US state's Diwali gift: Now Hindus can freely display religious symbols
It was introduced by Senators Pazina, Neal, Flores, Scheible, and Krasner, and Assemblymembers Roth and Nguyen. Per the bill, religious displays in dwellings that are no larger than 12" x 36" are permitted.NEVADA BILL SETS PRECEDENT FOR RESPECTFUL HANDLING OF RELIGIOUS DISPLAYSThe bill also set a new standard by mandating respectful handling of religious displays during home maintenance."Unlike similar bills in other states, the Nevada bill goes further by requiring maintenance workers to store religious displays in a way that preserves their sanctity until they can be safely returned after maintenance is complete," the statement read.Expressing his happiness, HAF Managing Director Samir Kalra said, "This bill is a significant win for Nevada Hindus because it ensures residents' right not only to observe their Hindu faith unencumbered, but also to bless their homes and everyone who enters them with the display of a toran, as their faith calls them to."GRATEFUL FOR THE BIPARTISAN SUPPORT: ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUEadvertisementJolie Brislin, Desert Regional Director, Anti-Defamation League, said the law safeguards religious expression at home and is backed by bipartisan support and interfaith advocacy."Nevada Senate Bill 201 will protect all faith communities. Ensuring that individuals can display religious items on their doorways without undue restrictions allows them to freely express their faith in their homes. We are grateful for the bipartisan support in the Legislature and to our partners at the Hindu American Foundation for championing this bill," Brislin said.The bill passed the Senate on April 18, and the Assembly on May 23, according to a report in Nevada-based newspaper, The Las Vegas Review-Journal.The bill aims to revise Chapter 116 of the Nevada Revised Statutes to address issues related to limitations placed by homeowners' associations and rental agreements.The main provision of SB 201 prevents association executive boards and unit owners who rent or lease their units from banning the display of religious items in spaces exclusively occupied by owners or residents.
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Hindustan Times
20 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Families of blasts victims look back in anger
Malegaon: 'Have they been let off just today? Wasn't Sadhvi already free?' The youngest victim, Farheen, was 10 years old when she was killed in the blasts in 2008. 'Uparwala saza dega.' (God will punish them.) These words from relatives of those who died in the 2008 Malegaon blast, which occurred in the month of Ramzan, encapsulate the sentiment of the six affected families in this power loom city in Nashik district, soon after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) court's verdict on Thursday. Old, ailing and abandoned by all political parties, these families, among the poorest residents of this city, have barely been able to keep track of the many twists and turns of the case. After the acquittal of all the accused in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts last week, the question being asked in Malegaon was simple –– will this be repeated in the Malegaon blast case. And if so, will the government rush to appeal as it did in the train blasts case? 'The home minister's speech in Parliament gave an inkling of the verdict,' said Aleem Faizee, founder editor of the Malegaon-based news website referring to Amit Shah's comment on Wednesday that no Hindu could ever be a terrorist. 'We have not got justice; we will appeal,' said Mufti Ismail, Malegaon MLA and general secretary of the Jamiat Ulema, which arranged for lawyers to represent the intervenors in the case. Advocate Irfana Hamdani added, 'We need to study the judgment to know how the evidence was placed before the court. The ATS charge sheet had both audio and video records of strategy meetings and phone conversations, recorded by one of the accused, and these pointed to Pragya Thakur's involvement.' Infirm and hard of hearing, Syed Nisar, 74, whose son died in the blast, has been the voice of the victims in the NIA court. He intervened in 2017 when the NIA said it had no objection to Sadhvi Pragya's bail application. 'This was not out of enmity for any community, but for justice,'' he clarified. 'My son was just 19.' The former scrap dealer is ready to continue fighting. Ainoor Bi lost her 23-year-old son Irfan, who helped her sell vegetables, in the blast. 'How could they not have been punished?'' she asked. 'Imagine what it means for parents to lose their young child.' After Irfan's death, she tried to resume work but could not do so as returning to the same spot in the market where her son's friends worked was unbearable. Hussain Shaha, who lost his father Harun, a power loom worker, was at his usual spot selling vegetable fritters even on the day the verdict was pronounced. The verdict means nothing to his mother, he said. 'Her health started failing after my father died; she is so far gone, she does not even recognise me.' 'Hemant Karkare (then ATS chief) had uncovered everything. If only he'd been alive…' rued Liaquat, father of the youngest victim. Holding up a picture of his then 10-year-old daughter Farheen, he said it was given to him by her teacher who took it from Farheen's scholarship form. 'My daughter was clever. She loved studies,' said the former truck driver. Karkare is revered in the community. Another set of victims in Malegaon, inextricably linked to the 2008 blast, also remembered him. Nine Muslims were arrested for the first set of blasts in the city in 2006 on Shab e Baraat, a night of prayer, in which 31 Muslims were killed. These men could get bail in 2011 and were finally discharged in 2016 only because Karkare's investigations into the 2008 blast led to a different set of accused for the 2006 blasts too. The appeal against their discharge is pending in the Bombay high court. Thursday's verdict has left people in the community angry. 'Was NIA's duty just to prove the accused innocent, or also to find the real culprits?'' asked eminent surgeon Dr Saeed Farani, who treated victims of both blasts. 'Perhaps we should just learn to live with this.' But what of Malegaon's Hindus? The Mausam river divides Hindus and Muslims geographically in the city. The power loom industry on which the city runs, necessitates interaction but otherwise, there's little intermingling. Gandhian Subhash Pardeshi said: 'When 31 of their fellow citizens died in the 2006 blasts, though Shiv Sena MLA Dada Bhuse sent Shiv Sainiks to donate blood, no Hindu in Malegaon condemned the attack or stepped up to share the grief of the families of the deceased.' 'That silence will continue,' he added.
