India was the world’s fastest-growing economy last year at 7.8%, and is expected to be the world’s third largest economy by 2030, behind the US and China.

As of June 2024, India’s total installed solar capacity was 87.2 gigawatts, and it added 15 gigawatts of solar in the first half of 2024, more than ever before in absolute terms in any 6-month period. But remember that the economy is growing quickly and electricity demand is also growing, so in relative terms solar’s growth this year isn’t that impressive.

Solar accounts for 57.7% of India’s renewable electricity generation, ahead of wind and hydro.

Japan’s solar installations are now slightly behind those of India. The proportion of electricity in Japan coming from wind and solar is 12%, however, whereas in India it is only 10%. The global average is 13%. As a hilly, densely populated country, Japan at least perceives itself to lack places to put big solar farms, and so it is turning to wind energy as its major renewable investment, including offshore wind.

India invested $68 billion in clean energy in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency, an increase of 40% over the average in the teens of this century.

“Brighter than a Thousand Suns,” Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v3/ Clip2Comic, 2024.

Although the spike in solar in India last year was welcome, however, it wasn’t nearly enough. Annual investment in green energy will need to rise by 120% by 2030 if India is to meet its own climate goals, which it is not on track to do. At the moment, the investment is on track only to double, i.e. to increase by 100%.

India is still investing in fossil fuels, including the deadly coal, in a big way, and its carbon dioxide emissions were up. Fossil fuels actually rose from 76% to 77% of India’s electricity last year, going in entirely the wrong direction.

As solar power rapidly falls in price, however, it may prove difficult for coal to compete with it, especially in a sunny country like India, so that renewables may take off in an unexpected way. That development will require India’s government, however, to stop backing coal (India is kind of like a big West Virginia when it comes to coal). Given India’s vulnerability to climate change, it would be better advised to be more ambitious in its renewables goals and to back them with a more robust industrial policy.

(The Conversation) – Delhi is reeling from the most extreme heatwave India has ever seen. While the record-breaking maximum recorded temperature of 52.9°C has been called into question by India’s Meteorological Department, it’s entirely possible. The city has been sweltering, with top temperatures ranging from 45.2°C to 49.1°C, at the limit of human endurance.

This event follows hot on the heels of extreme heatwaves across Asia as well as the Sahel in Africa.

Climate scientists have long warned these days would come. The recent acceleration in warming means it’s happening sooner than we expected. So we need to work harder and faster to reduce greenhouse emissions and get global heating under control.

Fortunately, India’s current heatwave conditions are expected to ease over the coming days. But the death toll is likely to rise, as people succumb to multiple health effects. Extreme heat has a long tail of destruction. Almost every chronic health condition is made worse by exposure to such temperatures.

Australians should take note. We are not safe, and we need to prepare for heat to hit us just as hard. It could even be worse here, because people with air conditioning can be lulled into a false sense of security. There’s no guarantee these air con units will extract enough heat to effectively cool our living and working areas, and electricity networks can fail.

What does extreme heat do to people?

When you’re hot, your body tries to cool off by sweating. This involves sending blood to the surface. Blood vessels at the skin dilate and the skin looks flushed, but this causes your blood pressure to fall. The heart has to work harder.

We need to keep our core temperature around 36–37°C. If the surrounding air is hotter, the body’s efforts to cool down can do just the opposite and absorb more heat. This is made worse during exercise, when 80% of the energy produced by working muscles is heat.

When we cannot shed that extra heat, our core temperature increases. At the microscopic level, cellular damage occurs. Extended heat exposure can lead to organ failure and death.

The “wet bulb globe temperature” factors in the humidity of the atmosphere. High humidity means the air is already saturated with water, so sweat on our skin doesn’t evaporate and we don’t get that cooling mechanism.

That’s why 33°C in dry Melbourne can be warm but tolerable, but 33°C in Darwin can feel stifling.

It’s not as if we could climb into an oven and be ok though, just because an oven is dry. There’s a dry heat maximum, which varies from person to person depending on their overall health and fitness. There is no particular temperature at which we can say a certain proportion of people will die, because there are so many variables.

In public health we talk about extreme heat having a “long tail” in a statistical sense. The number of excess deaths spikes during and immediately after the heatwave, but death rates don’t drop back to zero straight away. Organ damage is a likely cause. Mass heat death events are a relatively new phenomena, so the detailed understanding of the physiological mechanisms is still lacking.

India: hot and humid on the campaign trail

The India Meteorological Department installed more automatic weather stations across Delhi and the national capital region during the summer of 2022.

Wednesday’s maximum temperature ranged from 45.2°C to 49.1°C, except for Mungeshpur on Delhi’s northwest outskirts, which reported 52.9°C. As this was an outlier compared to other weather stations, the Department said it could be due to an error in the sensor.

However, it’s also possible Mungeshpur is a genuine hotspot due to local heat generation and trapping – the so-called “heat island effect”.

Delhi is crowded, hot and humid with limited access to air conditioning. What’s more, people have been coming out in the heat during India’s elections.

In previous heatwaves across India and Pakistan, many thousands of people died in their homes. It’s unclear what the ultimate death toll from the current heatwave will be.

WION: Extreme heatwave in India | Inside South Asia

The message for other nations

Clearly it’s time for other hot countries to ramp up their own heatwave preparations.

Australia, for example, is vulnerable to extreme heat, not just because of its hot climates but also because people acclimatise to their average local conditions. Problems arise when the weather is extreme for a particular location.

