i thought i was ready for the grammy nominations but seeing Narendra Modi on the nominee list disoriented me in such a critical way that i had to turn off my phone and take a walk outside in the middle of the night with the 50 stray dogs on my neighbourhood. from the bottom of my heart-- what the fuck?

definitely a longer piece so these excerpts are far from showcasing everything this piece has to offer! read the whole thing on your own time, and in general, just check out jewish currents, an educational, leftist, anti-zionist jewish magazine!

Every August, the township of Edison, New Jersey—where one in five residents is of Indian origin—holds a parade to celebrate India’s Independence Day. In 2022, a long line of floats rolled through the streets, decked out in images of Hindu deities and colorful advertisements for local businesses. People cheered from the sidelines or joined the cavalcade, dancing to pulsing Bollywood music. In the middle of the procession came another kind of vehicle: A wheel loader, which looks like a small bulldozer, rumbled along the route bearing an image of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi aloft in its bucket. For South Asian Muslims, the meaning of the addition was hard to miss. A few months earlier, during the month of Ramadan, Indian government officials had sent bulldozers into Delhi’s Muslim neighborhoods, where they damaged a mosque and leveled homes and storefronts. The Washington Post called the bulldozer “a polarizing symbol of state power under Narendra Modi,” whose ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is increasingly enacting a program of Hindu supremacy and Muslim subjugation. In the weeks after the parade, one Muslim resident of Edison, who is of Indian origin, told The New York Times that he understood the bulldozer much as Jews would a swastika or Black Americans would a Klansman’s hood. Its inclusion underscored the parade’s other nods to the ideology known as Hindutva, which seeks to transform India into an ethnonationalist Hindu state. The event’s grand marshal was the BJP’s national spokesperson, Sambit Patra, who flew in from India. Other invitees were affiliated with the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the international arm of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary force Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), of which Modi is a longtime member.

...

On December 6th, 1992, a mob of 150,000 Hindus, many of whom were affiliated with the paramilitary group the RSS, gathered at the Babri Masjid, a centuries-old mosque that is one of the most contested sacred sites in the world. Over the preceding century, far-right Hindus had claimed that the mosque, located in the North Indian city of Ayodhya, was built not only upon the site where the Hindu deity Ram was born but atop the foundations of a demolished Hindu temple. The RSS and its affiliates had been campaigning to, in the words of a BJP minister, correct the “historical mistake” of the mosque’s existence, a task the mob completed that December afternoon. “They climbed on top of the domes and tombs,” one witness told NPR. “They were carrying hammers and these three-pronged spears from Hindu scripture. They started hacking at the mosque. By night, it was destroyed.” The demolition sparked riots that lasted months and killed an estimated 2,000 people across the country.

The destruction of the Babri Masjid was arguably Hindu nationalism’s greatest triumph to date. Since its establishment in 1925, the RSS—whose founders sought what one of them called a “military regeneration of the Hindus,” inspired by Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Nazi “race pride”—had been a marginal presence in India: Its members held no elected office, and it was temporarily designated a terrorist organization after one of its affiliates shot and killed Mohandas Gandhi in 1948. But the leveling of the Babri Masjid activated a virulently ethnonationalist base and paved the way for three decades of Hindutva ascendance. In 1998, the BJP formed a government for the first time; in 2014, it returned to power, winning a staggering 282 out of 543 seats in parliament and propelling Modi into India’s highest office. Since then, journalist Samanth Subramanian notes, all of the country’s governmental and civil society institutions “have been pressured to fall in line” with a Hindutva agenda—a phenomenon on full display in 2019, when the Supreme Court of India awarded the land where the Babri Masjid once stood to a government run by the very Hindu nationalists who illegally destroyed it. (Modi has since laid a foundation stone for a new Ram temple in Ayodhya, an event that a prominent RSS activist celebrated with a billboard in Times Square.) The Ayodhya verdict came in the same year that Modi stripped constitutional protections from residents of the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir and passed a law that creates a fast track to citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants, laying the groundwork for a religious test for Indian nationality. Under Modi, “the Hinduization of India is almost complete,” as journalist Yasmeen Serhan has written in The Atlantic.

