It is the last warship to be inducted from a foreign source in the backdrop of India’s push to achieve self-reliance in defence.

The Navy commissioned INS Tamal, a Russian-manufactured guided missile frigate that also features dual role BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, into the force Tuesday. It is the last warship to be inducted from a foreign source in the backdrop of India’s push to achieve self-reliance in defence.

Additionally, Yard 12652 (Udaygiri), the second ship of Project 17A stealth frigate built at Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDSL) in Mumbai, was delivered, the Navy said in a statement.

INS Tamal’s commissioning ceremony was held at Yantar shipyard in Russia’s Kaliningrad, where it was built. The ship will soon embark for her homeport of Karwar in Karnataka, the Navy said.

“INS Tamal is a formidable moving fortress at sea and is designed for blue water operations across the spectrum of naval warfare in all four dimensions — air, surface, underwater and electromagnetic,” the Navy said.

INS Tamal is the eighth multi-role stealth frigate in Project 1135.6 — a series of frigates built by Russia for the Indian Navy — and the second of the additional follow-on Tushil class of ships. The first ship of Tushil class (INS Tushil) was commissioned in December last year.

The seven Project 1135.6 ships inducted thus far are part of the Western Fleet, ‘The Sword Arm’ of the Navy under the Western Naval Command.

INS Tamal has a crew of about 250 sailors and 26 officers and is commanded by Captain Sridhar Tata, a gunnery and missile warfare specialist. The ship is equipped with dual role BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, vertically launched surface-to-air missiles with extended ranges, the standard 30 mm Close in Weapon System, the 100 MM Main gun and very potent ASW rockets and heavyweight torpedoes.

It has also been equipped with complex automated systems for nuclear, biological and chemical defence, including damage control and fire-fighting that can be operated centrally from sheltered posts, the Navy said.

The ship has successfully carried out trial firing of all her Russian weapon systems, including the vertical launched surface to air missile Shtil-1, artillery weapons and torpedoes, the Navy added.

Udaygiri, meanwhile, is the second among the seven Project 17A frigates under construction at MDSL, Mumbai and Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd, Kolkata. Project 17A is a follow-on to the Shivalik class (Project 17) frigates active in service.

According to the Navy, P-17A ships have enhanced stealth features and fitted with ‘State of the Art’ weapons and sensors, including supersonic surface-to-surface, and medium-range surface-to-air missile systems, and represent a quantum leap in Navy’s in-house design capabilities at the Warship Design Bureau.

Udaygiri may undergo some more trials before being commissioned.

source/content: indianexpress.com (headline edited)

Roshni has to her credit catching and relocating 800-odd snakes, most of them venomous, from human settlements in the state capital district of Thiruvananthapuram.

For almost six minutes, as she prodded a 16-foot-long king cobra to slide into a black bag, a crowd of onlookers waited anxiously, not sure if the snake would give in or attack the catcher. After all, it’s not common to see a woman forest officer tackle a venomous serpent and relocate it safely back to the forest.

On Sunday, forest beat officer G S Roshni accomplished the feat when she caught the king cobra from Anchumaruthumoodi residential area in Peppara, Thiruvananthapuram. The video of the rescue has since gone viral, garnering praise for the brave and confident woman officer.

Roshni has to her credit catching and relocating 800-odd snakes, most of them venomous, from human settlements in the state capital district of Thiruvananthapuram. A beat forest officer for the last eight years, Roshni is the only woman snake catcher in Kerala forest department. She is among the first batch of women forest officers in the state.

“This is the first time I caught a king cobra. It had been my dream since I started as a certified snake rescuer in the department in 2019. King cobra, a shy snake, is rarely seen outside the forest. While many snake catchers elsewhere in Kerala have rescued king cobras, I did not get such a chance in Thiruvananthapuram, where this species is rarely spotted,’’ said the Botany graduate.

Roshni, who heads the rapid response team (RRT) at Paruthippally forest range, was alerted about the king cobra in Anchumaruthumoodi near Peppara wildlife sanctuary. When she and her team reached the spot, the serpent was seen resting near a stream where local people often come for bathing. With a black bag and hook, Roshni stepped into the water and in the next six minutes the snake was safely in the bag, secured with a knot, as the crowd heaved a sigh of relief.

“I never use gumboots and hand gloves while rescuing snakes. It is risky to catch a king cobra mainly because of its length. When you catch the tail of a king cobra, its length enables it to swiftly turn against you and attack. To save itself, a king cobra can coil with its head and tail on a single point,’’ she said.

Roshni said her office usually gets around two dozen calls a day regarding snake spotting in residential areas.

On snake catching, she said, “You need courage and presence of mind. Concentration is very important. We have to weigh our safety, the snake’s safety and that of the onlookers. I enjoy catching snakes and have the support of my family. Many others have got trained over the years, but they might not have ventured into snake catching for want of support from family or courage,’’ she said.

Releasing the snakes into the forest is riskier than catching them, she said. “Tied in a bag after being caught, the snake gets provoked while being released,’’ she said.

On days when she is away from office, Roshini leaves to rescue a snake in her car or scooter. “On most such occasions, there would be a snake in the trunk of the car or the storage of the scooter. I will be riding a scooter with a snake in the storage under the seat,’’ said Roshni.

source/content: indianexpress.com (headline edited)

The inscription records a grant made by the Vijayanagar ruler Mallikarjuna to a Vedic scholar on Śaka 1378, Dhātru Āshāḍha ba. 11, corresponding to Monday, June 28, 1456 CE.

