SRINAGAR — Holding elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be a test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s handling of Kashmir over the last five years, National Conference leader Omar Abdullah said Monday.

“Will the Modi government bow before those forces of separatism & terror that have always sought to disrupt/delay polls in J&K or will polls take place on schedule? The moment of truth for PM Modi’s handling of Kashmir over the last 5 years,” Abdullah wrote on his Twitter handle.

The former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir was reacting to media reports that the Election Commission of India will take a call on holding Assembly polls together with the Lok Sabha election after a visit to the state this week.

Abdullah said except for an odd by-election, all elections in Jammu and Kashmir since 1995-96 have been held as per schedule.

“Will PM Modi be able to keep to this schedule or will he accept he’s totally mishandled J&K? The next few days will give us the answer,” he added.

From young men who think menstruation is a disease women suffer from and older men who wouldn’t acknowledge the subject in public to men who stare at women trying to buy sanitary pads at a neighbourhood store, Rayka Zehtabchi’s Period. End of Sentence expertly unmasks the real menstrual health challenge facing a majority of women in India. And the biggest challenge is Indian men and their inability and unwillingness to engage with the subject.

The film which won the Oscar in the ‘best documentary short film’ category, points a finger at a concern shared by various health workers and women’s rights activists who work at the grassroots, trying to improve women’s access to menstrual health products. The film punctuates interviews with women in a Haryana village with conversations with men from the same village, deftly mapping the root of the women’s troubles.

It shows a group of young men agreeing that menstruation is an illness that women contract, then it moves to a woman whose uncle has rented his house out to set up a low-cost sanitary pad making unit. When the interviewers ask the man what he thinks is being made in the house, the man says, “Huggies”. His niece, who seems to have facilitated the rent arrangement, is unwilling to confront the man about it. In another scene, a gutsy young woman who aspires to join the police says that she has not told her father exactly what she does for work — she works with a pad-making unit. She explains that it will be too difficult to explain what she does to her father and she may not end up working there at all if he is not convinced.

Suman, who works in a sanitary-pad-making unit, tells the film crew that the men are aware of periods and the fact that the women will be making sanitary pads but they will never speak in public, thanks to patriarchy.

 Another man is show telling the film screw that the women in the self-help group will be making ‘pads’ for children. The absence of a common language on menstruation stares back at the viewers of this film, underlining that issues like GST on sanitary pads which social media rages about are the least of India’s menstrual health issues.

In course of various interviews with HuffPost India, activists and health workers revealed that the primary reason women in villages and urban slums do not use sanitary napkins has to do with men stumbling upon a pad in their homes. A day nurse who lives in a poor migrants’ colony in Mongolpuri on the fringes of Delhi told HuffPost India that though she insists her young daughters use sanitary pads, they often feel embarrassed. She lives in one-room 200-square feet house, which she shares with six other people, including her husband, son and son-in-law. She said that she often tucks packets of low-cost sanitary pads made and sold by women of her neighbourhood inside boxes of her clothes, or in other containers, but on many occasions men have ended up finding the pads while rummaging through these boxes for other things. “It’s very shameful. They had to touch the pads,” she told HuffPost India.

Sabbar Tausif, a programme manager with NGO Plan India said that many women have returned free pads given to them because they didn’t know where to ‘hide’ them from men.

Swati Bedekar who runs Sakhi Pads from Ahmedabad explained that in villages men refuse to let women dispose completely biodegradable pads into compost which has a variety of rotting garbage otherwise. Often, after they have thrown used pads in empty pieces of land or bushes, cats and dogs come and tear the pads apart, Jaideep Mondal, manufacturer of Aakar Inventions which makes biodegradable sanitary napkins had told HuffPost India. Zehtabchi’s documentary features a woman who echoes Mondal’s concerns and complains that the dogs she has fostered often tear up used sanitary napkins making the whole exercise ‘very embarrassing’.

Anshu Gupta, who runs the NGO Goonj, told HuffPost India that whenever the NGO undertakes awareness drives in rural India, it is usually led by men. Goonj holds awareness camps where they invite both men and women to participate and has male health workers explain the dangers of using dirty cloth.

The self help group model of manufacturing sanitary napkins may be riddled with issues which the film fails to address, but Period rightly asserts that men should unlearn their taboos before women can learn menstrual hygiene.

NEW DELHI —  BJP leader Subramanian Swamy Monday moved the Supreme Court for urgent listing of his plea seeking enforcement of his fundamental right to worship at the disputed Ram Temple site at Ayodhya. 

A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjiv Khanna asked Swamy to remain present in the court on Tuesday when the main Ayodhya matter will be taken up for hearing.

Swamy, while mentioning the matter for urgent listing, told the bench that his plea should be heard separately.

However, the CJI said, “You be present here tomorrow. We will see.”

The apex court had last year disallowed Swamy from intervening in the Ayodhya land dispute case and made it clear that only the parties to original lawsuits would be allowed contest.

