January in New Delhi

in brief

Meta faces €2.7bn civil lawsuit

Competition expert and the director of the Competition Law Forum Dr Liza Lovdahl Gormsen is all set to launch a multi-billion euro case against the social media giant Meta -the company which changed its parent name from Facebook- in the United Kingdom. She alleges that Facebook has abused its market dominance by exploiting UK users’ personal data to earn profits. A pre-action letter has been sent to Meta claiming a minimum of £2.3 billion in damages on behalf of affected UK Facebook users who used the social media platform between October 1, 2015, and December 31, 2019. Meta spokesperson said in an email statement to Euronews Next, “People access our service for free. They choose our services because we deliver value for them and they have meaningful control of what information they share on Meta’s platforms and who with whom. We have invested heavily to create tools that allow them to do so. ” Gormsen is planning to bring the case to the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London.

british Man wins back citizenship after five years

A British man’s citizenship has been reinstated after five years after challenging the decision. The Home Office had revoked his citizenship by serving a deprivation of citizenship order with him shortly after he flew to the country for the birth of his second daughter. E3, as he is referred to in court documents, was born in London to Bangladeshi parents. The Home Office claimed that E3 was an extremist and said he could obtain citizenship elsewhere because his parents were Bangladeshi. E3 told the Observer: “Why was I not arrested and questioned? Why have I been punished in this way without ever being shown a single piece of evidence against me? The government should admit that they have made a mistake and own up to it. ” Fahad Ansari, his lawyer at Duncan Lewis, said his client lost five years of his life because of the unlawful decision of the home secretary that lacked any prior judicial oversight.

britons’ hoMe-drinking posing a health risk

Millions of people in the UK have developed drink-related problems during the pandemic, according to the data from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. An expert said that due to sessions lasting longer than pub visits, Britons are consuming too much alcohol. Professor Julia Sinclair, chairwoman of the addictions faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said millions of people are silently harming themselves by consuming excessive alcohol. In the three months to the end of October 2021, about 18 per cent of adults in England were drinking at increasing or higher risk. The same levels were witnessed in February 2020, when 12.4 per cent of the population or about six million people drank at these levels.

Middleton’s failed coMpany owes £800k

The Duchess of Cambridge’s younger brother James Middleton has left an £800,000 trail of debt when his business went into administration. As per the documents, James Middleton’s company Boomf, which sells personalised marshmallows and greeting cards, owes £146,305.88 to HM Revenue and Customs. According to the administrators’ report, it owes almost £800,000 to creditors, but has assets of £561,054, meaning there is a shortfall of £236,310.88. Middleton sold the company for £300,000 months after it ran out of funds. British-Estonian businessman Stepan Galaev bought the company as part of a recently established company called Otkrytka.

Was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose misunderstood?

Shefali Saxena

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's daughter Anita Bose-Pfaff has slammed the controversy over the rejection of West Bengal's Republic Day tableau based on her father and his Indian National Army. The Central government in India has rejected West Bengal's tableau for the Republic Day parade themed on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army.

Sumantra Bose

In an exclusive interview with Asian Voice ahead of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose ’ s 125th birth anniversary on January 23, Sumantra Bose addressed some crucial questions about Netaji. Sumantra Bose, a political scientist and Netaji’ s grand-nephew, is the Director of the Netaji Research Bureau at Kolkata's Netaji Bhawan (netaji.org), formerly the Bose's family ancestral house.

Was Netaji the most misunderstood leader in Indian politics?

It depends on what you mean by 'misunderstood' . Netaji had been a full-time freedom fighter for almost twenty years when he had a rift with Gandhiji in 1939. Gandhiji was reluctant to let Subhas have a second term as President of the Indian National Congress. Subhas then took on Gandhiji's preferred candidate in a contested election and won the presidency, much to Gandhiji's chagrin. The Gandhi-Bose rift was not however any 'misunderstanding' . Gandhiji and his acolytes in the Congress leadership were not comfortable with Subhas's modernist, left-wing views, and also disagreed with Subhas's desire to launch an all-out mass struggle against the Raj–though Gandhi came around on the latter point three years later, when he launched the Quit India movement in 1942. Then again, Bose was vilified for decades by British colonialists not reconciled to the loss of the jewel in the crown of their empire, India, because he had sought help from the Axis in World War II. Bose was not alone in doing this by any means – many anti-colonial revolutionaries across Asia and the Middle East also sought help from the Axis in their struggle against British, French and Dutch imperialisms. Bose was vilified because those nostalgic for Great Britain's lost empire understood very well that the Indian National Army--recruited mainly from former BritishIndian Army soldiers--and the Azad Hind movement had delivered a fatal blow to any prospects of Britain retaining India as its colony after the war.