Tasmanians can succumb to temperatures regarded as normal for people in Broken Hill, New South Wales. Human tolerance for heat is variable, and can vary markedly within each individual, depending on their fitness level, stage of life, familiarity with heat and capacity to regulate their core temperature.

Climate science, modelling and human physiology may be complex, but how we must respond is simple. Everyone should be familiar with the signs and symptoms of heat stress, first aid treatment and when to call an ambulance. This includes school-aged children who may be the first to encounter their parent in strife.

People most at risk include those who are working outside or caring for others, travelling long distances, suffering from chronic illness, or simply ill-informed about the dangers of extreme heat.

Climate change is here, now

Climate scientists have been warning the world about the dangers of extreme heat for decades. It’s just going from bad to worse.

The Delhi heatwave is further evidence that climate modelling has been largely underestimating the speed and intensity of global warming.

Heat beyond the limits of human endurance is no longer a distant dystopian future. It’s here and now.

Liz Hanna, Honorary Associate Professor in Environmental Health, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(The Conversation) – A deadly heat wave gripped large regions of Asia for weeks in spring 2024, sending temperatures in India’s capital region over 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 Celsius) in late May. Officials in Delhi warned residents that they could face power outages and water shortages.

Earlier in the month, campaigning politicians, news announcers and Indian voters waiting in long lines had passed out in the oppressive heat.

From as far north as Japan to as far south as the Philippines, the relentless heat wreaked havoc on everyday life. Students and teachers in Cambodia were sent home from school in early May, as their hand-held fans provided little protection against the stifling heat and humidity in their poorly ventilated classrooms. Farmers in Thailand saw their crops wither and mourned the loss of livestock that perished under the punishing sun. Hundreds of people died from the heat.

Most of the planet has suffered the dire effects of extreme heat in recent years. Phoenix hit 110 F (43.3 C) or higher for 31 straight days in summer 2023, and Europe saw unprecedented heat that killed hundreds and contributed to devastating wildfires in Greece.

Regardless of where or when a heat wave strikes, one pattern has been a constant: Older adults are the most likely to die from extreme heat, and the crisis is worsening.

We study climate change and population aging. Our research documents two global trends that together portend a dire future.

More older adults will be at risk of heat stress

First, temperatures are hotter than ever. The nine-year period from 2015 and 2023 had the highest average temperatures since global records began in 1880.

CBC: “Delhi records all-time record temperature of 52.9 C”

Second, the population is aging worldwide. By 2050, the number of people ages 60 and older will double to nearly 2.1 billion, making up 21% of the global population. That proportion is 13% today.

These combined forces mean that ever-rising numbers of vulnerable older adults will be exposed to intensifying heat.

To understand the risks ahead, we developed population projections for different age groups and combined them with climate change scenarios for the coming decades. Our analyses show that by 2050, more than 23% of the world population ages 69 and older will be living in regions where peak temperatures routinely surpass 99.5°F (37.5°C), compared with just 14% today.

That means that as many as 250 million additional older adults will be exposed to dangerously high temperatures.

Mapping the data shows that most of these older adults live in lower- and middle-income countries with insufficient services and limited access to electricity, cooling appliances and safe water.

In historically cooler regions in the Global North, including North America and Europe, rising temperatures will be the main force driving older adults’ heat exposure. In historically hotter regions in the Global South such as Asia, Africa and South America, population growth and increases in longevity mean that steeply rising numbers of older adults will be exposed to intensifying heat-related risks.

Policymakers, communities, families and older residents themselves need to understand these risks and be prepared because of older adults’ special vulnerabilities to heat.

Extreme heat is especially harmful to older adults

High temperatures are oppressive for everyone, but for older adults they can be deadly.

Extreme heat worsens common age-related health conditions such as heart, lung and kidney disease and can cause delirium. Older people don’t sweat as much as younger people, which makes it harder for their bodies to cool down when temperatures spike. These problems are intensified by common prescription medications, such as anticholinergics, which further reduce the capacity to sweat.

Spending time outdoors in hot humid weather can cause dehydration, a problem worsened by the side effects of prescription medications such as diuretics and beta-blockers. Dehydration can make older adults weak and dizzy, increasing their risk of falls and injury. These threats are even worse in regions lacking access to safe and affordable drinking water.

Poor air quality makes it difficult to breath, especially for those who already have lung problems such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.

For older adults with physical health problems, temperatures as low as 80 F (26.7 C) can pose significant danger. And when humidity is as high as 90%, even 78 F (25.6 C) can be hazardous to older adults.

Nighttime heat is especially harmful for older adults whose homes lack air conditioning or who can’t afford to run their air conditioners for long periods. The ideal temperature for older adults’ restful sleep is between 68 and 77 F (20 and 25 C), and sleep quality diminishes as temperatures rise. A night of restless sleep can make an older adult more depressed and confused during their waking hours. Medications also can lose their effectiveness if stored in places much warmer than 77 F (25 C).

Older adults also may suffer emotionally during stifling heat waves

Being stuck indoors when temperatures are unbearable can make older adults bored, depressed and isolated. People with cognitive impairments may underestimate the dangers of extreme heat or may not understand the heat advisories.

Those who have physical mobility limitations or lack access to transportation can’t easily travel to public cooling centers – if there is one nearby – or find relief in nearby “green and blue areas,” such as parks and lakes.

These threats are especially dire in low- and middle-income nations, where older adults are more likely to live in substandard housing and lack access to high-quality health care or ways to cool down in the heat. We talk about this as “systemic cooling poverty.”

What can be done?

Policymakers can work to cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels in vehicles, power plants and factories, which drive global warming, and develop effective plans to protect older people from heat risk. Older adults and their caregivers also can take steps to adapt.

