Author: Tirthankar Mitra

Spain faces Argentina in the World Cup football final on Sunday. It will be their first meeting in FIFA World Cup since 1966

The highly anticipated arrival of exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin in Kolkata next month is shaping up to be far more than a routine literary homecoming. For the newly installed, first-ever BJP-run government in West Bengal led by Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, the event has morphed into a masterfully orchestrated, high-stakes political offensive. By rolled out the welcome mat for Nasrin to headline an anti-fundamentalism event at Rabindra Sadan on August 1, 2026, Adhikari intends to score decisive, long-term points over his two iconic predecessors. The saffron camp is systematically using the visit to indict the late Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s Left Front dispensation—which ignominiously forced Nasrin out of the state in 2007 after violent street rioting overwhelmed the Kolkata Police—while simultaneously exposing Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) for executing a quiet, two-decade-long exclusion of the author out of intense anxiety over minority blockades. Just two months into assuming the state’s highest office following a landslide election victory, Adhikari—often labeled “illiberal” by fractured opposition circles—is seizing this “sitter” of a cultural event to aggressively showcase a resolute, no-nonsense administration that strictly guarantees the rule of law under the party’s signature poll pledge: “Bhoi noi Bhorsa chai” (Not fear, but assurance).

Indian cinema’s golden musical era lost one of its most sublime voices as legendary playback singer S. Janaki, affectionately revered as the “Nightingale of South India,” passed away in Mysuru on Saturday, July 11, 2026, following age-related cardiac complications. She was 88. In a monumental career spanning more than six decades, Janaki defied shifting generational styles and technological transitions to record a staggering 48,000 songs in 17 languages, serving as the definitive emotional soundtrack for millions of listeners. Born in the village of Pallapatla in Andhra Pradesh, she grew up imitating the high-register intricacies of Lata Mangeshkar on her family radio before her raw soprano brilliance caught the attention of filmmaker B.R. Panthulu and composer T. Lingappa during a local theater intermission performance. Janaki made her formal recording debut with the Tamil feature Vidhiyin Vilayattu in 1957. Though a native Telugu speaker, she achieved legendary status across Malayalam, Tamil, and Kannada cinema by implementing a meticulous study of local dialects to perfect her linguistic diction. A recipient of four National Film Awards and dozens of state honors, her artistic journey was also punctuated by a fierce independent spirit, most notably in 2013 when she famously refused the Padma Bhushan civilian award on the principled ground that it had arrived far too late in her life. Janaki was laid to rest with full state honors, drawing profound condolences from across the country as the nation bid farewell to a vocalist who defined the very soul of South Indian playback history.

A profound institutional storm regarding state control over digital public spaces has erupted after Satluj (originally titled Ghallughara and later Punjab ’95), a highly anticipated biographical drama starring global icon Diljit Dosanjh, was abruptly scrubbed from streaming catalogues worldwide. Directed by Honey Trehan and backed by veteran producer Ronnie Screwvala, the film depicts the harrowing real-life crusade of celebrated human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, who systematically unmasked thousands of extra-judicial abductions and undocumented mass cremations handled by state forces during the peak of the 1990s Punjab insurgency before mysteriously disappearing himself in 1995. After enduring a bruising four-year legislative deadlock with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC)—which aggressively demanded an unprecedented 127 structural cuts for a theatrical release—the filmmakers engineered a high-stakes, entirely classified digital premiere on ZEE5 on Friday, July 3, 2026, utilizing streaming corridors that legally bypass classical film board certificates. However, the victory was short-lived; within 48 hours, the uncut feature vanished completely from the platform’s domestic interface following explicit directives from the Central Government, followed by an immediate blackout across ZEE5’s international networks. The sweeping execution has drawn fierce condemnation from civil liberties networks, who brand the sudden regulatory intervention as a dangerous example of executive overreach that forces streaming conglomerates into invisible self-censorship, echoing historical memories of the 1975 emergency ban on Gulzar’s Aandhi and threatening to permanently narrow the boundary of independent historical discourse in modern India.

Imprint of conflict on environment continues to deepen as increasing number of countries go to war. Environment being depraded by war is nothing new.

Ongoing World Cup football lost some of its lustre after Brazil, almost synonymous with the “beautiful game” lost to a unfancied Norway. Has Brazil become a combination of erstwhile giants?

British prime ministers are not lasting their full term these days. But one member of the prime ministerial household is staying put even if the principal resident of 10 Drowning Street, the centuries old official address of the British prime minister is gone after sometime after his arrival; it is Larry the Cat.

In a twist of bitter historic irony, Sir Keir Starmer’s sudden resignation as Prime Minister arrived on the exact tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, shattering his core foundational promise to finally restore structural stability to a fractured United Kingdom. Becoming Britain’s seventh prime minister in a single turbulent decade, Starmer’s exit caps a swift, tragic collapse occurring just two years after leading the Labour Party to a monumental 411-seat landslide victory in the House of Commons. The premier’s copybook was fatally marred by a series of high-profile policy missteps, starting with the deeply unpopular elimination of the winter fuel allowance for the elderly, and culminating in a severe ethical crisis following the criminal arrest of his handpicked U.S. Ambassador, Peter Mandelson, on public misconduct charges. Beyond individual political blunders and a chronic inability to articulate a clear economic roadmap or revitalize Britain’s stunted military, Starmer’s downfall exposes a much deeper, systemic crisis of governance currently afflicting the Western democratic architecture. From Emmanuel Macron’s gridlocked twilight in France and Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s plunging economic approval ratings in Germany, to Donald Trump’s inability to shield American voters from punishing everyday costs despite a robust headline economy, Western centrist leaders are consistently failing to deliver on mandates for structural reform. This systemic inertia has deepened public cynicism and cleared a wide ideological path for the populist Right and Left, forcing a desperate Labour Party to bypass its entire sitting parliamentary roster to engineer the emergency return of Andy Burnham via a rapid by-election victory in Makerfield to inherit a nation under siege from a festering energy crisis and entrenched stagnation.

Unearthing vital, suppressed records surrounding the legislative inception of the state, the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (MAKAIAS) hosted a high-profile seminar titled “West Bengal: Revisiting its Past” on Saturday, June 20, 2026. Commemorating Paschimbanga Diwas—the historic day nearly eight decades ago when Bengal’s lawmakers voted to sever ties with the expanding map of East Pakistan—distinguished academics, researchers, and political leaders gathered to correct decades of distorted historical narratives. Delivering a compelling video address, West Bengal Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose, a veteran chartered accountant, meticulously detailed how the state’s creation was explicitly designed to dismantle a deep-seated conspiracy aimed at dragging the entire landmass into a theocratic state. Bose positioned Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee as the singular, far-sighted leading light who unified ideologically polarized legislators in 1947 to secure a safe homeland for Hindu Bengalis. Echoing these structural concerns, MAKAIAS Director Dr. Sarup Prasad Ghosh slammed past administrations for intentionally imposing historical amnesia on refugees, while issuing an urgent, data-driven warning regarding a sharp drop in native Bengali speakers and an active “demographic invasion” fueled by systemic illegal immigration from Bangladesh.

Vaibhav Suryabanshi’s altercation with Sri Lanka A players after India’s Super Over defeat on Monday raises questions. The tri-series in Dambulla was supposed to be another step in the rise of the teenage prodigy.