The first Indian epigraphical reference to Halley’s Comet has been discovered in a copper plate inscription dated 1456 CE belonging to the Vijayanagar period and preserved at the Srisailam Mallikarjunaswamy temple in Andhra Pradesh.

Dr. K. Munirathnam Reddy, Director, Epigraphy Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), who announced the discovery, told The Hindu that the inscription was written in Sanskrit, using the Nagari script, and refers to the appearance of a comet and a subsequent meteor shower — events that historically coincide with the 1456 appearance of Halley’s Comet.

The inscription records a grant made by the Vijayanagar ruler Mallikarjuna to a Vedic scholar on Śaka 1378, Dhātru Āshāḍha ba. 11, corresponding to Monday, June 28, 1456 CE.

The grant was issued “in order to mitigate the great calamity believed to arise due to the appearance of a comet (dhūmakētu mahōtpāta śāntyartham), and the associated meteor shower (Prakāśyāya mahōtpāta śāntyartham)”, said Dr. Reddy.

The king donated a village named Simgapura, located in Kelajhasima of Hastinavati Vemṭhe, as an agrahāra to a Brahmin named Limgaṇarya, a Vedic scholar from Kaḍiyalapura. 

Dr. Reddy said this place was probably present-day Kaḍiyapulanka in Galividu mandalam, Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh, and noted that the scholar was probably well versed in astronomy.

Dr. Reddy noted that while references to ‘dhumaketus’ (comets) were found in ancient and medieval Indian texts, this was the first inscriptional record that had been discovered.

“What makes this particularly significant,” he said, “is that the year mentioned in the inscription and the reference to the comet’s appearance matches the year in which Halley’s Comet was later established to have appeared,” said Dr. Reddy.

He explained that in traditional belief systems and from the available historical records, the appearance of a comet and meteor shower was considered inauspicious, and associated with misfortune and calamities in many parts of the world.

Dr. Reddy said the appearance of the comet and the beliefs surrounding it were vividly expressed in the inscription in the phrase: Prakāśyāya mahōtpāta śāntyartham dattavān vibhuḥ — meaning: this grant was made in order to pacify the calamities that may arise due to the illuminating comets and meteor shower upon the king and his kingdom.

The discovery of reference to comets in the inscription was made during the critical “line by line” editing of a set of 21 unpublished copper plate charters held by the Srisailam temple authorities. The collection, comprising 78 copper leaves, would soon be published in book form, he added.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

Very stringent data security measures would be kept in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage.

A special dedicated web portal will be launched for self-enumeration during the upcoming Census, which will be available for both phases of the national enumeration exercise, officials said Monday.

In the country’s first digital census, enumerators will collect the data of citizens using mobile applications on their Android and Apple phones, they said.

A special dedicated web portal will be launched for self-enumeration during the upcoming Census, which will be available for both phases of the national enumeration exercise, officials said Monday.

In the country’s first digital census, enumerators will collect the data of citizens using mobile applications on their Android and Apple phones, they said.

It will also be the first time in the country that citizens will get a chance to self-enumerate through a dedicated web portal which will be available for both the phases of Census – Houselisting and Housing Census (HLO) and Population Enumeration.

“Digital Census initiative is a transformational step towards modernising the Census process. For the first time, technology will be used to collect data and send it electronically to the central server. This will result in early availability of Census data,” an official said.

Very stringent data security measures would be kept in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage.

HLO will start from April 1, 2026 followed by phase 2 starting on February 1, 2027 in which Population Enumeration (PE) will be conducted. Castes of household members will be enumerated in the ensuing Census.

Reference date for the Census 2027 will be 00:00 hrs of March 1, 2027 and 00:00 hrs of October 1, 2026 for Union Territories of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir and snowbound non-synchronous areas of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

It will be the 16th Census since start of the exercise in the country and 8th after Independence, for which a gazette notification was issued on June 16.

The Registrar General of India has put in place a three-tier focused and need-based training for each phase–national trainer, master trainer and field trainer.

The field trainers will train around 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors for the massive exercise.

The RGI has told states and Union Territories to make any proposed changes in the boundaries of administrative units before December 31, when they will be considered final for the Census exercise.

In a letter to all states and Union Territories, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Mritunjay Kumar Narayan had said that for the Census, all villages and towns are divided into uniform enumeration blocks and for each block, an enumerator is assigned to avoid any miss or repetition during the population count.

According to norms, the Census can be conducted only three months after the freezing of boundary limits of administrative units such as districts, sub-districts, tehsils, talukas and police stations.

Narayan had said that from April 1, 2026, the Houselisting Operation, the appointment of supervisors and enumerators and the work division among them will be done, and on February 1, 2027, the Census of the population will begin.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.

source/content: telegraphindia.com (headline edited)

The genetic ancestries and their proportions in the Adivasi and Sinhalese are most similar to Dravidian speaking populations who live in southern India today.

Analyses of whole-genome sequence data of urban Sinhalese and two indigenous Adivasi clans in Sri Lanka, which live in geographically separated regions in the country, have shed light on the migratory history of these populations and their genetic relationship to each other and to many Indian populations.

