R-Day riot and aftermath: How “fact checking” became the biggest form of fake news

Here is an imaginary conversation.

You: Hello 101, please come quickly to my house No. 123 on XYZ street. It is on fire.

Fire station: Did you say that is your house, sir?

You: Yes, my house.

Fire station: Sir, our records indicate that the house is registered in the name of Mr. Shyam. Are you Mr. Shyam?

You: No, Mr. Shyam is my father. He is not here right now.

Fire station: Sir, you said before that this is your house. Now you have admitted to lying. I am afraid we will have to report you to the police for fraud.

You: Are you joking?

Fire station: No sir, just fact checking.

Now consider this. On Republic Day, a mob of “liberals” storms the Red Fort in Delhi. They climb the flagpoles and plant whatever flag they happened to bring with them. All day long, they riot in the streets. Nearly one hundred police personnel are injured and in hospital. One video shows these “liberals” tossing away the Indian tricolor into the distance, like it was a piece of garbage. Another video shows the “liberals” in tractors, chasing down policemen who are on foot, forcing the latter to jump into a ditch to save their lives.

How do you rescue your image after this?

That’s where “fact-checking” came in super handy for the liberals. Was it a “good flag” or a “bad flag” they planted on the Red Fort? A team of highly capable “fact checkers” volunteer to find out the truth. Within hours, the matter becomes clear. The “good flag” is supposed to be shaped like this or that, it is supposed to be this much long and that much wide. And with this information, the liberals recover. They are now on the front foot, talking down to you about your ignorance.

Did you see what happened? The debate was supposed to be about why a different flag was flown on the Red Fort on Republic Day. The “liberals” were supposed to answer why they used tractors to chase policemen into a ditch. None of that is happening. Instead, we are bogged down with details of size, shape, color and design of flags.

In other words, the “fact checkers” have managed to deflect the conversation. That was the whole point of the “fact check.” To change the subject. And it worked.

Every now and then, something comes along that opens up an entirely new form of warfare. It was in World War 2 that the importance of an air force came to be fully appreciated. Suddenly, the trench warfare of World War 1 became obsolete. Unless you could command the air, you were toast. In the last few days of the war, the Germans began using rockets. They were too late to turn the tide of the war, but the age of missiles was coming. The Cold War was all about missiles and warheads. Most recently, it is unmanned militarized drones. They made all the difference in the recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

And so it is with propaganda warfare. Biased coverage, opinion pieces, on air spin are all still relevant tools. But the hottest new thing is “fact checkers.” Their job is to dismantle the narrative of the other side, by making people focus on marginal details instead of looking at what actually happened.

Consider what happened yesterday when some people protested against the folks who had blockaded Delhi’s border for months. How did the “liberals” respond? They started “fact-checking” the counter protesters! The fact checkers quickly spotted that many of the counter-protesters were “BJP supporters” instead of “locals.” Apparently, that de-legitimizes whatever they had to say.

Now you could ask : can’t BJP supporters be citizens and/or locals? And if they are not locals, so what? The liberals gathered at the protest are themselves from other states and most of their leaders have well known political affiliations. Why can’t the counter protesters have the same?

Good points. But you are still playing the game the “fact-checkers” wanted you to play. They are deflecting and forcing you to justify your legitimacy. As a consequence, they don’t have to answer your questions.

To stop playing their game, you have to first ask yourself what a fact checker is? Presumably, it means somebody who reports the facts. But wait!!! Didn’t we already have a class of professionals whose official job description is to report facts from the ground?

I remember. They were called “journalists.” What happened to them? I challenge any journalist to explain the difference between the official job description of journalists and fact checkers.

I know what happened to journalists. They got exposed for their institutional bias. And people no longer trust them to report facts. So what do they do? They come back wearing a fake mustache and beard claiming to be someone totally new and different. That’s what “fact checking” is. Same old propaganda journalism, now wearing a different color hat.

The Republic Day riot was a watershed moment for media in India. Never before have “fact checkers” been used in such frontline roles and on such a scale in propaganda warfare. The game has changed. And not for the better.

Three ways in which so called farmer protest is taking us back to the dark ages of the 1980s

The 1980s were not a good time to be an Indian. The vast majority lived in absolute misery, standing in endless lines for everything from grain to cooking oil. If you had anything above subsistence level, such as enough money to buy a third hand 1960s model Ambassador car, you were considered middle class. If your family could afford a trip to Nepal, you would be dazzled by all the different kinds of ‘luxury’ soap available in their markets. Many millions were destitute and the BBC came regularly to file ‘drain inspector’ reports. In Calcutta, a certain foreigner was so moved by our plight that she opened a “Home for the dying.” No medicines, no treatment. Just a place to lie down and maybe get a few drops of water before dying of hunger and disease.

