This year, Modi and his team fought the elections on the back of Hindu majoritarianism and national populism and expected a landslide win, a mandate that would have made it powerful enough to rewrite the Constitution of India and put India on the path of absolute rule.
That didn’t happen. And now this has.
Narendra Modi may have led his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to a historic third term, but the landslide victory that many had expected failed to materialise. With half of the 640 million votes counted, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its political allies were on course to win 290 seats. It’s enough to form a coalition government – but is 60 fewer seats than it won in the 2019 election.
Science and truth are ignored for the religion of Politics. Farewell to the Multicultural Secular State of India. Hello to the Hindu Nation first above all religions.
For their part, archaeologists Supriya Varma and Jaya Menon, after overseeing the ASI excavation in the run-up to the publication of their 2003 report titled “Was There a Temple under the Babri Masjid? Reading the Archaeological ‘Evidence,’” contended that the mosque was built over structures that resembled a Muslim place of worship. They also questioned the methods used by the ASI to come to certain conclusions.
Source: Did a Hindu Temple Stand on Site of Destroyed Mosque?
A document obtained by The Intercept shows India was targeting Sikh separatists with a “sophisticated crackdown scheme” in the West.
NEW YORK (AP) – An Indian government official directed a plot to assassinate a prominent Sikh separatist leader living in New York City, U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday as they announced charges against a man they said was part of the thwarted murder conspiracy.
The Indian government’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, has been planning assassinations targeting Sikh and Kashmiri activists living in foreign countries, according to secret Pakistani intelligence assessments leaked to The Intercept.
Leaked Pakistani intelligence backs up Canada’s claim of an Indian assassination program.
Source: Secret Intelligence Documents Show Global Reach of India’s Death Squads
Indian Government Raids Journalism
At the end of the day, the Delhi Police, who answer to India’s Ministry of Home Affairs, arrested Newsclick founder and chief editor Prabir Purkayastha and the organisation’s head of human relations Amit Chakraborty. Both remain in prison under remand. During the raid, the Delhi Police seized computers, phones, documents, and – crucially – network-attached storage (NAS) units from the Newsclick office. The NAS system contains fourteen years of coverage by Newsclick – the entire archive of its work. The Delhi Police sealed the office, making the equipment inside inaccessible to Newsclick journalists.
Source: Statement on the Attack on Journalists and Alternative Media in India – CounterPunch.org
Many Indians have bristled at a perceived double standard on extrajudicial killings amid Canada’s investigation into the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Source: U.S. Targeted Killings Inspired Foreign Assassinations, Indians Say
Unlike the Australian LNP Modi’s BJP unites the majority Hindu Nationalists in a fanatical rather than Democratic manner.
“Since May, Hindu nationalist militants have killed over 100 Christians in northeastern Manipur, destroying churches and displaying 50,000 people in a brutal campaign of terror.”
Oborne and his co-author do not shy away from warning that the Modi-Hindutva state is showing genocidal urges. “This is a moral emergency and thus far nobody seems to have noticed. US President Joe Biden, supposedly the leader of the free world, recently gave Modi a hero’s welcome in Washington.” Modi’s renaming of the stadium sent an ominous “message that the Indian cricket team represents his own political party – the Bharatiya Jana Party (BJP) – and not the nation as a whole.”
Source: Modi’s Cricket Ploy: Hindutva as Twelfth Man – » The Australian Independent Media Network
India has seen an “escalating trend” of anti-Muslim speech since Modi rose to power in 2014. The report found that more than half of the documented incidents this year were orchestrated by the ruling BJP and affiliates including the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Sakal Hindu Samaj. Those groups have ties to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, the ideological parent of the BJP.
Source: ‘Escalating trend’: Most hate speech in India linked to Modi’s party
After the brazen killing of a high-profile Canadian Sikh activist in June, FBI agents visited several Sikh activists in California this summer with an alarming message: Their lives were also at risk.
One such event might be questionable but several starts to be as suspicious as Russian Oligarchs accidentally falling out of hospital windows. PM Modi has a noted history when it comes to the blood spilled by Hindu Nationalists.