The study, published recently in the journal Current Biology, found that Sinhalese and Adivasi are genetically closest to each other and to South Indians, but at a regional and fine-scale level, the two Adivasi clans are genetically distinct.

For the study, whole genomes of 35 urban Sinhalese individuals and 19 individuals from two indigenous Adivasi clans were sequenced. Of the 19 genomes of Adivasi clans that were sequenced, five were from among Interior Adivasi and 14 were from among Coastal Adivasi.

A genetic perspective

The sampling and data generation were possible due to the outreach efforts of Sri Lankan collaborator Ruwandi Ranasinghe, from the University of Colombo. In addition, the whole genome data of 35 Sri Lankan Tamils sampled in the U.K., which were already sequenced as part of the 1,000 Genomes Project, were included in the analyses.

Sinhalese chronicles and previous genetic studies had proposed that the Sinhalese people had migrated from northern or northwest India around 500 BCE, though their exact origins and migratory history are still debated. That the Sinhalese speak an Indo-European language, Sinhala, whose present-day distribution lies primarily in northern India, further supported the idea of their migration from northern India. But the current study contradicted the findings of the previous studies from a genetic perspective.

“The genetic ancestries and their proportions in the Adivasi and Sinhalese are most similar to Dravidian speaking populations, which live in Southern India today,” Niraj Rai of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknow, and one of the corresponding authors of the paper, told The Hindu.

“Even among South Indian populations, we find that the Sinhalese are genetically closest to those communities that have higher proportions of the so-called ASI or Ancestral South Indian ancestry,” Maanasa Raghavan, assistant professor at the University of Chicago and a corresponding author of the study, said.

“In contrast to many North Indians, these populations generally have lower levels of a genetic ancestry related to ancient groups from the Eurasian Steppe, proposed to have carried Indo-European languages into South Asia and that are today spoken widely in northern regions of India.”

Genes and linguistic affinities

But how does one reconcile the fact that the Sinhalese people speak a language that is classified as Indo-European, which today is spoken mostly in North India?

The authors explained that genes do not reflect linguistic affinities and that biological and cultural evolution can have different trajectories. They have speculated that this genetic-linguistic discordance may have been caused by the Sinhalese population having migrated from somewhere in North India geographically, but genetically speaking, the migration may have come from a group that resembles more South Indian Dravidian speakers today.

An alternative explanation is that a small group of Sinhalese people, perhaps representing the elite, might have migrated to Sri Lanka and transmitted the language but not the genes.

“If the Sinhalese were derived from a North Indian genetic cluster with higher Steppe-related ancestry, mixing had to have happened with ASI populations to dilute their genetic ancestries and pull them genetically closer to South Indian populations in our analyses. More anthropological studies are needed to fully understand these differing genetic and cultural affinities of the Sinhalese,” Raghavan said.

Support from anthropological studies

The time of formation of the Sinhalese genetic pool was dated in the study to about 3,000 years ago, falling within the range of dates displayed broadly by Indian and other Sri Lankan populations and around the time of the proposed migration date of the Sinhalese in the chronicles (500 BCE).

“The date our analysis reveals is interesting. It implies that the Sinhalese ancestors migrated to Sri Lanka fairly close in time to the dynamic genetic mixing events that were occurring about 2,000-4,000 years ago in India that created the ANI-ASI genetic spectrum we see in today’s populations,” Rai explained. (ANI stands for ‘ancestral north India’ and ASI for ‘ancestral south Indian’.)

Sinhalese chronicles also say that when the Sinhalese people migrated from India to Sri Lanka about 3,000 years ago, the Adivasi were already living in Sri Lanka. This is also supported by anthropological studies that propose that the Adivasi are descended from early hunter-gatherers in the region. The Adivasi are in fact traditionally hunter-gatherers and the Indigenous peoples of Sri Lanka.

“At a broad scale, Adivasi today look genetically very similar to the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamil. This must mean that the Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils, or other groups migrating from South India must have met the Adivasi, mixed with them heavily, and contributed to what is the present-day genetic structure of the Adivasi,” Raghavan said.

The Sinhalese and the Adivasi are close to each other and share broad-level genetic similarities. On a finer-scale demographic resolution, however, the study found that the two Adivasi clans are a bit different from the Sinhalese. The Adivasi have slightly higher levels of ancient hunter-gatherer ancestry than the Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan Tamils, and have maintained smaller population sizes over the course of their history, both of which support their traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle.

The Adivasi genomes also display signatures of endogamy, which appear as long stretches of DNA inherited from a common ancestor. The study further reported that a consequence of the low population size and endogamy is that the genetic diversity among the Adivasi is lower than that in the urban populations, which may have an impact on their health and disease status.

While both Adivasi clans have maintained lower population sizes compared to the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils, the authors found that the Interior Adivasi clan seemed to have undergone a stronger reduction in their population size compared to the Coastal Adivasi, leading to a greater loss of their genetic diversity.

“We find the two Adivasi clans — the Coastal Adivasi and the Interior Adivasi — also have some differences in their genetic ancestry arising due to distinct geographic separation between them,” Rai said.

