The University of Texas was recently lectured by Arundhati Roy who dedicated her
talk to the increasing numbers of prisoners of conscience in India.A p.o.c is defined as a person 'imprisoned because of their race, sexual orientation, religion, or political views. The term also refers to those who have been imprisoned or persecuted for the nonviolent expression of their conscientiously held beliefs'
I ask us to remember Professor G. N. Saibaba,
who was arrested when Manmohan was P.M. He belonged to a far Left outfit which was banned in Andhra Pradesh- which wasn't ruled by the BJP. If Saibaba is a p.o.c, then his beliefs were unacceptable to the previous regime. But Saibaba isn't a p.o.c. He is not in prison because of his beliefs but because of his actions.
the scholars, activists, singers, and lawyers who are known as the Bhima Koregaon 16,
are accused of crimes. It was the previous regime which banned the party to which they are alleged to belong. Manmohan considered the Naxalites a grave threat to Indian security. Again, if these people have been framed and were only targeted for their beliefs then it was not the current administration but the previous one which criminalized those beliefs.
the activists jailed for protesting against the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act),
have all been accused of criminal actions. Plenty of others who shared their beliefs were permitted to go on protesting peacefully.
and Khurram Parvez,
in jail accused of terror-funding and conspiracy
who was arrested five months ago in Kashmir. Khurram is one of the most remarkable people that I know. He and the organization he works for, the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), have for years meticulously documented the saga of torture, enforced disappearances, and death visited upon the people of Kashmir.
He is actually Kashmiri. It is possible that he has moved from 'documenting' human rights violations to funding the killing of those who perpetrate them. Once again, he is not a p.o.c though it may be that he has been framed. But plenty of people get framed all the time. Under the previous regime, Hindutva activists were jailed on bogus charges. Amnesty International and so forth made no protest. Then it was their own blue eyed boys who were at the receiving end. The difference is that the Hindu majority in India does not believe Hindu terrorism exists. They do believe that Naxalite and Islamic terrorism exists.
So, what I say today is dedicated to all of them.
Telling stupid lies does not help those to whom those stupid lies are dedicated.
All dissent has been criminalized in India.
In which case Roy is not a dissident. She is just a stupid liar.
Until recently, dissenters were called anti-national. Now we are openly labelled intellectual terrorists.
Stupid liars are not considered intellectuals. To be labelled a terrorist, there must be some overt action of an unlawful type. Shitting yourself insistently because are afraid that the Nazis have taken over your country suggests you are terrorized not that you are a terrorist.
The dreaded Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, under which people are being held for years without trial, has been amended to accommodate the current regime’s obsession with intellectual terrorism.
The current regime doesn't give a fart for genuine intellectuals- let alone stupid liars. The previous administration was headed by a Professor. Ideas may have mattered to him but he soon ceased to matter.
We have all been branded Maoists—the colloquial term for us is Urban-Naxals—or jehadis, and have had targets drawn on our backs, making us fair game for mobs or legal harassment.
Everybody is fair game for both. But nobody gives a toss about Maoist jehadis. It is film actresses like Kangana Ranault who get headlines. Arundhati Roy once starred in a film produced by her boyfriend. But the film was shit. Sad.
It has only been a few days since I left New Delhi. In these few days alone, the momentum of the events unfolding there makes it clear that we have crossed some kind of threshold. We cannot return to the shores we once recognized as our own.
Roy has always lived in a fantasy world. God alone knows what threshold she thinks the rest of the country has crossed. Personally, I think that with the re-election of Mamta, Yogiji, Kerala's Vijayan and AAP's victory in Punjab, power has passed to Chief Ministers. The importance of the Central Government has decreased. Modi remains popular but it is the personality and leadership skills of the CM candidate which dictates electoral outcomes. Intellectuals and ideology matter less than ever.
In March 2022, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won an unprecedented second term to govern India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh.
Vijayan's victory was equally unprecedented. It seems the 'Deng Xiaoping of the South' has enthused voters with his pragmatic vision for Kerala. Roy is wholly irrelevant in her own home state.
The UP elections are usually read as the “semi-finals” for the general election expected in May 2024.