Indian Express
20 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Today in Politics: What the Malegaon verdict means politically
The crucial Malegaon verdict on Thursday has wide-ranging repercussions politically. The acquittal of all the accused, including former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, in the 2008 Malegaon blast case by a special court has given the BJP fresh ammunition to target the Congress, which has been groping in the dark against the ruling party's charge against it of being a 'pro-Muslim' and – by extension – an 'anti-Hindu' party. The Congress has often fallen between two stools in navigating this territory since the BJP's rise in the 1980s and, on Thursday, the central leadership maintained a telling silence in the wake of the Malegaon judgment. The 2008 blasts, blamed on accused with links to Hindutva groups, had come amidst a string of terror incidents under the UPA government. The attack in Malegaon was preceded days earlier by the Batla House encounter, in which alleged terrorists linked to the Indian Mujahideen and to several incidents across the country were killed. Two months later followed the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, one of the worst the country has seen. Even as the government dealt with the attacks, statements by several Congress leaders in their wake landed the UPA government in a sticky situation. Digvijaya Singh, the Congress general secretary, raised doubts over the Batla House encounter by security agencies, suggesting it was 'fake'. In the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, he said he had spoken to Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare hours earlier, and that Karkare had told him he was receiving threats from Hindu extremists. Karkare was at the time heading the investigation into the September 29, 2008, Malegaon blasts. In 2010, the then Union Home Minister P Chidambaram first used the word 'saffron terror'. Addressing an annual conference of DGPs and IGPs, he said: 'There is no let-up in the attempts to infiltrate militants into India. There is no let-up in the attempts to radicalise young men and women. Besides, there is the recently uncovered phenomenon of saffron terrorism that has been implicated in many bomb blasts of the past.' The Congress distanced itself from Chidambaram's remarks then, saying 'terrorism does not have any colour other than black'. The same year, one of the secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks quoted Rahul Gandhi as telling then US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer during a lunch in 2009 that 'the bigger threat (than outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba) may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community'. In 2012, then Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid also sparked a row when he said that Sonia Gandhi 'wept bitterly' when she was shown images of the Batla House encounter. Following its rout in 2014 and its struggles to rebuild, the Congress has attempted course-correction, with a section in the party emphasising the need to reach out to Hindus. Rahul Gandhi's frequent temple visits and assertions of being a 'Shiva devotee' are seen as a part of it, as well as the party's engagement with the Hindutva vs Hinduism narrative. Manoj C G breaks down these attempts The sudden announcement of President Donald Trump's 25% tariffs on Indian goods from August 1, with an additional but unspecified 'penalty' for its defence and energy imports from Russia has put a lot of stress on the Narendra Modi government. This move, coming just ahead of an impending trade agreement, could pull down the economy and cast a shadow on India-US ties, experts say. Former Union Minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, who has served as Finance minister for four terms and was also the Commerce and Industry minister, talks to The Indian Express of the tightrope that India must now walk on the negotiations. 'Negotiating a trade agreement with the United States is not easy. It is painstaking. The big obstacle is that we had — and in many cases still have — is high tax. As a result of that, the trade balance between the United States and India is almost $45 billion in our favour. We can say the same thing about our trade with other countries, where the trade balances in favor of the other country. But that is part of the world of commerce… We will have to deal with it. We do not have to bend over. At the same time, we do not have to be defiant,' says Chidambaram. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Thursday said that political parties and electors will be given one full month to add names of eligible citizens or remove names of those they think are ineligible from the draft electoral rolls of Bihar to be published on August 1. In a statement to the voters, the CEC said that as part of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls of the state, the draft electoral rolls for Bihar are being published on Friday. Physical as well as digital copies will also be given to all the recognised political parties in Bihar in all the 38 districts by the district election officers (DEOs), Kumar said. The CEC's remarks come amid continuous protests by the opposition parties against the SIR, claiming that it will deny eligible citizens of their to right vote for want of documents. They also alleged that the local poll machinery in Bihar could be manipulated by the ruling BJP-JD (U) alliance to its benefit. The protests have disrupted both Houses of Parliament on a daily basis during the ongoing Monsoon session.
New Indian Express
20 minutes ago
- New Indian Express
Political row erupts over Malegaon blast verdict
NEW DELHI/BHOPAL/MUMBAI/LUCKNOW : Following the acquittal of all accused in the Malegaon blast case, the BJP on Thursday accused the Congress of having concocted the theory of 'Hindu terror' during its tenure in power, to allegedly thwart the political rise of Narendra Modi, who was then the Chief Minister of Gujarat. The BJP claimed the Congress devised this narrative as part of a strategy to appease Muslim voters. 'The Congress can go to any extent in its vote bank politics,' stated former Law Minister and senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad at a media briefing. He demanded an apology to the nation from former Congress presidents Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. Prasad demanded that those discharged from the case, including former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Colonel Prasad Purohit, be compensated adequately. Thakur supporters celebrate In Bhopal, supporters of Pragya Thakur danced and distributed sweets after hearing the verdict. They want a grant celebration after Thakur returns from Mumbai to her B-29, 74 Bungalows residence in a couple of days. Five kilometres away, supporters burst crackers outside the residence of former CM Uma Bharti at 6, Shyamala Hills. She turned emotional, recounting her meeting with Thakur while the latter was incarcerated. Bharti recalled, 'I met Pragya at the Nashik Jail, when no one went there to meet her. A Maharashtra police officer had told me that she was tortured unimaginably. I was in tears while meeting her and still remember her confirming that she had been tortured beyond imagination.'