Of late, that lack of conspicuousness has been challenged. On September 18, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed that there were “credible allegations” that agents in the pay of the Indian government had murdered Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a vocal supporter for an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan and deemed by Indian authorities since 2020 to be a terrorist. He was alone in his truck when he was shot to death on June 18 outside the Surrey temple, Guru Nanak Gurdwara.
The Indian response was predictably sharp, with New Delhi also expelling a “senior Canadian diplomat,” asking the individual to leave within five days. Prior to that, the Canadian high commissioner to India, Cameron MacKay, was summoned for a bit of an ear-bashing, while the Indian Ministry of External Affairs expressed the “Government of India’s growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities.”
TORONTO (AP) — Canada said it was expelling a top Indian diplomat Monday as it investigates what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called credible allegations that India’s government may have had links to the assassination in Canada of a Sikh activist.
Source: Canada Expels Top Indian Diplomat As It Probes Sikh Activist’s Killing | HuffPost Latest News
The poor of India always suffer when any International Circus arrives in town. Modi is no exception in criminalizing the poor at the expense of an International image
As it happens, the G20 Delhi summit was, as so many of these occasions are, much ado about nothing. The absence of China and Russia turned the occasion into a G18 gathering, removing a good deal of flavour that would otherwise have been present. At the very least it provided Modi an excellent excuse to rough up the slum dwellers, using beautification as a strategy to criminalise the poor.
Source: G20 Aesthetics: Modi’s Brutal Delhi Facelift – » The Australian Independent Media Network
India Power
Aditya-L1 is heading for a point in space called L1, about 1.5 million km from Earth from where the spacecraft will have an uninterrupted view of the Sun
Imran Khan was challenged by the current Pakistan government and thrown out of government. He’s been arrested on count after count,53 in fact, and imprisoned just before the nation’s current election. There is no “equivalence” in these cases to Donald Trump who actually should be wearing an orange jumpsuit but isn’t and is claiming martyrdom. There is, in the case of Russia’s Alexei Navalny who just received an extra 19 years imprisonment for his opposition to Putin who tried to have him killed. Strange even Australia’s Julian Assange is more dangerous than Donald Trump who still is walking about scot-free having been charged and is issuing threats publicly.
We recently celebrated the Indian President Narendra Modi declaring we share the same Ideology and do the same with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu who’s Religious dictatorships are the antithesis of our idea of Democracy
“If you’re watching this video,” Khalid said, “it means that I’ve been arrested.”
Source: Umar Khalid Challenged Modi’s Anti-Muslim Agenda. India Locked Him Up.
The pretense of Real Democracy in India has gone. Modi and the Hindutva have come out into the world where various forms of Nationalism are currently flourishing. The face of religious nationalism has been revealed publicly in America, Israel, Turkey, Hungary, and other places. Is Australia Center left or right today? The ALP is certainly paying its respect to Religious and other fascist leaders. If Trump wins in 2024 Albo will greet him as he does Netanyahu.
In 2023, Modi had little reason to fear either rebuke from the Biden administration, or censure from Congress. India is now seen as more useful than ever, and its canny leader does not need lecturing about his own band of dangerous religious authoritarianism. Best, then, to drop the democratic values act, a show that is becoming increasingly absurd.
Source: Hindutva Goes to Washington: Narendra Modi’s US Visit – » The Australian Independent Media Network
For decades, the Indian state has suppressed the democratic rights of Kashmiris. Narendra Modi’s hard-right government is taking this pattern of repression to new extremes, with the complicity of Indian intellectuals who seek to toxify the cause of Kashmir.
Source: Narendra Modi Is Using Brutal Repression to Silence the People of Kashmir
Yes a bit more Bollywood the media gave Modi than the reality
With all the fanfare, the stadium event was not all it seemed. One beady-eyed journalist noted that a venue with a seating capacity of 18,500 seemed less than packed. Vivek Astri, covering the visit for The Wire, noted “empty chairs scattered throughout the expansive venue.” It struck him as rather odd, given the fact the tickets had been gratis, with registration noisily promoted through such platforms as WhatsApp months before. “Curiously, there seemed to be a veil of secrecy surrounding the ticket distribution process, lending an air of privacy to the entire event.”
Source: Modi in Australia: Down Under Bliss for Hindutva – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi’s conviction for criminal defamation is the latest sign that India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is moving toward Hindu nationalist authoritarianism.
