The Guardian View on anything to do with India is always the most racist possible and also the least politically savvy. This is their editorial on BoJo's recent India trip which was a success because he posed with a chakra- which was pure slapstick- and got very excited about bulldozers, which are associated with knocking down the houses of criminals and terrorists and thus very popular in India. I must admit I had been hoping for some really cringe-worthy gaffe- Boris turning up in a saree and responding to Modi's bearhug with a sloppy French kiss- i.e. the sort of thing David Cameron could carry off with patrician panache.
By attending the inauguration of a new JCB factory in Gujarat on Thursday, Boris Johnson
neutralized the dairy farmers' protest which was a stumbling block to the trade deal Britain needs. Bulldozers are hugely popular in India. Yogiji has defeated anti-incumbency in U.P because he is associated with the bulldozer. British people don't like criminals or terrorists either. We don't knock houses down because our legal system works well in transferring property. In India the thing would drag through the courts for fifty years. Knocking a building down gets the message across- don't be a fucking terrorist or your family will end up sleeping in the street.
might have thought he was leaving his troubles behind in Westminster. What harm was there in going in to bat for a successful British business owned by a big Tory donor?
None at all. Partygate has gone away. BoJo is doing something useful for the country by going out and getting trade deals. His critics aren't doing anything useful at all.
Plenty, it transpires. Mr Johnson walked into a major human rights controversy
Brits hate human rights bullshit. We want them to be scrapped.
over the use of JCB’s bulldozers in flattening Muslim homes
A 300 year old Hindu temple was flattened. Brits don't care. However they do cheer up when they see terrorists are getting shat on wherever they might be
and businesses in Delhi and in states run by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party.
Which is the party BoJo has to make a deal with. The other thing is that, by concentrating on Gujarat, BoJo is further strengthening the Tory hold over an important and quite affluent constituency back in Blighty. Whether by luck or cunning, BoJo's India trip went off well. The Guardian, naturally, is miffed.
Mr Johnson should not have mugged for the cameras with the machinery used to intimidate religious minorities
terrorists and criminals. Which Bohra''s house will be knocked down? The Guardian, it appears, takes a wholly racist, Islamophobic view of a 'religious minority' which exists in Britain itself where, since 2015, by law all public institutions- including primary schools- have to inform on the supposed terroristic tendencies of the entire Muslim population- even if Bohra, Khoja, Ahmadiya etc.
BoJo's antics distracted media attention from the genuine grievance of Gujarati dairy farmers. This does not mean Modi can afford to forget them. Still, there is enough time and room to maneuver to ensure they have a happy Divali.
by a regime seemingly bent on creating a theocratic Hindu state.
The Guardian is seemingly bent in the sense that it keeps fucking itself in the ass so as to demonstrate its commitment to socially inclusive self-sodomy within a wider context of virtue signalling shite of every possible stripe.
Perhaps he is unaware of the growing sense of vulnerability felt by India’s 200 million Muslims.
Why aren't rich Muslims selling up and fleeing the country? Plenty of Hindus are. Muslims should be running harder and faster away if they felt vulnerable. They aren't because the activities of criminals and terrorists is what most endangers a minority.
Darker skinned people would have been fleeing Britain if terrorism hadn't been curbed. Why? Whites would have taken to knifing us pre-emptively.
But no one who is paying attention could miss what Mr Modi is about. He is the only person ever denied a US visa for “severe violations of religious freedom”.
Precisely because no such violations occurred. Still, this helped Modi politically in the same way that this editorial in the Guardian causes British Hindus to think well of BoJo.
This was in 2005, after he failed, as Gujarat’s chief minister, to stop a series of deadly anti-Muslim riots.
He succeeded in stopping the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Gujarat by calling in the Army to shoot rioters. This happened in 2002. In 2004 Congress came to power. Only after that did the US oblige its new best friend in the region by sanctioning Modi. But this backfired. Modi rose in popularity because Muslims hate America. Its War of Terror killed 1.3 million Muslims. Since Hindus look a lot like Muslims, they too hate America though, obviously, this doesn't mean they wouldn't sacrifice a kidney for a Green Card.
Earlier this month the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Washington was monitoring a rise in human rights abuses in India by “some government, police and prison officials”.
But India will reject quad because it is too expensive. Then America can monitor whatever it likes without any foothold in the region. Even Nepal which is on the hook for a Millennium Challenge project may turn against it. This is a good thing. The West has fucked up in South Asia and should simply get out of the region.
The US often takes an instrumental approach in determining whether human rights violations are raised or overlooked.
Fuck off! The US ran away from Afghanistan. It turned out it didn't really give a shit about human rights. R2P is dead in the water. Anyway, the Russians are now going to do intensive nuclear proliferation so America's willingness to do what Obama called 'stupid shit' will decline even in Latin America.
India’s democratic backsliding, coupled with Delhi’s refusal to speak out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, probably tilted the scales in the White House.
America isn't going to come to the rescue of Taiwan. They understand that China will soon have more ICBMs than Russia. But this means Quad is over. The Australians are on their own. Japan is nuclear latent. Taiwan may be. Australia will follow suit. Macron may well keep getting re-elected in which case a proper European Army might come into existence over the next twenty years. Britain will be less important than Ireland.
But Mr Blinken’s warning should have been heeded by Mr Johnson.
