#Indian Mass Media

[insightfultake]

Indian Mass Media Lacks Credibility and Transparency

According to science, all living organisms thrive on others. One’s weakness becomes a source of success for others. It appears to be absolutely right in the case of mass media in India. Out of 1.4 billion people, 77.7% are literate. Being literate in India means one has to know how to write his or her name. In such a scenario, one-third of the population is illiterate, 80 crore people survive on government aid, which is popular in the name of ration, and huge unemployment could be understood by the fact that 38% of IITians are unemployed this year. The Indian mass media is capitalizing on these resources by doing gossiping in support of the government 24x7. The market size of the mass media industry combining electronic and print media will amount to a thousand billion Indian national rupees.

[blorbingqls]

I would like to add two movies that i loved for the Indian Queer Media context (i am a tamilian queer brought up in UP, India) :-

Cobalt Blue (its based on a book by Sachin Kundalkar) - available on netflix (not sure if its there for international audience)

Geeli Puchi (its a great exploration on caste and queer identity in India - part of an anthology called Ajeeb Daastaans) - also netflix

I don't think i have links for the same or else would have added - you can search on google and find it! (you may also need VPN tho)

The Absence of India in Discussions on Queer Asian Media

So, yesterday @lurkingshan tagged me in an ask she got from @impala124 about the absence of India when we're talking about queer Asian media. I was intially just going to reblog it with my thought, but as it kept growing I figured it'd be best to just make my own post. Please read the ask linked above first so this makes sense.

*cracks knuckles* this is going to be the most fun I've had writing a post in ages. (For a little background, I'm a queer Indian, born and raised)

So, this is a very interesting question on a subject I've been rotating in my head for the past several months. There's a lot of different variables that contribute to the noticeable lack of discussion on Indian and South Asian queer media in general, so I'm just going to talk through the ones I've noticed a little randomly.

Talking about Asian media in general, it's well known that the mass popularity of kpop and anime has contributed massively to the increase in popularity of Asian media. If you've been in the Asian media fandom for any amount of time at all, you'll have noticed that media from Korea, Japan, and China gets by far the most attention from international audiences; all East Asian countries. There may be several reasons for this, but in particular, it's no secret that the fetishization of East Asians is a massive proponent in the popularity of media from these countries, while there's no such interest in South Asians. If we shift our focus to queer media specifically, media from these three countries is still extremely popular, with the addition of Thailand and the Philippines to some extent; both South East Asian countries. From what I've seen, there's very little international interest in media from South Asian countries (although, if we're talking about India specifically, I can't exactly say anything. Bollywood has not been good lately). If we talk about queer South Asian media, the scope of interest falls even further. If you'll notice, MyDramaList, one of the most commonly used websites for finding and tracking Asian shows only allows for East and South-East Asian shows. So, that's one reason—there's just not much international interest in Indian media in general. As Shan said in the initial post, it's partially because of a difference in priorities. Korea is notorious for using media to gain global standing, the role of the 'soft power' of Thai bls in the recent bills for equal marriage in Thailand has been widely discussed, the list goes on. Could racism also play a part in the massive gulf of interest in media from East Asian versus South Asian countries? Probably. But I'm not going to get into that too much.

Moving on, there's obviously a massive lack of queer media in India. I think this is greatly exacerbated by the fact that it's very hard to support the people making queer media beyond buying and/or streaming their work. The majority of people engaging with Indian queer media are queer Indians, and a lot of us have to do so in secret because of the society we live in. This means that creators that have to push through several obstacles to publish their work often receive little incentive to continue doing so because of the lack of engagement. Because of the lack of media, international fans are less likely to become interested in queer Indian media, and the cycle continues.

I will say though, contrary to what Shan said, I think Indian media, particularly anything that came out post 2019 might actually be on the easier end of the spectrum when it comes to access. This may simply be bias, so forgive me if I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen, a lot of queer Indian shows are in fact available on streaming sites, and at most you'd need a vpn to access them. I think the two main things that actually hold back queer Indian media from becoming more popular are a lack of noise and it's relatively lower quality.

The main way we find out about new shows in this space is through either word of mouth (well actually, post) or because we follow production houses known for producing media. Because of the sparse nature of both the media and the consumers, there's very few people who learn enough about the media to want to give it a shot. For example, there's a film on netflix called Badhaai Do (hindi for Congratulate Us) that I've been meaning to watch for a while. It centers around a lavender marriage and I've heard a lot of good things about it, so I was slightly surprised to see that most of the people on tumblr I interact with who have been engaging with queer media for far longer than me had never heard of it. There's also a, Indian BL from 2017 called Romil and Jugal that I've written about before here, and I would've never learned of it's existence if not for a friend hearing about it from another friend of hers.

Because there's so little queer indian media, it's natural that the quality leaves much to be desired. The main issue is, because the queer asian media market has become so saturated lately people are becoming a lot more selective with what they watch, and for good reason. This means that queer media from india is simply unable to grow and improve over time, leaving it stagnant. Back in 2016-2018, the overall dearth of queer media from Asia meant that a lot of people were willing to watch shows that were average or even worse. Thailand particularly seems to have benefitted from this, being able to grow and evolve its queer media due to the successes of shows like SOTUS, 2gehter, TharnType and more even recently, KinnPorsche. Queer Indian media will have a much, much harder time with this because of all of the factors I've talked about and more, meaning that it is much harder for queer media to evolve. Honestly, though I haven't been able to watch/read much queer media from India, the stuff I have seen is really quite decent, it's just that it tends to fail in comparison to some of the brilliant stuff we're seeing from other countries. A while a ago, I bought four queer books by Indian authors, and of the three I've read so far, I'd genuinely recommend two, albeit one with quite a few reservations (I'll be writing about them sometime in the future, just haven't found the time yet). While talking about this with @neuroticbookworm, she brought up the excellent point of how Indian media in general has just been of fairly poor quality lately. It seems to me that a lot of it is catered to more conservative audiences, which results in people like me becoming disillusioned with Indian media and simply moving onto things from other countries. It has been a long time since I've watched anything worthwhile come out of Bollywood. So, it becomes even harder for queer Indian shows to be found at all; a majority of their target audience has already forsaken Indian media as a lost cause.

