In an email alert to Counterview, a senior Washington DC-based activist has said that recent trends suggest, when India is regressing, the diaspora in the US is fast progressing ahead with having interfaith marriages. In the long haul, the more we are united, the lesser the friction between the peoples and greater the prosperity, he believes.

This refers to a recent article titled “Muslim women of India have held hijab 'as part of their identity for centuries'." I usually refuse it comment on the articles and reports authored by others. Currently “holidaying” in the United States, I went to meet one of my bosom friends, Khursheed Latif, who lives in a beautiful area called Pocono, known for its forested peaks, lakes and valleys in the US state of Pennsylvania.

  Currently "holidaying" in Somerville, five km from Boston, one of the most high profile cities of the United States, the other day I decided to take a stroll up and down the busy hillock where I stay. Just next to the main road, a two minutes walk, crossing the road and reaching in a small open space, I found a few round shaped boards in yellow. All of them described about what Somerville was and is -- of course in a nutshell. One of the boards particularly attracted me -- and as a journalist who was based in Gandhinagar, the Gujarat capital, I could connect with it directly. The round yellow board talked of how Ford, one of the largest car manufacturers, had an assembly line at Somerville's Assembly Square, just two miles away from where I live. Titled "Assembling Cars at Assembly Square", this is what is written on the tin board, "One result of the boom times after World War II: for the first time, many American families had the cash to own a car. Ford ...

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has declared Imam Umar Guatam, Mufti Qazi Jahangir Alam Qasmi and and Maulana Kaleem Farooqui as “victims of religious persecution” in India, a US-based rights  group , Justice for All (JfA), with hubs in Chicago, New York and Washington DC, has said in an email alert to Counterview. In a statement, JfA said, Imam Umar Gautam was arrested on June 21 along with Mufti Qazi Jahangir Alam Qasmi, both preachers from Delhi’s Jamia Nagar by the Uttar Pradesh police’s Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) on charges of “mass conversion of people to Islam through inducements such as marriage, job and money and mental pressure.”Maulana Kaleem Farooqui is also an Islamic religious scholar, and was arrested a few months later under the same pretext by the Uttar Pradesh authorities. USCIRF has so far added 33 prisoners “incarcerated” by the Indian regime to their victims list. The victims listed have been accused by the Indian governmen...

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan Renowned activists and academics Kalyani Menon Sen, Nivedita Menon, JM Rugma, Cynthia Stephen and Enakshi Ganguly in a report on the case of illegal adoption in Kerala that was in the news in December 2021 say the state's CPI-M government has refused to "challenge the citadels of caste and patriarchy." In a report circulated by the authors, they say, "it is depressingly obvious" from what they have found that the Left Democratic Front (LDF), which is supposed to pursue "progressive" policies, has maintained silence on the societal norms that assert that "a relationship outside marriage is an unforgivable sin", or that pregnancy outside marriage is "the greatest possible shame for the family", and, worse, "a relationship between a savarna woman and a Dalit man is the ultimate crime." Stating that these beliefs are seen as "fundamental to the preservation of Malayali so...