This, according to Raghavan, indicated that the Interior Adivasi clan must have undergone stronger pressures, perhaps societal or environmental, to keep the population size lower compared to their Coastal counterparts. Explaining how the two Adivasi clans are more similar to each other, but still have genetic differences at a fine scale, she said that this basically means at some point in time, due to geographic separation, the genetic and lifestyle attributes of the two clans started to drift apart.

Capturing the population history

In fact, the fragmented nature of the Adivasi clans also impacted the study sampling strategy. While 35 individuals representing the two large groups — Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils — have been included in the analyses, the numbers for the two Adivasi populations were small: five from among the interior Adivasi and 14 from among the Coastal Adivasi.

Though it would be ideal to keep matched sample sizes of different populations for genetic analyses, the reason for including only small numbers for the two Adivasi clans was because the Adivasi communities today are very fragmented.

“Historical, anthropological, as well as our genetic results all suggest that these communities live in small sizes and practice endogamy,” Raghavan said. “Because of endogamy, a lot of these individuals tend to be quite related to one another. Having really high relatedness in a group impacts the genetic analyses because then everybody’s going to look like each other. So that’s why our sample sizes were lower for the two Adivasi clans.”

Despite the number of individuals representing the two Adivasi clans being small, the researchers were able to recapture the entire population history of these two groups. The study was able to address the questions that the researchers set out to do despite the Adivasi sample sizes being small, according to Raghavan.

“Since every individual’s genome is a mosaic of their ancestor’s genomes, even a small number of individuals can represent their population’s genetic histories. Moreover, we didn’t find any genetic outliers within the Adivasi clans. So, all the sampled individuals fit into the model that we propose,” Rai clarified.

“This is the first time that high-resolution genome data have been sequenced from multiple populations in Sri Lanka, including the Indigenous Adivasi and urban Sinhalese, to understand the deeply rooted ancestries and their population histories,” Rai added.

Broadly, the study has important implications for how humans moved across South Asia and highlights the high degree of interconnectedness between India and Sri Lanka over millennia.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

Known as Girmitiyas, the ancestors of present day Indo-Trinidadians, were taken to the former British colony as plantation workers.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Port of Spain, the capital of Caribbean nation Trinidad and Tobaga, on Thursday (July 4, 2025) he was welcomed with a cultural performance of Chautaal, a Bhojpuri folk music form. His Trinidad and Tobago counterpart, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, traces her origins to Bihar. In the ceremonial dinner hosted by her for Mr. Modi, food was served on a Sohari leaf, again a staple in Bihari households. President Christine Carla Kangaloo is also from an Indo-Trinidadian family.

“A total of 13 lakh people live in this country, out of which 45 per cent are of Indian origin,” Randhir Jaiswal, Spokesperson Ministry of External Affairs, said during a media brief on the PM’s visit, adding, “Among the 45% of people… most are those who have come from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Most of these people are those who have come from Bhojpuri-speaking districts like Chhapra, Ara, Ballia, Siwan, Gopalganj, Banaras, Azamgarh, etc.”

India’s Caribbean connection

India’s connection with Caribbean nations dates back to 1845. Fath Al Razack, a ship carrying 225 labourers from colonial India landed at the Gulf of Paria marking the arrival of Indians to Trinidad. Subsequently over 1.4 lakh Indian labourers were sent to Trinidad, mostly from present day Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to work on the sugar plantations. A majority of them were Hindus and spoke Bhojpuri, Awadhi, and Hindi.

After slavery was officially abolished, the British came up with the Indian Indentured Labourers System under which people would “voluntarily” offer to work as plantation labourers. A number of Indians agreed and migrated to colonies as India was grappling with famine and poor economic conditions under Colonial rule. These Indians were refers as Girmitiyas, a colloquial term derived from English word ‘agreement’. The British transported several thousand Indian labourers to several of its colonies, including Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad, and Guyana.

The British called it the Great Experiment, in which as many as 1.2 million Indians were migrated to several colonies between 1834 and 1920, according to the UNESCO. Though the agreement stated that these Indians would work “for a set period of time”, a majority of them chose to stay back by obtaining a new indenture. Some returned, only to bring back their families.

Another form of slavery?

The British called the Great Experiment a success, the Dutch too followed it and thus Suriname too became a destination for Girmitiyas. On paper, the system looked like a contract, but it was no less than slavery. The indenture was not based on the principle of equality or natural justice, wrote Ambassador Bhaswati Mukherjee in an article published in the MEA website in 2014. The indentured were shipped to the Caribbean and confined to a plantation or estate where they lived and worked under conditions comparable to those for Africans under slavery. They had no choice in employer, could not change employers or buy themselves out of, or negotiate their contract, nor could they move freely without the consent of their employers, wrote Professor Kamala Kempadoo in the article ‘“Bound Coolies” and Other Indentured Workers in the Caribbean: Implications for debates about human trafficking and modern slavery’, published in Anti-Trafficking Review in 2017.

In an article published in The Hindu’s Sunday Magazine in 2017, when India observed 100 years of abolishment of indentured labour, author G. Pramod Kumar wrote: “compared to “slave” labour, indenture was projected as “free” labour, even though the workers were bonded by contract for five years under harsh conditions. ‘Double-cut’, for instance, would dock two days’ pay for a day’s absence from work.”

