#never trust an Indian nationalist

[official-saul-goodman]

If you see an Indian guy say 'mera Bharat mahan' run as fast as you can because that man is a FASCIST

[homosexuhauls]

By Vidya Krishnan

GOA, India — My niece was just 4 years old when she turned to my sister-in-law in a packed movie theater in Mumbai and asked about gang rape for the first time.

We were watching the latest Bollywood blockbuster about vigilante justice, nationalistic fervor and, of course, gang rape. Four male characters seized the hero’s sister and dragged her away. “Where are they taking Didi?” my niece asked, using the Hindi word for “elder sister.” It was dark, but I could still make out her tiny forehead, furrowed with concern.

Didi’s gang rape took place offscreen, but it didn’t need to be shown. As instinctively as a newborn fawn senses the mortal danger posed by a fox, little girls in India sense what men are capable of.

You may wonder, “Why take a 4-year-old to such a movie?” But there is no escaping India’s rape culture; sexual terrorism is treated as the norm. Society and government institutions often excuse and protect men from the consequences of their sexual violence. Women are blamed for being assaulted and are expected to sacrifice freedom and opportunity in exchange for personal safety. This culture contaminates public life — in movies and television; in bedrooms, where female sexual consent is unknown; in the locker room talk from which young boys learn the language of rape. India’s favorite profanities are about having sex with women without their consent.

It is the specific horror of gang rape that weighs most heavily on Indian women that I know. You may have heard of the many gruesome cases of women being gang-raped, disemboweled and left for dead. When an incident rises to national attention, the kettle of outrage boils over, and women sometimes stage protests, but it passes quickly. All Indian women are victims, each one traumatized, angry, betrayed, exhausted. Many of us think about gang rape more than we care to admit.

In 2011 a woman was raped every 20 minutes in India, according to government data. The pace quickened to about every 16 minutes by 2021, when more than 31,000 rapes were reported, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. In 2021, 2,200 gang rapes were reported to authorities.

But those grotesque numbers tell only part of the story: 77 percent of Indian women who have experienced physical or sexual violence never tell anyone, according to one study. Prosecutions are rare.

Indian men may face persecution because they are Muslims, Dalits (untouchables) or ethnic minorities or for daring to challenge the corrupt powers that be. Indian women suffer because they are women. Soldiers need to believe that war won’t kill them, that only bad luck will; Indian women need to believe the same about rape, to trust that we will come back to the barracks safe each night, to be able to function at all.

Reports of violence against women in India have risen steadily over the decades, with some researchers citing a growing willingness by victims to come forward. Each rape desensitizes and prepares society to accept the next one, the evil becoming banal.

Gang rape is used as a weapon, particularly against lower castes and Muslims. The first instance that women my age remember was in 1980, when Phoolan Devi, a lower-caste teenager who had fallen in with a criminal gang, said she was abducted and repeatedly raped by a group of upper-caste attackers. She later came back with members of her gang and they killed 22 mostly upper-caste men. It was a rare instance of a brutalized woman extracting revenge. Her rape might never have made headlines without that bloody retribution.

Ms. Devi threw a spotlight on caste apartheid. The suffering of Bilkis Bano — the defining gang rape survivor of my generation — highlighted the boiling hatred that Indian institutions under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, have for Muslim women.

In 2002 brutal violence between Hindus and Muslims swept through Gujarat State. Ms. Bano, then 19 and pregnant, was gang raped by an angry Hindu mob, which also killed 14 of her relatives, including her 3-year-old daughter. Critics accuse Mr. Modi — Gujarat’s top official at the time — of turning a blind eye to the riots. He has not lost an election since.

Ms. Bano’s life took a different trajectory. She repeatedly moved houses after the assault, for her family’s safety. Last August, 11 men who were sentenced to life in prison for raping her were released — on the recommendation of a review committee stacked with members of Mr. Modi’s ruling party. After they were freed, they were greeted with flower garlands by Hindu right-wingers.

The timing was suspicious: Gujarat was to hold important elections a few months later, and Mr. Modi’s party needed votes. A member of his party explained that the accused, as upper-caste Brahmins, had “good” values and did not belong in prison. Men know these rules. They wrote the rule book. What’s most terrifying is that releasing rapists could very well be a vote-getter.