It was a miserable way for nearly one-sixth of humanity to exist. Believe me, you don’t want to go back there. Four decades of failed Nehruvian socialist policies had turned India into a basket case. In case you are wondering, Pakistan enjoyed a much higher per capita GDP than we did.

Pushed to the wall, India finally decided to change course in 1991. And almost everything good that has happened in independent India followed after that. And in 2007, India finally did manage to wiggle past Pakistan in per capita GDP. Sixty years to catch up to Pakistan!

Who wants to go back? Anyone fancy a return to the India of the 1980s? Well, what if I told you that prospect looms large at the doorstep of Delhi right now? A group of so called farmer leaders have brought in people to block the national highways around Delhi. They have choked the national capital, caused factories to lose hundreds of crores of business, stormed the Red Fort and so on. But the most scary part is that they are trying to bring back everything that miserable about India of the 1980s.

Consider this. First, they all speak the language of hatred against private enterprise. Their rhetoric is straight out of an old Bollywood movie where the ‘angry young man’ takes on the greedy capitalists and ‘saves’ everyone from exploitation. They want to destroy mobile phone towers that connect us to the world. They want to ban all sales of produce across state or even district lines. They want a legal guarantee that the government must buy everything at guaranteed rates at the local “market.” License, quota and permit. A command economy, a forever agrarian economy with low skilled farmers forever toiling on small plots of land.

Is this the nation we had in mind? Remember how we cherished the tag of fastest growing economy? Remember how we sulked when India lost that spot in 2019? Do you think the so called farmer leaders have a vision to match those aspirations? And yet, this dim vision is being hailed as the new cool, the heady poison being pumped into the veins of young India, one ‘woke’ influencer at a time.

Second, when the so called leaders realized they could not muster mass support, what did they do? They began to stoke Sikh separatist sentiments. Thanks to these so called leaders, a social faultline that had been plugged decades ago has turned into a gulf again. Once again, there are murmurs of fear and suspicion between Hindus and Sikhs.

Across the world, Khalistani organizations have jumped into the act. They lobby with foreign politicians who speak of this movement in openly religious terms. Even Indian liberals, many of whom write columns in western newspapers, support the agitators with openly religious slogans. They barely conceal their hand.

Decades ago, India paid a terrible price for this. Do you want to go back there again?

And most recently, after the storming of the Red Fort, the discredited movement has tried to turn over a new leaf. This time, they want to be a caste agitation. You know, I remember a time when caste based panchayats were derided as regressive and patriarchal. Who knew that in 2021, caste based panchayats would be hailed as the cutting edge of Indian “liberalism”?

A socialist agrarian economy, Sikh separatist movements and community action driven by caste based panchayats. Are we back in the 1980s yet? They say it’s the new cool. In fact, their message is targeting the youth. The generation that was born after (economic) independence. The generation that has not seen the human cost of Nehruvian socialism.

We get it. The Indian farmer is hard done by. Have you wondered why? Why is it that the average farmer does not want their sons and daughters to take up agriculture? Perhaps because the farmers got left behind by the rest. Once upon a time, a state like Punjab, powered by its farmers, was the richest in India. Today it is not even in the top ten. Why?

Because reform. Economic reform released the rest of the economy from the clutches of Nehruvian socialism. And it soared. The service sector, which was the least regulated, today accounts for over half of the nation’s GDP. The industrial sector, which is moderately regulated, has still managed to make its mark. Beyond these lies the agriculture sector, still in Nehruvian socialist mode, employing half of all people but not even producing a fifth of the GDP.

Today the same 1991 moment has come to the doorstep of India’s farmers. Will we fall for emotional blackmail by a bunch of so called leaders with nothing to offer the country except failed socialist ideas, separatist rhetoric and caste based panchayats?

In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi, the biggest and possibly the only beneficiary of Nehruvian socialism, had observed that just 15 paise of every rupee sent from Delhi ever reaches the ground. This December, PM Modi pressed a button and transferred money directly into the accounts of millions of farmers. Not a single paisa could be stolen in between.

This in a nutshell is the choice that India faces. India 2020+ or India 1980- ? Which one would you live in?

Liberals believe people will exchange Narendra Modi for Rakesh Tikait

Ah, so the fairy tale has begun. There is a new savior in town and his name is Rakesh Tikait. Apparently, his magical tears have the power to turn an entire generation of Indians against Narendra Modi. Or at least the Jats of Western UP.

Who is this man? Nobody knew until a few days back. Just like nobody knew who Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid were until the media said they are on the verge of changing the world.

Okay, okay, now they will accuse me of being out of touch. I hear that Tikait’s father was a venerated farm leader, among the founders of Bharatiya Kisan Union. And Modi’s critics now believe this Rakesh Tikait can capitalize on his father’s legacy to turn all of Western UP against BJP.

