One of the great flaws of countries like India and Pakistan is that citizens think that covering up for the sins & mistakes of their govt is “patriotism”
Yogi Adityanath should go to more states around the country and threaten to turn them into UP if the BJP wins. That strategy has been working brilliantly for all opposition parties!
The President of the United States has lived in the same
@WhiteHouse
for over 200 years, but India's prime minister needs to build a whole new, multi-million-dollar palace from scratch during a pandemic? Why? What's so miserably wrong with his current residence?
As a foreign policy writer, one of the things I regret being wrong about was praising India’s vaccine diplomacy. I had naively assumed that the govt was exporting excess, after having accounted for domestic need. They did no accounting whatsoever. They saw it as an empty PR event
I am seriously baffled that price rise and inflation have become complete non-issues in Indian discourse today. In the old days, they used to bring down governments. What has changed?
In a bizarre way, Sri Lanka has actually emerged as South Asia’s most advanced democracy this week. In the face of widespread protests over a collapsing economy, cabinet ministers quit & the strongman president has revoked emergency restrictions. Unthinkable in other countries.
Last week was very telling on the state of Indian democracy:
1) Muslim students were barred from college for wearing a hijab
2) A Muslim MP’s car was shot at
3) A Muslim Bollywood star was mocked for his religious practices
To call India an “illiberal democracy” is very generous
My grandfather became one among the thousands who succumbed to the pandemic today. He was a visionary who believed in a better India & pushed me to do many unusual & unlikely things early in my life. He lived a full life. His influence on me was immense. I will miss him.
I don’t know why people were banging pots out on the street. But I’m quite certain that at least some of them believed the bizarre rumour that banging pots will cause virus-killing vibrations. Mass ignorance is now a critical danger to public health in India.
I can’t believe that this outrightly and unabashedly genocidal line of conversation has entered Indian discourse. Why should Muslims fulfil any function in order to be in a country where they were born? Why should Rohingyas? Tutsis? Or minorities anywhere? This is how it starts.
India can’t be without Muslims because Nehru skirted full population exchange. But genuine question - which vital function in India would stop without Muslims?
It genuinely breaks my heart to see the India of Nehru & Mahatma Gandhi dying in my generation, even though I know that this is what millions of Indians want & are celebrating. I have long been passionate about the secular Indian experiment, so this has not been easy to let go of
After 100 days of being in the clear, New Zealand says it now has over a dozen cases of community transmission. That means that only one major country in the world still has zero community transmission: India.
#COVID19
Forcing women to quit their jobs and stay home, under the threat of death; forcing girls to drop out of school or risk being shot - all of this is terrorism, not insurgency. The Taliban has taken to violence because it does not believe that its terrorism will be popularly elected
#Taliban
are legitimate stakeholder in Afghanistan. It ran a govt, howsoever extremist, in Afghntn, whch was toppled by US. Since thn it has been resisting US occupation & subsequntly d Afghan govt. Tht makes them insurgents, not terrorists. We shldn't throw words arnd carelssly
This individual is an information commissioner — an official who is literally supposed to enforce transparency upon the government, on behalf of the citizens. This is the quality of Indian democracy.
The attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, the vandalism of Muslim-owned meat shops in India, the attacks on Hindus & Sikhs in Kashmir are all signs that S Asia is on the brink of outright communal warfare. The endgame in S Asia does not look bright at all. The world should pay heed.
As a young Indian writer who cares for India's already lost secular republic, what I've found most dispiriting in the last couple of years is that there is absolutely no support for any of us from the old guard - folks who run think tanks, retired from govt, head universities etc
Hindol, you were at Columbia, as was I, and I had friends who were on fellowships sponsored by the US govt who vociferously opposed Trump policies through protests and in unflattering terms. What’s this about being “grateful”??
Personally, I think the damage that has been done to our political discourse and social harmony is a million times worse (and will be more long-lasting) than the damage done to the economy.
After 7 years it can now be safely declared that this govt has absolutely no idea of how to run an economy. I would not give it more than 2/10 on economy. It is clueless, talentless (what do you expect from babus?), mindless when it comes to handling the economy
#Budget2020
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a professional diplomat shake & convulse so aggressively tbh. Politicians, yes. But the whole point of a diplomat’s existence is to stay calm & douse tempers — not to confront & inflame. In most countries, they’re trained not to speak like that. Weird
Of course, when there is no Muslim in the team, they will target the Sikh. When there is no Sikh, they will target the lower caste. When there is no lower caste, they will target the South Indian. This is the form of narrow “nationalism” promised by the Hindutva Right anyway.