But efforts to help need to be tailored to each region and population.

Wealthy municipalities can increase public investments in early warning systems and ride services to cooling centers and hospitals. They can use geographic information systems to identify neighborhoods with high concentrations of older adults and expand power grids to manage increasing demand for air conditioning.

In regions with substandard housing, limited access to clean water and few public supports such as cooling centers, much larger changes are necessary. Providing better health care, water and housing and reducing air pollution that can mitigate health problems during heat waves require significant changes and investments many countries struggle to afford.

The World Health Organization and Pan American Health Organization warn that this decade will be critical for preparing communities to handle rising heat and the risk to aging populations. Across all regions, researchers, practitioners and policymakers could save lives by heeding their call.

This article, originally published May 22, 2024, has been updated with extreme heat in Delhi.

Deborah Carr, A&S Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Innovation in Social Science, Boston University; Enrica De Cian, Professor of Environmental Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Giacomo Falchetta, Research Scholar in Energy, Climate and Environment, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Ian Sue Wing, Professor of Earth and Environment, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mir was born in Agra, India, into a Muslim family. His father was a Sufi mystic, and the spiritual aspects of that philosophy are seen in all his poems. His father died when Mir was a young man, in his teens.  As a young man, it seems that he began an adulterous relationship with a married woman.  When this was eventually discovered, he was disowned by his family and forced to leave his home and move to Dehli.  This traumatic event colors all of his poems.  He writes about his subsequent relationships with women with a dark sensibility, often with a sense of doom and dread.

Mir was a master of the ghazal, a poetic form with repeating lines.  He wrote his poems about love. Every aspect of the experience is explored in depth—from initial infatuation to bitter regret. Nor does Mir neglect the spiritual aspects of love, which along with carnal desire are so much in evidence in each of his poems.

The Plague of Love: Selected Sufi Love Poems of Mir Taqi Mir, By Mir Taqi Mir, translated by Bilal A. Shaw and Anthony A. Lee. Click here to buy.

This poem explores the poet’s dark fears and hopes at the start of a new love affair. Still, he tells us tragically how he has been scarred by past relationships. So, he hesitates. 

Love Is Just Beginning

Love is just beginning, and I weep.  Why?
Just go on.  See what happens, man!  Why not?

Hear that?  Sounds of the morning caravan.
So, move!  They’re leaving, fool.  You’re sleeping.  Why?

The land of heart will not turn green again.
But still, I sow seeds of desire.  Why?

These love stains on my skin will not come off.
Still, I wash the wounds that scar my chest.  Why?  

Yet more precious than Joseph’s hair is time!
And, Mir, you are wasting this rare thing. Why?

In this next poem, Mir confesses that he has abandoned the worship of God for the worship of a woman. His prayers to God he counts as only treason to his new beloved. Tortured by his blasphemy, he knows he is ruined.

I Worship You

I worship you, and God knows that.
What you may think? Well, God knows that.  

The agony of love is sweet.                            
Every wretched lover knows that.                             

Beneath her hair, behind her veil,
what she wants, only she knows that.  

You think I am a fraud like you?
My pleas aren’t false.  But you know that.  

My prayers to God are treason now.  
You’re cruel to those you love.  Know that.                    

You’re a spoiled and stupid child.  But
you twist your lips well.  You know that.  

Because you live inside my heart,
my love is there.  And, you know that.  

When you’re in love, Mir, you’re ruined.  
You gave away your heart, fool.  You know that. 

Though he pursued multiple relationships with women, Mir remained deeply religious.  But his piety and his sexuality were at war.  In one poem, “Finished,” he recounts his seduction of a woman.  But he includes this couplet:

I chased her for long miles, but stopped to pray.  

God!  Even mad with love, I dared not sin . . .  

In the next poem, spiritual love and physical love are so blended and intertwined that we cannot tell one from the other. The truth seems to shift from one to the other: “Sometimes love is/the believer. Sometimes God is this love.” And still, in the end, Mir doubts both his faith and his love. 

What Is Love?

How can I tell you what it is, this love?
It’s a disease, it’s a sickness, this love.

Love—only love—exists.  Look!  Everywhere
the universe is bursting with this love.

Love is my lover.  Love is my beloved.
And love itself delights inside this love.               

This love makes its own law.  Sometimes love is           
the believer.  Sometimes God is this love.

Who has ever reached his aim without love?
My wish is this love.  My goal is this love.

But no one really wants this sort of love. 
See!  It’s just like a bastard child, this love.

Mir, your life is looking so weak and pale.         
Can you say you have ever been in love?

In the poem “Until He Comes,” Mir expresses the pain of his love for a young man. The poem reflects the bisexuality that was the norm in his society at the time (and certainly also today).  We should remember that some of Shakespeare’s love sonnets were written to a young man, as well.

Until He Comes

Long have my tears been falling.  Still they come!
If my tears stop falling, my blood will come.

I can control myself, until he comes.
Then, I lose my mind, and no sense will come.

Patience used to be my only friend here. 
But now, he too is one who will not come.

My heart has lost all trace of its desire.
Just gone.  No wonder now my tears have come.

It’s all still here in this full heart, my friend.
But no verses on my lips.  They won’t come.  
   
There he lies so far away . . .  Poor sad Mir,
without love, this poem will never come.

After the end of another relationship, Mir laments and cries bitterly. He drinks. His sadness and insecurity are so evident. His loss is devastating and complete.

A Ripple on Your Robe

In this garden, make your tongue a rosebud
in your mouth.  Make a baby’s fist your hand.  