The workers could not easily move outside their estates. If caught without their ‘immigration ticket’, they were jailed for ‘vagrancy’. The colonisers wanted to appear morally right without losing profits, but what they had surreptitiously laid out was “a new system of slavery”, he wrote quoting Hugh Tinker’s seminal book published in 1974 titled A New System of Slavery.

Where are the women?

While it is a matter of pride for both Trinidad and India that two Indian-origin women are ruling the South American nation, very little is documented on women indentured labourers.

Professor Kamala Kempadoo wrote that Indian women were recruited not for their labour, but to marry, provide care work, bring stability to the male labour force, and help eliminate the cost of remigration and the loss of workers. “As wage labourers they were deemed inferior to men, and were paid less even while they performed the same work in the fields, but their sexuality was highly prized by the employers. The sexualisation of, in particular, Asian indentured women, is not dissimilar to that which is described as ‘sex trafficking’ in the twenty-first century, in that sexual labour was, and is, an explicit part of the reasons for the recruitment and overseas employment of women,” she wrote in the Anti-Trafficking Review article.

The Royal government even collected a £3 tax on indentured emigrants returning to their homeland, which was abolished after the Smuts-Gandhi settlement of 1914.

Gandhiji’s Satyagraha against indentured labour

Mahatma Gandhi was a vocal critic of indentured labour. In his autobiography ‘My Experiments with Truth’, Gandhi recalled how Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya sought permission to introduce a bill for the immediate abolition of the indentured labour system at the Imperial Legislative Council in February 1917, which was rejected. Gandhiji then organised an all-India agitation against the system and met Lord Chelmsford, the then Viceroy of Colonial India. On July 31, 1971, the system was officially abolished.

Root search

Former indentured labourers and their decendants are still referred as Girmitiyas. In the Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas held in Bhubaneswar in January this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised the need for study and research on Girmitiyas’ history. “Why cannot comprehensive database of Girmitiyas be created? This could document the villages and States they originated from, the destinations they settled in, and the journeys that shaped their lives,” he had remarked.

Trinidad Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar herself met her bloodlines in Bhelpur village in Bihar’s Buxar district, when she was on a state visit to India in 2012.

The government of Trinidad and Tobago maintains records of General Registers which contain details such as name, the name of the estate the Indians worked in, and the ship in which they the arrived. They also maintain records of Emigration Certificates, Estate Registers, Registers of Remittance to India, Marriages among others to help with root search. The Ministry of External Affairs runs Tracing the Roots programme to facilitate Indian origin people to find their bloodline in India.

While addressing Indian community members in Port of Spain Mr. Modi announced that citizens of Indian origin in Trinidad and Tobago, up to the sixth generation, will now be eligible for Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards, allowing them to live and work in India without restrictions. The government is also actively engaging with the community with Girmitiya conferences and root search. “Bring your children and neighbours. Bring anyone who enjoys ‘Chai’ and a good story. We will welcome all of you with open arms, warm hearts and Jalebi,” Mr. Modi added. Not just stories, the Indo-Trinidadian community has a rich history too to share.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

As the only person to serve on five international commissions focused on global issues, Shridath ‘Sonny’ Ramphal became familiar with the daunting tasks that face the Global South.

It sounds cheeky to suggest that Shridath ‘Sonny’ Ramphal’s response to the crises that are tearing the world apart today might have been to appoint an eminent persons’ group to examine all aspects of every problem and suggest and execute remedies. If he agreed to a conference, ostentatious ceremony, table-thumping histrionics and thundering speeches would have yielded to quiet retreats that produced exhaustive reports on the impact of universal voting or the effects of a rising sea level.

When he was secretary-general of the Commonwealth — the second and longest-serving one — from 1975 to 1990, New Zealand’s prime minister, Robert Muldoon, known as ‘Piggy Muldoon’, noted (jeered?) that Sonny was “more general than secretary”. But the story starts much earlier. According to his son-in-law, the Caribbean diplomat, Ronald Sanders, the Reverend C.F. Andrews, who visited Guyana in 1929 at Mahatma Gandhi’s request, looked into the infant Ramphal’s eyes and declared, “This child will have a long and rewarding life.”

Some would push back the fight for equality and human rights even earlier to his great-grandmother who reputedly became an indentured labourer rather than commit sati. A speaker at the July 1 thanksgiving ceremony and celebration in the Queen’s Chapel of London’s Marlborough House, which has housed the Commonwealth Secretariat almost since the previous occupant, Queen Mary, died, traced the possible roots of Ramphal’s fierce opposition to any kind of injustice. I knew from his dedicated aide, the late Patsy Robertson, an old friend through whom I first met him, and as devoted a Commonwealth champion as he was, that after the group’s 1983 New Delhi summit, Ramphal slipped away to pay an incognito visit to the Calcutta docks from where his ancestors had set out for their indentured exile. I didn’t know until the fifth Patsy Robertson lecture which followed last Tuesday’s thanksgiving that the trip honoured a double act of defiance.

When Ramphal’s great-grandmother, who had gone to Dutch Guiana as an indentured labourer, returned after a few years, she was rejected by her Indian family because she had crossed the polluting kala pani. So she went back into a second indenture, this time in British Guyana. She cannot have known then that Cheddi Jagan, another ethnic Indian from the sugarcane fields of Guyana, who called the colony “a vast prison” and incurred Winston Churchill’s personal enmity, was to make history there in 1953 by becoming the first ethnic Indian to head a government outside the Indian subcontinent. As for Ramphal, the world was full of causes.