Some hopes they live on. Rahul Gandhi could not capitalize on his legacy. Akhilesh could not capitalize on Mulayam’s name. But we have Mr. Tikait here whose powerful name will make it all happen. If only wishes were horses…

After months of drama, it all came down to this. We got a caste agitation on the doorstep of Delhi with no meaningful demand whatsoever. And then RLD comes in with a handful of people. Then we have other non-leaders like Sanjay Singh joining in. And Akhilesh Yadav, the ever comfortable opposition leader, makes a phone call to Rakesh Tikait. That’s it.

I have lost count of how many caste groups are supposed to be angry with BJP. If you look back at the last six years, you can find near identical articles. First, there was Jat anger, then there was Dalit anger, there was Maratha anger, (Patidar) Patel anger. In between there was even a phase of Brahmin anger. And now we have come full circle back to Jat anger.

There is no doubt this will go just the way of those other legends. For some reason, Modi’s critics are refusing to accept the course of history. Caste politics in India is almost at an end. This is not the story of just Uttar Pradesh. All across India, caste based parties are getting wiped out. Even all the way in Karnataka, where JDS is barely standing. Indeed, caste is very much a social reality, but as a political force, it has simply lost its appeal. Parties like RLD and JDS or BSP have gone from diminishing returns to zero returns.

But even on its way out, this caste politics does one useful thing. It helps expose those who strut around as open minded liberals and progressives. Stripped of everything else, what does the fashionable champagne liberal reach for in the hope that the people will turn against Modi? They know their ‘high end’ accent no longer speaks to anybody nor impresses them. Here is the first good thing. These liberals have accepted that they are completely out of touch and useless.

And so they look around and see Rakesh Tikait. He does not seem to speak English very much. In Rakesh Tikait, they see the exact opposite of the Doon school crowd. Because success is the opposite of failure, they assume that anybody who is not like the typical liberal will succeed against Modi for some magical reason.

It does not work that way. The liberal media thinks they are speaking the language of the “people” for a change. They are not. They are being just as condescending today as they were yesterday. Perhaps even more condescending because they think all non-English speakers are interchangeable … and people will back just about anyone who does not look like they are part of Lutyens.

Tikait lost his deposit yesterday. And he will continue to do so. There is no way people are going to exchange Narendra Modi for some random guy.

BJP is not in good shape in Maharashtra

With 105 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly, the BJP should have been breathing down the neck of the so called MVA government. It doesn’t feel like that at all.

I have been wanting to write this post since the Maharashtra panchayat poll results. But something or other kept coming up. Now since the polls are fought without party symbols, there is no way to know exactly who got how many seats. But it is easy to spot the fantasy calculations, like the Congress which claimed that BJP had come fourth! The BJP also has its fantasy calculation where they won like 6000 of the 14000 seats on offer.

The relatively believable number appears to be BJP (3263), NCP (2999), Sena (2808), Cong (2151)

The exact figures will always be a little disputed. But the broad contours are clear. The BJP is a narrow number 1, followed by Sena and NCP who are tied. The Cong is distant fourth.

While the number 1 position for BJP might be a small consolation, this was expected. The BJP is contesting alone while the other 3 parties are in alliance. The alliance is working on the ground and votes are transferring seamlessly. In particular, this is a startling result for Shiv Sena, which was never a party of rural masses.

What are the takeaways from this? For one, this is now essentially a Sena+NCP govt. The decimation of Cong is so spectacular that it is almost unbelievable. Who could have imagined there would be a day when Cong would be a distant fourth in rural Maharashtra? From independence till 1995, Maharashtra always had a Cong CM. Then after 4 years of Sena/BJP rule, back to 15 years of Cong. The Cong used to be so strong in Maharashtra they took the CM post in 2004 despite getting two seats less than NCP! The NCP barely even protested.

And now … the Cong at No. 4! And not even a respectable fourth. They are fourth by default, lagging far behind the other 3! Inevitable collapse of Cong in Maharashtra has happened. After TN or UP or Bihar or Bengal or Andhra Pradesh, the last big state where Cong could have been a contender for CM chair has just become Congress mukt.

It is now down to BJP facing an alliance of two regional forces, with Cong bringing a small but substantial vote chunk. The arithmetic is strong and it is now hard to see this govt going down at least for now.

The BJP desperately needs a Maharashtra strategy. History is definitely on BJP’s side. “Khichdi” govts have not worked in India in recent past. In Bihar, things broke down eventually between Nitish and Lalu. Maybe its just too early. Or maybe Pawar sahib is the one man who can make it work. He seems to know exactly how far the other will bend without breaking. The boisterous Lalu Yadav did not seem to understand that.