Cup your palm around your heart when you cry.
In that tempest, your lamp will die unmanned.

Wine boy!  Without you we will never know           
ourselves. Lost, we wander in our homeland.

The chains of reason hold me down, or I
would live insane–at frantic love’s command.

Even though I’m a poet, not a hack,
I fear the rhymes my friends recite offhand.

Mir, swept away by her soft love:  Now she’s
just a ripple on your robe as you stand.  

Finally, this short poem sums up Mir Taqi Mir’s own view of his brilliant poetry. 

Don’t Call Yourself a Poet

The God of favors did me a favor.  He took
some dust: From nothing, he gave me a human look.

Don’t call yourself a poet, Mir.  Because, you just
took a bunch of sorrows and wrote them in a book.

The Plague of Love: Selected Sufi Love Poems of Mir Taqi Mir

Translated by Bilal Shaw and Anthony A. Lee
A New Literary Translation (Nirala Publications, New Dehli) Paperback.  110 pages.

Available on Amazon.com here.   But do not pay full price.  New copies are available from private sellers at much reduced prices. 

Verses 19:17-35:

And once remote from them, she hid behind a screen. Then we sent to her our spirit, who took the shape of a well-formed man.
She said, “I take refuge in the All-Merciful from you, if you are pious.”
He said, “I am but an angel of your lord, come to bestow on you a son without blemish.”
She said, “Will I have a son, when no mortal has touched me, and I was not rebellious?”
He said, “So it is.” He said, “Your Lord says, it is easy for me. We will make him a sign for the people and a mercy from us. The matter has already been decreed.”
So she bore him, and withdrew with him to a remote place.
And the pangs of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, “I wish I had died before now, and had been forgotten in oblivion.”
But he called to her from beneath her, saying, “Do not be sad. For your Lord has made a stream run beneath you.”
So shake the trunk of the palm tree toward you, and ripe, fresh dates will fall to you. So eat and drink and be comforted. If you see any human being, say, “I have taken a vow to the All-Merciful to fast, and will speak to no one today.”

Many of these details are from material circulating in the late antique Christian community that also reached the Prophet Muhammad. In the Qur’an Jesus is depicted as in a line of God’s prophets, including Moses, Solomon, David, and others, a line that went on to include the Prophet Muhammad as of the early 600s CE.

The tradition of Persian and Mughal miniature painting — of painting leaves intended to go into manuscript books for the libraries of kings or very wealthy notables — flowered in the 1200s and after, in Iran, Central Asia, India and what is now Turkey. It was influenced by Chinese techniques that came in through the Mongol conquests and the Silk Road and sometimes the people depicted look a little Chinese.

In 1519-1687, the Qutb-Shahi dynasty ruled the Kingdom of Golconda, named after their initial capital, a city near Hyderabad in South India. From 1591 Hyderabad itself became the capital. That city today is the capital of Telengana State and is the fourth-most-populous city in the Indian Republic. The dynasty was founded by an adventurer from Hamadan in Iran, who was a Shiite, and so the kingdom had Shiism for its state religion, even though most of its subjects were Hindus and most of its Muslim subjects were Sunnis. In its later decades it became a vassal of the Mughals based up north, and ultimately was absorbed into the Mughal Empire.

During the 1600s in particular there was a lot of contact with European maritime empires and merchants, who brought books and paintings from Europe, and so the Renaissance tradition of depicting the Nativity had an impact on court artists. But these paintings were commissioned by Muslim rulers for Muslim court purposes, as their own celebration of Jesus, whom they considered, as did all Muslims, one of their prophets.

The National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian has a spectacular miniature painting from Golconda, dated to about 1630, of the adoration of the baby Jesus.



Jesus and Mary are both shown with golden halos. Joseph is also there but without a halo.

One of the adorers is, (extremely) anachronistically, a 17th-century European merchant in boots, almost certainly Dutch. He also seems to have brought gold vessels, and he has in his hand what looks to me like fine cloth, dyed purple. Indigo dye was one of India’s trading major commodities. More on all that later.

There are three winged angels, two hovering above and one on the ground in front of the manger. One of the angels above is holding what looks to me like a crown. Since the Muslim tradition doesn’t know about the Gospel language regarding the messiah being the king of the Jews, my guess is that this motif was borrowed from a European artist. Also, gold was one of the gifts traditionally thought by Christians to be brought to the Christ child by one of the 3 magi.

The other angel has a bow. In South India, the crown and the bow were royal symbols. So I think the angels are depicted as exalting Jesus in the way royalty was exalted. These symbols raise the possibility that the royal treatment given here to baby Jesus is not Christian in origin but Hindu Indian. After all, the beloved god Ram was a king. For these Indian artists, who did not know the Bible, the symbols may not be an assertion that he was royalty, only that he deserved the sort of glorification that kings received.

Although in the West of the Muslim world Arab artists were reluctant to depict holy figures, this Indian artist has no problem with it. Most did not, and they painted Muhammad, as well. Mary is shown wearing hijab but with her face visible, and Joseph and Jesus also have their faces depicted.

Shiite Islam puts special emphasis on piety centering on the family of the Prophet, including Muhammad’s son-in-law and first cousin, Ali, Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah, and the two sons of Ali and Fatimah, Hasan and Husayn. Although Sunni courts also produced nativity paintings, it could be that this form of Christian piety especially appealed to the Shiite rulers of Golconda.



