Firstpost Editor's Picks: Delhi communal clashes, Union Budget 2019, Ayushmann Khurrana's Article 15; today's must-read stories

Delhi communal clashes: City’s past shows Hindu-Muslim enmity predates Narendra Modi and even Partition

From interviews conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in the wake of the 1974 riots, it’s clear that Delhi’s Hindus despised Muslims long before Hindutva became a feature of our political landscape. Hindus believed Muslims were “poor”, “backward in education”, “religious fanatics”, and “quarrelsome and harsh”. Islam’s followers didn’t have a high opinion of their neighbours, either: Hindus were considered to harbour “enmity for Muslims”, and “dislike for Kashmiris.”

Survivors of torture in Kashmir Part 3: Electrocuted for ‘harbouring militants’, Shameema and Ashraf Bhat still struggle with social boycott

Shameema and her husband never tried to approach the police to file a complaint into the incident. “We were scared. Those days, it was a jungle raj. We thought what if they come in the dead of night and shoot all of us dead?” she said. Experts attribute this to “a lack of faith in institutions” that “prevents victims from seeking justice or redressal for the torture.” According to JKCCS report on the torture of the 432 torture cases studied by the rights group, only 27 had gone to the State Human Rights Commission out of which 20 obtained recommendations in their favour.

Union Budget 2019: Private investors are doing the vanishing act; will Nirmala Sitharaman pull a trick to lure them back?

Till now, the economy has been largely riding on public money. However, an economy which rides largely on government money for a prolonged period of time does not promise much to the economy in the long run. What is needed is the participation of private investors, also critical to generate jobs—a major problem the Indian economy is facing at this juncture with the unemployment rate touching a 45-year high. Nirmala Sitharaman can turn her first Budget into a reformist one, which will lift the economy to a faster orbit.

Wimbledon 2019: Cori Gauff, dealing with challenges and expectations that other 15-year-olds can only dream of

The fearlessness of youth can be a strange and wonderful thing – and it was on full glorious display in Cori Gauff’s match against Venus. The crowd, as you’d expect, responded appropriately to the dramatic story unfolding before their eyes. For the most part, they were on Venus’ side, egging on their beloved champion to keep fighting, but by the end, they were also applauding Gauff’s plays with throaty enthusiasm. They could see there was something special about the kid.

In Article 15, Anubhav Sinha continues the upper-caste project of brahminising anti-caste struggles

There is a Rajput man in Article 15, he is a policeman from the looks of it, but his only job is to drive his master, the brahmin Ayan Ranjan, from one place to another. Right at the beginning he tells him a story that inadvertently became for me, the moral of this story. His story goes that Lord Rama was being welcomed by people from all the cities and villages with lamps, except one village, which was in complete darkness. He asks them why their village is dark. They tell him that a storm came and knocked out all the diyas they had lit, and then they saw, that in the darkness, King Rama’s palace shines even brighter. I don’t know why this story was shoe-horned into the narrative of Article 15 because it isn’t really a metaphor for anything within the film, but it depicts perfectly what Anubhav Sinha does with the Dalits in the movie.