The challenges this time are global. Multilateralism is under severe attack. The United States of America is saddled with an eccentric egoist. Britain’s lacklustre Labour government has bought time but can collapse at any moment. No one dares thwart Vladimir Putin’s ambitious pursuit of the Czar’s empire. Nor has anyone told reckless Israelis that the phrase, ‘Next year in Jerusalem’, does not mean that Zionists will ride roughshod over world opinion next year. Or that all Muslims will be eliminated. The last is precisely what attracts Benjamin Netanyahu’s callous Asian admirers gloating over the privilege of being allowed to call him ‘Bibi’.

Shunning publicity, Ramphal tackled bravado with meticulous investigation. Interminable exchanges of views, exhaustive discussions and voluminous reports followed by action plans identified and strengthened areas of potential agreement. He helped to end Ian Smith’s rebellion in erstwhile Southern Rhodesia and that standing affront to humanity that was South Africa’s outrageous apartheid regime. As the only person to serve on five international commissions focused on global issues, he became familiar with the daunting tasks that face the Global South, the perceived conflict between democracy and development, climate change, protectionism, and threats to small and vulnerable entities.

The Brandt Commission on international development, Palme Commission on disarmament and security issues, the Brundtland Commission on environment and development, the Independent Commission on international humanitarian issues, and the South Commission, in all of which he laboured, were not platforms for garrulous politicians seeking votes. Nor for sycophants to applaud recitations of the master’s achievements. Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990 after 27 years of incarceration in an island prison is attributed to such quiet backroom diplomacy. When Sanders acknowledged his role at a reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth II, Mandela said, “Thank you for remembering me!” His understated style was again evident when I presented my wife to him at a Calcutta Raj Bhavan dinner. Mandela’s welcome “Ladies before governors!” pre-empted the ever-courteous Nurul Hasan easing himself out of his chair.

Given his implacable opposition to prejudice and discrimination, Ramphal “was seriously unloved in the upper echelons of the British government”, according to The Guardian. He bore the burden with equanimity because “it came with the territory”. There was no such problem with India’s political first family. Ramphal recognised Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision in making it possible for independent countries like India and Guyana to voluntarily become full members of the Commonwealth. He appreciated the importance of secularism in holding together in harmony the many faiths of a diverse nation instead of trying to force everyone into the straitjacket of one religion. He encouraged Rajiv Gandhi to welcome Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan back into the Commonwealth after 17 years of exclusion.

Unlike many other observers, he did not think Indira Gandhi was indifferent to this seeming relic of Empire. “I was close to her. I think she related to me”, he told Sue Onslow, now editor of The Round Table, the Commonwealth’s journal of record. “She was a very special kind of person. She was not effusive, but if she was with you, she was with you. And I think I have, by that personal relationship, [been able] to keep India with the Commonwealth.”

Of course, even the best of leaders are often also politicians with axes that need grinding. But there is undeniable scope for dispute resolution mechanisms beyond the stultifying bureaucracy of the United Nations and for using collective pressure (or action) by people whose lives are affected by conflicts such as Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza or Russia gobbling up Ukraine in bits and pieces. But coercive force to resist bullying is not to everyone’s liking. Listening to the tribute to Ramphal by the Nigerian chief, Emeka Anyaoku, I was reminded of the Australian tale that when Anyaoku and Malcolm Fraser were both candidates for the secretary-general’s job, Margaret Thatcher is believed to have said that of the two Blacks, she preferred the African.

Many in London believe that but for Queen Elizabeth’s stout support, the Commonwealth secretariat would long ago have been turfed out of Christopher Wren’s stately Marlborough House. While Thatcher called African National Congress activists “terrorists”, Patsy, heading the Commonwealth secretariat’s information department, was at the centre of a worldwide network of liberal politicians and journalists who helped to turn the tide of opinion. “The Commonwealth is not to be trifled with”, she warned me, arching an eyebrow in a telltale gesture.

Legend has it that Mandela was the only outsider to address Her Majesty by name. “Elizabeth!” he reportedly bellowed, ignoring protocol. I have always wondered what he called Britain’s formidable prime minister who fought and won the Falklands War. Whatever it was, the world can only benefit if the Commonwealth that was Mandela’s theatre regains its voice. “We cannot negotiate for the world,” Ramphal is quoted as saying. “But we can help the world to negotiate.”

The Commonwealth’s 56 member-nations boast 2.7 billion people, 95% of whom live in Asia and Africa. They provide a coherent voice for democracy, equality and international solidarity. India cannot forget that they also comprise the only global platform that is not overwhelmed by China.

source/content: telegraphindia.com (headline edited)

The Oscar-winning composers have scored the music for Nitesh Tiwari’s upcoming film ‘Ramayana’.

A.R. Rahman on Friday shared a selfie with German composer Hans Zimmer following the release of the first-look teaser of Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana, drawing reactions from celebrities and fans alike.

The two Oscar-winning composers have scored the music for the upcoming film, starring Ranbir Kapoor as Ram and Yash as Ravana.

“With @hanszimmer #ramayanamovie,” Rahman captioned the photo on Instagram.