After Ms. Bano, there was the young physiotherapy student who in 2012 was beaten and raped on a moving bus and penetrated with a metal rod that perforated her colon before her naked body was dumped on a busy road in New Delhi. She died of her injuries. Women protested for days, and even men took part, facing water cannons and tear gas. New anti-rape laws were framed. This time was different, we naïvely believed.

It wasn’t. In 2018 an 8-year-old Muslim girl was drugged and gang raped in a Hindu temple for days and then murdered. In 2020 a 19-year-old Dalit girl was gang-raped and later died of her injuries, her spinal cord broken.

The fear, particularly of gang rape, never fully leaves us. We go out in groups, cover ourselves, carry pepper spray and GPS tracking devices, avoid public spaces after sunset and remind ourselves to yell “fire,” not “help” if attacked. But we know that no amount of precaution will guarantee our safety.

I don’t understand gang rape. Is it some medieval desire to dominate and humiliate? Do these men, with little power over others, feeling inadequate and ordinary, need a rush of power for a few minutes?

What I do know is that other men share the blame, the countless brothers, fathers, sons, friends, neighbors and colleagues who have collectively created and sustain a system that exploits women. If women are afraid, it is because of these men. It is a protection racket of epic proportions.

I’m not asking merely for equality. I want retribution. Recompense. I want young girls to be taught about Ms. Bano and Ms. Devi. I want monuments built for them. But men just want us to forget. The release of Ms. Bano’s rapists was about male refusal to commemorate our trauma.

So we build monuments with words and our memories. We talk to one another about gang rape, keeping it at the center of our lives. We try to explain to our youngest, to start protecting them.

This is how the history of the defeated is recorded. That’s what it all boils down to: a fight between forgetting and remembering.

[onetimetwotimesthreetimess]

There will never be anything more despicable than building and celebrating, and forcing a nation to celebrate on the taxpayers money, a temple build on the mass graves of Muslims. The Hindu nationalist state, has proved again that this nation belongs to only Hindus.

Babri Masjid, 1992

Ram Temple, 2024

A bit of context for those who don’t know about the issue:

Babri Masjid, was a mosque in Ayodhya, India. It was built in the 16th century by the Mughal Empire. Babri Masjid was a holy place for the Muslims in the country. There’s a history of communalism (created by the British Empire) between Hindus (the majority religion) and Muslims (the minority) in the country.

In 1992, Babri Masjid was attacked and demolished by Hindu extremists who believed that the mosque was built on the site of birthplace of Ram (Hindu god). Thousands of people lost their lives. Thousands of Muslims were killed in cold blood by a hyper-nationalist state.

In 2010, after decades of Muslims fighting for justice, the Allahabad High Court upheld the claim that the mosque was built on Ram’s birth place. Muslims were also awarded one-third area of the site for the construction of a mosque. However, thr decision was subsequently appealed by all parties to the Indian Supreme Court, wherein a five judge bench heard a title suit from August to October 2019. On 9 November 2019, the Supreme Court quashed the lower court's judgement and ordered the entire site to be handed over to a trust to build the Hindu temple.

Today, 22nd January, 2024, marks the inaugural of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. On a site that is so deeply entrenched within a community’s blood, pain and trauma. While these Hindu nationalists celebrate, every Muslim in the country feels more scared. Muslims in India have always been unlawfully detained, persecuted, punished and killed throughout the past seven decades but it has only worsened ever since BJP, the ruling party came in power. Celebrities, sportsperson, politicians and millions of people travelled to Ayodhya to celebrate this tremendous failure of the state.

Today, the Indian constitution lies under those thousands grave.

If any one of you celebrated, I hope you understand the gravity of your actions. I hope you understand what you all set in motion. I hope that one day, you understand and that there is no redemption for you after that.

I hope you all rot in hell.

Here’s a short poem by Rabindranath Tagore about an old god, a new temple, an arrogant king and many hungry and homeless ordinary people.

[betterbemeta]

You know my biggest disapointment with breath of the wild was the Shiekah, they turned the VERY indian inspired group into bland ass ninjas and in the story that most revolves around the shiekah's agency that feels off, i suppose an indian group being servants of a european monarchy sucks but the erasure still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, what do you think?