A lot of people see Pawar sahib as some kind of Chanakya. I won’t go into such labels. I just think his approach to power is a bit different; it depends on accumulation and longevity. He seems to work himself into a comfortable position and know when to stop. In 2004, Cong govt at the Center was delicately poised and needed support of every MP. Pawar could easily have pressed for the CM post in Maharashtra. He didn’t. It got him 15 seamless years of being in the ruling coalition in the state. I think the one ally that never gave Congress any trouble in all years of UPA was the NCP.

The BJP seems trapped for now, unable to find an opening. The Sena is mercurial and the NCP is sobering. The Cong brings extra votes.

It’s hard to make up my mind exactly about what is happening in the state. Everyone could see in 2019 that BJP was unfairly denied power. That may seem like a concern for a party rather than people. But somehow people seem to keep track. Keeping the single largest party out of power never seems to end well. At all India level, in Karnataka, in Jharkhand, in Uttar Pradesh … I have never seen this gambit pay off at the polls. People tend to punish those who keep the single largest party out of power. Surprisingly, the only counterexample to this rule appears to be Bihar. And there the JDU scraped through on BJP’s goodwill.

Will there be another such miracle in Maharashtra?

Luckily for BJP, it is still too early in the term of the state govt. And Maharashtra has lots of urban seats, where the equation may be different. There are a number of civic polls (Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Thane, etc) scheduled for Feb-March 2022. Now is the time for the BJP to hit the ground and prepare hard.

Red Fort attack : Dear liberals, here is how a little understanding of physics can help YOU

I struggled with this article, wondering if there is something I could add to the commentary on the events from yesterday. I suppose most good people are still numb with shock. If you ask me, this was an attempted coup. The underlying message of holding a parallel parade on Republic Day was always clear. They wanted to showcase a parallel power center on the streets, a republic of mob rule. Storming the Red Fort and planting another flag was just a natural next step, likely carefully planned and executed.

That is literally the metaphor used by all those who want to overthrow the Indian state. They speak of flying their own flag on the Red Fort.

After the failed coup attempt, their supporters have had to go into damage control mode. The so called “fact checkers” were unleashed as the first line of defense. They wanted us to debate whether the flag they planted was a “good flag” or a “bad flag.” Classic diversion tactic. The fact is that it doesn’t matter. That spot is where the Prime Minister of India raises the national flag on Independence Day. No flag, whether “good” or “bad” can take its place.

After the fact checkers had done their bit, the rumor mongers were pressed into service. Now they are finding “BJP agents” all over the place and blaming them. See this photo, see that tweet. Ha! Till yesterday, they were all “annadaatas” with hearts of gold. Today you realize that the place was crawling with well known BJP agents. What about the farm union leaders themselves who welcomed these laws barely six months ago? What about the farm unions who made these same exact demands in writing as part of their “kisan manifesto” for 2019 elections? All BJP agents?

Again, that does not matter. They now realize that yesterday’s coup attempt was a step too far. They now want to drown everything out in a cloud of rumor, confusion and conspiracy theories.

For those of my generation, this is distressingly familiar. A horrible thing happened in Godhra on Feb 27, 2002. The next day, the lies began. Someone did not pay for tea, someone tried to sexually assault a woman, the fire was an accident and so on. Result: till date, a number of people, including outlets like BBC, think that nobody really knows who was to blame in Godhra. Never mind the fact that the Gujarat High Court convicted the culprits years ago and gave them life sentences.

I know I have digressed from the aim of this article, apparent from its heading. My aim was to add something new to all the things being said.

So, dear liberal annadatas, let me just point out that a tractor has a rather high center of gravity. Here is a diagram that may help understand the concept. An object will fall when the vertical line from its center of gravity no longer passes through its base.

Forget the technical jargon; what does that mean for you? It means that a tractor will overturn easily. In other words, it is incredibly dangerous to drive a tractor around in crazy ways at high speeds, like I observed some “liberals” doing yesterday on the streets of Delhi.

Dangerous for who? Well, it is dangerous both for the person driving the tractor and the people on the street. From what I saw yesterday, I suppose you don’t care very much about the latter. You already used tractors to chase innocent policemen over the walls of the fort, forcing them to jump into a ditch. Over 80 of them are in hospital. I know you couldn’t care less about that.

But it is dangerous for you too. If you try to turn tricks with a tractor, it will likely overturn and cause serious injuries to you. A tractor is supposed to be used for hauling heavy things, usually at slow speeds. No matter how loud its engine, a tractor is not a tank and cannot be used as such. Considering that most of the “liberal” rioters yesterday appeared to identify as male, I apologize if this revelation hurts your male ego.

And before you ask, these are laws of physics. They were not made by any Parliament. There was no debate and no discussion before these laws came into force. If that means these laws are serving the interests of A**ani or A*ani or any other businessman whose name rhymes with that, please do not blame Modi, Shah, RSS, Bhakts, Godi media, etc for it. Unfortunately, the laws of physics cannot be repealed. They cannot even be suspended.