However, the bench had considered Swamy’s submission that he had not sought to intervene in the matter but had filed a separate writ petition seeking enforcement of his fundamental right to worship at the birth place of Lord Ram in Ayodhya.

“I had filed a writ petition saying that I have a fundamental right to worship and this is a superior right than property right,” Swamy had said.

“As we are not inclined to permit the intervention application, the writ petition filed by the applicant (Swamy) shall stand revived and it shall be dealt with by the appropriate bench in accordance with law,” the bench had said.

On Monday, Swamy sought urgent listing of his plea for the enforcement of fundamental right to worship.

The top court will hear the politically sensitive Ayodhya’s Ram-Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid land dispute matter on February 26.

It will be heard by a five-judge Constitution Bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and justices S A Bobde, D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan and S A Nazeer.

Fourteen appeals have been filed in the apex court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgment, delivered in four civil suits, that the 2.77-acre land in Ayodhya be partitioned equally among the three parties ― the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla.

The five-judge bench was re-constituted on January 25 as Justice U U Lalit, who was a member of the original bench, had recused himself from hearing the matter.

Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav announced the alliance between Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party in Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand for the Lok Sabha elections, reports said.

The two parties announced their seat-sharing arrangement for the states on Monday.

In Madhya Pradesh, SP will contest the three seats of Balaghat, Tikamgarh, and Khajurago while BSP contests the rest of the 29 seats.

In the five Lok Sabha seats of Uttarakhand,  SP will contest from Garhwal (Pauri) seat while BSP contests from the rest.

The announcement comes days after the parties had announced their seat-sharing pact in Uttar Pradesh for the upcoming elections.

The SP will contest 37 seats and the BSP 38 in UP.

A South Carolina woman died last week after a playful wrestling session with her dogs outside her mobile home went horribly wrong, police said.

Nancy Cherryl Burgess-Dismuke, 52, often played with her dogs on the ground, but her neighbours in Greenville say they came running to check on her Thursday when they heard what sounded like a new level of aggression. They found two dogs, described as boxer mixes, biting Burgess-Dismuke’s arms and dragging her.

“It went from looking like they were really playing to them really eating her alive,” Amber Greer, who had called 911, told the Greenville News.

Denzel Whiteside and his roommate used a blunt ax and another makeshift weapon to fight the dogs off their distressed neighbour.

“When they finally got the dogs off of her, and finally got them to go, she threw her body over the fence,” Greer said. “She didn’t jump; she threw her body like you never seen before.”

Despite her neighbours’ help, Burgess-Dismuke died of her injuries after being transported to a local hospital, police said. She had been alert when the paramedics arrived on the scene, but later went into cardiac arrest at the hospital, the county coroner’s office told The Washington Post.

“She was already so far gone,” Whiteside told the Greenville News. “One arm was already bit completely off, the other arm was barely hanging on by a piece of meat. ... It was the longest 10 minutes of my life.”

Autopsy results, including Burgess-Dismuke’s cause of death, are still pending. The two dogs were scheduled to be euthanised on Friday.

NEW DELHI — The Adani Enterprises Ltd has won bids to operate five government-run airports in the country, two sources told Reuters on Monday, as the conglomerate looks to expand its business beyond mining and renewable energy.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI), which owns and operates more than 100 airports in the country, invited bids in December to operate, manage and develop six airports under a public-private partnership. The bids closed on 14 February.

Adani has won bids to operate airports in the cities of Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangalore and Trivandrum, the sources said. The winner for the sixth airport, Guwahati, is likely to be announced on Tuesday, one of the sources said.

Adani will operate the airports for 50 years and will fund any future development. The company is also expected to pay AAI a monthly fee for every domestic and international passenger handled at the airport, according to the tender document.

The five airports handled nearly 30 million passengers in total last year.

Adani did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. AAI, in a statement, said that Adani had quoted the highest passenger fee at the five airports. Other bidders included GMR Airports Ltd, which operates the Delhi airport, and Zurich Airport International.

KOLKATA— A retired IPS officer, who allegedly committed suicide last week, blamed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for his death, a charge dismissed by the state’s ruling TMC as “baseless”.

In a 6-page letter to the chief minister, Gaurav Chandra Dutt, who retired earlier this year, accused her of abetting his suicide by keeping him “compulsory waiting” for posting.

The 1986 batch IPS officer also alleged he was “harassed and tortured in devious ways” by various state institutions at the behest of the chief minister.

“Thus a self imposed death sentence by me should give you peace of mind, happiness and contentment and may this act result in sinful reactions which will cleanse you and awaken in other senior police officers some compassion and empathy which is sadly lacking today,” Dutt’s letter to Banerjee read.

“This act is a symbolic protest against the dirty games of ruling government meant to pick and choose honest, hardworking officers like me and Nazrul Islam IPS and destroy them systematically and make an example for others who are not servile/ subservient enough,” it said.

Copies of the letter were also sent to some senior government officials, and have been accessed by PTI.

Though Banerjee could not be immediately reached for comments, Jyotipriya Mallick, the state’s food and civil supplies minister, trashed the accusations.