I've never heard that the Sheikah were inspired by Indian art. Which does not mean it can't be a read-- I just haven't encountered it before. I WILL say that I noticed a LOT of architecture inspired by South Asia and India in Skyward Sword. But the dungeons and ruins in that game are rarely associated with a specific people, only 'the ancient past' and 'the goddess Hylia'. I wish we actually got confirmation that ancient Sheikah were associated with those ruins, rather than the only direct clue to Sheikah culture in that game being a time traveling exposition lady.

We had really few direct depictions of Sheikah architecture and customs before BotW, and in that game the 'ancient' Sheikah features were designed with the Jōmon period, the earliest known Japanese art and culture. The 'modern' Sheikah features were also very Japanese in aesthetic.

This kind of brings me to the point I want to bring up and reply to in your ask, which is that I take slight issue with the idea that Hyrule is a 'European monarchy.' I think it could be easy to read it that way where I live, because we tend to trust the aesthetics of stuff in a story to match up to locations in 'real life.' If we see a guy wielding a 14th century straight longsword we tend to assume the guy, within the bounds of style, is a medieval European dude. We don't expect him to lift his helm visor and reveal he's Japanese.

But for the same reason we look at anime characters and assume that many of them are probably intended to scan as Japanese to a Japanese audience, I think we need to extend that to Legend of Zelda. Even though the Hylian monarchy isn't wearing fashions that look Japanese, their nationalist myth throughout many games is set up to be extremely familiar to the domestic Japanese audience. Link and Zelda may be Blondes but the Sheikah analogs to a 'japan' themed culture are given white hair.

(Somebody else than me might have better insight into Anime Hair Colors.)

I live in the USA, 'the west', so by default narratives about imperialism and orientalism most accessible to me are going to assume whiteness and euro-centrism. But I feel it would be wrong to frame a piece of Japanese media as about whiteness, especially when it's clear that we can see the same type of stuff happen wherever racism and imperialism intersect.

There's only so much detail or nuance I can really have, given that I'm a white person in the anglosphere who's able to take Asian Literature in college, and Use Wikipedia, and Compare mythology, history, and news out of other countries to Video Games.

But yes, with all that said. It does put bad tastes in my mouth. Basically any depiction of entire cultures existing in some way to ensure a monarchy's security will do that, and the recent installment TotK extends to other fantasy races the horrible fate that has always been slapped onto the Sheikah: bound by an oath to serve Hyrule, Zelda and by extension, Link who paradoxically exists to both be the nation's tool but also the inheritor of everything in it.

[thewomboftheuniverse]

The sun never set on the British empire, an Indian nationalist later sardonically commented, because even God couldn’t trust the Englishman in the dark

Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

[dbunicorn]

https://www.landconflictwatch.org/conflicts/sikh-farmers-sell-land-move-out-of-gujarat-after-attacks-by-locals

I'm curious. I've been mistaken for muslim and harassed repeatedly since 9/11. Where is it you would like me to 'go home' to? Canada? I know I'm not welcome in India. The states? Be specific? What a brilliant display of 1984 style propaganda. When an abuser plays possum. Particularly men.

Where would you like my white husband and half white children to go? Be specific.

Why all the Twitter bans? Denying visas? Is stalking considered violence? Is child endangerment? I'm curious to have a debate about billionaires, taxes, water rights, indigenous rights, bank notes, women's rights, femicide, censorship , math and revisionist history. Land grabs. Sovereignty. Technology transfer.

Tell your young people about the reality of their day to day climate future.

This in NO WAY advocates violence. It advocates the truth. Not revisionist history. By the numbers TRUTH.

My father always told me 'all paths lead to God'. Even as an atheist my beliefs were grounded in morality and reason.

Corruption isn't a path. Neither is evil.

An excellent researcher/reporter will NEVER weaponize numbers. It destroys trust. You cannot get it back.

For the official record. This smells of the 1984 genocide, operation blue star, and 9/11 without any legality whatsoever.

The labelling of actual data as misinformation is a joke.

PS I took a moment to tune into wion, India today etc...for the purposes of research of course.

That's some really fair balanced angry journalism you've established. 👍👍

Relax....

[mad-desperada]

I'm sorry, but calling themselves a "defense force" is like how America calling itself the "peacekeeper of the world" when both are just colonizers

Oh ho ho ho yes they fucking have, they aren't even targeting the schools with missiles, but rather storming them with landmines & then immediately detonating them.

Oh I'm sorry, how could I forget that simply criticizing the actions of a nation automatically makes you a tewwowist, so it's a-okay to bomb them 🙃

We never trusted police departments when the undergo internal investigation, are we really gonnaput our trust in governments when they do the same?

