On October 26, Hindu nationalist mobs attacked Muslim-owned businesses, homes, and a mosque in the small northeast Indian state of Tripura, reports BBC News. Viral videos show Muslims being attacked and the mosque being set on fire. Videos also show members of the Hindu nationalist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad marching through Muslim neighborhoods and chanting insults against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.
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Climate change and nuclear weapons, two existential threats to humanity, work to exacerbate each other’s detrimental effects. Though the two topics may seem distantly related at first glance, they share many connections.
Read MoreEvery four minutes, someone dies from COVID-19 in Delhi, India. Smoke from mass cremation sites covered the skies in a thick layer, as seen in CNN’s drone footage. On Friday, April 30, the country continued its streak of diagnosing over 300,000 new cases in a single day, the ninth consecutive day with over 200,000 total deaths. There is increasing evidence, however, that the death toll may be five to ten times higher than reported, partly due to the country’s large population of nearly 1.4 billion people. India faces a lack of vaccines, hospital beds, vaccines, and oxygen supplies; even crematoriums are struggling to keep up with the pandemic.
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Authorities in Jammu detained over 200 Rohingya refugees in early March and are threatening to deport them to Myanmar, the state from which they are fleeing. India claims that the refugees are considered “illegal immigrants” and explains they are in the process of deporting the detainees back to their home country, despite the continued severe violence against Rohingya Muslims in the region.
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For the first time in almost 20 years, India and Pakistan have ceased firing across their shared border. Military officials from both nations released a joint statement stating they have agreed to a new ceasefire that went into effect at midnight on February 26, according to The New York Times.
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Farmers in India began protesting the new farming regulations instituted under the Modi government in early November. Protests escalated in both size and scale in the months that followed, culminating in violent confrontations with police at Red Fort in New Delhi on January 26. Reuters reports that the protests continued February 5, with thousands of farmers across India blocking off roads with their tractors, tents, and boulders.
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On February 7, 2021, a massive glacier in the Himalayan mountain range collapsed, leaving at least 32 dead and almost 200 missing in the state of Uttarakhand. Part of a glacier near the Nanda Devi mountain broke off into a river, breaking dams, sweeping away bridges, and destroying hydroelectric projects in the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers. Numerous towns had to be evacuated, and 13 villages are still being resupplied by air after being cut off by the flood waters, according to Reuters.
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India represents the world’s largest democracy, with an approximate population of 1.3 billion people residing in the country. Since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, came into power in 2014, there has been a fundamental reshaping of Indian politics with an increasing trend towards undemocratic governance.
Read MoreProtests led by Punjabi farmers in Delhi, India have been escalating in recent days. According to BBC News, thousands of farmers marched to Delhi, where barricades at the border led to clashes with police.
Read MoreIn early October, China completed the construction of Pangda, a village of 100 people near the Torsa River in the Himalayas. Pangda is situated in Bhutan, a small Buddhist kingdom of 800,000 that borders southwest China. The construction of Pangda, as well as other Chinese territorial claims to Bhutan, adds further strain on already sensitive Sino-Bhutanese and Sino-Indian relations.
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