction of Indian boundaries in the old way became illegal. Indeed, if you seek out the White Paper on Indian States of 1948 and 1950 in the Parliament library, you will find that the maps have been removed because they too showed the border as being “undefined” in the Central and Western sectors.

What was the government up to? Did it seriously think it could get away with such a sleight of hand? Or was there a design that will become apparent when the papers of the period are declassified? Not surprisingly, the other party, the People’s Republic of China, was not amused and, in any case, there are enough copies of the old documents and maps across the world today to bring out the uncomfortable truth that the boundaries of India in these regions were unilaterally defined by the Government of India, rather than through negotiation and discussions with China.

More: Lesson From an Unsettled Boundary - the Hindu

A Chinese border guards’ platoon (40 soldiers) has pitched tents ten kilometres inside Indian territory overlooking Daulet Beg Oldie (DBO) in Ladakh in the Western sector. The last time they did a similar thing was in 1986 in Sumdorong Chu in the Eastern sector (Arunachal Pradesh). Both times, the Chinese forces had blessings from the highest quarters: then supremo Deng Xiaoping and now the President and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping.

Then, the Chinese were not a risen power and the occupation of Sumdorong Chu, of little tactical significance, was meant to test Indian gumption after the passing away of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who Deng admired for being a strong and determined leader. The Chinese finally left Sumdorong Chu of their own accord in 1995, with India calling it a historic win-win situation. This time around, the Chinese forces are unlikely to withdraw because as a risen power, the occupation is a well-crafted act of an unfolding grand strategy.

According to the Chinese, they are technically correct in insisting that the present occupation does not transgress the Line of Actual Control (LAC). This is not all. India, according to China, has done more transgressions into the Eastern sector than the other way round. China further says that it has refrained from making noises because it wants good neighbourly relations, but it will act in self-defence if the need arises.

India, on the other hand, says that differing perceptions about the LAC are responsible for numerous transgressions as well as the present stand-off in the Western sector. Meanwhile, treating it as a military matter, the Indian army has reportedly pitched its own tents facing the Chinese. What is the truth in this game?

More: Beijingâ€TMs Moves Along the Disputed Border Are Aimed at Achieving Indiaâ€TMs Strategic Encirclement - Times of India