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India's Kerala state shut some schools and offices this week as officials raced to halt the spread of the deadly Nipah virus, after it killed two people in the fourth outbreak since 2018. Here's everything you need to know about the virus.

India and Canada are caught up in a tense diplomatic showdown over the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week linked the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar to India's government. Both countries have since expelled top diplomats. Bloomberg columnist Bobby Ghosh joins Amna Nawaz to discuss.

Khalistan Row: Trudeau Avoids Questions, India Halts Visas for Canadians | Vantage with Palki Sharma

It's Day 3 of the Khalistan row that PM Justin Trudeau triggered in the country's parliament. As tensions escalate, India has temporarily suspended visa services for Canadian nationals.

Meanwhile, Trudeau avoided questions on India in the UN General Assembly. Palki Sharma brings you the latest on the India-Canada standoff.

The women alleged that while they were asleep, the assailants took their husbands and children out of the rooms and tied them with ropes, before raping them in turns.

Three women in Haryana’s Panipat district were allegedly gang-**** by a group of four masked men in the presence of their family members, including children, early on Thursday, officials said.

The accused men, armed with knives and other pistols, barged into the house where the three families reside around 1 am, sexually assaulted the women aged 24, 25 and 35 years and decamped with cash and silver ornaments, the police said.

According to the police, while escaping out of the village, the same gang also allegedly robbed a man of Rs 5,000 and assaulted his wife who later succumbed to injuries.

Preliminary investigation revealed that the accused men might be the same set of individuals who had threatened the families to vacate their premises about a month ago.

“The gang then locked them up in one of the rooms. Then, they pulled us (the women) into the verandah and **** us in turns. They threatened us not to raise a voice and kept torturing us till 4 am.

It’s happening in schools and homes. And while Modi’s BJP might gain, generations of India’s Hindus will lose.

A Muslim friend from a town in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh recently called, seeking counsel.

His young daughter had told him the previous day that her friends refused to play with her any more – after they were warned by other children to stay away from her because of her religion.

This is an experience most Muslims have gone through while growing up in India. They are familiar with anti-Muslim slurs and cuss words used against them. But something new is happening which is radically different from earlier times.

While the Indian media and politicians have long harped on the supposed dangers of radicalisation among Muslim youth, or of the threat of far-left propaganda, we are now witnessing the turbocharged expression of a reality the country has never confronted: the radicalisation of Hindu youth.

It is an everyday radicalisation of young men and women who appear very normal, until they decide to target Indian Muslims and Christians

They are part of public, over-ground groups like the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyaarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS); and the Bajrang Dal, the militant youth wing of the RSS. All of them are affiliates of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which gives them political clout and a veneer of respectability.

Members of the ABVP and the Bajrang Dal have been involved in numerous cases of physical violence against students and teachers, especially Muslims and Christians. Yet earlier this year, when the Congress party – the principal national opposition – declared that it would consider banning the Bajrang Dal if it came to power in the southern state of Karnataka, no less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised slogans in defence of the militant outfit.

Recently, a video surfaced in India and went viral in which a young Hindu girl is seen singing “Desh ke gaddaron ko Goli maro …” (shoot the traitors of the country). She is surrounded by elders who are clapping and encouraging her.

This slogan was made popular by a minister in the Modi government who was targeting Muslim women and men for protesting against the controversial new citizenship law passed in 2020 that discriminates against Muslim asylum seekers. The slogan has since been used in rallies and videos to target Muslims.

This video encapsulates a reality that Hindus do not want to talk about.

the atmosphere that dominates today’s India.

the slogan “Jai Shri Ram” in their class. This slogan is used by the RSS to proclaim Hindu dominance.

Talking to teachers and principals, one realises that the radicalisation of young Hindus, while an ongoing process, has acquired dangerous proportions in recent years, fuelled by hate-mongering TV channels, internet platforms and WhatsApp groups that have been relentlessly spreading anti-Muslim propaganda.

In the last decade, it has become common to see adolescents, even children, brandishing swords and other weapons, raising hateful slogans targeting Muslims, and even vandalising mosques and Islamic shrines.

These young Hindus see that violence against Muslims and Christians is often celebrated or at least tolerated, sometimes approvingly, in their families and society.

They see that far from suffering consequences for hate speech and hate crimes, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian acts help those who carry them out.

A major source of this hatred towards Muslims and Christians is the chain of educational institutions run by organisations affiliated with the RSS.

inculcate ‘nationalism’ in young minds, which is synonymous with anti-Muslim and anti-Christian hatred.

that the only way to reclaim the country’s past glory is by teaching Muslims and Christians a lesson.

Scores of vigilante groups have mushroomed all over India

Unfortunately, the radicalisation of Hindu youth often goes unnoticed as it is approved by their families, whom they see indulging in a range of aggressions against Muslims: It could be something as bizarre as protesting against their Muslim neighbours praying in their own houses.

Once hatred is normalised, violence follows naturally.

Yet while the BJP might benefit politically

The widow of a Hindu man killed in the violence says it was caused by a hardline Hindu nationalist march - after which bulldozers were sent in by the BJP-ruled state to destroy Muslim-owned businesses.


It's dusk in Mudlada in Panipat, a city at the heart of India's cow belt - a state at the centre of a wave of recent communal clashes in India.

bulldozers sent in by the BJP-ruled state to destroy Muslim-owned businesses it claimed were illegal.

Harkesh Sharma, a Hindu shopkeeper, says most of the businesses were Muslim-owned but had Hindu tenants. He says they were given no warning and that both communities were hit hard.

Under Hindu nationalist leaders, sectarian violence has flared in India. Critics of the government say the bulldozers have become a symbol of anti-Muslim hate, a vehicle for injustice.

Outside the mosque, one Muslim worshipper tells me, Hindu nationalism is intensifying a religious divide in the country.

"They are hating other communities, so this is disturbing to any nation," he says.

"Because if hate will be a cure, the nation will not progress."

India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has strongly denied encouraging religious polarisation and anti-Muslim hate speech.

Recently in fact, he hailed India as the "mother of democracy".

Modi has certainly embraced the image as a global mentor. The global demand for his leadership is a powerful force and a potentially powerful distraction from whatever is happening domestically.