PM Modi Conferred With Order Of Trinidad & Tobago Caribbean Nations Highest Civilian Honour
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NDTV
27 minutes ago
- NDTV
'Deeply Saddened': PM Modi Condoles Loss Of Lives In Devastating Texas Floods
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that he was deeply saddened to learn about the loss of lives, especially children, in the devastating floods in Texas and offered his condolences to the US government. In a post on X on Saturday evening, PM Modi said, "Deeply saddened to learn about loss of lives, especially children in the devastating floods in Texas. Our condolences to the US Government and the bereaved families." Deeply saddened to learn about loss of lives, especially children in the devastating floods in Texas. Our condolences to the US Government and the bereaved families. — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 5, 2025 As per CNN, torrential rain has caused flash flooding in parts of central Texas, that has resulted in the deaths of more than 50 people. CNN reported that in Kerr County, more than 20 girls are missing from Camp Mystic, a private Christian summer camp located along a river that rose more than 20 feet in less than two hours. Throughout Kerr County, hundreds of people have been rescued or evacuated so far, many by helicopter, authorities said. Some areas saw a month's worth of rain in just a few hours overnight into Friday. In a post on X, late on Saturday night (local time), Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem shared that the US Coast Guard has 'saved or assisted' in saving lives of 223 people. In times of crisis, look for the helpers. In Central Texas, @USCG has saved or assisted in saving 223 lives. God bless our first responders. — Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) July 5, 2025 "The number one priority right now is people- making sure we are finding them as fast as possible and are returning them to their families and throughout the process we will get into what damage was done to public infrastructure", Noeam said in a video message shared on her official X account. She wrote on X, "Our hearts are with those impacted by the Central Texas floods. I thank Gov. Abbott, state officials, and the U.S. Coast Guard for their swift, heroic response." She noted that the US President is committed to deploying all federal resources to unify families, rescue the missing, and return recovered loved ones promptly. "DHS remains fully engaged, and I am in constant contact with the President -- working around the clock and providing him with real-time updates. God bless Texas", Noem wrote in her post. Our hearts are with those impacted by the Central Texas floods. I thank Gov. Abbott, state officials, and the U.S. Coast Guard for their swift, heroic response. President Trump is committed to deploying all federal resources to unify families, rescue the missing, and return… — Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) July 5, 2025 According to CNN, Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott on Saturday signed an expanded disaster declaration, including Travis County. The county is about 130 miles northeast of hard-hit Kerr County.
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First Post
38 minutes ago
- First Post
How India-Brazil defence partnership has deepened under PM Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Brazil today (July 6) where he will attend the Brics Summit. Modi is also set to meet President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday (July 8). The men will likely discuss deepening cooperation on a wide range of issues, including energy and defence. But how have India and Brazil's defence ties deepened during the Modi years? Let's take a closer look read more Prime Minister Narendra Modi's five-nation tour continues. Modi is in Brazil today (July 6) where he will attend the Brics Summit. Modi is also set to meet President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday (July 8). All eyes will be on the two men, who will likely discuss deepening cooperation on a wide-range of issues including energy and defence. Modi's five-nation trip, which began in Ghana on July 2, will wrap up in Namibia on July 10. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Modi's five-nation tour, his longest diplomatic foray in nearly a decade, will see him visit Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Brazil, and Namibia. But what do we know about the lesser-known but crucial strategic relationship with Brazil? How has the defence relationship between India and Brazil deepened in the Modi years? Let's take a closer look: India-Brazil defence relationship India and Brazil established diplomatic relations in 1948. The two countries originally signed a defence agreement in 2003. The relationship was elevated to that of a strategic partnership since 2006. The countries also established the Joint Defence Committee (JDC) as a mechanism to increase cooperation. During the Modi years, meetings of the JDC have been held regularly. In all, seven such meetings have been held since its inception – the last such gathering in 2021. Meanwhile, high-level defence delegations have visited each other in 2022, 2023 and 2024. They have also established several mechanisms to improve bilateral relations. This includes Joint Commission Meeting (Foreign Minister level), Strategic Dialogue (NSA), Foreign Office Consultations (Secretary), and Joint Defence Commission. The 2nd Foreign Office Consultation (FOC) was held in Brasilia in June 2023. The medium-range Akash air defence system is in service with the Indian Army and Air Force. (Photo: BEL) Last year, the 2+2 political-military dialogue held its first meeting. India and Brazil have seen visits of over a dozen high-level and defence delegations. This includes high-level defence officials from both sides, such as India's Chief of Air Staff visiting Brazil and Brazil's Air Force Commander, Lieutenant Brigadier Marcelo Kanitz, coming to India. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD In August, Brazilian Navy Commander, Admiral Marcos Sampaio Olsen, made a five-day official visit to India. India-Brazil potential for military platforms The two countries have much to gain by cooperating when it comes to developing military platforms. Brazil's defence budget in 2024 was $25 billion. It has the world's 11th-largest army. India, meanwhile, has a defence budget of $74 billion. It has the world's second-largest standing army. India's defence exports surged to $2.76 billion in 2025. This was a 12 per cent increase over the previous year. In 2013-2014, defence exports were at Rs 686 crore. That's a massive 34-fold increase. The country is aiming to increase its defence exports to 5.84 billion (Rs 50,000 crore) by 2029. Brazil has expressed interest in purchasing several defence items from India. This includes the Akash air defence system, a medium-range, surface-to-air missile system developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, which displayed an outstanding performance during Operation Sindoor, India's Scorpene Class submarines and Garuda artillery guns. P Kumaran, Secretary (East) of India's Ministry of External Affairs, P Kumaran, said the defence system would be discussed during Modi's trip. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Brazil has also displayed interest in purchasing India's Tejas Light Combat Aircraft. PTI 'There's going to be talk on defence cooperation, avenues for joint research, and training,' Kumaran said. 'They (the Brazilian government) are interested in secure communications systems on the battlefield, offshore patrol vessels, partnership for maintaining their Scorpene-class submarines, Akash air defence system, coastal surveillance system and Garuda artillery guns,' Kumaran added. An MoU for Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) to maintain the submarines could be on the agenda. 'They are also interested in the Akash Air Defence system, coastal surveillance systems, and Garuda artillery guns. They are also interested in manufacturing defence industries in a joint venture with us and joint R&D and co-development systems,' he added. Brazil could also buy Offshore Patrol Vessels from MDL. Brazil has also displayed interest in purchasing India's Tejas Light Combat Aircraft. 'According to our rules, we should have not less than two and not more than three kinds of fighter aircraft. Currently, we have the F-5 and the Gripen, but after 2030, we will need maybe two more kinds as the F-5 goes. So, while the Gripen remains, the Tejas is one of the options for our second or third fighter plane,' Damasceno was quoted as saying. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Brazil is also looking at Indian helicopters and drones – the latter of which could involve a transfer of technology. 'We have seven squadrons of 12 helicopters each, and we are looking for more, perhaps 24 new choppers,' Damasceno added. 'We will consider Indian helicopters,' he added. The next-generation BrahMos supersonic missile, jointly developed by India and Russia, is also on Brazil's radar. A senior defence official told Financial Express, 'For Brazil, the BrahMos-NG can be a suitable choice for their new Gripen aircraft. The new system is designed for a wide range of fighter aircraft platforms with best-in-class specifications.' Kumaran also said the countries could launch a joint venture through Brazil's aerospace firm Embraer. The firm has designed the C-390 Millennium, a multi-role transport aircraft, which India could look to acquire as part of its own efforts to upgrade the Indian Air Force. The next-generation BrahMos supersonic missile, jointly developed by India and Russia, is also on Brazil's radar.. Representational image: Wikimedia Commons There are reports that Embraer could join hands with Mahindra to jointly manufacture the C-390 in India. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'Compared with the C-130 (an American plane noted for its ruggedness), the C-390 is faster and carries at least as much load. We are offering this to India, and the MOUs with Mahindra are already done. So far, its serviceability level is over 97 per cent,' Damasceno added. 