“This is nonsense. There is no substance in it. We are not interested in the matter,” Mallick told PTI.

State BJP president Dilip Ghosh, however, smelt a conspiracy behind Dutt’s death and sought a speedy probe to “unravel” the truth.

“I think there is a conspiracy behind this (Dutt’s death). He has targeted the chief minister. A neutral probe must be initiated. I am sceptical about how much the state police will be able to do because they are under tremendous pressure from the top level. I demand a neutral agency conduct the enquiry,” he said.

Mukul Roy, once a close Banerjee aide who quit the party and joined the BJP, sought a CBI probe into Dutt’s death.

“This is a very sensitive matter. A very senior IPS officer has accused the chief minister of abetting his suicide. I am not very confident that the state police will be holding a fair probe. I want a CBI investigation,” Roy told PTI by phone from New Delhi.

The officer had a chequered past. He was suspended for nine months in 2010 for “conduct unbecoming of an officer” after a constable’s wife accused him of torturing her husband as he spurned his “sexual advances”.

He also faced disciplinary action in 2012 over alleged financial irregularities.

The finale of Karan Johar’s popular chat show, Koffee with Karan, aired on Star World and Hotstar Sunday evening.

Johar, Bollywood’s presiding overlord, managed what perhaps nobody in the Mumbai film industry can manage - bring two actresses, who were once pitted against each other and even exchanged acidic one-liners - on the same couch.

In a mature turn of events, an uncharacteristic feature as far as Bollywood stars go, relationships that were only gossip items thus far, earned legitimacy as both Kapoor and Chopra owned up to having an ex-boyfriend in common - Shahid Kapoor. (Chopra also let it out that Arjun Kapoor and Malaika Arora are dating, Johar said that Kareena could possibly be the bridesmaid)

While Kapoor never shied away from talking about her personal life, Chopra always maintained a diplomatic silence. 

When Johar teased Kapoor that while dating Shahid, she had turned vegetarian (the actor is famously vegetarian and is known to advocate it to close friends/family), Kareena smiled, as if amused at her own past self.

Said Johar, “Bebo adapts. When she was dating Shahid she was this spiritual vegetarian. Now she is this wine drinking type, going to Gstaad, skiing, being an intellectual, reading a book...”

To which, Kareena said, “I am a method actor in my personal life.”

That wasn’t all.

Throughout the episode, Kareena was sassy AF.

When Johar asked her if husband Saif Ali Khan shut anything down for her, referring to Nick Jonas shutting down a Tiffany store while buying a ring for Priyanka Chopra, Kapoor said, “He didn’t shut anything down. But he did give me a palace.”

Kapoor also made her displeasure known about the Taimur dolls which are doing the rounds in certain stores.

“I’m sorry to say, but that looks like Chucky The Doll, and doesn’t look like Taimur Ali Khan at all. It has strange blue eyes, some scruffy hair and a bandhgala which does not make him Tamur Ali Khan,” she said.

Later on, when Johar asked Chopra, if she knows who’s dating who in Bollywood, the actress said she doesn’t quite keep a tab. When Chopra drew a blank after Johar asked if she knew who Varun Dhawan is dating, Kapoor said, “Oh, now you only know about Hollywood stars, haan.... don’t forget your roots.”

Watch the entire episode on Hotstar here.

NEW DELHI — Monsoon rains in India are expected to be normal in 2019, the country’s only private weather forecasting agency said on Monday, raising prospects of higher farm and economic growth in the $2 trillion economy.

There is a more than 50 percent chance that India will get normal rainfall and only a small probability of excessive rainfall, Jatin Singh, chief executive officer at Skymet, said.

India defines average, or normal, rainfall as between 96% and 104% of a 50-year average of 89 cm for the entire four-month season beginning June.

The monsoon season delivers about 70% of India’s annual rainfall and is key to the success of the farm sector in Asia’s third-biggest economy.

NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the country’s National War Memorial (NWM) adjoining the iconic India Gate complex in the heart of the capital, nearly 60 years after it was mooted to honour the fallen soldiers after Independence.

Spread over an area of approximately 40 acres, the memorial comprises four concentric circles, namely― the ‘Amar Chakra, the Veerta Chakra, the ‘Tyag Chakra’ and the ‘Rakshak Chakra’ with names of 25,942 soldiers inscribed in golden letters on granite tablets.

It also includes a central obelisk, an eternal flame and six bronze murals depicting famous battles fought by Indian Army, Air Force and Navy in a covered gallery (Veerta Chakra).

The PM dedicated the memorial, built at a cost of Rs 176 crore, by lighting the flame positioned at the bottom of the stone-made obelisk. Rose petals were showered by IAF helicopters and a fly-past in ‘Missing Man’ formation was also part of the event.

Speaking at the event Modi said: 

 Modi also targetted the Congress saying: 

There was no national memorial to commemorate the sacrifice of fallen soldiers after independence. The NWM pays tribute to soldiers who laid down their lives defending the nation during India-China war in 1962, Indo-Pak wars in 1947, 1965 and 1971, Indian Peace Keeping Force Operations in Srilanka and in the Kargil conflict of 1999.

