Mind Your Language

The court rebukes the actor for his Kannada remark as Thug Life faces an uncertain future in Karnataka

KAMAL HAASAN IS no stranger to ambiguity. He has worn many tongues on screen, slipped between registers and made oratory a second medium. But at a recent audio launch in Chennai, he spoke plainly. “Kannada was born from Tamil,” he said, not realising that the statement would stall a film across state lines.

The film is Thug Life, his much-awaited reunion with Mani Ratnam, pitched as both political allegory and genre spectacle. Pro-Kannada organisations protested. The Karna­taka Film Chamber of Commerce withheld screening permis­sions. Police complaints were filed. Haasan did not apologise. In a letter to the Chamber, he expressed regret for the misunder­standing, clarified that he had meant no offence, and invoked his long-standing respect for Kannada. But the clarification, like the cinema, didn’t travel. When his production company approached the Karnataka High Court to help release Thug Life, the court made itself heard. Justice M Nagaprasanna asked, “Are you a historian? Or a linguist? On what basis did you speak?” Then came the line that landed hardest: “You may be Kamal Haasan or anybody, you cannot hurt the sentiments of the masses.” The judge went further, evoking precedent: “When Rajaji could apologise for his statement in the House, what stops Kamal Haasan?” Haasan may have believed he was speaking of shared roots—after all, the Dravidian family tree has often been drawn with Tamil as its trunk—but roots, too, can become contested territory. To some, Hassan’s statement and his refusal to apologise read as cultural condescension; to others, historical inaccuracy. It was left to the judiciary to act as chorus and critic. And in doing so, the court made it plain: celebrity does not immunise one from the politics of place. (By V Shoba)

Noisemaker: Zohran Mamdani
Playing Both Sides

It is interesting what some people will do for votes. New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has released a Bollywood-themed campaign video aimed at the Indian community, which has a strong presence in pockets. The choice of Hindi might be easily understood by Pakistani-origin people, too, but the Bollywood retro elements are clearly aimed at Indian Americans. Mamdani seems to believe that appealing to popular Bollywood scenes and positioning himself as anti-Trump will help voters forget his presence at a Khalistani rally where anti-Hindu slogans were raised. It will be a surprise if his target audience chooses to forget the incident.

The Big Picture
Catania, Italy, June 2, 2025

The Fire of Vulcan: Mount Etna, one of the most active volcanoes on the planet, undergoes a Strombolian eruption with the plume rising from its southeastern crater. The Sicilian volcano is associated in mythology with the forge of Hephaestus and Vulcan, the Greek and Roman gods, respectively, of fire, metallurgy and volcanoes.

Ideas
Access

The fact that India has an antibiotic resistance problem is well-known. The excessive use of antibiotics here has led to the emergence of super bugs that have made India the epicentre of the antibiotic resistance problem. But as a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal shows, India, ironically, has also another antibiotic problem, one that rarely gets discussed. Many in India actually die because they are unable to access these drugs.

According to the study, in 2019, India saw an estimated 1.07 million people get infected with carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative (CRGN) bacteria, which are a deadly type of super bugs that are resistant to almost all antibiotics and which cause a lot of deaths. Out of this, less than 8 per cent received the treatment needed. The study, conducted by the non-profit Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, looked at access to antibiotics for nearly 1.5 million cases of CRGN infections across eight major low and middle-income countries, including India. It found that while the use of antibiotics is huge in India, it managed to treat only 7.8 per cent of the infections.

How does one reconcile this stark mismatch in India of antibiotics sold and treatments that actually help? There are probably multiple reasons for this, from poor diagnostic facilities in many of our healthcare centres, where doctors don’t have access to labs and instead treat patients empirically, often with the wrong antibiotics, to many of these drugs being too costly to buy. India’s antibiotics challenge isn’t just that they are used wisely. But also, that it does not reach those who need them the most. (By Ramesh Singh)

Money Mantra
Dynamic Investment
The four sectors to watch out for in the coming decade

AS INDIA EMERGES FROM a series of global shocks with a resilient economy and optimistic outlook, investors should look for long-term structural growth and the stocks which are going to benefit from it.

The country’s demographic dividend, policy reforms, digitalisa­tion push, and infrastructure-led development are setting the stage for a new era of value creation. But amid this growth, the question remains: Where should one invest in India today?

One of the most promising areas is the banking and financial services sector. A decade ago, Indian banks were weighed down by stressed assets and subdued credit growth. Today, the landscape is markedly different. Public and private sector banks have cleaned up their balance sheets, strengthened their provisioning, and embraced technology with surprising agility.

Equally attractive is the infrastructure and capital goods sector. The government’s aggressive capital expenditure strategy targeting roads, railways, ports, airports, and defence corridors has put this sector at the heart of India’s economic revival.

The healthcare and pharmaceuticals sectors continue to be of strategic importance. India has earned its place as the “Pharmacy of the World” by supplying affordable generics across continents. Post-pandemic, there is renewed investment in diagnostics, vaccines, and biosimilars.

Finally, the green energy and sustainability sector has quietly but significantly become a major investment theme. India’s commit­ment to achieving net-zero emissions, its massive push for solar and wind power, and the incentives for electric vehicles, battery storage, and green hydrogen are all converging into a potent mix of policy support and market opportunity.

So, India offers a dynamic investment landscape. While short-term market fluctuations are inevitable, the structural story remains intact. Banking, infrastructure, pharma, and sustainability are the sectors shaping the country’s future.

Viral
A Towering Song

A group of Indian tourists in Paris takes the escalator to the Eiffel Tower and bursts into an old Bollywood song. The video of them singing and clapping, while sharing space with people of other countries, went viral rapidly. You can see why many might have liked this video. The singing, of an old Bollywood classic (‘Aaja Sanam Madhur Chandni Mein’ from the 1951 film Chori Chori) in a foreign land, seemed to have occurred spontaneously, and the joy on the faces of the singers was infectious. But there was also a problem. While some of the others in the escalator seemed to enjoy what transpired, many others looked taken aback. Indians are often accused of not showing much consideration for others’ personal spaces, and this seemed to be yet another case, many commentators said, of poor etiquette. There were of course many who pooh-poohed this criticism too. Taking the escalator to the top quietly is of course not as much fun. But it is, some would say, the more considerate thing to do.

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