So, those are a bunch of reasons because of which there's not a lot of discussion about queer Indian media in fandom spaces like Tumblr. Something else I'd like to point out is, it's very hard for queer shows in India to gain much traction whatsoever. Live television slots are ruled by the infamous Indian serials, the majority of the audience being people in their late thirties and older, particularly women. And while homophobia is just as prevalent amongst the youth of India as it is amongst older generations, younger people are far more likely to be engaging with queer media, in India at least. This means that it would be near impossible for queer shows to air on live television the way they do in countries like Thailand and Japan. The majority of Indian youth use global streaming services to watch shows, hence the greater concentration of queer shows on service platforms. (Romil and Jugal is something of a dark horse here—I don't believe it was ever aired, but it was produced by a producer who has a few decently popular serials under her belt and is available on an Indian steaming service—another reason I'm determined to research how tf this show ever came into existence) If we talk of movies, the industry is limited by the iron fist of Bollywood, another reason it's very hard for queer movies to be produced and why they're generally found on streaming sites.

There's just not a lot of people who have the balls it would take to make a queer Indian show/movie and push it to the Indian public beyond a streaming service. I mean, we're all seeing what's happening with the Love in The Big City drama right now, and believe me, public backlash in India would be the same, if not much worse. And if no one in India is watching these shows, why would anyone in any other part of the world? There's barely any public figures that would be willing to participate in such a project, so queer media stays underground. Currently, Karan Johar is the most popular—and one of the only—out celebrities in Bollywood, and, well, he's treated as something of a laughing stock by the public. He has one or two queer adjacent shows under his belt as a producer, but once again, they're barely known and available only on Netflix. There was a movie called Dostana in which he played a straight guy pretending to be gay but, well, that speaks for itself. And well, I can't exactly blame him for it, knowing how the Indian entertainment industry is.

To talk a little more about the specific comparison between India and Korea, I think you're fairly accurate in saying that the two countries seem to be roughly on par in terms of homophobia, although that's an extremely vague statement that's rather hard to either prove or disprove. While the difference in international attention towards Korean and Indian media is certainly a major component of the difference in discussion about the queer media from these countries, there's obviously other things that go into it as well. There's this video I watched some time ago on the progression of queer representation in K-dramas that's quite well researched. It's an hour and a half long, so in case you don't have the time to watch it (though I do recommend it), it basically talks about some of the dramas with queer rep that have aired on Korean television and their impact. While it's hard to gauge the level of impact of these shows on the availability of bls and gls in Korea, they certainly had an effect, if only telling the queer population of Korea that they are seen and heard. To my knowledge (although I may be mistaken), no such queer rep has ever aired on Indian television, meaning that there's nothing to push creators to put queer media out there. There have been old movies and shows that depict queerness, but none of them ever reached the sort of the scale where they may have some sort of impact on the industry. As I mentioned earlier, the widespread popularity of K-dramas (and k-pop) does make it easier for creators to make queer media since there's a much higher chance of the shows being successful thanks to the international audience. Bringing back Love In The Big City, the success of the book abroad and the high probability of the show being well received internationally is probably one of the reasons it was able to be produced amongst domestic backlash.

Now, I've been talking a lot about how it's difficult for queer Indian media to gain any sort of international recognition with domestic attention. However, it's not necessarily the case. Here's where I start rambling (I say, as if this post isn't verging on 2k words). It's been proven that the presence of the international market allows for greater creative freedom in spaces beyond television. The best example comes from Korea's very own 'soft power'; K-pop. There's a K-pop group called Dreamcatcher that debuted in 2017 with a rock sound and horror concept that was extremely rare in kpop at the time. They succeeded mainly by focusing most of their promotions to the foreign market, knowing that their concept would not be well liked in Korea. And they succeeded. Today, Dreamcatcher has a sizeable fandom and has even been growing in popularity in Korea, with the Korean public warming up to their genre and having influenced other girl groups to try out similar sounds. We've already talked about the lack of international attention for Indian media, but there's also the issue that the producers of queer Indian media aren't marketing to foreign audiences, which remain ignorant.

That's all I have, this is so long good lord. All in all, there's a bunch of factors that feed into each other creating a cycle which means that, unless there's a break somewhere, queer Indian media will remain unrecognized. I'm excited to see what other people have to say, because this is a topic close to my heart and I'd definitely enjoy seeing more discussions around it.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Yemen’s armed forces threatened on 22 April to expand military operations against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea, Arab Sea, and Indian Ocean following the discovery of mass graves in Gaza’s Nasser Medical Complex. “For the seventh month in a row, the genocidal crimes of the Israeli enemy continue, the latest of which is the brutal massacre in the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis,” the armed forces said via a statement on Yemen’s Al-Masirah channel. The statement continued, “the genocidal crimes that the Palestinian people are facing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank reflect an unparalleled level of Zionist hatred and crime.” The statement by Yemen called to “escalate their operations in the Red Sea,” adding that Sanaa continues its full support for the people of Gaza. On Sunday, over 200 bodies were found across two mass graves located in Khan Yunis’ Nasser Medical Complex. Gaza’s Government Media Office announced that about 700 victims are expected to be found. “We found in the Nasser Complex corpses without heads and bodies without skins, and some of them had their organs stolen,” the media office said. “The occupation executed dozens of displaced, wounded, sick, and medical staff.”

