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Days after Mumbai-based cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote and Israeli artist Bracha Ettinger quit German art exhibition Documenta 16’s finding committee, the remaining four members have also tendered their resignations.

In their resignation letter on Thursday, Gong Yan of the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art, Paris-based writer and curator Simon Njami, Vienna-based curator Kathrin Rhomberg and Colombia-born curator María Inés Rodríguez said that their decision was based on “grave concern for the future of Documenta”.

Documenta is an exhibition of contemporary art that takes place every five years in Germany’s Kassel. The finding committee was responsible for selecting the artistic director for the next edition scheduled to take place in 2027.

Hoskote resigned from the committee on November 12 after Germany’s Culture Minister Claudia Roth threatened to withdraw public funding for the event. She said that a 2019 letter signed by Hoskote, among others, was “clearly antisemitic”.

The 2019 letter was published as part of an article by a German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung on November 9. The letter had been circulated by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a global movement to pressurise Tel Aviv into withdrawing from the occupied Palestinian territories and abiding by human rights laws.

Ettinger’s resignation on November 12 was not linked to the controversy around Hoskote. She said…

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Kashmiri literature exists in something of a vacuum at present. Correction. It existed in a vacuum for the longest time, till translations by, among others, Neerja Mattoo, Ranjana Kaul, Trilokinath Raina, Ranjit Hoskote, and Shafi Shauq introduced non-Kashmiri readers to the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from the region. This year, a new collection of short stories, For Now, It Is Night, has enriched the canon of Kashmiri literature.

The book brings together short stories written between 1970 and 2000 by the prominent Kashmiri author and playwright Hari Krishna Kaul. It also contains a few previously translated stories that have appeared in various Kashmiri short stories collections edited and translated by Neerja Mattoo such as Kath: Stories from Kashmir (2011), The Greatest Kashmiri Stories Ever Told (2022), and In This Metropolis (2011) translated by Ranjana Kaul and published by Sahitya Akademi.

Rediscovering Hari Krishna Kaul

Unlike most collections featuring multiple translators, where each story is translated by only one of the translators, this collection is a collaborative effort. Each story has been discovered with painstaking effort, restored, audio-recorded, and discussed at length by the translators – the outcome of which is clearly visible in the masterful translations by the team comprising Kalpana Raina, Tanveer Ajsi, Gowhar Fazili, and Gowhar Yaqoob.

Kalpana Raina is Hari…

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And then there were two.

The ICC Men’s ODI World Cup began at the Narendra Modi Stadium on October 5, pitting 10 of the best cricketing nations, at the time, against each other. As the weeks went by, it became clearer who would be the ones left behind, and who would go on to earn a shot at the title.

On Sunday, at the very same venue in Ahmedabad, it will be decided who is the best of the lot. And it is rather fitting that India and Australia will be competing for that grand prize.

India, a team led admirably by Rohit Sharma, have been virtually unstoppable. They remained unbeaten throughout the nine matches they played in the round robin stage. And in the semi-final they overcame New Zealand who have historically been a thorn in India’s side when it comes to the knockout stages of an ICC event.

Also read: Virat Kohli paints the perfect picture at Wankhede

And then there’s Australia, who started off their campaign with two overwhelming losses to India and South Africa.

Slowly, Pat Cummins and his mates in yellow picked up the pieces and are on an eight-match winning streak ever since.

In the semi-final against South Africa, a match that, given the target that was set, one could argue Australia should have won…

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Ballon bear pic.twitter.com/bLJae681I9

— outhere (@rugcarpetz) November 10, 2023

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Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Friday urged party workers to seek public opinion on whether he should resign as Delhi’s chief minister or run the government from jail if he is arrested in connection with the liquor excise policy case, the Hindustan Times reported.

“I don’t have any lust for power,” Kejriwal said. “I resigned from the post on the 49th day [in 2014]. Nobody asked for my resignation. But we have to ensure that we do not get trapped in BJP’s conspiracies”.

The chief minister alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party plans to get central investigative agencies to arrest Opposition leaders Mamata Banerjee, Tejashwi Yadav and Hemant Soren so that it can “sweep in” West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand – states where the leaders are in power.

“So, should I resign?” The Indian Express quoted Kejriwal as saying. “Should I run the government from jail?” Today I am giving you [party workers] this task to ask the people of Delhi. They have given us a lot of love, we will not do anything without their permission.”

He added: “Go to every house in Delhi and take people’s opinion. But the BJP should not get one Lok Sabha seat from Delhi this time – even if I am in jail.”

Kejriwal said he has also been discussing the matter with…

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नाशिक मध्ये बिबट्याचा धुमाकूळ, सावता नगर येथे जेरबंद pic.twitter.com/T3yM3zRTOA

— Ganesh sonawane (@GaneshS11511) November 17, 2023

2 leopards rescued today morning from #nashik city. 2 km distance from each other. Rescue operation done by @MahaForest Nashik & @resqct@ranjeetnature @neha_panchamiya @nashik_feed @TamhiniGhat pic.twitter.com/E6C95Up9IQ

— Akshay Mandavkar🌿 (@akshay_journo) November 17, 2023

…

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In 2019, Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s consul-general to the United States at that time, said India could follow the Israeli model of building settlements in Kashmir. He was speaking in the aftermath of the Indian government’s abrogation of Article 370, stripping away the special autonomy granted to Jammu and Kashmir under the Constitution.