If anything that comes out of Judith Varnai Shorer's mouth really.

If that were the case then how do ethiopian jews exist? Or Indian Jews, or the Mizrahi jews, or the Sephardi Jews, and so on and so forth. White Jews do exist, fuck man, you can convert to Judaism. My guy it's no fucking secret how much Ashkenazic Jews are discriminatory towards other Jewish diaspora, ESPECIALLY ethiopian jews. Also, if Hamas truely was only targeting jews, then why do they never target Palestinian Jews? Oh but you know who does kill Palestinian Jews? The Israeli Occupational Force, just as they've mercilessly & indiscriminately killed Palestinian Arabs & Christians. It's always been about white supremacy just as it's always been about colonization & imperialism. Israel is an apartheid, America's puppet in order to conquer the Middle East. You think they're gonna stop at Palestine? Egypt's already next on the chopping block. Fuck it wouldn't even be the first time they've attacked Egypt either, they are an extension of America's evil. Full stop.

And for fucks sake

Never

And I repeat

NEVER

Insinuate Judaism & Zionism are one in the same thing. How fucking dare you. Zionism is a nationalist movement that has only existed for a little over a century. Hundreds of Thousands of Jewish people over the globe have been against the zionists movement since it's inception. Hasidic Jews especially are critical of Zionism, which of course the Israeli government is all to gleeful to commit police brutality against, can't let them break the illusion of judaism=zionism 🫠. I mean for fucks sake, Theodor Herzl, you know, the dude how invented zionism, didn't even practice Judaism, even Israeli ministers don't consider him a jew, the movement itself was founded by non-believers. And yet Zionists today still claim it's their "religious right" to colonize Palestine & relocate thousands upon thousands of Palestinians from their homes. The fact that you'd so quickly equate a religion that teaches peace and brotherly love to a nationalist colonialist movement that exercise it's might through wanton death and destruction, shows just how much you've lot the fucking plot, bud

Shame on you

[dregstrash]

Fever Dreams and Shadow Games

A/N: Here it is Chapter 3 of my fic co-written with the wonderful and talented @wafflesandkruge! If you want to be on the tag list please don’t hesitate in letting one of us know!

Ao3

Tagging: @aditiiparasharr  @strummoner  @itsbrilliantjustlikeyou @but-she-was-aelin-galathynius @shadowbusiness @privateerrezni @roonill--wazlib @thejennster @the-regal-warrior @kazual-crow @ipizzippy @inkpot-dreamer @bookwormsincebirth @fluffy-hedwig

Chapter 3: Masters of Illusion

There were many wonderful things about the Cirque de Lie. The acrobatics. The stunts. The sights. The sounds. The food. Its tents held the promises of a night that could be spent in a dream, one that ended too soon and left you wanting for more and more.

In a time before Kaz had taken up the mantle of ringmaster, he used to be one of the participants of this dream. He used to wonder and gape at the contortionists, the dancers, and especially the illusionists. He could remember so clearly watching coins and cards disappear and reappear. He watched as the masked man unveiled a previously empty stool to reveal a beautiful woman holding a rabbit. He marveled at the mastery, and some small part of him wanted to believe it was magic.

But then his parents died, and the streets became his home. Then he learned what real magic was-- it was making pennies disappear from ladies’ purses, wallets and watches vanishing from gentlemen’s coats, bread and apples seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Desperation and starvation were Jordie and Kaz’s first ringmasters.

“Wylan, I need two more Parem substitutes tonight, and tell Pim and Anika to meet me in my tent. I need them to be escorts tonight. And I want you to supervise the First-Class box tonight.”

The younger boy’s eyes widened with each instruction given. It was becoming more habit to rely on the American in his crew. While Kaz trusted Inej for the more important bits of information, he trusted Wylan to just do what he was told-- not out of some sort of blind obedience but because he was entirely too predictable, and Kaz liked that better than a yes man.

“I just gave you two bottles last night,” Wylan said, dusting his stained hands against his apron. He was working on a new fireworks display. He said something about mixing pigments to create more colors or something to do with the chemicals to prolong the burn, Kaz wasn’t sure.

“I didn’t need the tally,” Kaz snapped, but as he turned to leave Wylan caught his attention again.