As for the Dutch merchant or factor, Sanu Kainikara explains,

“In 1627, the Dutch had a disagreement with the Governor of Golconda, under whose jurisdiction the region fell, regarding the grant of a ‘farming’ permit for Masulipatam (Macchilipatanam). They withdrew to Pulicat and blockaded Masulipatam from the sea. The Qutb Shah dismissed his governor and invited the Dutch to return to Masulipatam. The reason for the Qutb Shahi sultan’s action was that the Dutch possessed a preponderance of naval strength that was able to threaten an adversary from the sea without exposing themselves to any significant danger—a capability that no other European power in India could lay claim to at that time.”

“The Dutch trade from Masulipatam amounted to Rupees 600,000 per year throughout most of the 17th century. In 1660, the Dutch opened a factory in Golconda, whose chief merchant also doubled as the ambassador to the Qutb Shahi king.”

One of the key commodities traded from Golconda to the Netherlands and later to Britain was diamonds.


Map of Hyderabad state, c. 1730, H/t Wikipedia, UM Clement Library .

So that Dutch merchant was almost certainly in Hyderabad seeking diamonds. But maybe also indigo dye and textiles, which he is shown in turn offering to baby Jesus.

And the court painter, having been commissioned by the king to do a nativity scene, obligingly incorporated the trader into the painting, a common practice. It is unlikely that the painting was commissioned by the foreigner– it stayed in India until a British officer purchased it. It just shows that the Prophet Jesus (`Isa in Arabic) had acquired another connotation in the Renaissance period, being associated with the expanding maritime trade empires of the Christian Europeans. The Dutch had just displaced the Portuguese, who can be seen in earlier miniatures.

The painting is a reminder that Christmas is not parochial — not northern European, as it is often conceived in the US, but a global commemoration of a global event. Not only do Muslims celebrate Jesus as a holy figure, but many Hindus also respect him (and more used to before the rise of Hindutva, Hindu nationalism). And Jews who live alongside Christians often have Christmas trees, even if they can’t go along with Christian beliefs about Jesus, who after all was born and bred a Jew. Christmas should be for celebrating rebirth and renewal and hope, in a world that desperately needs all three, for Christians and for everyone.

( Tomdispatch.com) – In 1981, India’s post office issued a stamp showing the flags of India and occupied Palestine flying side by side above the phrase “Solidarity with the Palestinian people.” That now seems like ancient history. Today, Hindu nationalists are flying the flags of India and Israel side by side as a demonstration of their support for that country’s catastrophic war on Gaza.

It’s a match made in heaven (or do we mean hell?), because the two nations have similar “problems” they’re trying to “solve.” Israel has long been engaged in the violent suppression of Palestinians whose lands they occupy (including the current devastation of Gaza, an assault that 34 U.N. experts have labeled a “genocide in the making”). Meanwhile, India’s Hindu nationalist government continues the harsh oppression of its non-Hindu minorities: Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and indigenous people.

About the time Zionist settlers were beginning their occupation of Palestine in the early 1920s, an Indian right-wing figure, V.D. Savarkar, fashioned the ideology of Hindutva (Hindu-ness). Today, right-wing Hindu nationalists employ Hindutva and physical violence to further its vision of India as a nation for Hindus and Hindus only. Similarly, Zionism views historic Palestine as a land for Jews and Jews only. These parallel visions, along with the two governments’ increasingly authoritarian tendencies and ready use of violence, have drawn them into a dark alliance the consequences of which are unpredictable.

India Makes New Friends

The Republic of India and the State of Israel were born nine months apart in 1947 and 1948, each an offspring of partition. The British-ruled Indian subcontinent was then split into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, while Israel was carved out of a portion of the British Mandate Palestine.

Throughout the Cold War, India would be a leader of what came to be known as the nonaligned movement — formerly colonized nations that sought to develop independently of both American and Soviet influence. In the 1980s, it also became the first non-Arab nation to recognize the state of Palestine. A similar recognition of Israel didn’t come until 1992, around the time India was shifting away from its nonaligned social-democratic stance toward its current adherence to neoliberalism.

Embed from Getty Images
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (L), US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attend the launch of the Global Biofuels Alliance at the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9, 2023. (Photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / POOL / AFP) (Photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images).

In recent decades, India and Israel have established strong trading relationships, especially in the military sphere. In fact, given the massive militarization of its borders with China and Pakistan and its suppression of occupied Kashmir and its people, India has become the top importer of weapons and surveillance equipment from Israel. In 2014, the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won power and its leader, Narendra Modi, became prime minister. In the process, India and Israel grew ever closer.

By 2016, as the Washington Post reported, “after Indian commandos carried out a raid inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in response to an attack by militants on an Indian army post, Modi trumpeted the action, saying: ‘Earlier, we used to hear of Israel having done something like this. But the country has seen that the Indian army is no less than anyone else.’”

Buy the Book

Today, the Israeli weapons-robotics firm Elbit Systems has even established a drone factory in India and now has a $300 million contract to supply drones to the Indian army occupying Kashmir. Meanwhile, Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have established a mutual-admiration society, dubbed by the media of both countries the “Modi-Bibi bromance.” And New Delhi has all but abandoned the Palestinians.

Economic Alliances

When, on October 27th, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for an “immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza, only the U.S., Israel, and a handful of small nations voted “no.” India abstained. (Apparently, the Modi-Bibi bromance wasn’t quite enough to sustain a “no” vote.) Modi, however, immediately responded to the measure’s passage by declaring his “solidarity” with Israel.

Economic, political, and diplomatic relations between New Delhi, Tel Aviv, and Washington (all nuclear powers, by the way) had been strengthening even before the current conflict. Last year, for instance, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the “I2U2 Group” to attract corporate investment for their mutual benefit. Projects now underway include “food parks across India” with “climate-smart technologies” and a “unique space-based tool for policymakers, institutions, and entrepreneurs” (whatever in — or out of — the world “food parks” and “space-based tools” might be).