[timetravellingkitty]

KASHMIR MASTERLIST

Background

History of Kashmir from 250 BC to 1947 [to understand Kashmir's multi religious history and how we got to 1947]

Broad timeline of events from 1947 to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution in 2019 (BBC) [yes, BBC. hang on just this once]

Human Rights Watch report based on a visit to Indian controlled Kashmir in 1998 [has a summary, background, human rights abuses and recommendations]

Another concise summary of the issue

Sites to check out

Kashmir Action - news and readings

The Kashmiriyat - independent news site about ongoings in Kashmir

FreePressKashmir - same thing as previous

Kashmir Law and Justice Project - analysis of international law as it applies to Kashmir

Stand with Kashmir - awareness, run by diaspora Kashmiris (both Pandit and Muslim)

These two for more readings and resources on Kashmir: note that the petitions and donation links are from 2019 and also has explainers on the background (x) (x)

To read

Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? - about women in the Kashmiri resistance movement and the 1991 mass rape of Kashmiri women in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora by Indian armed forces

Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir - a compliation of writings about the lives of Kashmiris under Indian domination

Colonizing Kashmir: State Building under Indian Occupation - how Kashmir was made "integral" to the Indian state and examines state-building policies (excerpt)

Resisting Occupation in Kashmir - about the social and legal dimensions of India's occupation

On India's scapegoating of Kashmiri Pandits, both by Kashmiri Pandits (x) (x)

Of Gardens and Graves - translations of Kashmiri poems

Social media

kashiirkoor

museumofkashmir

kashmirpopart

posh_baahar

readingkashmir

standwithkashmir and their backup account standwithkashmir2 (main account is banned in India wonder why)

kashmirlawjustice

kashmirawareness

jammugenocide (awareness about the 1947 genocide abetted by Maharaja Hari Singh and the RSS)

To watch

Jashn-e-Azadi: How We Celebrate Freedom parts 1 and 2 - a documentary about the Kashmiri freedom struggle (filmed by a Kashmiri Pandit)

Paradise Lost - BBC documentary about how India and Pakistan's dispute over the valley has affected the people

Kashmir - Valley of Tears - the exhaustion with the conflict in the post nineties

In the Shade of Fallen Chinar - art as a form of Kashmiri resistance

Human rights violations (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Land theft and dispossession (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

A note: I know annoying Desis are going to see this and go "Oh but Kashmir is Pakistan's because-" and "Kashmir is an integral part of India because-". I must make my stance clear: Kashmir belongs to the Kashmiris, the natives, no matter what religion they belong to. Neither Pakistan nor India get to decide the matter of Kashmiri sovereignty. The reasons given by both parties as to why Kashmir should be a part of either nation are bullshit. The United Nations itself recognises Kashmir as a disputed region, so I will not entertain dumbfuckery. I highly encourage fellow Indians especially to take the time to go through and properly understand the violence the government enacts on Kashmiris. I've also included links to learn more about Kashmiri culture because really, what do the rest of us know about it? Culturally and linguistically Kashmir differs so much from the rest of India and Pakistan (also the amount of fetishization of Kashmiri women...yikes). This is not just a bilateral issue between these two nations over land, this actually affects the people of Kashmir. And if you're still here, thank you for reading

[odinsblog]

Henry Kissinger's victims:

3 million + Vietnamese

2.5 million + Cambodians

200,000+ Laotians

3 million + Bangladeshis

10,000+ Indians

10,000+ Pakistanis

15,000+ Egyptians

3500+ Syrians

6500+ Cypriots

40,000+ Chileans

30,000+ Argentinians

10,000+ Zimbabweans

60,000+ Mozambiqueans

900,000+ Angolans

11,000+ Guinea Bisseauans

300,000+ East Timorians

1,000,000+ Indonesians

20,000+ Western Saharans

1,100,000+ Iraqis

and so so many more

“…it is very possible that Henry Kissinger has played a role in the mass murder of more people than anyone else in human history.”

Henry Kissinger was a vile, evil man through and through. And while good people are justifiably rejoicing at his long overdue death, please never forget that his evil brand of warmongering, unending “defensive” wars, and colonialism lives on in far too many media pundits, Hollywood + media influencers, and powerful politicians.

Kissinger is dead, but his cruel, cold-blooded, sadistic brand of militarism still lives on, and that is what we must bring an end to.

[fatehbaz]

Woah. Not exaggerating: The very same week you tagged me here, I was submitting a final draft paper about spectacle and British use of animal imagery and caricatures of South Asian resistance, especially on stages and in "ethnographic" exhibitions. Part of this involved the weaponization of spectacle, media, and public display. And part of this involved British imagination of "exotic" animals. And the article shown here kinda invokes both of those subjects.

That afternoon, I had been reading through a 2012 article with new-to-me info about the staging of theatre-esque mass trials/executions of Thugee by British administrators 1820s-1850s. (More on that below.)

In the pictured article/link shown here, similarly, Shanahan describes fig trees and mass hangings of Indian rebels. He lists about a dozen instances of when British authorities used fig trees to perform quasi-ritualized mass executions between 1806 and 1871.

Among them, he notes two in particular:

1857, hanging 144 rebels from a single tree in Nanaro Park at Kanpur (Shanahan cites a T!mes of !nd!a article, which itself cites a history department professor at Christ Church College)

March 1860, hanging 257 rebels from a single tree in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, in retaliation for their revolt in May/June 1857, when rallying under Khan Bahadur Khan (Shanahan again cites T!mes of !nd!a, who cite an ancient history and culture professor at Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University)

---

The same afternoon you tagged me, I was straight-up reading:

Maire ni Fhlathuin, "Staging Criminality and Colonial Authority: The Execution of Thug Criminals in British India." Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Volume 37, Issue 1, October 2012.