The sanction for the project was issued on December 18, 2015 and actual work on it started in February 2018.

In the complex, 16 walls have been constructed in the Tyag Chakra for paying homage to the 25,942 battle casualties and their names have been inscribed on granite tablets arranged in a circular pattern, symbolizing the ancient Indian war formation ‘Chakravyuh’.

The outermost circle ― the Rakshak Chakra comprises of rows of more than 600 trees with each tree representing many soldiers who guard the territorial integrity of the nation round the clock.

The memorial complex also comprises graphic panels and stone murals. Busts of the 21 awardees of Param Veer Chakra have been installed at Param Yoddha Sthal which includes three living awardees Sub Maj (Hony Capt) Bana Singh (Retd), Sub Major Yogendra Singh Yadav and Sub Sanjay Kumar.

Officials said the Amar Jawan Jyoti, built in 1972 underneath the India Gate arch in memory of the fallen soldiers of the 1971 war, will remain there but the NWM will be the place to pay tributes to soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the country.

Six murals, made by noted sculptor Ram Sutar, depicting famous battles fought by the Army, Air Force and Navy have been put up in a gallery in the Veerta Chakra zone, he added.

The India Gate itself is a war memorial built during the British Raj as the All India War Memorial Arch to honour the soldiers who died in the First World War (1914-1918) and the Third Anglo-Afghan War (1919). The landmark has the names of soldiers inscribed on its surface.

The proposal to set up a a National War Memorial had been under consideration since early 1970s. A Group of Ministers (GoM) in August 2012 recommended “C” Hexagon of India Gate as the appropriate location for the memorial.

AYODHYA, Uttar Pradesh — Blocking traffic just outside the temple town of Ayodhya, a motley crew of protestors chanted slogans condemning the killing of at least 40 soldiers in Kashmir. “Death to Pakistan,” they shouted, last week. 

An hour later, Acharya Satyendra Das, chief priest of the “makeshift” Ram Mandir for nearly a quarter of a century, said it was not often that one heard slogans other than ‘Jai Shri Ram’ raised in Ayodhya.

One other break from tradition, Das anticipates, is that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may not have to peddle dreams about constructing the Ram Mandir while campaigning for the 2019 general election. 

“The BJP will replace the Ram Mandir issue with the attack in Kashmir. They used to chant Ram, Ram, Ram, but now they won’t,” he said. “Ram Ram rat rat kar, BJP mara mara ho gayi.”

In any case, the 80-year-old priest said, the BJP has cashed in its rhetorical chips as far as the Ram Mandir is concerned. “If the BJP try and run on the Ram Mandir, they will lose. The public will not believe them. They have lost the trust of the people,” he said.

For now, the makeshift Ram Mandir, which stands where the Babri Masjid once stood, is four idols reposing under a waterproof and fireproof tent, surrounded by armed security personnel in black and white fatigues. Pilgrims, after four rounds of security checks and a circuitous walk, are allowed a glimpse from behind a barrier, 50 meters away.

Das, who oversees one of the most controversial religious sites in the world, was made a pujari in 1959 and he was appointed as the chief priest in March, 1992 by the state government of Uttar Pradesh.

His father was a farmer and there was no school where he grew up in Basti district, the chief priest said. He started school when he was 21-years-old — after he became a pujari at the Hanuman Garhi temple in Ayodhya. “The Hanuman Garhi folks used to make fun of me. I would say where is it written that you cannot go to school after becoming a pujari,” he said.

Das went on to teach Sanskrit at the Government Sanskrit College in Varanasi. The “government pass” he carries today says “Pradhan Pujari, Ram Janmabhoomi.” He is called “maharaj” by the locals. The former Sanskrit lecturer is known to be blunt and provocative. He has often said that destroying the Babri Masjid had hurt Hindus more than it had Muslim. 

 “There was no need to do it,” he said, while speaking to HuffPost India.

When it comes to the BJP turning the attack in Kashmir into political opportunity, the chief priest just might have a point.

The political fallout of the deadly attack on Indian security forces in Kashmir was immediate. The Opposition’s bashing of the Modi government for failing to create jobs came to a halt for a few days. So did jibes like “chowkidar chor hai,” leveled at Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the context of alleged improprieties in the Rafale deal.

There are, however, two months left for the general election. The Opposition is already picking up where it left off, but whether issues of unemployment and alleged corruption resonate with the same intensity, remains to be seen.

If the election was held today, a snack seller in Ayodhya observed, BJP would win and Modi would be prime minister.

On 14 February, a 19-year-old Kashmiri, Adil Ahmed Dar, rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into a convoy of security personnel in Pulwama district. It was the deadliest attack on Indian security forces in Kashmir in nearly three decades.

Das believes there is no going back from Pulwama.

“The country has changed drastically. Such a big thing has happened that no one can say anything against the government because it is the responsibility of the government to fix this,” he said.