“Kaz….umm...I don’t think it’s such a good--”

Sighing, Kaz turned around quickly, “Wylan, do I look like some sort of drug addled fool?”

He didn’t wait for the boy to answer.

“No. I’m not. Just do what you’re told and give me those vials before Jesper finishes his act.”

Without another word, Kaz left Wylan’s lab and strode back down the path towards the Hall of Mirrors. It was the quickest way to his tent and promised more privacy. At least that was the theory.

He more or less felt Inej pick up his trail from Wylan’s tent and he waited a long while before he stopped inside the entrance to the hall of mirrors before he spoke.

“Anything you want to say, Wraith?”

“Wylan’s just trying to help you, you know?” He heard her voice, but she had yet to appear. A true feat since he was surrounded by a dozen reflections of himself, but he couldn’t catch the barest glimpse of even her shadow.

“Wylan should mind his own business.”

“Why are you asking for Parem substitutes? You can’t possibly be trying to sell that off as the real thing. Especially not with your Lantsov association.”

Kaz rested his gloved hands against his cane, not speaking until Inej appeared right in front of him. He might be the master illusionist, but she never failed to be the true artist of disappearing.

“I don’t need to explain myself, Inej. Not to Wylan, and certainly not to you,” he said.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I have risked a lot to stay on with you, Kaz. I have a right to know whether or not you might destroy everything just because you’re playing around with Parem.”

“Then leave,” he said simply.

“You know I can’t.” She scowled. “It’s tricky enough getting into this blasted country, and to get out, especially when you have coppers scenting out Indian nationalists, is a bloody nightmare.

Kaz shrugged, secretly pleased, “Then I guess you’re stuck trusting me, unless you can find another troupe that chooses to ignore certain political affiliations.”

“What are you doing with the Parem substitutions?” she reiterated, a touch of anger still coloring her voice.

“All will be revealed in due time.”

“Kaz, if you’re using—”

“For God’s sake, it’s not for me,” he snapped. “Now, if you find that so hard to believe, I might need to find another acrobat.” The pair stayed in a heated silence for a few moments until Kaz knew she wasn’t going to say any more. “I need you to pull out all the stops tonight. We have a few special guests coming, and it would be poor form to not give them the best show possible.”

Inej stared at him, a question lurking in her warm brown eyes. “You need me to play Acrobat, again?”

Kaz shook his head. “I need you to play what you’re good at, which is being the Wraith. Leave the theatrics and charming to Nina, I need you in the shadows.”

“What am I looking for?”

“The elder Lantsov’s closest associates and then Rollins’ closest distributors.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s not the kind of information you get over a standard meet and greet, Kaz.”

He grinned at her. “I guess you’ll have some leg work to do. Maybe even make suspicious visits to a certain Indian liberation leader that happens to be close neighbors to our dear friend Mr. Lantsov.”

A silence stretched between them-- Inej’s brown eyes challenging the endless dark depths of Kaz. After a moment, she finally sighed and stepped away from him.

“I didn’t hear a please.”

Kaz raised a hand to his chest in mock supplication. “Oh my dearest star, please would you be a dear and use your marvelous abilities to spy on our enemies and bring me in the information I so desire?”

Inej was a woman of few words, and as she walked away she displayed just that as she raised a middle finger against his laughter. -------

Ever since the Great War, Zoya has had to make adjustments in her life, starting with reluctantly agreeing to her aunt’s insistence of her finding a husband and ending with Nikolai’s ridiculous impulses to find help in the dirtiest of places. She sat down on the filthy bench with a sniff, and curled her nose in disgust when Nikolai offered her what looked like sticky popcorn.

“Don’t tell me you don’t like caramel,” he teased, popping a few pieces into his mouth. “I know for a fact that you have a jar of it hidden under your bed.”

“What I do or do not have under my bed is none of your concern,” she huffed, pushing away the snack. “What should be your concern is the fact you will be stuck in this sectioned off area with your competitors under the disgusting little hands of Kaz Brekker. Do you realize what this could do to public opinion of you?”

Nikolai munched silently for a few moments. “I’m sure the odes to my good looks won’t be worse for wear. And as for my competitors….you know what they say about keeping your enemies close and all of that.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” she said flatly, looking out onto the rapidly filling stands. From where Kaz Brekker had assigned their first class section, they would be able to have a clear view of any and all the acts without the obstruction of other attendants.