Not sure why
@ESPNcricinfo
chose to compare Warner-CA parting to
@KP24
-ECB parting. KP was a maverick who didn't like the way England played cricket, but he didn't conspire to cheat in a game.
Sick of the foolish attempt to paint 200mn Muslims as a coherent, monolithic group that takes decisions together. Why can’t one hold TJ folks individually accountable? They never asked me or
@javedmansari
before they did what they did. I’m sure most Muslims haven’t even met them!
‘If Muslims want equal opportunities, they need to be equal participants in the national effort’: veteran journalist
@javedmansari
on why there can be no excuses for what the Markaz Nizamuddin did. Agree fully!
If this was 2023 and not 2021, Modi would not be spending millions of dollars on a new palace for himself while his govt doesn’t even order enough vaccines for the public (or vaccinates for free). He is betting that in 3 years, voters will forget all this. It’s a commentary on us
The concept of “secularism” is for the govt, not citizens. Banning citizens from wearing the cross, hijab, Hindu thread etc is not secularism. OTOH, the prime minister using his constitutional post to conduct religious ceremonies & inaugurate a Hindu temple is also not secularism
The Prime Minister of Pakistan has just told the
#UNGA2019
that he is going to launch a nuclear war against India unless they meet his ultimatum... There have been several bizarre speeches at the UN over the years but this one really does boggle the mind.
This is the first time that an oligarchic billionaire has become untouchably popular in India’s political discourse, so much so that he’s able to play the jingoism card & gain support. It’s a chapter that those who were alive in the 1950s could never even have imagined.
#Adani
You can feel sorry for the fate of those who live under authoritarian regimes. They have little agency. But every democracy fully deserves whatever politics it suffers.
Having been in India the last two years, I’m rather disillusioned. Indians have a tendency (a fairly human tendency) to want to only hear sugarcoated “good news” - even though India is currently going through the most problematic era since the 1930s. Not sure where this will end.
A record number of Indians are giving up citizenship this year. Reasons would probably include a weak passport, poor economic opportunities, and increasingly, a lost sense of belonging, given that India’s national identity & social landscape has changed.
It’s difficult to escape the fact that
@DrSJaishankar
was lying about the Philippines not needing oxygen. It’s a lie with far too many holes: to start, they actually opened the gates for the IYC volunteers. So if the man would lie about this, can he be believed about anything?
Sorry to disappoint, but if you’re thinking of using this ban to get back at China, you’re not going to succeed. To get back at China, you need to stop being scared of China and at least name them. This is an unimaginative cop out.
For safety, security, defence, sovereignty & integrity of India and to protect data & privacy of people of India the Government has banned 59 mobile apps.
Jai Hind! 🇮🇳
I prefer to take my news - including on India - from the international press. They have far fewer incentives to lie, not being subject to political & other pressures in India. They also have a more clear-eyed view of Indian identity politics, not falling for coverups & facades.
It’s bad enough that folks post hate comments through anonymous accounts on Twitter. But I’m now seeing people do that on LinkedIn - with their full name, picture & employer in display. One HR professional just told me “puncture banao”. Are Indian workspaces that toxic now?
Rajapaksa was elected on the back of Buddhist-Sinhalese majoritarianism. But in the face of incompetence, neither Buddhism nor Sinhalese is helping him politically. I can think of at least one South Asian country where majoritarian populists won polls despite death & devastation.
A year ago, the editor of
@frontline_india
relinquished office & went down swinging with this editorial. I’m yet to read a better, more succinct, yet comprehensive piece of writing on India in the last few years.
This is huge news & everybody should know about it.
@SaketGokhale
has done yeoman service. The question is whether the rest of us are going to take this travesty lying down, or if we are going to jump in with him to protect the credibility of our democracy
I hate to say it, because it feels judgemental, but engineering students in Indian colleges really need to be taught classes on basic human decency, civic sense and social responsibility.
1) The most inspired and inclusive freedom struggle in history
2) A population that reflects nearly all of humanity’s diversity - religion, language, culture, food
3)
@virendersehwag
’s batting!