In UP, which sends 80 lawmakers to Lok Sabha, and where the Ram Mandir issue has the most traction, the BJP is facing a formidable caste-based alliance of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party, which count Dalit, Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Muslims among their supporters.

Ashutosh Mishra, a political science professor at Lucknow University, says that the attack in Pulwama would have “mixed consequences” for the BJP.  The problem of joblessness, he said, was a big one and was not likely to be overshadowed. “Pulwama could be temporary and transitory,” he said.

Now, like in 2014, Das believes, the ball is in Modi’s court. In other words, a lot rides on whether Modi, a powerful orator, can emerge as the strongman and how the media projects him.

“It is up to Modi. If he can assure the public that he can respond strongly, people will forget the Ram Mandir,” he said. “If the public is satisfied with Modi’s response to attack, it will have a huge political impact.” 

‘Ram has given me no indication’

With the Supreme Court delaying the title dispute hearings in January, the Hindu right was finding it difficult to get the Ram Mandir ball rolling for the 2019 election. The Opposition, meanwhile, persisted with highlighting the Modi government’s failure to generate jobs.

There were several attempts to revive the Ram Mandir issue. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath renamed Faizabad district as Sri Ayodhya and announced that he would build the largest statue dedicated to Ram in Ayodhya. In an appeal to the Supreme Court, he said, “If Supreme Court can give its verdict on Sabarimala Temple, then we appeal that a decision on Ram Mandir should also be taken as soon possible, to ensure peace in the country.”

Leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) called on the BJP to pass an ordinance that would get around the Supreme Court and allow for the construction to begin immediately. There was a “Dharam Sansad” at the Kumbh Mela to push for the construction of the Ram Mandir. 

Modi, however, ruled out an ordinance. “Let the judicial process be over,” he said in an interview. A month later, the Modi government moved the Supreme Court seeking the return of the land around the disputed area to a Hindu trust.

And then, Shankaracharya Swaroopanand Saraswati, who heads two of the four mathas in India, and is close to the Congress Party, said that he would lay the foundation stone of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on 21 February.

Adityanath, who has promised to build the Ram Mandir, was at his wits end after Saraswati called on his followers to reach Ayodhya.

It wasn’t just concern about the “Congress Swami” stealing his thunder.

The optics of the Hindutva hardliner trying to stop the 93-year-old seer would have gone down badly. Saraswati’s decision to call off the program following the Pulwama attack was a big relief for the chief minister.

Laughing out loud at how the “drama” around the Ram Mandir is playing out, Das said, “This is turning into a joke. What the BJP says, it does not mean. What the BJP says, does not matter. Eventually, the Supreme Court will decide. The BJP needs to be honest about it.”

In any case, Ram, the god in question, Das said, appeared to be seriously displeased about the state of affairs.

“Lord Ram has given no indication, not the slightest sign, that the Ram Mandir will be built,” he said. “It will only be built when Lord Ram wants. So what is the point in doing hai, hai?”

The chief priest then mimicked Adityanath promising that he would build the Ram Mandir.

Just last week, the chief minister said, “Do not worry, we have made it clear the the temple of Maryada Purushottam Shri Ram will be constructed at the very place, at the very spot. Let there be no confusion.”

In Lucknow, Adityanath told a student to trust Modi, who could “turn the impossible into possible.” 

He might not vote BJP

Modi, while campaigning for 2014 Lok Sabha election, did not speak of the Ram Mandir. The prime minister has not visited Ayodhya since coming to power, but he raised the cry of “Jai Shri Ram” in the run up to the 2017 Assembly election in UP.  The Ram Mandir also found place in BJP’s manifesto for state polls. It won by a huge margin. 

Das says he is tired of the “untruths” about the construction of the Ram Mandir, and that is why he does not want to vote for the BJP, this year.  

“How can I support someone who came to power saying that the Ram Mandir would be constructed but did not do it,” he said. “Now, they say that the Supreme Court will decide. You are saying it today. Why did you not say it back then?”

When pushed on whether he really did not plan on voting for the BJP, Das said, “To be honest, I don’t know. It depends on the circumstances. When it is good for the country then one has to make friends of an enemy.”

Das refused to elaborate any further.

Despite the VHP’s pledge to not raise the Ram Mandir issue until the election is over, Das believes that the VHP, the RSS and the Bajrang Dal would campaign on the Ram Mandir.

“The BJP will not do it, but its partners will. They will say that give the BJP five more years and the Ram Mandir will get built.”

On whether he intends to believe the Ram Mandir pitch this time around, Das said, “When you feel desperate, you have no choice but to believe. When you feel desperate, you have no choice but to hope.”

Destroying Babri Masjid was a mistake

Das, who believes that Muslims should not have been given a choice to live in India following the partition in 1947, blames the Congress Party for “this entire mess.” Now, he refers to Hindus as the “elder brother” and Muslims as the “younger brother.”

After discussing the fate of the Ram Mandir, the chief priest explained what he meant when he said that destroying the Babri Masjid was a mistake.

Das had performed Hindu rituals inside the mosque, when the makeshift temple was under its middle dome. He had done this for almost a year before the mosque was demolished on 6 December, 1992.