“On the contrary, I am taking this quite seriously, why else would I go to Brekker for help?”

“You could have just trusted me,” she hissed, feeling a surge of indignance rise in her temper.

Nikolai sighed. “I do trust you, Zoya. You know that. But we are losing badly, and running out of options. The vote is coming up, and if we don’t do something about Rollins then all will be lost, and we’ll either have Kirgin’s indifference or my brother’s arrogance. Which would you rather have?”

She knew he was right, but her pride wouldn’t let her admit it. Thankfully they were saved from answering as Pekka Rollins himself arrived with his son in tow.

“Ah, Mr. Lantsov, Miss Nazyalensky, what a wonderful surprise.” He gave an oily smile and held his hand out for Nikolai.

He shook it gracefully and offered a smile of his in return, “Mr. Rollins what a pleasure.” His eyes moved to the young man who stood hesitantly by his side. “And a good evening to you, Alby.”

The boy shook Nikolai’s hand and stepped back behind his father. Alby Rollins was a boy of eighteen, and currently attending one of the most prestigious schools in the country if Zoya remembered correctly. He had inherited his father’s strong jaw and nose, but despite his height there was still a softness about him that made his youth so apparent. He kept looking to the entrance of their section where two very imposing figures leaned against a wooden pillar. One a girl with blonde hair and the other a boy who looked like the size of a wall. Both wore plain clothes, but Zoya almost swore she had seen them somewhere else before.

“I had no idea that we’d be sharing this space,” Rollins continued.

“I’m sure you were looking forward to a nice evening with your son, and the men who are quite big….fans of yours,” Nikolai said just as Kirgin and Vasily appeared at the other entrance with the American boy, Wylan, leading them in.

“Compliments of Mr. Brekker,” Wylan said as he made sure the adults settled into the space, “He invites you all to a private dinner after the show. If there is anything you need, an associate will be right outside to get it for you.”

“We’ll start with whiskey, boy,” Vasily said offhandedly.

“As you wish, sir.” Wylan nodded and bowed out.

Rollins, who had already forgotten what Nikolai was talking about, turned his attention to his son who whispered something into his father’s ear. Zoya watched as Rollins gave his son a firm nod, and the young man disappeared with the two thugs in tow.

“Should have known you would be here, Nikky,” Vasily said joining their group, “You always had a taste for oddities.”

Vasily’s muddy brown eyes glanced briefly at Zoya, and she saw a muscle twitch at Nikolai’s jaw. It was a good thing, because as long as she concentrated on soothing his temper, then she won’t have to focus on her own.

“You’ve met Kirgin, I’m assuming,” Vasily continued, gesturing towards the round faced man by his side.

Kirgin startled at the sound of his name, too busy staring at Zoya’s chest, before smiling up at Nikolai.

“I believe I’ve had the honor at my last birthday party,” he said, his cheeks dimpling.

Nikolai mirrored the expression. “That was quite an affair. I had hoped we would be friends rather than rivals.”

“There’s really no reason that we cannot be both,” he said.

Nikolai opened his mouth to respond, but Vasily finally took notice of Pekka Rollins watching the exchange with interest.

“Ah, good evening Mr. Rollins. I wasn’t expecting you here at a show like this.”

Rollins shook Vasily’s hand jovially. “My son insisted when he saw that I had been sent tickets by a messenger this morning. He really insisted we go. Although it seems, I have been used, since he seems to have run off with some friends.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Zoya muttered.

Pekka Rollins turned a sharp eye on her, but she just smiled in return.

“Speaking of, what are you doing here, Vasily?” Nikolai broke in.

The elder Lantsov grinned, “Why it seems I was sent a special invitation by Kaz Brekker himself. He said it would be an honor having a man such as myself be in attendance of tonight’s show. I hear that he has recently acquired a new act.”

Zoya frowned. New act? Brekker didn’t say anything about a new act at their meeting. Was this some new ploy that was supposed to get something out of Rollins or Vasily? Or was it just some new gimmick for his tacky show?

She looked to Nikolai for clarification but he looked just as confused as she was. And maybe she would have asked for a private word with him so that they may try to determine what Brekker might be playing at, but the swell of violins started from an unseen orchestra and slowly all the torches in the space were being blown out by an unfelt wind.