Fans and celebrities flooded the comments section.

“Legends,” wrote singer Armaan Malik. Actor Ishaan Khatter dropped a goat emoji to describe the greatness of the two legends. Dancer-actress Lauren Gottlieb commented, “This is so iconic.”

Fans couldn’t keep calm after seeing the two musicians in one frame. “Goated selfie ever,” one of them wrote. “Apple needs to invent a new version of airpods for me to experience this fullyyyyyy,” another commented. “This will go down in history,” wrote an Instagram user.

Ramayana will be released in two instalments, with the first part hitting screens on Diwali 2026 and the second part slated for a release on Diwali the following year.

The script for Ramayana is written by Namit Malhotra in collaboration with Shridhar Raghavan. The film is directed by Nitesh Tiwari, known for his films Dangal and Chhichhore. Pankaj Kumar has served as the film’s cinematographer.

Ramayana also stars Sai Pallavi as Sita, Ravie Dubey as Lakshman, and Sunny Deol as Hanuman.

source/content: telegraphindia.com (headline edited)

According to data tracking site Chart Master, the ‘Bulleya’ singer claimed the top spot with 151 million followers.

Indian musician Arijit Singh has become the most-followed artist on music streaming platform Spotify with over 150 million followers, beating American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, according to data tracking site Chart Master.

Swift, a pop sensation with fans spread across the globe, has 139.5 million followers on Spotify.

According to Chart Master, Arijit surpassed Swift on Spotify on July 1. British singer Ed Sheeran occupies the third spot on the list with 121 million followers.

Earlier, in 2023, Arijit enjoyed a brief victory when he surpassed Swift to claim the third spot among the most-followed artists on Spotify. However, Swift quickly regained her position.

Indian musician Arijit Singh has become the most-followed artist on music streaming platform Spotify with over 150 million followers, beating American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, according to data tracking site Chart Master.

Swift, a pop sensation with fans spread across the globe, has 139.5 million followers on Spotify.

According to Chart Master, Arijit surpassed Swift on Spotify on July 1. British singer Ed Sheeran occupies the third spot on the list with 121 million followers.

Earlier, in 2023, Arijit enjoyed a brief victory when he surpassed Swift to claim the third spot among the most-followed artists on Spotify. However, Swift quickly regained her position.

Arijit became the first Indian music artist to cross 100 million followers on Spotify in January, 2024.

The other artists on the Spotify list include Billie Eilish (114 million) and The Weeknd (107.2 million). A.R. Rahman is the only other Indian musician in the top 20 with 49 million followers.

Recently, Arijit Singh collaborated with British singer Ed Sheeran on the latter’s latest release, Sapphire. The music video also features Shah Rukh Khan.

Swift released her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, in April this year. The music video Fortnight from the album earned her 10 nominations at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards.

Swift kicked off her sixth concert tour, The Eras Tour, on March 17, 2023, and headlined 149 shows in a little more than a year. She wrapped up the tour with the last show on December 8, 2024, in Vancouver, Canada. The singer’s musical world tour generated over USD 2 billion in ticket sales.

Arijit, on the other hand, most recently sang Jaane Tu from Vicky Kaushal-starrer Chhaava, which hit screens earlier this year.

source/content: telegraphindia.com (headline edited)

The genetic ancestries and their proportions in the Adivasi and Sinhalese are most similar to Dravidian speaking populations who live in southern India today.

Analyses of whole-genome sequence data of urban Sinhalese and two indigenous Adivasi clans in Sri Lanka, which live in geographically separated regions in the country, shed light on the migratory history of these populations and their genetic relationship to each other and to many Indian populations. The study published recently in the journal Current Biology found that Sinhalese and Adivasi are genetically closest to each other and to South Indians, but, at a regional and fine-scale level, the two Adivasi clans are genetically distinct.

For the study, whole genomes of 35 urban Sinhalese individuals and 19 individuals from two indigenous Adivasi clans were sequenced. Of the 19 genomes of Adivasi clans that were sequenced, five were from Interior Adivasi and 14 were from Coastal Adivasi. The sampling and data generation became possible due to the outreach efforts of Sri Lankan collaborator, Dr. Ruwandi Ranasinghe from the University of Colombo. In addition, the whole genome data of 35 Sri Lankan Tamils sampled in the UK, which were already sequenced as part of the 1,000 Genomes Project, were included in the analyses.

Sinhalese chronicles and previous genetic studies had proposed that Sinhalese had migrated from northern or northwest India around 500 BCE, though their exact origins and migratory history are still debated. That Sinhalese speak an Indo-European language, Sinhala, whose present-day distribution lies primarily in northern India further supports the idea of their migration from northern India. But the current study contradicts the findings of the previous studies from a genetic perspective. “The genetic ancestries and their proportions in the Adivasi and Sinhalese are most similar to Dravidian speaking populations who live in Southern India today,” says Dr. Niraj Rai from Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknow and one of the corresponding authors of the paper.

“Even among South Indian populations, we find that the Sinhalese are genetically closest to those communities that have higher proportions of the so-called ASI or Ancestral South Indian ancestry. In contrast to many North Indians, these populations generally have lower levels of a genetic ancestry related to ancient groups from the Eurasian Steppe, proposed to have carried Indo-European languages into South Asia and that are today spoken widely in northern regions of India,” says Dr. Maanasa Raghavan, Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago and a corresponding author of the study. But how does one reconcile the fact that Sinhalese speak a language that is classified as Indo-European, which today is spoken mostly in North India?