In 1949, a group of Hindus placed idols inside the mosque. In 1950, a court in Faizabad allowed for a Hindu priest to offer prayers and for the public to do darshan from behind the the iron grills of the mosque gate.  On 1 February, 1986, a district judge in Faizabad ordered the lock on the gate be opened. Two years on, the VHP escalated the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. 

On the day of the demolition, Das said that he was preoccupied with rescuing the idols from under the middle dome of the mosque.

The chief priest, who believed the mosque to be a temple, said that it was far better setup than the makeshift tent he goes to everyday.

As things stand, Das says offering prayers has become mechanical.   

“I cannot deviate in the slightest from what prayers have always been offered. I cannot do a havan. I cannot even add a stick or a pole to the structure that already exists,” he said. 

All the demolition had achieved was the loss of life in the communal violence that followed, he said. “Hindus and Muslims were killed,” he said.

Lilly Singh shared some personal news via Twitter on Sunday, and her fans have only shown her support. 

The YouTube star, known as “Superwoman,” revealed that she is bisexual. 

In the tweet, Singh checked off the boxes “female,” “colored” and “bisexual,” saying that though these traits have “proven to be obstacles from time to time,” she is now “fully embracing them as superpowers.” 

Fans and fellow YouTubers alike met Singh’s revelation with praise.

Many South Asians have expressed that Singh’s coming out is deeply significant for their community. Writer Afshan D’souza-Lodhi told BBC Newsbeat that “in the South Asian community there’s a hesitancy for women to take ownership of their sexuality in the way Lilly has done.”

“My parents have seen Superwoman videos. I’ve made them sit and watch them,” D’souza-Lodhi said. “They’ve laughed and found it really funny. The videos get shared on Facebook so they have access to that, so for her to come out and to normalise bisexuality in the way she has, allows our parents to have that discussion.”

As many point out, Singh’s representation of the LGBTQ community speaks volumes. 

Singh tweeted her appreciation for all the love. 

Arya doing this on purpose, HBO? 

On Sunday, the television network released another new clip from the final season of “Game of Thrones,” nestled in a promo for the network’s upcoming 2019 programming. The footage seemingly shows Arya (Maisie Williams) looking wide-eyed at a dragon, and doing her best impression of surprised Pikachu.

It’s a cool clip (Arya and dragons, what’s not to like?), but it’s hard not to be slightly disappointed, considering some fans were thinking a Season 8 trailer would be dropping, especially with the season finale of “True Detective” and the Oscars both airing on Sunday night.

On top of that, there’s some curious reused Season 7 footage tacked on to the end of the promo. After the teaser shows brief moments of when the Night King (spoiler alert) kills Viserion at the end of last season, this glimpse of Jon Snow (Kit Harington) eventually flashes on-screen:

Does that look familiar to anyone? Perhaps a little bit like this?

In George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Bran isn’t the only kid in the Stark family who can warg, aka take over another creature’s mind (as he does above with Hodor). In fact, most of the kids seem to have some degree of this ability with their direwolves, including our King in the North, Jon Snow.

In the novels, it’s not yet revealed that Jon Snow comes back to life after the Night Watch’s mutiny (which took place in Season 5 of the show). It’s only theorized that he warged into his direwolf, Ghost, to avoid death.

Jon hasn’t been revealed as a warg on the HBO show, but seeing this brief clip of a very foggy-eyed-looking King in the North, especially viewed on a small phone screen, is enough to stir up some conversation:

For the record, Jon is not warging in the clip. It’s actually a shot of him beyond the wall in Season 7, Episode 6, before Khaleesi shows up to save the day with her dragons. Interestingly enough, the brief moment is included alongside other footage that occurs after Khaleesi’s dragons arrive, so it does make you wonder why HBO picked this particular earlier moment to shoehorn in.

Sure, it could be by accident that a slightly warg-like image of Jon Snow flashes across the screen. But HBO knows how much fans analyze footage, breaking it down frame-by-frame. And the network isn’t opposed to playing jokes. HBO infamously Rickrolled “Westworld” fans ahead of Season 2, promising spoilers and instead delivering a Rick Astley cover. The network was also reportedly messing with “Game of Thrones” fans during a Season 5 social media campaign that would show “visions” of the upcoming season. These clips could only be viewed once and would disappear, which HBO anticipated would cause some backlash from rabid viewers.

The network is well aware there’s already been a couple cases of “eye-gate” on the show, with fans pausing different moments to see if Jon’s eyes had changed color to indicate he’s warging. One incident happened in Season 5 when Jon Snow lay dying after being stabbed by the Night’s Watch, and the other was in Season 7 when people were wondering if the eyes on the direwolf pommel of Jon’s sword, Longclaw, had changed. In both cases, it turned out to be nothing.

If you think there’s absolutely no chance HBO was intentionally being a little cheeky, possibly giving fans a wink through warg-looking eyes, you know nothing, Jon Snow.

A former staffer on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign says he kissed her without her consent outside a rally in Florida in August 2016, The Washington Post reported Monday.