Hearing horror stories from my cousin who works at a Delhi govt hospital - docs are having to serve
#COVID19
patients without protective gear or quarantine space. I’ve seen
@nytimes
report on this in US but Indian media is busy with communal fever! Hope
@BDUTT
takes issue this up
I suppose that, to anyone who knows any world history, it would not come as a surprise that the noisiest “nationalists” don’t care the slightest about the national interest. People who cared for the national interest - the Lincolns, Gandhis and Mandelas - never had to chest thump
What
#SabarimalaVerdict
has done is this: while RW Hindus advocated a UCC till the verdict, supported the (rightful) ban on triple talaq & hailed Yogi for governing madrasas, they are now changing their mind and want "no state interference in issues of faith and religion".
It’s a strange that, in a country that’s ranked 78th out of 85 nations for internet quality, Internet access is made a prerequisite for vaccination! Did anybody really think this through?
#CowinPortal
Great that an Indian-origin MP in NZ took oath in Sanskrit, but the credit for this should go to NZ's pluralism which is able to accept a foreign lang as its own. The hypocrites celebrating this here in India want everyone to "behave like a Hindu because this is a Hindu Rashtra!"
Unpopular opinion: China was always going to needle India in the Himalayas regardless of Art 370 abolition. Some people are saying that if India did not abolish that law, then this crisis would not have happened. That’s a gross misunderstanding of Chinese policy & strategy.
Chinese scholar: Art. 370 decision "'opened up new territory on the map,' incorporated part of the areas under the local jurisdiction of Xinjiang/Tibet into [Ladakh]...This forced China into the Kashmir dispute."
What "new territory" is he talking about?
Just learnt that Hindu nationalists are now trolling Virat Kohli. So apparently, even Virat is not Virat enough for the folks who call themselves “Virat Hindus”!
#IStandWithVirat
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
#ElonMusk
’s ownership of twitter is going to turn out to be one of the most consequential political events of this century. This will have serious implications for disputes, wars & civil strife everywhere, from Taiwan to Tigray.
I am appalled that
@JoeBiden
has left India hanging, banning it from importing crucial ingredients to make vaccines. This is all the more bizarre, given that the Quad only recently invested in boosting India’s vaccine mfg capacity. This is a mistake that will have lasting impact.
Please stop congratulating the govt for lifting bans on media outlets and restoring the internet in Kashmir. Freedoms are not favours bestowed upon us by the govt - they are the fruits of the sacrifice of millions of freedom fighters, which were snatched away unjustly.
It’s a vicious cycle: if you fudge the data to make yourself feel good, you won’t have data to base your policy decisions on. If you make policy based on fake data, you’ll end up with a failing economy. If you end up with a failing economy, you will have to fudge the data again!
6 months since Art 370 went out the window, the govt's Kashmir conundrum continues: It won't trust the local politicians, won't trust the local people, won't trust any stakeholders anywhere, yet somehow wants to "integrate Kashmir". What does "integrate Kashmir" even mean then?
My latest
@haaretzcom
: India's COVID crisis was caused by many bad decisions. For eg, instead of investing in hospitals, govt went on with a $2bn new parliament. By contrast, it took 8 mths to invite bids for oxygen plants, allocated just 1/7th the money.
I’m old enough to remember when many liberal atheists criticized Nehruvian secularism for not respecting a strict separation btwn state & religion. Many of them wrote about it
@SwarajyaMag
etc. They’re nowhere to be seen now as the Indian parliament is given a Hindu inauguration.
I think the scariest fact about the
#StanSwamy
case is that anybody is now fair game because anybody can be hacked and evidence can be planted against anybody.
I simply cannot imagine how any Muslims are still able to live in the
#gaurakhshak
states. This is genocidal stuff - systemic dehumanisation, propaganda & brainwashing of the average citizen, and shameful complicity of the police. There needs to be a complete overhaul of the govt
Religious nationalism is a million times more dangerous than corruption. Frankly, in any civilised democracy, it should be outlawed; to define your nation in such a way that a sizeable part of your citizenry is excluded is a crime. It is not a legitimate political ideology.
Kudos to
@HappymonJacob
on this issue. So far as I remember, he was the only one who stuck his neck out early to ask difficult questions on vaccine diplomacy (while the rest of us, me included, were busy writing tributes & praising it). A lesson in avoiding groupthink & idealism!
I've never expressed this before, but I'm most definitely furious with
@INCIndia
. It has been utterly incapacitated - incapable of setting its leadership woes straight. Its ancestors, who fought for India's freedom, have been let down. It bears responsibility for India's decline.