'The Indian Air Force does need medium transport aircraft,' he added. Brazilian firms Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos (CBC) and Taurus Armas are already in joint ventures with Indian firms when it comes to small arms and ammunition production. What do experts say? They say Modi's visit is just the latest sign of deep trust between the two democratic powers. A piece in Financial Express stated that Brazil is currently trying to reinvent its defence strategy for the modern age, while seeking stronger strategic alliances. India, they say, is a critical partner to its growing defence ambitions. India's ambassador Reddy was quoted as saying, 'Defence cooperation has become a cornerstone of our strategic relationship.' Major-Brigadier Rui Chagas Mesquita, Secretary of Brazilian Defence Products, was quoted as saying by EurAsia Times, 'When we look at India, we seek to work together so that we can also jointly develop finished products and use Brazil as a hub for selling these commonly developed products in the Latin American market.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD With inputs from agencies
The Wire
41 minutes ago
- The Wire
'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' and the Way of the Jackal
What is needed is a clear-eyed assessment of our past and present so that we know what it would take to create a truly egalitarian and cosmopolitan culture at home and in the world. Illustration: The Wire, with Canva. It was barely two years ago when the entire country was plastered with posters featuring the G20 logo, accompanied by pictures of a beaming Narendra Modi. The logo was adorned with a blooming lotus, the Bharatiya Janata Party's symbol, and carried this uplifting message: वयुधैव कुटुम्बकम्, ONE EARTH. ONE FAMILY. ONE FUTURE. India's G20 logo. Not unexpectedly, Modi milked this motto for all its worth in his opening remarks at the G20. He reminded the foreign heads of state and other guests that the global conduct of this 'mother of democracy' is 'rooted in the fundamental principle of ' Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,' which means 'world is one family.'' This Sanskrit phrase, वयुधैव कुटुम्बकम्, is second only to the other maha-mantra of Hindu nationalists: एकं सद्विप्रा वदन्ति, the Existent is one, the sages express it variously, a verse from the Rg Veda. Both these phrases are thrown around endlessly – and unthinkingly – to prove the openness, the tolerance, the wholeness, the ecological wisdom, and the cosmopolitanism of the 'eternal' Hindu civilization. No one can deny that the mantra of vasudhaiva kutumbakam expresses a noble, cosmopolitan sentiment: the world would indeed be a better place if we treated it as one big family. If India practiced – today, or ever in its history – what this mantra preaches, no one would deny the nation the moral superiority that it so badly craves. But who in their right minds can deny that the India that treats its non-Hindu minorities as second-class citizens, and its poor and lower orders as dispensable, does not practice what it so piously preaches to the rest of the world. The question is whether vasudhaiva kutumbakam has ever meant what modern-day interpreters claim it means. Was this phrase originally meant as a moral injunction to extend the same love to everyone that one has for one's family? Is there any evidence that the sentiment that the entire cosmos was one big family is something that Hindus have lived by in the past, or live by today? To answer this question, one has to locate vasudhaiva kutumbakam in the context it appears in the sacred literature of the Hindus. One thing is for sure: it is nowhere to be found in any of the Vedas, the gold standard for Hindu beliefs and practices. Some claim to find it in the so-called 'Maha-Upanishad,' which, if it exists, is not a part of the 10 principal Upanishads that Hindus consider canonical. So, where does this mantra come from? It makes its appearance in a story in the Hitopadesha, where a cunning jackal mouths a noble-sounding shloka to get close to a deer that he wants to have for dinner! It was never meant as an injunction to love others as you love your family. It was rather a case of the devil quoting the scripture, or equivalently, a rogue donning a saffron robe and smearing his forehead with a big tilak. The provenance of vasudhaiva kutumbakam in the Hitopadesha was established by professor Brian Hatcher, a scholar of Hinduism at Tufts University in the United States. I first became aware of the Hitopadesha connection after reading his 1994 essay on the subject. This provenance and the plot of the story in which the famous words appear are worthy of closer examination, as they lay bare the danger of taking lofty Sanskrit phrases out of context and turning them into badges of Hindu wisdom and exceptionalism. § As with most of Hindu sacred literature, it is hard to say definitively when and where Hitopadesha was composed; the accepted timeline is anywhere between the 9th and the 15th centuries. According to the authoritative Sanskrit-Bengali-English text edited by Lakshi Narayan Nyalankar and published in 1830, a raja named Sudarsana in Pataliputra invited a pandit by the name of Vishnu-Sarma to teach niti-shastra (ethical and moral precepts) to his wayward sons. (There is no trace of the said raja in historical records, and nothing is known about Vishnu-Sarma either.) Vishnu-Sarma creatively spun didactic stories with deer, crows, jackals, tortoises, vultures, and other rather learned and talkative animals. It is these stories that have come down to us as Hitopadesha, which translates into 'beneficial