“I immediately felt violated because I wasn’t expecting it or wanting it,” the staffer, Alva Johnson, told the Post. “I can still see his lips coming straight for my face.”

The allegation is described in a federal lawsuit filed Monday in Florida, in which Johnson is seeking unspecified damages for emotional pain and suffering, according to the Post.

Trump grabbed Johnson’s hand and tried to kiss her on the lips as he exited an RV outside the Tampa rally on Aug. 24, 2016, she alleges in the lawsuit and told the Post in a series of interviews.

Johnson, 43, told the Post she turned her head to avoid the unwanted kiss, which landed on the side of her mouth and felt “super-creepy and inappropriate.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed Johnson’s accusation, calling it “absurd on its face.”

“This never happened and is directly contradicted by multiple highly credible eye witness accounts,” Sanders said in a statement.

Head over to The Washington Post to read the full report.

Johnson identified a campaign official and then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as witnesses. However, both parties told the Post they did not see the alleged kiss.

Johnson’s boyfriend, mother and stepfather confirmed to the Post that she told them about the alleged incident the day it occurred. The Post also obtained text messages between Johnson and a Florida attorney whom she consulted about Trump’s alleged misconduct. The messages showed that the attorney found Johnson’s allegation “credible” but did not take on her case for business reasons, according to the Post.

Notes from Johnson’s therapist at the time referred to an unspecified event during the campaign that left Johnson distressed, the Post reported.

Johnson “felt reduced to just another object of [Trump’s] unwanted sexual attention” when he “forcibly kissed” her, the lawsuit says.

In her lawsuit, Johnson, who is black, also alleges that Trump’s campaign discriminated against her by paying her less than her white colleagues. Trump’s campaign has denied the accusation.

“The Trump campaign has never discriminated based on race, ethnicity, gender, or any other basis,” Kayleigh McEnany, a spokeswoman for the campaign, told HuffPost in a statement. “Any allegation suggesting otherwise is off base and unfounded.”

At least 21 other women have accused Trump of various instances of sexual misconduct between the early 1980s and mid-2000s. He has vehemently denied the allegations.

In the now-infamous “Access Hollywood” tape recorded in 2005 and made public in October 2016, Trump bragged about making sexual advances on women without their consent.

“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women],” Trump can be heard telling host Billy Bush. “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Johnson told the Post that she quit Trump’s campaign a few days after the “Access Hollywood” tape was made public.

“I felt sick to my stomach,” she said of Trump’s comments on the leaked audio. “That was what he did to me.”

Johnson’s attorney, Hassan Zavareei, told The Daily Beast that his client feels “partly responsible for helping put a sexual predator into the White House.”

“She believes she has an obligation to tell her story and to hold him accountable for what he’s done to her but to so many other women,” Zavareei said.

Asked if Johnson would testify before Congress about the alleged kiss, Zavareei said they would consider doing so.

“She’s obviously going to testify in court in this case,” he said. “Whether she testifies in Congress, I don’t know. If they made the request we would certainly give it fair consideration.”

This story has been updated to include McEnany’s statement and Zavareei’s comments.

SRINAGAR/ NEW DELHI — Political parties in Jammu and Kashmir Monday warned the Centre of far-reaching consequences if Article 35A, which provides special rights to natives of the border state, is altered with PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti saying the people there may even raise some other flag and not the national tricolour.

The warning by the parties came on a day when the Supreme Court listed for hearing this week a batch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of Article 35A, which also grants privileges to permanent residents of the state. The crucial hearing could come up on any date from 26 February to 28 February.

The J and K administration had requested on 11 February to adjourn the hearing on the pleas on various grounds, including that there was no “elected government” in the state. The apex court had deferred till January this year the hearing after the Centre and the state said local bodies polls there would go on till December.

Barring the BJP, political parties came out with strong statements opposing any move by the Centre to dilute Article 35-A or amend it.

“I am in contact with (NC president) Omar Abdullah. We should have a strategy so that there is no attack on Article 35A. And if there is an attack, then I do not know which flag, other than the tricolour, would the people of Kashmir bear in hand and if they do so, then do not tell us that we had not warned you (Centre). Do not push the people of J-K to the wall,” Mehbooba told reporters.

Abdullah, the vice president of National Conference, reminded the Centre that a peaceful state like Arunachal Pradesh is also up in flames and people there have hit the roads in order to save their permanent resident status.

“That I believe should act as an eye-opener for those who are inimical to Article 370, Article 35A. Any mis-adventure in fiddling with the state’s special status will unarguably have serious and far-reaching consequences in Jammu and Kashmir. The situation will be worse than what it is in Arunachal Pradesh,” he said.

Abdullah said it was his duty to warn New Delhi about the consequences of any tampering with the special status of J and K.

“I am not threatening, it is my duty to warn you, the rest is your will. As a responsible citizen, it is my duty to tell Delhi that your thinking is not right,” the NC leader said.

At her news conference, Mehbooba warned that any tampering with the special status would “undermine and nullify” the state’s accession with the Union.