She "examines the staging and response to the public executions of thugs, focusing on the British authorities' 'scripting' of the execution ritual (as documented in East India Company records and the writings of the officials involved) to include [...] the crowd's appreciation of the eradication of that criminality."

---

British animalization and/or dehumanization in depictions of South Asia, what they both call "interspecies/multispecies empire," more directly explored by Rohan Deb Roy (insects/bugs in India) and Jonathan Saha (elephants/cattle in Burma). But another thing I had been referencing in my own little paper was British fixation on re-enacting the defeat of Indian rebels, which you might especially notice in stage plays about Tipu Sultan (the "Tiger of Mysore" beaten by "the British bulldog," defeated in 1799, who became the central villain/character of multiple spectacular and popular plays in London from 1790s-1830s, to such an extent that British schoolchildren decades later would still understand references to villianous "Tipu"; and historian Daniel O'Quinn, who's written much about British popular discourses about crises in the Age of Revolutions, called the plays comparable to "precinema"; after his defeat, the East India Company could secure sandalwood resources and perform sweeping cartographic surveys for land/revenue administration). Probably worth noting nineteenth-century Britain played host to the explosion of newly-affordable mass-market print media of all kinds; recalcitrant South Asian rebels show up in stage, sportsmen's magazines, travel literature genre, novels, etc.

On the subject of weaponizing newly-emergent media, the author linked/pictured here (Shanahan) too, also lists in his bibliography:

Sean Willcock. "Aesthetic Bodies: Posing on Sites of Violence in India, 1857-1900." History of Photography, Volume 39 (2015), Issue 2, pages 142-159.

Abstract includes: "This article looks at how aesthetic concerns inflected the dynamic of imperial relations during the 1857 Indian Uprising and its aftermath. The invention of photography inaugurated a period in which aesthetic imperatives increasingly came to structure the engagement of colonial bodies with the traumas of warfare in British India. The formal conventions of image-making practices were not consigned to a discreet virtual sphere; they were channelled into the contested terrains of the subcontinent through the poses that figures were striking for the camera. I trace how one pictorial convention - picturesque staffage - had the capacity to engender politically and psychologically disruptive tableaus on the contested terrains of empire, as colonial photographers arranged for Indian figures to pose on landscapes that were marked by disturbing wartime violence."

---

And finally, another of his citations includes:

Kim A Wagner. "'Calculated to Strike Terror': The Amritsar Massacre and the Spectacle of Colonial Violence." Past & Present, Volume 233, Issue 1, November 2016, pages 185-225.

And in her article, Wagner describes:

"Closely following the ritual model provided by judiciary practices in the imperial homeland, the British in India nevertheless favoured hanging [...] Controlling the symbolism of public executions, however, proved increasingly difficult within a colonial context, and the hanging of hundreds of highway robbers known as Thugs during the 1830s had fully exposed the porous nature of colonial rituals of power. The Thugs signally failed to conform [...]. [T]hey [...] climbed the scaffold and [...] tightened the noose around their own neck and then simply stepped off the platform [...]. As regiment after regiment broke out in mutiny across northern India during the summer of 1857, [...] the colonial state thus unleashed its entire arsenal of exemplary violence. [...] [A]nd it was in that context that the first mass execution of forty sepoys by cannon had been ordered in Peshawar on 13 June 1857 [...]. This was only the first of many such mass executions [...]. A contemporary British newspaper report elaborated on the cultural specificity of the ritual enacted in Peshawar: You must know that this is nearly the only form in which death has any terrors for a native … he knows that his body will be blown into a thousand pieces, and that it will be altogether impossible for his relatives, however devoted to him, to be sure of picking up all the fragments of his own particular body [...]. Execution by cannon could thus be presented as both justified and civilized or, as Lord Roberts put it, ‘Awe inspiring, certainly, but probably the most humane, as being a sure and instantaneous mode of execution’. [...] In the House of Commons, Lord Stanley expressed this sentiment in no uncertain terms: ‘Only by great exertions - by the employment of force, by making striking examples, and inspiring terror, could Sir J. Lawrence save the Punjab; and if the Punjab had been lost the whole of India would for the time have been lost with it’.

---

I do kinda wonder if, sometimes, contemporary people, today, might think: "Well, maybe we're unfairly retroactively ascribing motivations of malice to nineteenth-century imperial administrators. And even if they were sometimes spiteful or horrifically violent to that extent, surely they probably exercised discretion; they couldn't have been too explicit." But then you read about them performing executions by shooting cannonballs at groups of people. Or you read the words of major popular, industrial, or political figures casually describing this kind of thing when speaking directly to the public, the newspapers, or the House of Commons (you can read plenty more scary, explicit comments like this from other officials and administrators in all kinds of institutions).

As Shanahan describes here in "Trees of life that became agents of death," British administrators (and media in the metropole, too) whether deliberately or otherwise, manipulated or employed animals and plants in the popular conciousness; whole bunch of writing elsewhere about British fixation on "man-eating" tigers, lions, crocodiles, mosquitoes, flies, etc., and appropriating creatures (like appropriating fig trees in Shanahan's reading). Or idealization of the same and other creatures, like celebrating rubber, sugarcane, elephants, etc. Dovetails with long history of picturing and/or harnessing "tropical nature" in US, British, and European imaginaries.