instruction.' Now for the story: Once upon a time, there was a deer and a crow who were great friends. A jackal spotted the deer and wanted to eat him. He knew that the crow would warn the deer before he could get to him. So, he decided to befriend the duo. The crow, being worldly wise and very smart, was suspicious of the jackal's motives. The crow proceeds to narrate a story of how a crafty cat pretended to be a saintly vegetarian and ended up eating the birds it had befriended. The conclusion the crow drew from this murderous cat was that one should be wary of inviting strangers into one's midst. The jackal got annoyed at such comparisons and said to the crow: 'Listen, my friend, you, too, were once a stranger to this deer. Now look at the two of you. You're bosom friends.' The jackal then proceeds to recite a Sanskrit verse which reads as follows: The narrow-minded ask, 'Is this person one of us, or is he a stranger?' But to those of noble character, the whole world is one family. These high-minded words impressed the deer and the crow, and they, not wanting to appear narrow-minded, allowed the jackal to live with them. The misadventure continues: the deer gets trapped in a farmer's net, with the jackal waiting in the wings; the crow manages to set the deer free; the jackal falls into the farmer's trap and meets his maker. All's well that ends well! The phrase 'to those of noble character, the whole world is one family' – to the udarcharita, all of v asudha is thus a kutumbh – is hardly a lofty call to live ethically and humanely in this story. On the contrary, it is a sly scheme of a schemer. If there is a moral to the story, it is not that the world is a family, but rather, you should not lower your guard when someone makes lofty declarations. § When our nationalists piously cite these Sanskrit words, they are following the jackal's way. Like the jackal, they use high-minded words to further their Hindu supremacist ends while harbouring murderous hatreds. They wow the world with Sanskrit shlokas, while they go about systematically unraveling the multi-faith fabric of this country. Even more problematic – and more consequential — than the bad faith of our current Hindutva regime is how Indian scholars have honed the art of reading all that is worthy of emulation in the modern world back into the Great Tradition of Sanskritic Hinduism. That we can so smoothly slide from the words of a sly trickster in the Hitopadesha into the language of cosmopolitan humanism is the result of a scholarly tradition that began with the 19th-century Hindu Renaissance. In the spirit of anti-colonialism, nationalist intellectuals developed the fine art of stretching Hindu philosophical concepts in all directions to encompass the new and revolutionary ideas born in the modern age. The ancestral concepts were denuded of their original intent and context and filled in with those features of the modern West that were seen as conferring prestige and power – scientific rationalism, equality, democracy, and other such virtues. Thus, the old was turned into the 'mother' of the new, and the new turned into something ever present in the 'eternal' dharma. It is through such sleights of hand that a Hindu Golden Age of an enlightened, democratic, rational (even 'scientific' in the modern sense of the word) polity was constructed. While this Golden Age imagery may help us puff up our chests with pride, it does nothing to make us more enlightened, democratic, or rational. The problem is that these values are not the real values that the people of India live by today or have lived by in the past. To think that the traditional Indian cultural universe was democratic or 'scientific' is no different from interpreting the jackal's 'noble-mindedness' as a message of brotherly love. Unfortunately, this romantic rewriting of traditions extends beyond the Hindu nationalists. The postcolonial Left that battles the cultural after-effects of colonialism in the name of the non-modern masses (the 'subaltern') is also guilty of reading a uniquely wholesome communitarianism and a non-reductionist, holistic rationality in India's indigenous traditions. If the Hindu nationalists are guilty of projecting their cultural chauvinism into history, the postcolonial Left is guilty of projecting its disillusionment with the project of modernity and the Enlightenment into the subaltern life-world. As I argue in my new book, Postcolonial Theory and the Making of Hindu Nationalism: The Wages of Unreason, both are fighting the same battle for a non-Eurocentric 'alternative modernity' that is rooted in indigenous conceptual categories. While the Hindu nationalists trace all indigenous concepts and practices to our Vedic heritage, the postcolonial Left looks for them in the local knowledge traditions of the marginalised, as if the two evolved in water-tight compartments. The quest for indigeneity, whether from the Right or the Left, can only lead to nativism and claims of exceptionalism. What is needed is a clear-eyed assessment of our past and present so that we learn to distinguish between the jackal's way and what it would take to create a truly egalitarian and cosmopolitan culture at home and in the world. Meera Nanda is a historian of science. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