“I believe the security situation will improve, it will allow the refugees to go back because we already have a model in the world. It has happened in the Middle East. If the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it,” he had said, at an event organised by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri to discuss his upcoming controversial film The Kashmir Files (2022) about the displacement of Kashmiri Hindus from the valley in the 1990s.

When a video capturing Chakravorty’s comments circulated widely online, Azad Essa, a journalist based between Johannesburg and New York, had been thinking about India’s growing closeness with Israel.

Essa grew up in South Africa and travelled to India every year to visit his family in parts of Mumbai and Gujarat where his grandparents came from. He is a journalist at Middle East Eye – and has previously covered Africa for Al Jazeera English. He has also reported from Kashmir.

When he visited the…

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In an interview to a news channel on October 25, former Pakistan cricketer Danish Kaneria identified himself as a “sanatani” and said it was his duty to speak against atrocities on Hindus. He was replying to a question on alleged religious discrimination against him during his days in the Pakistan team – a claim first made in 2019 by his former teammate Shoaib Akhtar.

In the interview, Kaneria went on to criticise Pakistani cricketers for offering namaaz on the field, hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, defended chants of “Jai Shree Ram” by Indian supporters at a match against Pakistan and made a pitch for “Akhand Bharat” – a Hindutva concept that envisages annexing neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh into India.

Kaneria’s career ended in ignominy after he was given a lifetime ban by the England and Wales Cricket Board for fixing matches in county cricket. However, social media has allowed him another chance at fame.

With 1.38 lakh followers on Twitter and 4.24 lakh subscribers on YouTube, his popularity on social media is part of a trend of Pakistani social media personalities looking to make inroads into the huge Indian audience by posting content that show India and even the Modi government in good…

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The toll from the October 29 blasts at a Jehovah’s Witnesses gathering in Kerala’s Ernakulam district increased to six on Thursday after a critically injured man succumbed to burns, PTI reported.

The 24-year-old identified as Praveen Pradeep, a resident of Malayatoor, died at a private hospital on Thursday, Mathrubhumi reported. He had been in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

Praveen’s mother, who had suffered serious injuries in the explosions, died on November 11. His sister Libina had succumbed to injuries on October 30, a day after the blasts, PTI reported.

His brother Rahul was also injured in the blasts and he is undergoing treatment.

At least two big explosions occurred at a convention centre of the Christian group in Kalamassery municipality area on October 29.

Hours after the blasts, a man named Dominic Martin had surrendered to the police in the Thrissur district claiming responsibility for them.

Before surrendering, Martin, a resident of Ernakulum, had said in a social media post that he was enraged at the “teachings” of the Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation. The post was later deleted.

“I was a ‘non-serious’ member of the congregation for 16 years,” Martin had said. “Six years ago, I found that their teachings were ‘anti-national’. The denomination’s leadership refused to pay heed, although I had requested them to stop this type of preaching which even exhorted…

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For those who are already aware of the vocal forms that form a part of the Hindustani tradition, it would be clear that the pakhawaj provides rhythmic accompaniment to the dhrupad-dhamar forms. On the other hand, the khayal and the thumri-dadra forms employ the tabla. It is not an accident of history that the evolution of the tabla and that of the vocal forms it accompanies was concomitant.

Unfortunately, we have traversed so deep into areas of specialisation that we seem to have forgotten the points of engagement, of dialogue, of shared histories. But, musical terms and colloquialisms are signposts of this exchange – an exchange that proved the definition of the term sangeet, which has been loosely used by many to refer to music alone. Sangeet in fact refers to the amalgam of vocal and instrumental music and dance, and the exchanges that I am referring to indicate what could have possibly represented sangeet in the original sense of the term.

Moving on to sangat for khayal, since khayals are sung in vilambit, madhya and drut layas, the tabla player has to be adept at keeping time in all speeds. Further, the tabla player has to be conversant with the taals that…

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Officials at the site of the partially collapsed under-construction tunnel in Uttarakhand on Tuesday began using steel pipes to rescue workers trapped inside, The Indian Express reported.

The tunnel, located on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri national highway, collapsed in the early hours of Sunday, leaving 40 workers trapped. The tunnel is part of the Char Dham Road Project to build all-weather roads in Uttarakhand.

Authorities are attempting to rescue the workers by inserting large-diameter mild steel pipes through the rubble by using auger drilling machines. Auger drilling involves using a screw-shaped tool to make holes into the ground or other surfaces.

The National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force, the police and the fire brigade are conducting rescue operations.

#WATCH | Uttarkashi tunnel accident: Trucks loaded with 900 mm diameter pipes reach Silkyara. A platform is being prepared for the auger machine for horizontal drilling to rescue the trapped labourers by inserting large diameter MS pipes in the part of the Silkyara tunnel blocked… pic.twitter.com/KcGcVB2z55

— ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) November 14, 2023

Uttarkashi Circle Officer Prashant Kumar said on Monday that all the workers were safe and were being supplied with oxygen through a pipe. The authorities have also sent food and water to them, he added.

On Monday, rescue workers were able to cut through around…

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