Then, in September, the G-20 summit of the group of 20 major nations, meeting in New Delhi, approved an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor which, according to Voice of America, would “establish a rail and shipping network linking the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan to the Israeli port of Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea.” And guess who now operates that very port? A company led by Gautam Adani, India’s richest person and (naturally!) a Modi buddy. Foreign Policy notes, “It is also palatable for the Middle East to have India as a major energy market to diversify its exports and offset Chinese influence over critical commodities such as oil and gas.”

But not surprisingly, the war in Gaza has thrown plans for such a new Indian-oriented economic corridor through the Middle East into limbo.

High-, Medium-, and Low-Tech Warfare

Militarily, the conflicts in occupied Palestine and occupied Kashmir are both lopsided mismatches. In each, a powerful nation-state is assaulting resource-poor populations, though the scale of slaughter, displacement, immiseration, and death wrought by the Indian regime doesn’t faintly approach what’s currently being done by Israel in the Gaza Strip — at least not yet. While the cases have similarities, magnitude isn’t one of them.

In Gaza, you have the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a massive high-tech killing machine financed in large part by the world’s richest nation, facing off against Palestinian resistance groups, including the Qassam Brigade, whose most effective weapons are homemade Yassin antitank grenades and whose defenses largely consist of a network of fortified tunnels. Instead of engaging in face-to-face subterranean combat with the Qassam fighters — something that could turn out badly indeed for the IDF — the Israelis have been carrying out an industrial-scale bombardment of densely populated areas. As of late November, the result was approximately 15,000 civilians killed (including more than 6,000 children) and the displacement of 1.6 million people, or two-thirds of Gaza’s population.

In India, the Hindu nationalists’ onslaught against non-Hindu minorities has not been carried out by the Indian Army itself, but by a paramilitary organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in partnership with the BJP. That unofficial army, founded almost a century ago and modeled on Italian fascist Benito Mussolini’s “blackshirts” and Adolph Hitler’s Nazi stormtroopers, has a membership of five to six million and holds daily meetings in more than 36,000 different locales across India. Its shock troops rarely even carry firearms; their weapons are low-tech, crude, and exceptionally cruel, and their targets are unarmed, unsuspecting civilians. They kill or maim using batons, machetes, strangulation, sulfuric acid to the face, and rape, among other horrors.

Such attacks by Hindu-nationalist gangs, different as they are from the military assault on Gaza, do have parallels in the occupied West Bank. There, Israeli settlers, some carrying government-supplied small arms, maraud through parts of that area (where they live illegally), beating, torturing, and killing Palestinians, including ethnic Bedouin families. They have expelled people from their homes, stolen their money and possessions, including livestock, and destroyed houses and schools. It is now olive harvest season and Jewish settlers have attacked Palestinians in their olive groves, sometimes forcing them off their ancestors’ land, perhaps permanently. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed this way since October.

Common Language

One of the worst atrocities perpetrated against Muslims since India’s partition occurred in 2002 in the western state of Gujarat. (Not coincidentally, that state’s chief minister at the time was Narendra Modi.) Following the alleged torching of a train compartment in which 58 Hindu nationalist “volunteers” were traveling, Hindu mobs inflicted state-sponsored terrorism on the Muslim community across Gujarat. More than 2,000 Muslims were killed. Speaking in the aftermath of that horror, then-prime minister A.B. Vajpayee offered a perfunctory admission of regret for the carnage, only to ask rhetorically, “Lekin aag lagayi kisne?” (“But who lit the fire?”) The implication was that since some from their community were accused of committing the initial crime, all Gujarat Muslims were responsible and that, however regrettably, justified their slaughter.

Similar allegations of collective guilt and justifications for collective punishment have a long history in Israel, as in the current conflict. In October, Israeli President Isaac Herzog claimed that “there is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” That comment earned Herzog a place in a greatest-hits video of Israeli leaders attempting to defend atrocities inflicted on Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants. Similarly, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. told Sky News, “I am very puzzled by the constant concern which the world… is showing for the Palestinian people, and is actually showing for these horrible inhuman animals.”

Some of the language surrounding it can be similar. Allegations that, in their October 7th attack on Israel, Hamas fighters beheaded children and tore fetuses from women’s wombs — none of which have been substantiated — eerily echo the sexualized violence committed by Hindu mobs in Gujarat in 2002 (rape, mutilation, the killing of women and their babies, and other horrors). A report of attackers using a sword to cut a fetus out of a Muslim woman and burning the bodies of both fetus and mother has been told and retold countless times over the past two decades.

And within mere hours of the October 7th attack in Israel, BJP politicians and Hindu nationalists in India were spreading propaganda on social media, including accusations that Palestinians were “worse than animals” and were cutting fetuses from wombs, beheading children, and taking girls as “sex slaves.” This started in India before IDF spokespeople began spreading similar claims.

An Unnatural Disaster

Drawing a comparison to the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the Israeli agriculture minister, a member of the security cabinet, recently explained his government’s goal to a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz this way: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.” (Nakba was a reference to Israel’s forcible expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from large portions of their territory in 1948.) When the incredulous reporter tossed the minister a lifeline, asking if he really meant what he’d said, he doubled down: “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

As of now, it certainly looks that way. The IDF bombed apartment blocks, shelters, schools, and hospitals in northern Gaza to force the migration of the population there toward supposedly “safe” south Gaza. They then began bombing southbound car caravans and even ambulances in which refugees were fleeing. Large groups of other Gazans were forced to make the long journey south on foot through narrow IDF-designated corridors. As the Guardian reported in mid-November,

“Those walking south under the tense gaze of Israeli troops, through a hellscape of tangled rubble that had been buildings two months ago, along roads shattered by weapons and churned to mud by tanks, had little hope of rest when they reached the south. Shelters are crammed, food and water supplies are so low the UN has warned that Palestinians face the ‘immediate possibility’ of starvation, infectious diseases are spreading, and the war there is expected to intensify in coming days.”