The authors explain that genes do not reflect linguistic affinities, and biological and cultural evolution can have different trajectories. They speculate that this genetic-linguistic discordance may have been caused by the Sinhalese population having migrated from somewhere in North India geographically, but genetically speaking, the migration may have come from a group that resembles more South Indian Dravidian speakers today.

An alternative explanation is that a small group of Sinhalese, perhaps representing the elite, might have migrated to Sri Lanka and transmitted the language but not genes. “If the Sinhalese were derived from a North Indian genetic cluster with higher Steppe-related ancestry, mixing had to have happened with ASI populations to dilute their genetic ancestries and pull them genetically closer to South Indian populations in our analyses. More anthropological studies are needed to fully understand these differing genetic and cultural affinities of the Sinhalese,” Dr. Raghavan says.

The time of formation of the Sinhalese genetic pool was dated in the study to about 3,000 years ago, falling within the range of dates displayed broadly by Indian and other Sri Lankan populations and around the time of the proposed migration date of the Sinhalese in the chronicles (500 BCE). “The date our analysis reveals is interesting. It implies that the Sinhalese ancestors migrated to Sri Lanka fairly close in time to the dynamic genetic mixing events that were occurring about 2,000-4,000 years ago in India that created the ANI-ASI genetic spectrum we see in today’s populations,” Dr. Rai explains.

Sinhalese chronicles also say that when Sinhalese migrated from India to Sri Lanka about 3,000 years ago, Adivasi were already existing in Sri Lanka. This is also supported by anthropological studies that propose that Adivasi are descended from early hunter-gatherers in the region. The Adivasi are, in fact, traditionally hunter-gatherers and the Indigenous peoples of Sri Lanka.

“At a broad scale, Adivasi today look genetically very similar to the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamil. This must mean that the Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils, or other groups migrating from South India must have met the Adivasi, mixed with them heavily, and contributed to what is the present-day genetic structure of the Adivasi,” Dr. Raghavan says.

Sinhalese and Adivasi are close to each other and share broad-level genetic similarities, but on a fine-scale demographic resolution, the study found that the two Adivasi clans are a bit different from the Sinhalese. The Adivasi have slightly higher levels of ancient hunter-gatherer ancestry than the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils, and have maintained smaller population sizes over the course of their history, both of which support their traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle. The Adivasi genomes also display signatures of endogamy, which appear as long stretches of DNA inherited from a common ancestor. The study further reports that a consequence of the low population size and endogamy is that the genetic diversity in the Adivasi is lower than the urban populations, which may have an impact on their health and disease status.

While both Adivasi clans maintained lower population sizes compared to the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils, the authors found that the Interior Adivasi clan seemed to have undergone a stronger reduction in their population size compared to the Coastal Adivasi, leading to a greater loss of their genetic diversity. “We find the two Adivasi clans — the Coastal Adivasi and the Interior Adivasi — also have some differences in their genetic ancestry arising due to distinct geographic separation between them,” says Dr. Rai.

This, according to Dr. Raghavan, indicates that the Interior Adivasi clan must have undergone stronger pressures, perhaps societal or environmental, to keep the population size lower compared to their Coastal counterparts. Explaining how the two Adivasi clans are more similar to each other, but still have genetic differences at a fine scale, she says that this basically means that at some point in time, due to geographic separation, the genetic and lifestyle attributes of the two clans started to drift apart.

In fact, the fragmented nature of the Adivasi clans also impacted the study sampling strategy. While 35 individuals representing the two large groups — Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils — have been included in the analyses, the numbers for the two Adivasi populations are small — five for interior Adivasi and 14 for coastal Adivasi.

Though it would be ideal to keep matched sample sizes of different populations for genetic analyses, the reason for including only small numbers for the two Adivasi clans was because the Adivasi communities today are very fragmented. “Historical, anthropological, as well as our genetic results all suggest that these communities live in small sizes and practice endogamy,” says Dr. Raghavan. “Because of endogamy, a lot of these individuals tend to be quite related to one another. Having really high relatedness in a group impacts the genetic analyses because then everybody’s going to look like each other. So that’s why our sample sizes were lower for the two Adivasi clans.”

Despite the number of individuals representing the two Adivasi clans being small, the researchers were able to recapture the entire population history of these two groups. The study was able to address the questions that the researchers set out to do despite the Adivasi sample sizes being small, says Dr. Raghavan. “Since every individual’s genome is a mosaic of their ancestor’s genomes, even a small number of individuals can represent their population’s genetic histories. Moreover, we didn’t find any genetic outliers within the Adivasi clans. So, all the sampled individuals fit into the model that we propose,” clarifies Dr. Rai.

“This is the first time that high-resolution genome data have been sequenced from multiple populations in Sri Lanka, including the Indigenous Adivasi and urban Sinhalese, to understand the deeply rooted ancestries and their population histories,” says Dr. Rai. Broadly, the study has important implications for how humans moved across South Asia and highlights the high degree of interconnectedness between India and Sri Lanka over millennia.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)