An immigration officer in Mumbai refused to allow an Indian student to pass through because he could not speak Hindi. Aside from religious tests for refugee citizens, please tell me again how the obnoxious Hindutva monoculture is not being implemented!?
Laugh all you want at paralysis & polarisation in the US, but voting over abortion & inflation still sounds better to me than voting over temples, mosques and Kempegowda statues.
Allegations of so-called judicial harassment are baseless & unwarranted. India upholds the rule of law, but is equally clear that no one is above the law.
We expect SRs to be objective & accurately informed. Advancing a misleading narrative only tarnishes
@UNGeneva
’s reputation
I have consistently argued - in my book as well as articles - that India should do more for the outside world, to build its influence. The lesson I take from the failure of vaccine diplomacy is that, in coming up with such initiatives, we have to assess our capacity more honestly
From my own personal experience, there's a reason why I write only for foreign publications. The Indian editors have no faith in their own power & are unwilling to support young talent.
@DeccanHerald
is the only shining exception & I'm proud to write for them.
Some news: After yrs of travel, debates & reflections across continents, my debut book comes in Jan 2021
@PenguinIndia
. Why should Indians care about foreign policy? How can forgn policy make India richer? How can India be a ‘jagad guru’? I promise to make you think! Details soon
Stop allowing folks to turn “politics” into a bad word. “Being political” is not immoral or unethical. This is a democracy - encourage people to be political! I’m also looking at your employers here - corporate orgs, universities, think tanks, everybody.
I think India is the only democracy in the world where folks say “don’t politicise” governance issues. Governance *is* political because it’s decided by politics. In a democracy, everything is political. Only immature democracies and sham banana republics are afraid of politics.
It's really telling that, here on Twitter, who are the folks most vocal, exposing the deterioration of India's secular republic? It's the young reporters, freshly graduated academics, people in their 20s & 30s. Where is the old guard? Why have they abandoned the young? Shameful.
Are u aware of ground reality? A number of Bangladeshi illegal migrants are working in coffee estates of Coorg, Chickmaglur. Had they not come,who would have been employed?Locals or not?This is just one example. In unorganised sectors,poor workers who are citizens are worst hit.
Personal update: I have moved to the United States!
Folks in Washington DC: I’m in your city for the visible future, do hit me up if you’d like to meet!
The young folks who are speaking out, who have their entire careers in front of them, have been fired from newsrooms, boycotted by think tanks, shunned by the old & powerful. There are countless such stories. The middle-aged generation bears responsibility for letting them down.
Not quite able to make sense of Pakistan cricket fans here, who seem to believe that the world owes cricket to Pakistan more than Pakistan owes a renunciation of terrorism to the world.
#PAKvENG
#PakistanCricket
For most of last year, I wrote very aggressively about Hindu nationalism. But in the last few mths, I've deliberately chosen to read & write exclusively about foreign affairs, almost, in a sense, giving up on the "good fight" for Indian secularism. Today is pretty much it for me.
Twitter is unpopular in India among people 18-30 years of age. They find its discourse boring, vitriolic, hateful and unproductive. (The good news: that means the trolls are mostly all 30+ years old - and belong to an outnumbered generation!)
This is the untold & unspoken fact about the tragedy of India today. The reason India is different from advanced Western democracies is that no one in any position of power is willing to support young activists. That is what makes the difference. (End of rant)
The China standoff taught me something: this govt has incredible control over public discourse. The Chinese practically invaded our territory. Yet, there were no calls for “Chinese boycott” etc on social media. Lesson: the dangerous, divisive rhetoric we see is orchestrated.
Honestly, aside from never electing inhuman megalomaniacs to power again, the bigger lesson for all of us is to never elect anybody to a single-party majority ever again. The Indian system is just not built to withstand it. It will collapse under their arrogance.
India’s democracy was an internationalist project — started by Dadabhai Naoroji who served in the UK parl, furthered by Gandhi who began his fight in SA & tied together by a globalised constitution. So, the fact that today’s Indians bristle against foreign opinions is dispiriting
Every time a voice from outside India wades into our domestic debate, Western lawmakers or media, it in fact reinforces Modi government's nationalist positioning. You want to strengthen India's Democracy? Leave it to us Indians. My piece
@washingtonpost
“We are deeply saddened ... withdraw this film keeping in mind the ... well being of our employees, partners and store staff.”
Tanishq did not withdraw its ad because it feared the hollow boycott campaign. It withdrew because it’s afraid of RW terrorism.