Source: Who Can Stop Modi and His Authoritarian Vision for India?
Gandhi, 52, lost his seat on Friday, a day after a court in the western state of Gujarat convicted him and sentenced him to two years in jail for a defamatory comment he made during an election campaign rally in 2019.
“The metamorphosis of BJP’s vindictive politics into autocracy is happening at an alarming pace,” one Indian state’s chief minister said in response to the parliamentary expulsion and criminal sentencing of Rahul Gandhi.
Source: ‘Scorched-Earth Politics’: Indian MP Ousted, Sentenced to 2 Years Over Modi Insult
The rise of Religious Nationalism is detrimental to the principles of Democracy
India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, has more members than most countries have people.
The unit’s latest report says there has been “a serious deterioration in the quality of democracy under leader Narendra Modi, whose Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has presided over increased intolerance and sectarianism towards Muslims and other religious minorities” and that a failure to “crack down on the persecution of religious and other minorities by Hindu nationalists continues to weigh on India’s democracy score”.
To rise from the fringes of Indian politics to become the world’s biggest party has been a stunning achievement. But can Indian democracy flourish with a political behemoth like the BJP?
Source: India’s BJP: The rise of the world’s biggest political party
Young, single Indians make up the second-biggest market of dating app users globally – and it’s revolutionising how people think of love and marriage.
When Rohini Ramnathan’s husband passed away unexpectedly in 2017, the 37-year-old thought she’d never find love again.
But two years later, Ramnathan downloaded a dating app on her phone for the first time and started swiping on potential matches.
“My first impression was, ‘Wow, there are so many people and they’re all single’,” she says.
“And then I thought, ‘Wow, there are so many good-looking people’.”
Ramnathan, a radio presenter who lives in Mumbai, says dating apps have helped her to understand and explore “the casualness of dating” in India.
Source: From arranged matches to Tinder hook-ups: How the apps changed dating in India – ABC News
India has moved away from British to Israeli Justice of “collective punishment”
It looks all too eerily similar as a method: the expulsion of individuals from their home, the demolition of said home and the punishing of entire families. All excused by a harsh reading of local regulations. But this method, used by Israeli authorities for years against vulnerable Palestinians, has become a weapon of choice for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat.
Source: The brutality of “Bulldozer Justice” in India – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Over the weekend Indian authorities bulldozed several homes belonging to Muslims in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). The homeowners were alleged to have taken part in organised protests on Friday in response to inflammatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) made by the now ousted spokesperson for the country’s ruling-Hindu hardline BJP party. It is the latest provocation against India’s sizeable Muslim population, following a high-court decision in March in the southern Karnataka state to ban women wearing the hijab in schools and colleges.
Source: In Demolishing Muslim protestors’ homes, India is taking a Leaf from of Israel’s Book
India has leapfrogged China as the number one country of origin for foreign students in Victoria, as universities and student accommodation providers report a better-than-expected return of internationals arriving to study in Melbourne. People from India make up a quarter of the 96,300 international student visa holders currently in Victoria, followed by those from China on 19 per cent and Nepal on 7 per cent.
Source: India overtakes China as international students’ top country of origin
India is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and its transition to a low-carbon economy is crucial to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. But unfortunately, the nation is still clinging firmly to coal.
Epidemics are known for laying bare the hidden fault lines of societies. For many of us it may not come as much of a surprise that British colonial officers chose to let the Kumbh mela go ahead even at great cost to public health because it was politically convenient and sidestepped the possibility of having a rebellion on their hands. After three-quarters of a century of political independence, we see the democratically elected government of India, a country that prides itself on technological and financial progress, make a similarly crass political calculus, choosing to curry favor with Hindu nationalists at the expense of lives. Whether subjects or citizens, the public health of Indian people has too often been sacrificed for political gain.
Source: In India’s Covid Crisis, Echoes of a Colonial Past | Washington Monthly
And at least three of the Australians blocked from returning home on Saturday’s flight from New Delhi to Darwin, because they tested positive for COVID-19, have since tested negative for the virus. The two revelations raise serious questions about the medical screening process set up by Qantas and the federal government for the resumption of travel between India and Australia.
Source: Australians in India test negative after being blocked from returning home
From a lack of investment in public health care to mishandling vaccine production, Narendra Modi’s right-wing government has failed the Indian people during the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands are dead as a result.