[rotzaprachim]

one of the things that’s so grotesque is like, never in my life have I ever felt people en masse really cared very much about Jews or wanted us to be safe, and that includes Israelis. They don’t care about us but we can be used to justify so so much mass death on people who never hurt us at all. I spent four years living in a horrific Antisemitism Country, a now “neutral” Western European power which killed Jews, expelled jews, banned Jews for hundreds of years. There were large Eastern European and middle eastern diasporas there and I was almost always the First Jew anyone had ever met - or that had admitted to being Jewish. People regularly assumed jews controlled the world media. I got harassed for - yes- the idea of Zionist infiltration, for being one of the evil Zionists people knew controlled the world. One time I left shule with a friend who had forgotten to take his kippah off and a group of drunks coming out of a bar physically shook us as we walked by. To get to Jewish events I walked over the literally former “Jewry” where Jews had lived in the medieval era but were expelled and which had me ember been rebuilt or returned to Jews. When I was in university the most famous fascist family in the country donated money to one of the most famous universities in the country in order to have a building named after their fascist family name and people agreed to it! In university someone gave off a long Hitler impersonation at a general event and the manager of the event refused to end it or call him out. We always always looked over our shoulders. My friends who were Israelis, who came from Iraqi and Indian and Persian Jewish families, described racial and ethnic harassment that occured to them all the time from people who saw Brown people and decided it was time for racism. Even Ashkenazi Israelis I knew were harassed for being Too middle eastern, too foreign, their language Hebrew too strange. We just lived with it all. relatively speaking this is small stuff. *minor.* it’s not like what’s happening in Gaza and it never will be. But what it was was years of accumulated pain, and the understanding that the country did not love us and was unwilling to do much but the bare minimum to let us live. And then three weeks ago the leader of that country got up and declared support for the state of Israel because of his support for the Jews. And he’s stood by that. He’s stood supporting the state of Israel as they’ve killed over seven thousand people, including thousands of children. My safety wasn’t important enough when I lived in *their* country to be much worth doing anything about, anything that might slice into the rind of how awful and alienating and antisemitic that culture was, but it’s also important enough to be worth the violent murder of thousands of children. NO ONE EVER FUCKING ASKED ME WHAT WOULD MAKE ME SAFE, BUT THEY DID DECIDE THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN NEEDED TO DIE, and they decided they needed to put my name to it. I’ve gotten to watch world leaders pull off a “the people of yisrael live” over and over again these last three years ago to justify arming a right wing dictator I never voted for in a country I never set foot on kill thousands and thousands of people. And I’ve gotten to see the hordes screaming for my death in response. Because it’s in our name and we asked for it and after all we do run everything. I’ve yet to get the feeling that western powers like Israelis all that much. The coverage really isn’t like us and uk based terror attacks. But they certainly don’t like Jews at all. No one cares about Jewish lives but they can collectively be used to justify non stop murder of a civilian population. The leader of that country I lived in will support all this forever. There’s no horror greater than that.

[ramayantika]

as a dancer yourself, how do you think the stigma against male dancers which makes them labelled "gay" and female dancers which makes them labelled "prostitutes", can be dispersed?

This is something which even I think of and to be honest I do not have a good definite answer.

But, firstly, people need to be educated on the cultural history. History books mention about wars, dynasties and politics. There are very vague and meagre mentions of india's cultural history especially of the performing arts.

When I see the young masses talking about hindu culture and worship, the same barely know how many classical dance forms are there in India.

Exposure of the general audience to indian music and dance shows will actually help. I believe that the new gen dancers and some veteran dancers too have actually begun conversations about the history of dance, especially about female performers and their role in shaping the performing arts of india. Those need to be popularized especially through social media, because our generation uses a lot of it, so why not support viewership of the classical dance forms? That way even male classical dancers can be seen by non dancer males.

We have watched DID and other dance reality shows. Not everybody has enrolled in a dance class (neither western nor indian) but somehow we still accept western dance forms easily especially by males but sadly there isn't enough recognition for male classical artists. People talk about bharatiya sanskriti and sabhyata, will talk (and romanticize) wearing outfits from the vedic period, but will swiftly call the male dancer slurs even though he is portraying shiva and parvati.

When dance and music forms an integral part of indian culture, it is disappointing to see the general indian society be alienated from it. They are aware of it only through Bollywood which now does a shit job at portraying indian dance forms (folk dance is rarely seen. Folk is well another topic)

A good starting point would be to first read about it or watch classical dance shows and productions. Many of them are available on YouTube for free.

No one's asking to start learning dance and music, but if you can appreciate contestants on other dance reality shows with no knowledge of hip-hop, contemporary dance etc , then certainly you can also begin with indian dances.

I also need to add that good changes are happening. They are slow, but I am seeing appreciation for male dancers too. The stigma exists but the essential conversation about gender roles and art is taking place. It will take time, but it is happening.

As for female dancers well.... I do wonder when will the sexualization of the dancing body stop. Sensuality has been celebrated in India from a very long time, and there is a thin line between sensuality and vulgarity. Sadly, we as a society see sensuality as something impure.

A woman who is free and in control of her sexuality and sensuality must be tamed, turned demure and controlled. That is the general view. She is attractive, desirable but then when won/conquered/possessed must be tamed. The dancer too I think is seen as the same.

Stigma and stereotypes never completely break. But like I said previously, dialogue and debate is needed. Conversations need to happen. Female dancers too need to speak up and be vocal about it, about our history of women performers, because all of this exists due to them.

This was a long answer and I don't really have a definite solution(s) but I hope I could provide a few insights.

Also thanks for the question, I was writing in my journal about my dancing experience and the male gaze, I kinda vented it a little here too.

[girlactionfigure]

🟡 ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

Morning Report - Tuesday

▪️A HERO SOLDIER HAS FALLEN.. Yehuda Geto, 20, from Pardes Hana-Karkur, fell in battle in Tulkarm, Samaria.  May his family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem, and may G-d avenge his blood!

.. a bomb exploded on a Panther APC that stopped and unloaded in Nur al Shams, Tulkarm.  There was the driver and a commander from the Duvdvan unit in the vehicle, the rest of the fighters unloaded before the explosion.  The Panther was parked in an area where there was no fear of explosives (that is, there was no intelligence information about suspected explosives) and therefore the road was not scrapped by a D9.  The driver was killed and the commander was seriously injured.