Do you think he got his due recognition beyond Bengal?

It depends on what you mean by 'recognition' . It is true that Netaji was largely airbrushed out of the official narrative of the freedom struggle for at least four decades after Independence. But the more he was airbrushed out of the official narrative, the more his stature and legend grew in the popular imagination, across the length and breadth of India. Today, Netaji is not only revered throughout India, he is deeply respected in Bangladesh and even Pakistan, as well as Sri Lanka (among the Tamils).

What is his relevance today as we grapple with multiple issues across the globe?

Netaji stands as an eternal symbol of the struggle of oppressed peoples for liberty and justice. In October 1990, Nelson Mandela visited India after his release from 27 years in prison. At a mass rally in Kolkata's Eden Gardens stadium, Mandela hailed Netaji in glowing terms and said that Netaji had been a hero of his ever since his youth. In January 1972, days after his return to liberated Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman sent an audio message on the occasion of Netaji's 75th birth anniversary to the Netaji Research Bureau at Kolkata's Netaji Bhawan. In the message, the founding leader of Bangladesh said that "Netaji's example of courage and sacrifice in the cause of freedom will, for eternity, be an inspiration to the struggle of all freedom-seeking peoples of this world. He is immortal. He lives on, like the flaming sun that illuminates the world. Joy Bangla!" (translated from the Bengali text of the message).

If Netaji were alive today, what would he have done differently?

If Netaji were alive today, he would do everything in his power to confront and defeat the attempt by fake Indian nationalists, whose forebears played no role in the freedom struggle, to destroy India's democratic and secular character. Jai Hind! Bengal Heritage Foundation (BHF) is holding a virtual member meeting on the 23rd of January to discuss “Netaji: The Forgotten Hero” - where experts like Sarit Bose, will talk about the importance of Netaji Subhas Chandra and how it has impacted the course of Indian history.

In his personal opinion, Suranjan Som, President BHF, said, “I don't think Netaji has been misunderstood. Netaji's strategic thinking was way ahead of his time, compared to anything else other leaders were doing to achieve Indian independence. I will not go into a debate of who was right and who was wrong (topic for another day). Subhas Ji was the only individual who not only dreamt of freeing India by military might but also achieved it to a large degree. If you are aware that a large part of the Empire's army was made up of Indian soldiers. “It was only a matter of time to switch their allegiance to their motherland. Very few of us know that on 21st October 1943, Bose announced the formation of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India), with himself as the Head of State, Prime Minister and Minister of War. So in effect, he was the first Prime Minister of Free India.

“Why is all of this important for us sitting in London. I think Britain holds the key to a lot of classified information, probably even more than India, Japan or Russia. If the members of the diaspora are interested in researching that, there is a job at hand for us to do trawling through the National Archives and requesting the custodians of classified material for disclosure. Alternatively, one day, when these things will be too old to be relevant, most of it will be released in the public domain anyway.

Suranjan Som

“It is only on the basis of undiluted Nationalism and of perfect justice and impartiality that the Indian Army of Liberation can be built up. ” - Subhas Chandra Bose

Balliol College in UK names its building after an Indian

Balliol College in the UK has named its new building after Indian Dr Lakshman Sarup who was the first student at Oxford to submit his thesis for a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree.

Balliol College in a release stated, “Balliol’ s newest buildings at the Master ’ s Field have been named after historic Balliol alumni and academics who reflect the diversity, values and history of the College. Block C1 has been named after Dr Lakshman Sarup (Balliol 1916). Oxford to submit for a DPhil degree, which he was awarded in 1919 on the subject of Yaksa ’ s Nirukta, the oldest Sanskrit treatise on etymology. ”

In 1942, he became the first Indian scholar to be appointed as Principal of the Oriental College of the University of Punjab.

Pupils to learn 1,700 words to pass GCSEs gets a nod

The Department for Education (DfE) has decided to bring in changes to language teaching in schools which will make pupils in England memorise lists of 1,700 words to pass GCSEs in Spanish, French or German. However, this has not gone down well with language associations, teaching unions and headteachers at state and independent schools who believe that this will deter students from studying modern foreign languages (MFL).

Simon Hyde, the general secretary of the Headmasters ’ and Headmistresses ’ Conference of independent schools, said,

“This model will not give students the confidence in their language, both at examination level and as a life skill, to take forward into further studies, careers and personal endeavours. ”

The Association for Language Learning also expressed their displeasure adding that the DfE did not take up an invitation to work collaboratively with subject associations, exam boards and headteachers on a further review of GCSE content and development.

The DfE said its consultation received 1,644 responses, with the majority