Weekend Reads

  1. It is clear that the protection of minorities is not the aim of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Citizenship Amendment Bill. Gautam Bhatia in the Hindu explains why the proposed legislation is unconstitutional.
  2. Biryani beats everything when it comes to online delivery. Karishma Mehrotra in the Indian Express reports on how algorithms are helping spread the famous dish even further.
  3. Five villages in Karnataka came together to protect a hillside forest they planted three decades ago. S Bhuvaneswari in the Hindu reports on the success of this initiative and what it might tell us about other fights to save trees.
  4. The art school founded by Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan is celebrating its centenary. Somak Ghosal from Mint visits the iconic school and examines its legacy.
  5. South Asian cooks never use pre-packaged masalas – except when they do. Maryam Jilani writes on Heated about “the brand at the heart of Pakistan’s culinary conscience”.
  6. The Western world has some very peculiar toilet habits. The UK and the US in particular are unfamiliar with using water to clean, preferring the strange unhygienic toilet paper instead, finds Christine Ro on the BBC.
  7. Tulsi Gabbard, the South Asian-origin American presidential candidate, has a strange following. Lisa Lerer in the New York Times finds that her support includes many from the racist Right and toxic online message boards.
  8. This isn’t the first time the US is betraying the Kurds. Jon Schwarz on the Intercept counts out a total of eight time that the Americans have gone back on their word.
  9. Whiteness was an ever-evolving concept in America. Italians, for example, were not considered white, and often treated with the same discrimination doled out to Africans, writes Brent Staples in the New York Times.
  10. Despite nearly everyone believing Saudi Arabia murdered Jamal Khashoggi, the country has faced no pushback. These seven people (and huge amounts of money), writes Akbar Shahid Ahmed in the HuffPost, were responsible for the country not turning into a pariah.