Indian police on Thursday arrested a Hindu religious leader for allegedly making a derogatory speech against India’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi and praising his assassin.

Gandhi was shot dead by a Hindu extremist during a prayer meeting in the Indian capital in 1948 because he was considered sympathetic toward Muslims during the partition of the Indian subcontinent by British colonialists in 1947 into India and Pakistan.

Kalicharan Maharaj was arrested in central Madhya Pradesh state on Thursday for allegedly promoting hatred between religious groups in a speech earlier this week, the Press Trust of India news agency cited police officer Prashant Agrawal as saying.

According to media reports, Maharaj said “Gandhi destroyed the country … salutations to Nathuram Godse, who killed him.”

He will be formally charged in court after the police complete an investigation. If convicted, he can be jailed for up to five years.

Attacks by Hindu hard-liners against Muslims and other minorities have intensified after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, and won a landslide reelection in 2019.

The opposition is also demanding the arrest of several saffron-robed Hindu religious leaders for making highly provocative speeches against Muslims at a closed-door religious parliament, known as Dharam Sansad, earlier this month in the northern holy city of Haridwar. They called on Hindus to arm themselves for “a genocide” against Muslims, according to a police complaint.

Police in Uttarakhand state, which is ruled by Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said they were questioning suspects. No arrests have been made.

Muslims comprise nearly 14 percent of India’s 1.4 billion people.

BEIJING: China will take “drastic measures” if Taiwan makes moves towards independence, a Beijing official warned on Wednesday, adding that Taiwan’s provocations and outside meddling could intensify next year.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and in the past two years has stepped up military and diplomatic pressure to assert its sovereignty claim, fuelling anger in Taipei and concern in Washington.

China was willing to try its utmost to seek peaceful reunification with Taiwan but would act if any red lines on independence were crossed, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman of the Taiwan Affairs Office, told a media briefing.

“If separatist forces in Taiwan seeking independence provoke, exert force or even break through any red line, we will have to take drastic measures,” Ma said.

Taiwan has emerged as a key factor in strained relations between China and the United States, the island’s most important international backer and arms supplier despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties.

China regularly describes the island as the most sensitive issue in its ties with the United States.

Ma said provocation by pro-independence forces and “external intervention” could grow “sharper and more intense” in the coming months.

“Next year, the Taiwan Strait situation will become more complex and severe,” he said.

Beijing has sent repeated air missions over the Taiwan Strait in recent months to pressure Taiwan. It has said it will not give in to threats.

While the United States recognizes only one China, it is required by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself and has long followed a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on whether it would intervene militarily to protect Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

The defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communists, who established the People’s Republic of China.

A destitute Indian woman who claims she is heir to the dynasty that built the Taj Mahal has demanded ownership of an imposing palace once home to the Mughal emperors.

Sultana Begum lives in a cramped two-room hut nestled within a slum on the outskirts of Kolkata, surviving on a meager pension.

Among her modest possessions are records of her marriage to Mirza Mohammad Bedar Bakht, purported to be the great-grandson of India’s last Mughal ruler.

His death in 1980 left her struggling to survive, and she has spent the past decade petitioning authorities to recognize her royal status and compensate her accordingly.

“Can you imagine that the descendant of the emperors who built Taj Mahal now lives in desperate poverty?” the 68-year-old asked AFP.

Begum has lodged a court case seeking recognition that she is the rightful owner of the imposing 17th-century Red Fort, a sprawling and pockmarked castle in New Delhi that was once the seat of Mughal power.

“I hope the government will definitely give me justice,” she said. “When something belongs to someone, it should be returned.” Her case, supported by sympathetic campaigners, rests on her claim that her late husband’s lineage can be traced to Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last emperor to reign.

By the time of Zafar’s coronation in 1837, the Mughal empire had shrunk to the capital’s boundaries, after the conquest of India by the commercial venture of British merchants known as the East India Company.

A massive rebellion two decades later — now hailed as India’s first war of independence — saw mutinous soldiers declare the now frail 82-year-old as the leader of their insurrection.

The emperor, who preferred penning poetry to waging war, knew the chaotic uprising was doomed and was a reluctant leader.

British forces surrounded Delhi within a month and ruthlessly crushed the revolt, executing all 10 of Zafar’s surviving sons despite the royal family’s surrender.

d the revolt, executing all 10 of Zafar’s surviving sons despite the royal family’s surrender.

Zafar himself was exiled to neighbouring Myanmar, travelling under guard in a bullock cart, and died penniless in captivity five years later.

Independence symbol

Many of the Red Fort’s buildings were demolished in the years after the uprising and the complex fell into disrepair before colonial authorities ordered its renovation at the turn of the 20th century. It has since become a potent symbol of freedom from British rule.

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the national flag from the fort’s main gate to mark the first day of independence in August 1947, a solemn ritual now repeated annually by his successors.

Begum’s court case hinges on the argument that India’s government are the illegal occupants of the property, which she says should have been passed down to her.

The Delhi High Court rejected her petition last week as a “gross waste of time” — but did not rule on whether her claim to imperial ancestry was legitimate.

Instead, the court said her legal team had failed to justify why a similar case had not been brought by Zafar’s descendants in the 150 years since his exile.

Her lawyer Vivek More said the case would continue.

“She has decided to file a plea before a higher bench of the court challenging the order,” he told AFP by phone.

‘Justice will happen’

Begum has endured a precarious life, even before she was widowed and forced to move into the slum she now calls home.

Her husband — who she married in 1965 when she was just 14 — was 32 years her senior and earned some money as a soothsayer, but was unable to provide for their family.

“Poverty, fear and lack of resources pushed him to the brink,” she added.

Begum lives with one of her grandchildren in a small shack, sharing a kitchen with neighbours and washing at a communal tap down the street.

For some years she ran a small tea shop near her home but it was demolished to allow the widening of a road, and she now survives on a pension of 6,000 rupees ($80) per month.

But she has not given up hope that authorities will recognise her as the rightful beneficiary of India’s imperial legacy, and of the Red Fort.

“I hope that today, tomorrow or in 10 years, I will get what I’m entitled to,” she said. “God willing, I will get it back… I’m certain justice will happen.