No they aren't. Roy is repeating some stupid shit she heard back in the Eighties. But it had ceased to be true in 1967. By the Nineties it was obviously false.
The election campaign was marked by saffron-robed godmen openly calling for mass killing and a social and economic boycott of the Muslim community.
No it wasn't. Roy is telling a stupid lie. The Election Commission would have barred Yogi if he had done any such thing. Yogi got only 8 per cent of the Muslim vote because of Akhilesh's strong showing. But the fact that some Muslims voted for Yogi means Roy is talking bollocks.
We are currently in that dangerous place where there is no set of facts or histories that we can agree upon, or even argue with.
The rest of us have facts- e.g. 80 percent of the Muslim vote went to Akhilesh- which we can agree with. Roy makes up her own facts. But nobody in India bothers to argue with her. Why? It is cute that this lady thinks she is actually a tribal carrying a gun in some remote jungle rather than a pampered product of the Lutyen's bubble.
While the BJP’s victory in the elections appeared to be robust, on the ground the contest was closer than the number of seats they won suggest.
Not really. Akhilesh got the Yadav and Muslim vote but struggled to get other OBC and Maha-Dalit votes which went to Yogi. The surprise was the Farmer's agitation had not alienated Jats despite a tie-up between Tikait and Charan Singh's grandson.
The result seems to have generated in BJP workers and leaders a peculiar, untenable mix of anxiety and over-confidence.
No. The BJP sees that its future lies with Dalits. Mayawati is now irrelevant. It will take some time for her nephew to establish himself. This means Yogi needs RSS based outreach to build Dalit cadres. Interestingly, Kejriwal too sees that Dalits are crucial to his own ambitions. He is replacing portraits of Mahatma Gandhi with those of Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh. Interestingly, it was his chanting of Hanuman chalisa which set the trend.
Very soon after the election results were announced, Hindus celebrated the festival of Ram Navami, which coincided with Ramzan this year. To mark Ram Navami, violent Hindu mobs armed with swords and staffs rampaged through as many as eleven cities.
No. Some Muslim criminals had financed the stockpiling of weapons and the instigation of riots. One such is a wealthy scrap metal dealer from Nadia in West Bengal who is seeking to expand his operations into the National Capital Region. The BJP, AAP and the TMC are now each saying that this guy belongs to their rival's party.
Led by swamis and BJP activists, they entered Muslim settlements, dog-whistling outside mosques, chanting obscene insults, openly calling for the rape and impregnation of Muslim women and the narsinghar—genocide—of Muslim men.
She means narsanhaar. Shringar (which a lot of Hindi speakers would pronounce singhar) means erotic love or bridal or other such feminine adornment. It may well be that some Hindus wish for the narshringar of cute Muslim boys. But surely Roy approves of homosexuality?
Any response by Muslims has led to the bulldozing of their property by the government or burning by mobs.
But Hindu owned shops too have been bulldozed as has a 300 year old Hindu temple.
Those arrested, almost all Muslims, are accused of conspiracy and rioting, and will likely spend years in jail.
That's what happens when you kill people or shoot at police officers. This lady is talking to Texans. They have executed more people than India since 1976 despite having a population which is 40 times smaller.
One of those charged was in jail on a different charge long before Ram Navami.
His house was bulldozed because it was illegally constructed. Furthermore, an order under the NSA against him had already been made.
Another, Wasim Sheikh, accused of pelting stones at the Hindu procession, is a double amputee and has no forearms.
He said his kiosk was demolished. Then he said it wasn't demolished. Then he said it was demolished but maybe not by the Government. What is the truth? I have no clue. But what is the outcome of this sort of action? No more rioting. The punishment may be unjust but it is effective. The outcome nobody wants is for the majority to systematically eradicate the minority. Yet, that is what will happen if the police goes by the book and keeps out of such clashes.
Their homes and shops were bulldozed by the government. In some cities crazed TV anchors rode inside the bulldozers.
Thus, the thing is popular. Texans understand this sort of thing. The majority will get its way because that's how Democracy works. Some nutters may talk Naxalite or Jehadi bollocks but then they get arrested not because of their 'conscience' but because of their stupidity. Otherwise, sooner or later, they'd simply be bludgeoned to death.