So, Johnson should not have bothered with trying to get a trade deal beneficial to this country. The Guardian view is that the British Prime Minister must heed 'warnings' from American officials even if America itself completely ignores those warnings.
Instead of keeping his distance,
by not visiting India
Mr Johnson hugged Mr Modi close.
He should have spat on him- right? That's what would make the Guardian happy.
India is set to be the world’s fastest-growing major economy over the next two years.
So BoJo was doing something sensible. The Guardian objects to any action by the Government which is helpful and beneficial to this country.
London joins the list of capitals courting Mr Modi, despite his refusal to choose sides over Moscow’s invasion.
Which is why he is being courted. A girl who says she will only fuck her camel won't get a lot of suitors.
India’s bargaining power rests on appearing as a key element in western-led efforts to counterbalance China in the Indo-Pacific.
That game has already been lost. America is not a credible partner.
One assumption is that India is so indispensable in geopolitics that its partners will not be offended if it also deals with some of their opponents.
India is non-aligned. However, it relies on Russia's Security Council veto. Also, the US is not a reliable partner. India can exert pressure on China along the land border. It is a pipe dream to think it can challenge it at sea. But then again, why should it? It is a nation of land-lubbers.
Another is that the country is competently governed
which, unlike Britain or America, it is. There is a continuity in India's policies severely missing from that of Brexit Britain or post-Trump America.
and has the social and economic means to accomplish its policy goals. The latter is a live question.
For the brain-dead. It is obvious that governance is improving.
Mr Modi failed to grasp the scale of the Covid pandemic early on,
just like Britain and America. The difference is that Modi showed generosity to the rest of the world. BoJo said ' I've got the Indian jab (Covid vaccine) in my arm, and it did me good. Many thanks to India.' What the Guardian has failed to grasp is the scale of its own relentless stupidity. It has been attacking Modi for 20 years for the things he got right and for which voters have rewarded him.
and his mistakes meant that Delhi failed to fulfil its obligation to supply Covid vaccines to the EU.
It had no obligation to do so.
Last year, Germany’s then leader Angela Merkel wondered if Europe had erred in allowing India to become a large pharmaceutical producer.
She has been consigned to the garbage pile of history. Europe erred by doing stupid shit. Now it has to cope with millions of Ukrainians fleeing a dictator who was financed by Germany.
Britain’s prime minister pointedly described India as the world’s pharmacy.
The Guardian thinks the UK should stop importing cheap pharma from India.
Mr Johnson, who faces political oblivion thanks to his own pandemic mistakes,
If the Guardian says so then BoJo is bound to get re-elected.
might envy the ends – if not the means – of Mr Modi’s rule. The Indian prime minister has been in power since 2014. His success is built on an aggressive assault against minorities, with economic policies that favour the rich.
No. It is built on the same thing every other leader's success is built- viz. being better- miles better in his case- than his nearest rival. If all it takes to become P.M of India is killing Muslims and favoring the rich, there wouldn't be a single Muslim in India and there would be no restrictive Land and Labor and Environmental laws.
Mr Modi’s populist repertoire sees him claiming that the poor are his priority, while doing little to combat inequalities.
Inequalities don't matter as Labor realized when Heath beat Wilson. You have to lift the absolute, not the relative, standard of living of the poor more especially if the poor have ten thousand times the number of votes as the moderately affluent.
His appeal endures despite rising unemployment and Covid deaths.
In India, unemployment rises when affluence rises.
Judges rarely confront the government.
They have never done so in the UK. Pakistan is the only country I can think of where a Chief Justice was at loggerheads with the General running the show.
Civil society opponents are jailed.
If they break the law- sure. Extinction Rebellion activists have been jailed in the UK.
But Britain is not India. The Indian jurist BR Ambedkar sensed a fatal political flaw in his fellow citizens: the tendency towards hero worship, which he said was “a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship”.
Ambedkar was speaking of Mahatma Gandhi whose assassination he considered a blessing in disguise. However, Gandhi's appeal was precisely that, as Govind Vallabh Pant said in 1938 to rapturous applause- 'Germany has its Fuhrer, Italy has its Il Duce, India has Mahatma Gandhi'.
In Mr Modi, that prophecy might be fulfilled.
Modi will be unceremoniously dumped by his party in exactly the same way Advani was dumped if he ceases to attract votes on the basis of his performance. The Guardian knows nothing about India and wishes to keep the British equally ignorant of a country which isn't actively trying to harm us. Why? The Guardian wants Britain do everything it can to antagonize India and to push it into the enemy camp. This may well happen. China can easily return to the status quo ante on the border in return for exporting infrastructure. Pakistan under a Punjabi leader may play nice and boost cross-border trade. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and Myanmar have already been pushed into the China camp. Nepal is the next domino. India will be part of a vast Eurasian trading bloc. Pundit Nehru's vision of 'Panchsheel' and 'Hindi-Chini bhai bhai' will finally be realized. Australia and New Zealand will fall out of the Western sphere as the 'gravity model' of international trade triumphs. Meanwhile France will take over the leadership of Europe which will have to play nice with both the Eurasian bloc as well as its Muslims neighbors to the South. England will return to what it was in the seventeenth century. A small but beautiful island capable of producing great literature- not shite Guardian editorials.
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