▪️GERMAN PAPER SAYS - WAR WITH LEBANON IN 2 WEEKS.. According to its sources, the German newspaper "Bild" (the most widely read newspaper in Germany) reports that Israel will launch a full-scale war against Hezbollah in the second half of July if Hezbollah does not cease its attacks.  (( I always rely on foreign media for knowing when a war will start. ))

▪️US QUIETLY THREATENS.. The US military released photos of the Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group together with the USS Wasp amphibious attack ship and the British Navy ship HMS Duncan in the waters of the Mediterranean.

.. Related: Houthis threaten to attack US carrier strike group coming to replace the Eisenhower in the Red Sea / Gulf of Aden area.  "Any aircraft carrier that enters the Red Sea will become our main target.”

▪️TEL AVIV RELIGIOUS CONTRAVERSY.. The Municipality of Tel Aviv responded negatively to the request of the Hotam organization to hold a segregated outdoor prayer on Rosh Chodesh (the new Jewish month) in the exact same place where Israeli-Arab Muslims were permitted for an outdoor segregated prayer session.  

▪️PEACE POLITICS.. MK Ayman Odeh, chairman of Israeli-Arab party Hadash Ta’al: "the peace camp is waking up and calling with all its might to stop the war immediately."  (( Nobody wants war, but we want our children burned to death and women raped to death less. As long as the enemy is committed to slaughtering us and trying to do so, peace is not an option. ))

▪️US ARMS DELAYS - AGAIN.. Israel submitted a request to the Americans to purchase combat helicopters, but the administration is delaying the request.  

▪️DRUG DANGER.. wave of hospitalizations: young people seriously injured with 1 death by using fake vapes that pretend to contain cannabis but in fact contain dangerous synthetic drug "nice guy" synthetic cannabinoids.  Symptoms: convulsions and agitation.   These fake vapes are sold in Israel mainly through Telegram and are illegal. They are packed in colorful packages impersonating well-known brands. False claims such as "contains 78.5% THC" and "Made in the Netherlands" appear on the packaging.

▪️ISRAELI AID.. Electricity returns to Gaza: operation of a sewage and water desalination plant "directly from Israeli electricity”.

▪️HIGH COURT HEARING TO REQUIRE MEDICAL TREATMENT IN ISRAEL FOR GAZANS.. Yesterday at the hearing on the introduction of a population that supports terrorism and is holding our hostages into medical treatment in Israel, the audience in the courtroom shouted ‘shame! shame!’ The judges shifted uncomfortably.

♦️IDF firing artillery shelling in Nuserat.

⭕ HOUTHI MASS SHIP ATTACK CLAIM.. The Houthis claim to have attacked four ships associated with the US, UK and Israel - in the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.  No confirming reports, particularly about the Mediterranean.

[insightfultake]

Indian Mass Media Lacks Credibility and Transparency

According to science, all living organisms thrive on others. One’s weakness becomes a source of success for others. It appears to be absolutely right in the case of mass media in India. Out of 1.4 billion people, 77.7% are literate. Being literate in India means one has to know how to write his or her name. In such a scenario, one-third of the population is illiterate, 80 crore people survive on government aid, which is popular in the name of ration, and huge unemployment could be understood by the fact that 38% of IITians are unemployed this year. The Indian mass media is capitalizing on these resources by doing gossiping in support of the government 24x7. The market size of the mass media industry combining electronic and print media will amount to a thousand billion Indian national rupees....read more

[tamlindudley]

I am going to "Indian" up the Palestine genocide coz by god, majority of the people in India do NOT get it. And it feels like there is so much false and especially Islamophobic propaganda pushed to the masses, it makes my blood boil.

Israel = Occupier & Palestine = Occupied. What does this mean? It means like how British came to India and occupied our land, Israel is occupying Palestine. Palestine was a colony of British in 1917 but after WW2, British backed out of Palestine just like it did with India. We were lucky that we didn't have multiple occupying forces colonizing us. Palestinians weren't so lucky. When British left in 1948, it went from one colonizer to another. The Zionists who came from Europe swooped in like vultures and named the place Israel and has been masquerading as a country. And just like we fought for our freedom, Palestinians are STILL fighting for their freedom.

This is not a religious issue, this is a land issue. The actual issue isn't about Jew and Muslim hatred. It just so happens that Muslims are the majority in Palestine. Its like how our majority is Hindus and we have BC, OBC etc. Palestine majority is Muslim but there are Christians and Jews too. And before the Zionist intervention they all resided together harmoniously. But the Zionists love to push the religion angle and make it sound like a religious conflict for their own benefit. Because if people think it's a religious conflict, they will hesitate to speak out. But dear fellow desis, I swear, it's okay to support Palestinians even if you are Hindu, Sikh, Jain or any other non-Abrahamic faith you follow. Because this isn't about supporting Muslims, this is about supporting people who are colonized.

India does NOT support Israel. OK listen, I know what the internet looks like. But India's official stance is in support of Palestine. It always has been. Granted, under the current government, it doesn't look like it but just google it up. India was the first non-Arab country to come in support of Palestine back in 1974. Don't let media confuse you about this. Learn about this. Talk about this. Show your support. We got our independence in 1947. They are still fighting. Getting killed in masses. We are literally the most populous nation in the world and our support has not been loud enough. I beg you, as a fellow Indian, use your voices and support Palestine.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Up to 10 informants managed by the FBI were embedded in anti-pipeline resistance camps near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation at the height of mass protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The new details about federal law enforcement surveillance of an Indigenous environmental movement were released as part of a legal fight between North Dakota and the federal government over who should pay for policing the pipeline fight. Until now, the existence of only one other federal informant in the camps had been confirmed.  The FBI also regularly sent agents wearing civilian clothing into the camps, one former agent told Grist in an interview. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, operated undercover narcotics officers out of the reservation’s Prairie Knights Casino, where many pipeline opponents rented rooms, according to one of the depositions.  The operations were part of a wider surveillance strategy that included drones, social media monitoring, and radio eavesdropping by an array of state, local, and federal agencies, according to attorneys’ interviews with law enforcement.