Meanwhile, BJP leaders who openly provoked Hindu rioters in the run up to the 2020 Delhi massacre were recently acquitted by the Delhi High Court, which held that there is no criminality when provocative things are said with a smile.
So, what is the story here? The majority can stomp the minority but prefers that the police lock up criminals and nutjobs thus letting law abiding people go about their business. This was what was said 'with a smile'. If the police won't act, the public will take the law into its own hands. This isn't provocation. It is a prediction.
Some of them are back on the streets of other cities, stoking similar violence. Yet the young Muslim scholar Umar Khalid is in prison.
Which is why he is alive. Police men were killed in the riots. The alternative to jailing nutters like Khalid is extra-judicial killing. That was what worked against Naxals and Khalistanis. Those who seek to stir up working class Muslims are laying the foundation for, not more 'prisoners of conscience', but the sort of indiscriminate killing we last saw in the Punjab.
His speech about brotherhood, love and nonviolence upholding the Indian Constitution and delivered during the anti-CAA protests, is, according to a police charge-sheet, a smokescreen for a conspiracy that led to the 2020 Delhi massacre. Apparently, Muslims conspired to riot and kill themselves during Donald Trump’s state visit in order to besmirch India’s good name.
Some got paid while others, like Khalid, were living in a fantasy world where riots would cause the masses to wake from their slumber and turn upon their real oppressors- viz. Neo Liberal repressive desublimation or some other such dated shite.
Through all of this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose own political career was jump-started by the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat
provoked by the massacre of Hindu pilgrims by Muslim nutters.
when he was chief minister, remains an inspirational figure.
The US put a Visa ban on him. Then it had to crawl to the fellow.
Often silent, but more often leading the dog-whistling,
Fuck dog whistling. There is no need for any such thing in India.
he is the messiah of these mobs and their holy men who, fed on a steady drip of spurious history delivered by WhatsApp, portray themselves as victims of historic oppression and genocide perpetrated by Muslims,
as happened not just in Pakistan but also the Kashmir Valley.
which must be avenged here and now.
Modi has power. Roy has none. She isn't even a prisoner of conscience. Sad.
We are currently in that dangerous place where there is no set of facts or histories that we can agree upon, or even argue with.
Roy isn't in a dangerous place. She is merely dotty. Still, if the Texans will buy into her fantasy of herself what great harm befalls thereby?
Consider Roy's conclusion-
If the RSS wins this battle, its victory will be pyrrhic.
No. It was Congress's victory in 2004 which was pyrrhic. The RSS began winning when Socialists like Lohia and then JP and so forth aligned with the Jan Sangh. Now there is no prospect of revival for the Dynasty.
Because India will cease to exist.
India is flourishing. Ecumenical Hinduism is replacing Caste as a definer of identity. Since India only exists because Hindus want a big, cohesive, State to defend themselves from their historic enemies- militant Islam, proselytizing Christianity, senile Marxism- India's future is secure.
Elections will not reverse the tide. It’s too late for that. This battle will have to be waged by every single one of us. The blaze is at our door.
There is a bag of dog poop at your door which the neighbor's kid has set alight. Don't stamp on it to put that 'blaze' out. Take a broom and sweep it onto the street. There is no 'battle to be waged'. There is merely a batty broads talking bollocks.
There was a time when American hegemony was unchallenged. Its elites could believe that the world had been made safe for hysterical virtue signallers and left liberal bleeding hearts. Then Trump got elected and pointed out the bleeding obvious. America's delusion had permitted the rise of China. Now there is a cohesive Eurasian bloc which includes China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran. Sooner or later, China will do a deal with India. It may even go on to resolve the Palestinian problem. Meanwhile America will retreat into splendid isolationism as Europe develops its own Army under French leadership. The trouble is that America will be divided between Red & Blue States. It was America's global role which strengthened the Federal Government and gave it the motivation to over-ride States' Rights and put an end to Jim Crow etc. The big question is whether America hasn't already changed in this respect. Biden's presidency may set the clock back to 1941- the year before his birth. There may well be a 'blaze at the door' of the University of Texas. There is none for Hindu India.
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