So while we are in this physical universe, I suggest you simply follow the law. Be careful when you are driving a tractor. Take care of your own safety as well as the safety of others around you.

Why Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is the most enigmatic figure in world history

Let us start with an anecdote. In 2019, a video went viral, which showed a man wearing a T-shirt with the face of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The person in question was one Saikat Chakrabarti, then chief of staff for democratic socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The video caused an uproar in the US and it is not hard to see why. Put yourself in the shoes of an American whose grandfather fought the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy. How would you feel if somebody were to glorify a man who had been a Nazi ally? And a leader who had declared war on your country, as Bose certainly did.

But then, Saikat Chakrabarti is also an American, evidently of Indian heritage. And Netaji was fighting for the freedom of all Indians of his time. So, whose grandfather is more important? Whose freedom matters more?

And that is how Netaji forces you to admit the complexities of history. More often than not, people come to study history looking for ways to confirm their politics. But facts are not beholden to anyone. In other words, if you try to study Netaji’s life through an ideological prism, no matter which one, he will make you uncomfortable.

Let us go through this one by one. Start with the Congress worldview. Your big heroes are Gandhi and Nehru. We know Netaji was elected to the position of Congress president in 1939, defeating Gandhiji’s candidate. But they forced Netaji to resign. What do you do about the fact that Gandhi and Nehru had been trying to turn the Congress into a family monopoly for over a decade at that point? In fact, in 1928, Motilal Nehru wrote to a letter to Gandhi that even though Sardar Patel was more qualified, “the party should now be handed over to young leaders of Jawahar’s type.” The Mahatma replied that the time was not yet ripe for Jawahar to “occupy the throne” and suggested that Motilal himself “wear the crown” for a while. Accordingly, Motilal Nehru became party president in 1928 and his son Jawahar ascended to the position in 1929. If you are a Congress supporter, how do you defend this cozy club and the way Netaji was treated?

If you are a BJP supporter, you may be thrilled at this last paragraph. But things don’t look very good for you either. Netaji was not Hindu right and no free market advocate; he was an outspoken leftist. Perhaps even a radical leftist. So while you may enjoy embarrassing the Congress over how they treated Netaji, you are not doing so well yourself.

Perhaps the leftists could be happy then? Not a chance! Because Netaji’s life story will take you into the most embarrassing chapter of left wing history. Did Netaji set out from Calcutta to go to Nazi Germany? Of course not! He went to Peshawar, crossed over into Afghanistan and from there into the Soviet Union. Netaji had set out to reach the Communist USSR, the promised land of the revolution. But as it turns out, the Communists at the time were military allies with the Nazis. So when Bose reached Russia, the Communists turned him over to their Nazi friends in Germany.

As a matter of fact, World War 2 began when Hitler and Stalin jointly invaded Poland in Sep 1939, which they proceeded to divide among themselves. As per the friendship treaty between Hitler and Stalin, the Nazis would get half of Poland, while the Communists would have the remainder, as well as the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia), along with Finland. In other words, all the big Communist boast about resisting Hitler is just a matter of a very loving relationship going sour in 1941. Have you noticed how history textbooks gloss over the story of this wonderful friendship between Communists and Nazis? From that you can guess the political inclinations of those who wrote those textbooks.

Not just within the Indian political context, Netaji will make almost anyone uncomfortable. The European powers like Britain and France said they were fighting on behalf of free people. But what sort of freedom is it when they had huge colonial empires of their own? But Netaji was no anti-imperialist either. He first sought help from the Soviet empire and then from the Nazi empire. Those are two of the most brutal regimes in history. And finally he raised an army with the help of Japanese imperialists. The story of Japanese imperialism in East Asia and South East Asia is also one of unimaginable cruelty.

No matter how much you try, Netaji can never be boxed into an ideological corner. You have to settle for the fact that the truth is what it is, with all its complexities and ironies. Netaji is not just the most enigmatic figure in world history; his life is a tough lesson in how to think about history. He is a lesson to the historians themselves.

So what is the legacy of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose? What relevance does he have for common people like you and me, living our ordinary lives in 21st century India? It might be too much for me to try and sum up his legacy, but I will try.

First, it is about unqualified patriotism. He always put the nation first. Don’t let anyone bully you for professing love for our country.

Second, it is about daring and sense of purpose. Netaji tried everything. He engaged with the British to advocate for Indian independence. He tried it the way of Gandhi and Nehru and their Indian National Congress. When that didn’t work, he traveled from Calcutta to Peshawar to Kabul and then escaped to the Soviet Union to make the best of the opportunity presented by World War 2. And from there to Germany. From there onwards, he traveled under the high seas in a German U-boat, transferring somewhere near the southern tip of Africa into a Japanese submarine. From Japan to Singapore and then Burma, where he organized a liberation army that he led to the borders of British India. For what? Independence.