[timetravellingkitty]

But isn't the military occupancy to keep militancy under control?

whatever reasons aside, there really is no justification for torturing and raping kashmiris and shutting down social media in the state (do read up on the mass rapes of women in the kunan and poshpora villages in 1991. february 23 has since then been labelled kashmiri women's resistance day. report about the use of torture in kashmir by the caravan)

also the instrument of accession was signed by an immensely unpopular ruler. maharaja hari singh was a dogra rajput he wasn't even kashmiri. like, this is the same guy who abetted the 1947 jammu massacres (this one is actually not nearly talked about as much). kashmiri muslims overwhelmingly disliked him

besides, kashmiri separatism and the groups that adopt its ideology came around because of indian domination and because there was no plebiscite held to call for kashmir joining either india or pakistan. the jklf and its leaders have stated that they want an independent, secular kashmir free from both india and pakistan. yasin malik himself refers to pakistan as an occupation power

[livelaughlovechai]

I saw that video of tucker carlson or wtv the fuck his name was and some other random bitch saying that the british “civilised“ india and made us what we are today like honey did you guys skip history or what the indus valley was there before yall’s ancestors could wear clothes and if india wasnt here say goodbye to half ur hygiene and development including this dear social media u luv sm

I have actually never loved being indian more now then ever when south asian hate is at its highest. Anyways stay safe and keep on jamming to marana mass and zinda banda/vandha edam bye ty lysm💋💋💋

[ravensvirginity]

I won't lie, even as an atheist i am always completely confused by antisemitism in superhero fandoms. We most definetly wouldn't have modern superhero media without jewish men, while they were not perfect (it was the 40s-60s afterall, alot of stuff related to women and characters of color didn't age greatly), these days they make so much of modern pop-culture...it'd propably help if the movies (mainly Marvel) would stop ignoring characters jewish identity (Fantastic Four and X-men movies by Fox), toning them down as much as possible (Moon Knight) or christian-washing them (Scarlet Witch).

yeah, Jewish men literally made the comic book industry but of course their legacy hasn't really been honored. Modern comics in general are so soulless and any Jewish rep is there just to tick a box, at least in my opinion. Like in the Teen Titans Christmas special this year when they had a shot of the Tower decked out in Christmas decorations and then they had 2 tiny Hanukkah banners there just for no reason. Like why are they there?? As far as the comic presents, none of the Titans are Jewish, and the decorations didn't feel like a real Hanukkah decoration at all. It was just a diversity tick with no thought put into it.

I definitely agree that I wish comics would stop ignoring Jewish identity, and it would be great if there were just more Jewish characters in general. And if they do a Hanukkah special or whatever it would be awesome if they hired someone Jewish to write it.

Raven I think is an interesting example of comics being created by Jews - Marv Wolfman is Jewish, and though Raven is primarily Indian coded (mostly in an 80s cultural appropriation way, but I digress) she's also got some things about her that feel Jewish. Arella is an unconventional spelling of a Jewish name (Erela) and Rachel Roth (tho Wolfman isn't the one who gave her that name) is incredibly Jewish.

In the 80s comics Wolfman wrote, Arella's religion before coming to Azarath is unclear. Her birth name isn't Arella, but we don't know what it is beyond that. Raven is a character with a very strong conviction in her fictional, but very non Christian religion. In a way, she's both an antichrist and a Christ allegory (she dies for Trigon's sins, and is resurrected purified of evil to destroy him). She's just a mix of so many different things, and while I do think some of it could be more ironed out (like making her actually Indian instead of a white woman who's very clearly been inspired by Indian culture) I think for the most part these elements work together.

20 years later, Raven gets a reboot, and much of this is gone. Arella's birth name is Angela, and it's now canon that she joined a demonic cult to escape her Christian family. Raven still has a connection to Azarath, but this gets less and less prominent and in the current run, it's completely gone.

I think that even though the cult of Azar is not a real religion, so it's not like anyone was being represented by it, it's very frustrating that they got rid of it in favor of making Raven vaguely culturally Christian (and even outright Christian in the 2018 live action show). Christian homogeny comes for literally everything, even this comic book character's fictional religion that was once a central part of her character.

The weirdest part is Marv Wolfman's modern Raven solos only further reinforce her new Christian backstory, having her stay with her very Christian aunt's family and even having a storyline about pushing her to go to Mass on Christmas, despite him being Jewish himself. It's unclear how much of this was his own writing choices and how much was an editorial mandate, but it's weird.

This got kind of rambley but my main point is modern DC flattens out it's characters to insane degrees, and that includes things like unique religious practices, fictional and real. Everyone is just vaguely culturally Christian with no further thought given to what makes sense for the character, and any religious diversity (in the comics I have read) is almost entirely there just to tick a box with no real thought or depth put in.

[claudz-vision]

Ireland is Committing Genocide Against Itself

The obsession of the Irish government with falsely accusing Israel of genocide is only equaled by its determination to commit an actual genocide against the Irish people.

In its latest move, the Irish government has called for watering down the definition of genocide to be able to apply it to the Jewish State, but there is no need to water down the formal definition, the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, to charge Ireland’s government with ‘self-genocide’ or ‘autogenocide’ against its own people.

In the last 20 years, Ireland, a small nation of millions, has been overwhelmed by a mass migration of 1.6 million people. In 2023, there were 54,678 births in the Republic of Ireland and 141,600 immigrants. Birth rates dropped 5% in 2023 (hovering at 1.5 births per woman well below replacement rate) but the number of immigrants grew by 31%. And will grow further.