Israel soon began bombing parts of South Gaza, too, clearly trying to drive the refugees further south, possibly even through the Raffah gate into Egypt. But Egypt has refused to participate in such an ethnic-cleansing campaign. So, figuratively speaking, millions of desperate Palestinians have their backs to the wall, or in this case, fence, with nowhere to run.

As economic and geopolitical ties among Israel, India, and the U.S. have only continued to strengthen, Joe Biden has chummed it up with both Netanyahu and Modi, averting his eyes from their antidemocratic and all-too-violent national visions. He has backed the assault on Gaza all the way and as late as November 18th was still arguing in the Washington Post against a ceasefire. At the same time, he called for increasing the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza to remedy critical staggering shortages of food, water, housing, and fuel. In other words, the Biden administration is treating the catastrophe there like a natural disaster, acting as if there’s something terrible happening, something beyond his (or anyone’s) power to prevent, so all that can be done is to aid the survivors.

In truth, administrations in Washington have been treating Israel’s occupation and immiseration of the West Bank and Gaza like a natural disaster for more than half a century now. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, recently pointed out an incident that suggests just how disingenuous that claim is. In November, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came under withering criticism for permitting a few small, wholly inadequate truckloads of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt. As Theoharis noted, Gallant defended his decision to allow the aid this way: “The Americans insisted, and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?” This puts the lie to the idea that Washington has no influence over the progress or outcome of this war. It does have influence over Israel — more than $3 billion worth in the form of military aid provided by Washington every year, not to speak of the $14 billion the Biden administration still wants to reward Israel with.

As we write this, we don’t know what will happen to the people of Gaza once the temporary ceasefire for prisoner exchanges expires. But rest assured that the governments of India and Israel will continue to feed off each other as they develop new strategies, tactics, and propaganda for their respective campaigns of occupation and oppression, campaigns the U.S. government, through both action and inaction, is endorsing. Consider them now three nations under god(s) of hell.

Copyright 2023 Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox

Via Tomdispatch.com

Analysts rushed to comment that the enlargement is anti-democratic and China-centric; however, a close look at the enlargement shows that the enlargement is not only about China but more of a consensus of the five powers, including, more importantly, India and Russia in addition to China. Of course, China is the most potent power in the bloc and might increase its influence over time. However, the current expansion shows that none of these countries are states that India and Russia reject, as they include Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two powers that have warm relations with India and an increasingly close relationship with Russia. Moreover, Brazil was already willing to accept Argentina as a member of BRICS in case it would help the neighbouring country in its quest for foreign reserves.

Indeed, these analysts ignore the warm relations between India and the two Gulf states, underestimate the tension between China and India, and tend to show the current members of BRICS under great Chinese influence, which is not necessarily true as India and China have significant issues, including but not limited to border crises. Otherwise, China President Xi Jinping’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit in South Africa would not present a significant diplomatic incident.. The tension worsened in 2020 and cost the lives of 20 Indian soldiers.

Is BRICS+ the new G7?

In its current form, BRICS represents around 40.72 percent of the world population; if the new members accept the offer, the representation will rise to 45.95 percent, a significant rate as China and India’s share is around 35.48 percent. Similarly, the current GDP share of the BRICS is around 25.77 percent, while the expansion would bring it to around 28.99 percent, another significant increase as 17.86 percent of the current club’s GDP comes from China alone. On the other hand, the G7 represents around 27 percent of the world’s GDP and around 10 percent of the world’s population.

BRICS has long been considered an alternative initiative to the Western system as it includes Russia and China as leading powers, despite its loose institutionalization. One of the BRICS targets is to de-dollarise trade and bypass US sanctions on global trade. Indeed, BRICS created a development bank to encourage trade in local currencies and support developmental projects, an alternative to the Western-centric IMF and World Bank.

While BRICS, in its current form, does not challenge UN-based institutions, it can be considered an alternative to the G20 or G7, if not a rival. The G20, too, is not a very effective platform but a place where world leaders discuss significant issues and attempt to form a global agenda. Indeed, G20 meetings have recently been defined as “empty talks” by analysts.

China and the Gulf

While none of the new members states that China would reject their membership, showing their membership as pure Chinese influence is inherently wrong as they include two members of the GCC with India who already share close ties. The close ties between India and the GCC can be seen from the G20, too, as India invited the UAE and Oman as this year’s G20 guests, in addition to Saudi Arabia, a permanent member of the G20.

While India is particularly close to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because of the number of expatriates in the Gulf, China is interested in these states for more strategic reasons. China made headlines in May when it brokered a normalisation agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, inviting Iran and its regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the UAE together to the bloc is interesting as the bloc does not want to include only the “isolated” countries from the Western system, preventing it from being a platform of excluded powers.

Even though the existence of Russia and China and their influence in the bloc signal anti-Americanism, BRICS, even in its 11-member form, is not inherently anti-American. Indeed, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, stated, “We do not want to be a counterpoint to the G7, G20, or the United States.” This is an important message for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as they do not want to exclude themselves from the American security umbrella but also want to diversify their security and strategic importance to gain leverage against the US. Thus, by joining this kind of organisation, they hit two birds with one stone.