Yes, this man was for real.

Third, it is about holding our head high as we engage with the world. A lot of great Indian leaders suffered from a sense of inferiority towards the colonial power. And who could blame them for it? Looking at a map of India, dominated by a tiny island nation from afar, it is easy to look down on ourselves.. But Netaji never saw it that way. He saw it for what it really was, a mere accident of history. He engaged with the British, the Soviets, the Germans and the Japanese on his own terms. If he could do it in the 1930s and 1940s, how could any of us be lacking in self-confidence today? No excuse.

It is perhaps fitting that Netaji’s death remains a mystery. For no definitive death could have done justice to the life that he lived. That of the impossible man.

Take a moment to think of the man who stood by himself at Gomoh railway station, with only a few belongings. He would have to cross the great Indian plains and negotiate with three imperial superpowers to put their trust in him. His plan was to come back with an army, defeat another superpower in battle and bring freedom to one-sixth of humanity. He decided to go ahead with it.

Jai Hind!

How to be “Godi media”? Learn from American liberals

“They built back better. From the moment that President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the reflecting pool beside the Lincoln Memorial on Tuesday night to the final note of the virtual concert that capped the inaugural rites and celebrations, it was clear that they, and those around them, were going to use every tool at their disposal to underscore their message of fresh starts and racial justice, help and healing.“

We Indians generally wish America well. It is good to know that America is building back better and so rapidly. So what exactly did President Biden build back? I can’t wait to find out what the author is talking about. Did he get a grip on Covid, put the American economy back on track, settle big issues of trade or diplomacy with China?

Would you believe they are talking about President Biden wearing a Ralph Lauren suit to his inauguration? Check it out, because this for real. It’s the New York freaking Times fawning over how Biden built back America (and better!) by wearing a designer suit. How is that an achievement? Don’t worry. Just be happy.

In fact, the top anchor on MSNBC said she cried so many tears of joy while watching the inauguration that she finished an entire box of tissues.

In recent years, Indian liberals have come to use the expression “Godi media,” a pejorative for what they see as Indian media promoting a personality cult around PM Modi. First of all, seriously? Second, do these liberals ever look in the mirror? How could they? For they are all but prostrated on the ground before five generations of a political dynasty. All their opinions lie somewhere on the spectrum between Rahul coming of age and Priyanka having her grandmother’s nose.

If you want to see “Godi media” done right, look at American liberals right now. I already told you about MSNBC and the New York Times. Here is something from a CNN vice-president:

“I mean those lights that are just shooting out of the Lincoln Memorial along the Reflecting Pool, it’s like almost extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America.”

Have you ever wondered why liberals take all those “dear leader” jibes at PM Modi? Have you wondered why they call BJP supporters as “bhakts”? I have seen trenchant criticism of PM Modi from BJP supporters. Would Congress supporters dare to criticize Rahul Gandhi?

Now you know. It’s a classic case of projection. Liberals see their opponents as they themselves are. Fawning over their leaders in a way that would rival North Korean state television.

What good news did President Biden have for real Americans? As it turns out, very little. Instead, the President had this to say to his country:

“A lot of America is hurting. The virus is surging. We’re 400,000 dead expected to reach well over 600,000.”

What? So 200,000 more people are going to die? Is there any hope? Don’t count on it, because the president went on to also say:

“…there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”

Imagine the grim reality of being an ordinary American right now. Your government has given up on you. They say there is nothing they can do and 200,000 more people are set to die. You open the New York Times, the so called ‘newspaper of record.’ Or you turn on CNN, the biggest global name in news. The headlines are about the achievement of wearing a Ralph Lauren suit.

That’s liberalism. Common people don’t matter. Instead the New York Times questions the ‘morality’ of Melania Trump leaving the White House in Chanel suit, Dolce & Gabbana dress, Hermès bag!

You didn’t catch the problem there, did you? It turns out that Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana and Hermès are European brands. That makes Trump immoral while Biden is moral in his very American Ralph Lauren suit. If you are an American, you must be thrilled about this. The New York Times expects no less of you.

Okay, what about Biden’s brand new Rolex watch, which he bought specially for the inauguration? Isn’t Rolex a Swiss company? Never mind. Anyway, I know about this new Rolex watch because a number of equally reputable liberal outlets were fawning about it as well.

“When Joe Biden put his hand on the Bible, he was wearing a Rolex …. Biden thus joins a bipartisan tradition of presidents wearing Rolex. Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan all had one.”

See? It’s a tradition for American presidents to wear American suits. And also a tradition to wear European watches. Anything Biden does is a glorious tradition.

When media and power come together in a tight embrace such as this, the common citizen becomes invisible. And nobody does this better than liberal elites. That’s why common citizens should be scared of rule by the liberal elite. Whether in India or in the United States.