Source: Blame Modi and the BJP for India’s COVID-19 Catastrophe
In the months leading up to the assembly elections in West Bengal, I began to realise that there was every chance that the state where I live, once a left stronghold, would soon be under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). The realisation came from talking to ordinary, working-class Bengalis. K, a man in his late 30s who had come to work for us, said tersely but firmly that he’d be voting BJP. The reason? “You need to throw out parties in power from time to time. It’s good for them.” He was invoking the Kerala model – in Kerala, voters periodically alternate between putting one of the two main parties in power. Electorates in all states – in fact, the whole country – would probably go Kerala’s way if they had a viable opposition to turn to.
When the Federal Government, brandishing its latest dog whistle, announced on Friday (30 April) that any Australian citizens attempting to flee India’s raging pandemic outbreak would face $66,000 fines and five-year gaol terms, both Australians and the international community reacted with disbelief.
Source: India latest front in Morrison Government’s war on Australians
Professor Mary-Louise McLaws, an infectious diseases expert at the University of New South Wales and member of the WHO’s COVID-19 team, said a Guardian analysis of data showed India had fewer cases per capita than either the United States or the United Kingdom during their COVID-19 peaks. She said the data suggested the ban for India was likely an “act out of fear” and said it should be reversed “to ensure there is no misconception the ban is in any way racist”. While other countries have suffered horrific virus surges, Australia’s response hasn’t been to put up an impenetrable wall. Here’s a quick look at what we’ve done instead.
Source: India travel ban: Australia hasn’t banned flights from any other country
The horrific COVID crisis in India isn’t just the result of rich countries’ criminal hoarding of vaccines and intellectual property — it’s the fault of Narendra Modi’s far-right government, which has prioritized private profits over public health.
Source: India Is In a Horrendous COVID Crisis. It’s Modi’s Fault.
Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised India’s handling of the second surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. These tweets, which are now inaccessible to Indian users of the social media website, include posts by Revanth Reddy, a sitting Member of Parliament; Moloy Ghatak, a West Bengal state minister; actor Vineet Kumar Singh; and two filmmakers, Vinod Kapri and Avinash Das.
Overwhelmed hospitals in India are begging for oxygen supplies as the country’s coronavirus infections soars again in a “tsunami” of disease, setting a world record for cases for the third consecutive day.
Source: In Delhi alone, COVID kills another Indian every 4 minutes
Rihanna Is Right About the Importance of India’s Massive Farmer Protests
The massive farmer protests in India are facing down a Modi government that has no qualms about using repression to push through its neoliberal agenda. The farmers’ resolve has been remarkable — and they’re providing a glimmer of hope that Modi’s far-right government may not be as invincible as it seemed just months ago.
Rihanna Is Right About the Importance of India’s Massive Farmer Protests
At least one person has died and more than 450 others have been hospitalised due to a mystery illness that has broken out in southeastern India. Indian health authorities are baffled by the reason behind why large numbers of residents in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh are collapsing and experiencing seizures and nausea. Widespread water contamination and COVID-19 have been ruled out as the cause.
Hundreds sick, one dead after unexplained illness breaks out in India
Other comparisons relate to the World Bank’s definition of poverty as the pronounced deprivation of well-being:
via Comparing Poverty in India and America May Surprise You | The Smirking Chimp
The Corona virus certainly doesn’t understand discrimination, but oppressive social and political structures governed by caste biases certainly add on to the multiple vulnerabilities of the marginalized communities in India. Caste is allotted at birth, it defines the role of a Hindu at birth, defining their social position irrespective of their acquired economic status. Caste is rigid to the extent that it can never be changed, even if a Hindu choses to convert to Islam or Christianity or any other religion, the Caste identity remains. Be it in choosing life partners, jobs or now in dealing with a global ‘pandemic’, where we cannot even spare the First Citizen of our country, Caste discrimination and atrocities seem like they are here to stay, irrespective of Corona.
The invoking of Religion in a Multicultural Democracy (ODT)
Indian citizenship has now been reduced to ‘us’ versus ‘them’
India at war wit 200 mill of it’s own Citizens (ODT)
via India’s Government Is Going to War Against Its Own People | The Smirking Chimp
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.