The most popular name for boys was Jack, among Irish parents, while the most popular name among non-European immigrant parents was ‘Mohammed’.

Churches are closing across Ireland and mosques are opening in their place. There were only 400 Muslims in all of Ireland in 1991. That shot up to 19,000 in 2002 and 83,000 in 2023. 3% of Ireland’s children are Muslim now and the numbers are increasing every year.

Some Muslims are impatient with those numbers and have been trying to hurry them along.

In November, an Algerian Arab began stabbing children outside a Catholic school in Dublin. A five and six-year-old girl suffered severe injuries. When a crowd gathered to protest the latest act of Muslim violence, a ruthless police and media crackdown quickly ensued.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the son of an Indian father, scolded that the Irish protesters had “brought shame on Dublin, brought shame on Ireland and brought shame on their families and themselves.” No shame was brought on those who had allowed Riad Bouchaker and a legion of foreign invaders like him to occupy Ireland, slaughter and displace the native population.

Media accounts emphasized that the Algerian Muslim stabber, Bouchaker, who needed an Arabic translator in court, was really an “Irish citizen” and condemned bigotry against him.

No mention was made in the media that Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire, the Catholic school attended by the children, was four blocks away from the ‘Dublin Mosque’ and the headquarters of the ‘Islamic Foundation of Ireland’ which had formerly been the Donore Presbyterian Church.

And no questions were asked about what this proximity to the largest mosque in the city might have had to the attack. Such questions, according to the government, are “disinformation”.

Bouchaker was only doing to Ireland’s children what the Dublin Mosque had done to a church.

One cannot fault the current Irish government for its Jihad over Israel. It’s really treating the Jews no worse than it treats the Irish. And if it expects Israel to lie down and die rather than stand up to Islamic terrorists that is the exact expectation that it (and not just it) has for Ireland.

And perhaps the Irish government is jealous that the Israelis refuse to follow in its footsteps.

The modern rebirths of Israel and Ireland were linked by common rebellions against British rule. Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel is the grandson of the Chief Rabbi of Ireland. His father, Chaim Herzog, Israel’s sixth president, was born in Belfast. His grandfather, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was both an enthusiastic Irish nationalist and Zionist. Rabbi Herzog became known as the ‘Sinn Fein Rabbi’ despite Sinn Fein being founded by Arthur Griffith who hated the fairly small Jewish community in Ireland so much that he had cheered on the Limerick pogrom.

The ideological heirs of those who prided themselves on driving the Jews out of Limerick have welcomed in Limerick’s multiple mosques. Muslims are now the second largest religion in Limerick. And history shows it will only be a matter of time until the second will become the first.

Israel and Ireland as modern states arose from 19th century nationalist movements seeking to restore the glorious past of diaspora peoples. Animated by writers, artists, linguists and poets determined to revive what many saw as dead languages and the dead past, Zionism and Celtic nationalism seemed to have much in common. But the outcomes have been very different.

Half the Jewish diaspora lives in Israel while the vast majority of the Irish diaspora still lives abroad. Israel is a technological pioneer while Ireland serves as a Big Tech tax shelter. Israel has fought and won wars against Muslim invaders while Ireland shamefully kneels to them.

The revival of Israel is an object of pride to Jews around the world, but Ireland remains little more than a tourist stop with little about its state to take pride in as a modern day nation.

And most damningly, Israel’s birth rate is double that of the Irish birth rate.

Israel could very easily have ended up like Ireland: a kleptocracy run by crooked club socialists doling out just enough social welfare to keep the population voting for them, a cafe cultural establishment whose literary and linguistic experiments had soured into a club of worthless worthies, and plenty of history for scholars to look back on but no future to look forward to.

And if the Israelis hadn’t spent the last century fighting for their lives, maybe it would have.

If Israel had been living next door to some dying socialist republics with nothing to aspire to beyond wrangling about their share of EU subsidies, maybe it would have also become a failed experiment with Labor and Likud as its Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, Amos Oz as its Joyce, and people who don’t bother with the national language, but just want to move to Europe.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) the Jews were cursed or blessed with their enemies.

Mediocre decline was never an option for Israel. More than the Jews, it is their enemies who will not allow Zionism to die out. And so Israel is in yet another war for the Irish government to deplore. The Irish were allowed to stop fighting while the Jews can never have any respite.

And so paradoxically they can also never die out.

The Jews and the Irish are both a little mad, self-destructive and prone to endless infighting. We ought to understand each other better, but true to form we do not when we most need to.

Israel is what the Irish nationalists once dreamed of before they became small petty men.

The poet warriors who go off to die for their homeland are not historical figures in Israel, they are friends and neighbors. Everyday life is a struggle for survival against enemies out to kill you. Each child born is a triumph. Keeping a shop going while serving in the war is heroic. And so everyone takes a break from the infighting and pulls together because life means something.

Ireland once had that. It no longer does. And by the time it does again, it may be too late.

Where the Irish government allows Arab Muslim invaders to murder their children, the Israelis refuse. The Irish government calls this genocide: the Israelis call it survival. The Irish nationalists have sold out their homeland and their people, and resent those who won’t.

A generation hence the Israelis will have sons in their homeland while the sons of Ireland will be everywhere but in Dublin, mourning a homeland lost once again to foreign invaders and traitors.

Ireland is facing its own genocide. And few dare to talk about it. In Ireland, hating the Jews is safe, but opposing Muslims is a crime. Israel is not Ireland’s problem: instead it ought to be Ireland’s model. And yet accuse Israel of genocide and you’re a national treasure, but accuse the Irish government of genocide and you’ll face smear campaigns and criminal charges.

There’s a genocide problem in Ireland. The blood of Irish children stains a nation. Israel’s worst enemies are outside it, but Ireland’s worst enemies are inside its own government.

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