In 2008, when Barack Obama was running for President, Chris Hayes, one of the biggest faces on MSNBC, had announced that he was so excited that he could feel a thrill going up his leg. Yes, he really said it on air. And nobody thought that was odd. That’s big media in embrace of big government. That’s when common people should feel a shiver down their spine.

Left wing fury at Vir Sanghvi shows just how much liberals hate Hindus

By most accounts, Vir Sanghvi would be among the Indian media elite. He has studied at all the right schools, colleges and universities. He has been seen with all the happening people in media.

Yesterday, Vir Sanghvi came out with a column about the ‘shameful persecution’ of Munawar Faruqui and the ‘bogus controversy’ around the web series Tandav. In his piece titled “Of harmless humor and manufactured anger,” he took the BJP governments heavily to task. He used words like “authoritarian,” “emergency” and “tyranny.”

If you are like me, you are probably not surprised by this. How can a day pass without an elite telling our elected government to its face that they have taken away the right to free speech? You know, sort of like the Communist USSR or Nazi Germany.

But, would you believe that liberals are furious with Vir Sanghvi over this article.?

Surprised? See if you can guess what their problem is:

Did you catch that? Liberals are furious. It’s okay if someone thinks that the BJP government is authoritarian or tyrannical. But how dare someone speak disrespectfully of the maulvis? Indeed, when have Muslim fundamentalists been to blame for anything at all? In fact, is there even such a thing?

Sample the anger.

Vir Sanghvi’s tweet has been quoted nearly 200 times and most people seem to be bashing him for this reason. How dare he disrespect the maulvis? On his timeline, Vir seems to have retweeted two people who came out in his support. It doesn’t appear that there are too many more.

In other words, anti-Hindu hatred among India’s liberal-secular class is simply out of hand. Now this class does not allow even the slightest criticism of any member of the Muslim community for any reason. You cannot even criticize the BJP by calling them Hindu fundamentalists and then equating them with Muslim fundamentalists. That would be an acknowledgement of the existence of Islamic fundamentalism! You can’t have that any more.

In the prescribed new format of Indian liberalism, you must accuse the BJP of Hindu fundamentalism. And you must also say that they are the most evil and the only evil people in the world. So evil that they cannot be compared to anything in the past, present or future.

In his column, Vir Sanghvi described the BJP’s strategy thus:

“It is a strategy that has been successfully mastered by many Muslim fundamentalists. Take the most famous example: The controversy over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. None of the people who called for the banning of that book had even read it. They had no idea whether it really ridiculed Islam. But they ordered the protests anyway and got the novel banned, a crazy spiral that reached its apotheosis when Ayatollah Khomeini, who had never heard of Salman Rushdie or the book before, was told that it made fun of the Prophet. Khomeini promptly issued a fatwa urging the faithful to kill Rushdie.“

Get it? Even if you compare the BJP to Ayatollah Khomeini, that’s not condemnation enough. What did the poor Ayatollah Khomeini ever do to deserve comparisons with ‘fascist’ BJP?

This is how extreme the Indian liberal has become in their hatred against Hindus. If you seriously believe that India has voted in a government that is worse than Ayatollah Khomeini, you can’t be a reasonable person.

A final note. Yesterday, Badruddin Ajmal, the head of AIUDF, now a member of Congress’ grand alliance in Assam, spoke thus at a rally.

” “The BJP has a list of 3,500 mosques in the country. If it comes to power again at Centre again, they will demolish all those mosques,” he claimed at an election meeting on Wednesday in Dhubri district’s Gauripur.

Ajmal targeted the ruling BJP in the state as well and claimed that if the BJP wins the Assam elections again, “they will not let women go out wearing ‘burqa’, grow a beard, wear a skullcap or even offer ‘azaan’ at mosques”. Will you be able to live in such a way?” he questioned those gathered at the rally.”

Incidentally, Badruddin Ajmal has studied theology from the Darul-Uloom Deoband is listed among the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. A true liberal, you see.

Those who blamed Modi for market crashes must congratulate him for Sensex at 50,000

The Bombay Stock Exchange just hit the huge psychological mark of 50,000. Woo hoo!

But fortunes swing wildly on the stock market. Most serious people know that. They know not to get too exuberant when the market is rising. They know how to take it on the chin when there is a crash. On the market, patience and grit usually pay off.

There are mature investors and analysts on one side. And then there are the crazies in the anti-Modi ecosystem. Always rushing to judgement, forever itching to blame anything and everything on Modi. Here is the Indian National Congress, speaking on March 9 last year.

In March 2020, the world was facing a truly unprecedented, possibly once in a century situation. Half the world under lockdown already and the rest scrambling to shut everything down. Literally thousands of people dying in America and Europe each day. The world’s richest countries on their knees. What would happen once the pandemic begins to spread across the developing world? What kind of nightmare could India be facing? Nobody knew. No wonder markets in India and around the world were crumbling.

