Julie McCarthy

In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party suffered a convincing defeat in a crucial state election that was seen as a referendum on Modi's leadership.

Results are still being counted in the state of Bihar, but the BJP has conceded to the projected winner, Nitish Kumar, an anti-Modi stalwart and the sitting chief minister, a post akin to a U.S. governor.

The Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa says it has shut down its adoption services in India over religious objections to the country's new adoption rules. The Catholic sisters known for their blue and white habits and vow of free service to the poor say they have asked the government to de-register 13 orphanages.

The world's third-largest carbon polluter has submitted its long-range plan to curb greenhouse gas admissions in advance of December's Paris climate summit. India does not commit to an absolute reduction in carbon emissions, but does promise to ramp up renewable energy to help slow global warming.

Jawaharlal Nehru towered over 20th century India — a thinker, a statesman, the heir to Mahatma Gandhi. As one of the founding fathers of modern India, Nehru oversaw his country's transition from a British colony to a democracy, and announced the birth in 1947 of a free India.

In the capital, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library honors the man's legacy. Depending on where you stand, new plans by the government to modernize the museum fall somewhere between an apostasy that dilutes the great struggle for Indian independence and a facelift of a faded but once glorious building.

A person who is very old or very ill decides to stop eating in order to die.

To members of the ancient and tiny faith of Jainism in India, that's a tradition called santhara or sallekhana (literally thinning out).

India's Supreme Court is considering whether to ban the practice as a form of suicide, which is punishable under law. The court is now reviewing the end-of-life ritual.

India has been practicing a form of affirmative action since independence nearly seven decades ago.

The country has quotas that allow "reservations" for government jobs and college slots for members of the most disadvantaged castes.

But a backlash against such caste quotas in the state of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home turf, provoked riots last week and fears that the upheaval may be just beginning.

Rising two stories and capped by three domes, the Jaffna Public Library looks a bit like a stately wedding cake. Gleaming white under the Sri Lanka sun, the building's classical lines and beautiful proportions make it one of the architectural standouts of the South Asia region.

That it survived at all is a testament to resilience. The fact that it was restored to such pristine condition, including its lush gardens, and modernized (it now offers Wi-Fi) makes it all the more remarkable.

The Indian government is seeking $99 million in damages from Swiss food and beverage giant Nestle over a recent food scare involving the Maggi brand of instant noodles that are a household staple in India.

The class action, filed late Tuesday before India's National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, accuses Nestle of "gross negligence, apathy and callousness."

India is an ancient, traditional country. It's also a democracy that's very modern when it comes to the Internet and technology.

That's one reason the country sometimes sends mixed messages like this: Publishing or distributing pornography in print or on the Web is illegal in India. But viewing it is not.

With this in mind, lawyer Vijay Panjwani argued before the Supreme Court last month that pornography should be blocked as broadly as possible.

"Pornography is a criminal activity from A to Z. Completely!" he says.

Sri Lanka, a palm-fringed island in the Indian Ocean, is in the sixth year of peace. But as the country prepares for elections in August, the legacy of its long civil war still casts a shadow.

The intervening years have been especially painful for the families of the thousands who disappeared in three decades of conflict and remain unaccounted for.

You don't expect to see world leaders getting down on all fours to perform yoga in public, let alone in a mass yoga class that draws observers from Guinness World Records.

But India's Narendra Modi did just that when he launched International Yoga Day on Rajpath, the central Delhi mall that represents the nerve center of power in India.

"Who would have thought that we would turn Rajpath into Yog-path [Yoga Road]," Modi asked the assembled yoga enthusiasts.

It seemed like a noble idea: Declare an international day of yoga.

Who knew it would be so controversial?

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi put forth the proposal during his maiden speech before the United Nations last September. Modi, who himself does yoga, called the ancient practice "India's gift."

It's India's latest social media battle cry: #DespiteBeingAWoman erupted on Twitter on Monday after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the phrase while talking about the female prime minister of Bangladesh.

The Swiss giant Nestlé is facing a commercial disaster in India over allegations that its best-selling brand of instant noodle soup contains unsafe amounts of lead as well as the taste enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG).

Sales of the soup, sold under the brand Maggi (pronounced Maggie), have plunged since the food safety dispute erupted.

Last month's earthquake brought much of Kathmandu's historic Durbar Square, a World Heritage Site, tumbling to the ground. Nepal's showcase temples and palaces were reduced to ruins. But save for a few cracks, the home of the city's Living Goddess remained intact.

Largely unknown to the outside world, Nepal's centuries-old institution of the child deity, the Kumari Devi, is deeply embedded in the culture of Kathmandu Valley. Young, beautiful and decorous, even a glimpse of her is believed to bring good fortune.

Driving east out of Kathmandu, the road turns north and coils toward the Chinese border, up past the treeline, with breathtaking views of the indelible, snow-capped peaks of the Langtang Mountain Range. The valley fans out below, carpeted with ancient terraces.

It's a singular Nepali panorama. But alongside it another more sobering scene unfolds on the landscape.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Blue-uniformed police do the heavy lifting in Dubar square in the city of Patan, one of Nepal's oldest. Moving wooden beams and stacking broken bricks, they sift through ruined monuments, some of which date back four centuries and more.

He carried his 70-year-old mother on his back for five hours.

Then he traveled with her by bus for 12 more.

She suffered a severe head injury when the earthquake rumbled through her village of Thumi. He was trying to get her to a hospital in the Gorkha district in northern-central Nepal.