“JK is a Muslim majority state which acceded to India under certain conditions and that condition is Article 370 Unfortunately, whenever there are elections, JK becomes a part of the electioneering. Before the 2014 polls, Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru was sent to gallows. 

Mehbooba said the people of J and K would have to resist any tampering with the state’s special status themselves and all the parties, irrespective of their ideologies, would have to come together to defend it.

The PDP president appealed to all political parties in the state to devise a joint strategy to save the special status and asked the Centre to not “play with fire” by tampering with Article 35A.

“It is my request that this should not be done and if it is done, then the consequences would be such that the people who bear the flag of India would perhaps not be able to do so. It is my humble submission to the powers in our country, do not play with fire. Its consequences would be grave and something which you have not witnessed since 1947, she said.

The CPI (M) demanded that the Centre make a public commitment to retain Article 35A in the Constitution.

The state government’s counsel had sought permission from the Supreme Court for circulating a letter among contesting parties for adjourning the upcoming hearing on pleas challenging the constitutional validity of Article 35A.

Article 35-A, which was incorporated in the Constitution by a 1954 Presidential Order, accords special rights and privileges to permanent residents of J and K and bars people from outside the state from acquiring any immovable property in the state.

It also denies property rights to a woman who marries a person from outside the state. The provision, which leads to such women from the state forfeiting their right over property, also applies to her heirs.

Indian Air Force crossed Line of Control and hastily “dropped payload” near Balakot, Pakistan said on Tuesday.

Pakistan Army spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor tweeted: 

Ghafoor also posted images of the open space where the payload was allegedly dropped. He said there had been no casualties or damage.

The statement from Pakistan comes amid reports that a group of Mirage 2000 Indian Fighter jets struck a terrorist camp across the LoC and destroyed it. 

Two Mirage 2000 jets dropped 1000 kg bombs on terror camps across LoC at 3:30am on 26 February, ANI reported quoting Indian Air Force sources.

However, an Indian defence spokesman told Reuters, “I have no information.”

ANI reports that the Air Force has put all air defence systems along the international border and LoC on high alert to respond to any possible action by Pakistan Air Force. 

Meanwhile, Congress president Rahul Gandhi has tweeted in support of Air Force pilots.

The reports of a strike come days after the Pulwama terror attack on 14 February in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed. Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad had claimed responsibility for the attack.

The relations between India and Pakistan have deteriorated further since the attack for which India has blamed its neighbour. 

After the attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said security forces were given a free hand to avenge it.

On 24 February, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan asked Modi to “give peace a chance” and assured him that he “stands by” his words and will “immediately act” if New Delhi provides Islamabad with “actionable intelligence” on the Pulwama attack.

We don’t know about you, but our favorite part about the Oscars is definitely all the afterparty outfits. 

Don’t get us wrong; we love the red carpet arrivals, and this year they did not disappoint. But the after-party costume changes always seem to be a little more fun and adventurous, as was the case at the annual Vanity Fair Oscars party.

Regina King, who took home the trophy for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, ditched her stunning white gown for a bright coral dress, while Constance Wu swapped her pretty yellow Versace dress for full-on disco glamour. Then there was Kendall Jenner, who narrowly avoided a number of wardrobe malfunctions in her skin-baring ensemble. 

Other standouts included Lupita Nyong’o, Naomi Campbell and Miley Cyrus, who sported a black sequined dress with a plunging neckline. Selma Blair was also in attendance, making her first red carpet appearance since announcing her multiple sclerosis diagnosis last year. 

Check out all those looks and more below: 

NEW DELHI — India’s defence ministry said on Tuesday that it had no information about Pakistani allegations that Indian aircraft violated Pakistani airspace.

Pakistan’s military said that Indian military aircraft crossed the Line of Control frontier in the disputed Kashmir region and “released a payload” after Pakistan scrambled its own jets, but there were no casualties or damage.

“I have no information,” an Indian defence spokesman said.

A woman who took part in the ‘Garima Yatra’ for sexual assault survivors was beaten by a mob in her village in Uttar Pradesh for speaking up on the issue. 

The woman is believed to have participated in the march with her husband because her minor daughter is a rape survivor. 

The woman alleged that the family of the rape accused had come looking for her and her husband when they had gone for the march. And when they returned on Saturday, they were assaulted.

“There were about 35-40 people, mostly relatives of the accused. About a dozen of them hit me on my head repeatedly, until I started bleeding. I am barely able to walk as they hit me on my legs with sticks,” the woman told The IndianExpress.

The woman told the newspaper that even her two minor daughters and her mother-in-law were assaulted. 

The Indian Express reported that the daughter of the couple was raped after several police complaints of stalking and assault, but the police did not take any action. 

Thousands of survivors of sexual abuse travelled from across India to participate in the dignity march in New Delhi on Friday.

The survivors, both women and children, who have faced some form of abuse in their life, travelled 10,000 km connecting 200 districts in 24 states starting from Mumbai on 20 December, reported PTI.