To achieve its goals, the RSS has worked via a dense network of organizations that call themselves the “Sangh Parivar” (“joint family”) of Hindu nationalism. The BJP, which holds more seats in the Indian parliament than every other party combined, is the Sangh’s electoral face. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is the movement’s cultural wing, responsible for “Hinduizing” Indian society at the grassroots level. The Bajrang Dal is the project’s militant arm, which enforces Hindu supremacy through violence. Dozens of other organizations contribute money and platforms to the Sangh. The sheer number of groups affords the Sangh what human rights activist Pranay Somayajula has referred to as a “tactical politics of plausible deniability,” in which the many degrees of separation between the governing elements and their vigilante partners shields the former from backlash. This explains how, until 2018, the CIA could describe the VHP and Bajrang Dal as “militant religious organizations”—a designation that applies to non-electoral groups exerting political pressure—even as successive US governments have maintained a warm relationship with their parliamentary counterpart, the BJP.

...

The most extreme figures in the Hindu nationalist and Zionist movements were especially frank about the nature of their partnership: “Whether you call them Palestinians, Afghans, or Pakistanis, the root of the problem for Hindus and Jews is Islam,” Bajrang Dal affiliate Rohit Vyasmaan told The New York Times of his friendly relationship with Mike Guzofsky, a member of a violent militant group connected to the infamous Jewish supremacist Meir Kahane’s Kach Party.

...

In 2003, Gary Ackerman—a Jewish former congressman who was awarded India’s third-highest civilian honor for helping to found the Congressional Caucus on India—told a gathering of AJC and AIPAC representatives and their Indian counterparts that “Israel [is] surrounded by 120 million Muslims,” while “India has 120 million [within].” Tom Lantos, another Jewish member of the caucus, likewise enjoined the two communities to collaborate: “We are drawn together by mindless, vicious, fanatic, Islamic terrorism.”

POINT AND LAUGH. TELL THAT TO MANIPUR BITCHASS

Picture Credit: @brown.journals on instagram

India's visa processing centre in Canada suspended services Thursday as a rift widened between the countries after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said India may have been involved in the killing of a pro-Khalistan activist and president of Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in British Columbia, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.  So what does that mean for Canadians planning trips to India? Here's what we know so far: Who does this affect?  Canadian citizens who do not have a visa for India or were in the process of applying for one.  What type of Indian visa can I apply for? India's Ministry of External Affairs confirmed the decision to stop all categories of visas, including e-visas, for Canadian Citizens. If you're a Canadian national wondering whether you can apply for an Indian visa from a third country, like the U.S., you will be subjected to the same suspension of services.  

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"Coriolanus x Reader", huh...?

Of all the lessons that Suzanne Collins wanted to teach you about good governance, dictatorships, and not treating human beings as being anything less than freaking human...that is the takeaway you go for...?

Well, well, well...some of us truly have never, or possibly will never, have to deal with the creeping horror that our lives are at risk; the lives of our children and their children and everyone else's children are at risk; that all the freedoms we enjoyed could quite literally go up in smoke; and that some people could easily give it all away for power...and boy, does it show.

The section of the BBC film that the government of India has acted most outraged about was the revelation of an internal report commissioned by the British Foreign Office in April 2002, so far unseen by the public. The fact-finding report estimated that “at least 2,000” people had been murdered. It called the massacre a preplanned pogrom that bore “all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing”. It said reliable contacts had informed them that the police had been ordered to stand down. The report laid the blame squarely at Modi’s door. It was chilling to see the former, but obviously still cautious, British diplomat who was one of the investigators on the fact-finding mission choosing to remain anonymous, with his back to the camera.

[...]

Though The Modi Question was broadcast exclusively for a British audience, and limited to the UK, it was uploaded by viewers on YouTube and links were posted on Twitter. It lit up the internet. In India, students received warnings not to download and watch it. When they announced collective screenings in some university campuses, the electricity was switched off. In others, police arrived in riot gear to stop them watching. The government instructed YouTube and Twitter to delete all links and uploads. Those sterling defenders of free speech hurried to comply. Some of my Muslim friends were baffled. “Why does he want to ban it? The Gujarat massacre has always helped him. And we’re in an election year.”

Narendra Modi

DON'T VOTE FOR MODI. PLEASE!!!

I am having to make an effort at writing a coherent post instead of just screaming. Please don't vote for Modi.

He is not a saviour. He is not a God.

Here's what he is: A terrified extremist who has to maim the mainstream media to keep his support, who NEEDS to plunder the Hindu Muslim divide in India, and spread hate and fear about communities that can very peacefully coexist, in order to gain people's support, to be seen as an saviour for upper caste Hindus in India. He needs to shut down the internet, so many times that India had the largest internet shutdowns in the past year, to shut the voices of people. He is the leader of the party that drafted a bill that would maintain stringent control over OTT platforms, the only free and accessible source for information in India at this point, AFTER THEY SUSPENDED 140 MEMBERS OF OPPSN. Who maintains silence over protesters of his own country being attacked by tear gasses and pellets, who welcomes RAPISTS into his party.