But the Congress party has a bot like response to anything going wrong. Blame Modi.

So what happens now? Will Randeep Surjewala put up another tweet thanking PM Modi for shepherding the stock market out of this panic? Or will it suddenly be all about global factors?

In other words, take your pick and stick to it. If Modi is to blame for market crashes, then he gets all the credit when there is a bull run. It is the only intellectually honest position.

It wasn’t just 2020. Even in 2015, the Congress connected a fall in markets to PM Modi.

So when is Congress going to thank PM Modi for bringing Achche Din?

But it wasn’t just Congress. A number of elites had been taking potshots at the Prime Minister whenever markets went south.

Ah! So now that the stock market has decisively changed direction, can we expect to see an article in Scroll thanking PM Modi’s ‘structural reforms’ and praising their impact? Or will it be back to the usual refrain of how the real economy and the stock market are different?

But that was just Scroll.in. I pity them. Here is Bloomberg, which should really have known better.

Don’t draw profound conclusions from stock market swings. Old lesson. But completely forgotten because of the itch to go after PM Modi. Will Bloomberg take back its sweeping conclusions now? I doubt it.

Then, there was the outright absurd stuff like this.

How about a headline like this: PM Modi’s tweet congratulating President Biden lifts Sensex to 50,000?

That would be an absurd thing to say. But I’m not the one who started this game.

Like the stock market, Modi’s critics also go through cycles. When the going is bad, everything is Modi’s fault. When things are looking good, it is global factors, black magic and almost anything else. If they had any sense, they would realize that Congress party stock is in free fall, with an incompetent CEO and a board of directors that is perpetually out of touch. The only thing that still works over there is the ecosystem of tale bearers rushing back and forth.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan never called for tracking women : how liberals made a story out of nothing

You must have heard. Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan is planning to register and track every movement of working women. What more can you expect from the patriarchal, sexist old men of the BJP who run that cow belt state? Headlines in liberal media have already delivered their verdict. Feminists have already made bold declarations of intent: they will never register! A song or poem, on the lines of “kaagaz nahin dikhayenge” may also be in the works.

The Madhya Pradesh government clarified that this was only a proposal to help with security. It had no intention of tracking anyone and would apply equally to both men and women. But this did not stop India’s feminists from fighting the most important women’s rights battle in a generation. A number of left wing opinion sites chimed in, uncovering all sorts of ulterior motives that you may not have noticed at first.

But first let us check out what the Chief Minister actually said. Here is the video. Luckily, it is from Barkha’s Mojo Story, which should give me some protection from criticism by liberals. Anyway, ignore the title of the video and just listen to what the Chief Minister said (starting 0:20)

“Koi mazdoori karne, kaam karne ke liye bhi koi beti-beta baahar jayega, to pehle uska registration zile mein kiya jayega…. Pradesh se baahar jaana hai to zile mein registration hoga ki beta kahaan ja raha hai, beti kahaan ja rahi hai… ”

Here I have put in boldface the part where he talks about sons and daughters, as well as the masculine forms of the verbs he used in his sentences. He was always talking about both sons and daughters.

After this, he launched into a minute of explanation of how the policy would serve and protect women. Why would he do that? Perhaps because he was speaking at an event called “Samman,” a fortnight long awareness program about crimes against women.

That was all there was to this story. But who will tell the feminists who are determined to make this the biggest women’s rights battle of this generation?

Incidentally, the Indian state has a number of policies that may be seen as paternalistic towards women. For instance, rebates on stamp duty, property tax, slightly cheaper loans and so on. Even Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) from the government are generally made into the accounts of women in the household. We will not even get into laws on domestic violence or sexual harassment which are not gender neutral. Till now, these have mostly been regarded as positive measures, necessary for empowerment of women. But if you wanted, you could turn it around on its head, and argue that they are paternalistic towards women. A woman can earn her money as much as a man. Does she really need a cheaper loan to buy a house?

But that’s a much bigger, more nuanced argument. And it had nothing to do with what Shivraj Singh Chouhan had proposed. His plan was gender neutral.

Are there legitimate privacy concerns here about the Madhya Pradesh government proposal? Probably, for both men and women. But again, that’s a completely separate debate, having nothing to do with sexism or patriarchy.

But feminists and liberals did not seem to care. They just wanted to scratch their itch against the BJP.

At the risk of being accused of being paternalistic (or worse), I have a humble suggestion for all the feminists out there. The laws in this country allow a Muslim woman to inherit only half of what sons are entitled to. The laws in this country allow for child marriage of Muslim girls. Even female genital mutilation of babies in certain Indian Muslim communities is still protected by law. Perhaps we can all come together and raise our voices against that. It is 2021. You have no excuse.