Not long ago, in 2022, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were granted dialogue partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an even bigger anti-Western organisation than the BRICS. Iran was granted full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Council in 2023. Therefore, despite Iran and its Gulf rival Saudi Arabia and the UAE not sharing warm relations and having situated themselves on different poles, if Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s role is upgraded to full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Council and Saudi Arabia accepts BRICS offers, these two non-Western organisations would be platforms where they can have dialogue and use it as leverage with the West. As these two clubs will be new platforms where non-Western states have leadership, they can offer more equal negotiations between Iran and its Gulf neighbours, as none would have better privileges over others.

Of course, considering the new members, including the closest US MENA partners such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, one wonders if they are really asking for an alternative to US hegemony. In its 11-state form, the new bloc can benefit the organisation and the new members, including those directly linked to the US security umbrella. While Russia and China attempt to counterbalance the US-based Western system, most of the new members, most importantly in our case, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, attempt to diversify their geopolitical engagements with the rest of the world while still giving greater attention to the US and the West. The greater attention paid to the US and the West can be seen from their reactions to the offer, particularly Saudi Arabia’s. While UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed published a statement showing his appreciation of the offer, Saudi Arabia is yet to accept the offer and stated it will study the deal and give an appropriate decision,” a message to its Western allies that their priorities are still the West and also could be a bit disappointed by the offer to Iran too.

In short, considering the share of China and India’s oil and gas exports from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with India’s warm relations with these states, the invitation of these two states can be considered Indian-influenced as much as Chinese. Moreover, considering South Africa’s relations with Ethiopia and Brazil’s relations with Argentina, one can say BRICS’s enlargement is not solely Chinese dictation but more of a common ground for all members.

Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country of some 220 million people, the fifth most populous in the world It has a nominal GDP per annum of some $350 billion (in the same general range as South Africa, Egypt, Iran and Chile). Its most fertile regions comprise the Indus River basin. Water is the country’s lifeblood, and it is estimated that some 74% of the Indus Valley run-off derives from Himalayan snowmelt and glacier melt. It is likely to decrease by 5% to 12% by 2050. The melting of the glaciers and the retreat of the snow cover there at the top of the world are therefore an existential issue for Pakistan.

Image by lutz from Pixabay

If the world goes on putting 36 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year and doesn’t pull back significantly, actually the melting could be twice as bad. And under the worse case scenario, where human beings just do nothing to fight climate change, by the end of this century, 2081-2100, fully 80% of the lower-lying Himalayan ice will be gone.

These findings, by the way, pertain not only to the lower levels of the Himalayas but also the European Alps, the Rockies, and the Andes.

The reason for the melting of the surface ice in the Hindu Kush Himalayas is obvious. Glacier mass changes have been accelerating because of increased heat owing to human-induced climate change. Temperatures have been going up by an average of +0.28 °C (about half a degree Fahrenheit) every decade since 1951.

The rate of mass loss in the ice between the 1970s and 2019 has increased 65%. Even just in this century, the amount of ice mass lost in 2000-2009 was -0.17 meters water equivalent. But in 2010-2019 it jumped up to -0.28 meters water equivalent.

Seasonal snow cover in the Himalayas is decreasing at an alarming rate. At the lower elevations, there has been a loss of 5 snow-cover days per decade since the 1970s.

The Asian Exchange Union was established in 1972 and was intended to decolonize the banking system and allow member states to trade with one another without going through the old imperial powers. It never has, however, amounted to much, though it may suddenly be a bigger deal if Iran’s plans are implemented.

In the end the representatives voted to explore the formation of a non-dollar basket of currencies, to bring into being a digital currency controlled by the central banks of member states, and setting up an international banking exchange to rival the US-dominated SWIFT. The US has kicked both Iran and Russia off of SWIFT and interdicted their use of dollars, which has hurt their trade and foreign exchange reserves.

The non-dollar basket of currencies to be used as an alternative to the US dollar as a reserve currency would initially consist of the Chinese yuan, the UAE dirham and the Russian ruble, according to the plan voted on.

The United Arab Emirates’ central bank took part last year in a trial of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) using mBridge technology directed by the Bank for International Settlements and looking at the potential use of CBDC’s for “international transactions.” The study’s participants also comprised “the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the Bank of Thailand, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority with participants hailing the results of the study,” according to Coingeek.

The third resolution was to set up an alternative to the SWIFT bank exchange. According to Investopedia, “The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system powers most international money and security transfers. SWIFT is a vast messaging network used by financial institutions to quickly, accurately, and securely send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. ”

Mohsen Karimi, the International Vice President of Iran’s Central Bank, said at the Tehran summit, “The interbank messenger replacing SWIFT will be implemented within the next month among the members of the Asian Exchange Union.” He said that Iran has designed a new exchange that will message members of the Asian Exchange Union’s banks and allow currency transfers among them. He said this method will be cheaper than SWIFT.

For many reasons, the dollar is likely to remain the world’s reserve currency for some time, and the SWIFT banking exchange will remain central. Still, it may be possible for this rival basket of currencies to replace the dollar in Asia for some purposes, and a new banking exchange that allowed South Asian countries to deal with Iran and Russia in ways that the US cannot easily sanction would have its attractions. It is certainly the case that Washington’s over-use of financial sanctions is likely sooner or later to cause other countries to move away from the US-dominated banking exchange and from the dollar, which is a Trojan Horse for the Office of Foreign Asset Control of the US Department of the Treasury.