And a lot of his actions suggest that he will bring dictatorship in India.

Here's what a lot of you are going to say: OMG, what is the other opinion, Rahul 'Pappu' Gandhi? Well, sorry to inform you guys, but India (fortunately) is not a two party system. It is a MULTIPARTY nation. There are a lot many options. vote for your MP's, who you think will have your voices heard.

ooc but important

They're so desperate they put their ad on a mostly leftist, liberalist, boycotting woke and gay website. Modiji ka maansik santulan thik nhi hai (modiji's mental stability is not good)

this piece is written so well, reads just like a story, that i'm struggling on which excerpts to showcase for this post. please read the whole thing when you get the chance!

“They forbade us from feeding our own before we went to feed their children. They never prohibited us physically,” she said, her jaw clenched, adding that the fear they inculcated was enough for them to obey. “They didn’t want their children nursing from the breast of a woman who had just fed an untouchable child.” Driving her stick farther into the ground, she added: “Sons of b******.” “I was distressed about starving my child, but I always went along with it because that is how it worked,” Narsamma said. She would be compensated sporadically. “I was paid with a sack of grains or 10 or 20 paise [less than 1 cent].” She looked around, before adding: “Soon as I reached their premises, I was provided with a piece of soap and was asked to take a bath near the cattle shed. Which human being would want to be treated that way? I left my baby starving in the house to feed their child. And while we slaved away our bodies for them, they saw it as nothing less than their birthright to treat us like that.”

...

The women began to speak about Madiga food habits and, in particular, eating beef. Most Hindus who are not Dalits do not eat beef because cattle are considered sacred animals, but it is a staple food for many Dalit communities like mine. For Madigas, meat from the dead cattle our community disposed of was often our only source of food, and we became associated with consuming beef. Non-Dalits have long humiliated people who eat beef by saying they are impure. But beef was not only an easy, protein-rich source of food for my community, it also played a significant role in our nutritional customs. Such customs have faded as our community has tried to dissociate itself from a cultural practice that we were shamed for. The marginalisation of those who eat beef has only grown since 2014 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power and banned the slaughter of cattle in many states, fuelling the rise of violent vigilantism against beef-eating minorities. Beef played a particular postpartum role for Madigas. “For about 12 days following childbirth, our elders made sure we ate a nutritious diet of a different assortment of beef parts every day,” Narsamma said. “The elders carefully chalked out every day’s diet to make sure we had the strength to sustain ourselves after giving birth and to produce sufficient nutritious milk for our babies. All the castes knew about this custom and hence had a popular opinion that our women produce nutritious milk.” The sun had nearly set, and the women fanned themselves to keep the mosquitoes away. They would soon return home to tend to their families and the evening chores. “They humiliated us as impure and dirty every day for eating beef, but they wanted the milk of the beef eaters,” Narsamma said. “They say we polluted the air they breathed, but they wanted our bodies to feed their children.”

Hardly a day passes without news of mob violence against Muslims and Dalits. The violence may range from online trolling, online abuse, rape, and intimidation to physical attacks, lynchings, and calls for genocide. The excuses abound the myth of the Muslim population boom, cow killing, cattle trading, beef eating, love-jihad, burqua, the nuisance of the azan, etc. From their food habits to sartorial wear, from their prayers to recitation of their holy book—everything is under the Hindutva scanner. The non-issues are the main issues in Modi’s “New India”. And flames of hatred are being nurtured at each home. To our surprise, even our mothers and sisters, so-called anchors of moral values and familial congeniality, are fueling the flames of hatred.

Abu Siddik, ‘Flames Of Hatred In Modi’s India', Countercurrents

India's ruling right-wing Hindu extremist party BJP's workers backed by police seize Bibles from Christians, force them to convert to Hinduism and threatens them in case Bibles are found in their homes again.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly confirmed Thursday that 41 Canadian diplomats have left India after New Delhi threatened to revoke their diplomatic immunity. CBC News reported earlier that a large number of them had departed the country overnight.

The departures followed two weeks of negotiations between India and Canada after India issued a demand for "parity" in the number of diplomats present in the two countries, a source with knowledge of the situation told CBC News.

That demand was part of an angry reaction by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's allegation last month that Indian agents were involved in the murder of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in Surrey, B.C. on June 18.

India claimed to have only 21 accredited diplomats in Canada and said that Canada had 62 in India, spread across its High Commission in New Delhi and four consulates in Mumbai, Chandigarh and Bengaluru. [...]

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