Nikolai, Zoya, and the rest of the men in their private section took their seats just as a flash and a bang exploded in the middle of the ring, with Kaz Brekker rising from the ashes. The crowd applauded. Her companions sat back. Zoya leaned forward eyes squinting at the young ringmaster, determined to pick apart his illusions. The Cirque de Lie was about to begin.

[apveng]

My Failed Attempt at Activism

I am not an activist and have never done a march for anything in my life. However, the steady stream of disheartening and troubling news that I received about Kashmir made me think that I need to at least stand up for the people who are being oppressed by the Indian state.

But, before I go on, let me tell you something about Kashmir.

        ________________________________________________                

Stage: As you may know, on 5th August 2019, Indian government, by the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) removed the semi-autonomous status of the contested state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and reduced it to one of two Union Territories; to be directly administered by the Indian Union (that is the government at the centre--federal level).

J&K is a majority Muslim state and at the time of Indian independence had agreed to join the Indian Union only on the condition that it’d be a semi-autonomous state with only foreign affairs, defense and communications managed by India. 

Accordingly: 

The Constitution of India or any federal laws applicable to India will not be applicable to J&K unless they were approved by J&K legislative assembly.

A non-resident cannot own property there thus preventing an attempt at demographic change by non-Kashmiris.

Another condition was that India would hold a plebiscite there so that the residents can vote on whether they want to join India or not. That plebiscite never happened.

Despite this, the government at the centre had been trying to dilute the semi-autonomous status and since the late 1980s and 90′s there has been a steady armed insurgency (intifada and more) against Indian state in Kashmir. This has led to atrocities against Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus, who are a minority in Kashmir), which lead to their exodus from the valley in 1989-91. 

And, after that came a retaliation by the Indian armed forces that led to many Kashmiri men going missing in the 1990′s.  

Lately, an increasing amount of Kashmiri youth have taken to stone pelting at the forces, and even a terrorist attack that killed 40 of Indian armed forces (CRPF) in February.

International observers, Kashmiris and UN Human Rights Council has maintained that army has been violating human rights in Kashmir through torture, threats of rape, and violence.  Mostly, non-biased news reports support this fact.

Following the abrogration of the article 370, the Kashmir Valley, a majority of whose people is against the action, has been under continuous lockdown with there being no internet, telephone or mobile service and limited amount of mobility. In periods when some of the curbs were lifted, people still refused to come out to protest the action.

Since August 2019 (and before as well), army and police has been raiding people’s homes, detaining boys as young as 12 year olds, and beating up and torturing citizens. There has also -been rape threats against the women.

For more: https://apnews.com/52b06a124a5a4469984793d3c208733d

         ________________________________________________                

Back to me: The trigger for my attempt was an article by Indian Journalist Rana Ayyub on Washington Post.

I spent the first night after reading it wondering if there is a protest for Kashmiris in my city (or outside Kashmir anywhere) that I could show up for. However, I had not heard of one. There may be one by the way, but there have been no news reports of it.

The second night, I decided that I should at least show that I stand with Kashmiris. I cannot organise a protest because I am an introvert and people organising is not my skill. And, it won’t happen overnight. I have no contacts and the number of twitter followers I have is a joke. But, I can hang a few placards outside my home so that the passersby can see it and question their stance.

The first thought that ran through my mind after deciding this was whether an FIR will be registered against me and if I would go to jail for it. 

It would seem like a silly fear, really. Why would the Indian state be concerned about a total non-entity protesting, that too just outside their own home?

On the other hand, this is the country where people get arrested for whatsapp forwards and tweets. Who knew what might happen?

And, of course the majority of people in my colony were BJP supporters, what would they do about it?

Even if I am not jailed immediately, registering an FIR would mean that I may not be able to go for a long-planned trip outside the country.

Ugh! So many worries, and I haven’t even started by nano-level of activism yet.

Well, despite the worries and concerns, today, I went out and printed a few statements and got them laminated:

1.

I stand with Kashmiris (I thought it was important to draw a distinction between the land and the people; Indian government seems to be after the land. I stand with the people).

It is not democracy to abrogate Kashmiris’ right to self-determination.

2. 

You cannot win hearts by oppression. (You really cannot; not in the long term).

You don’t oppress your people. You stand by them. PS: All humanity is your people.

3.

 You cannot use a stick to liberate.

Reactionary Forces co-opt progressive values to justify aggression and oppression. Think of colonialism.

(The official line on Kashmir has been that this would bring LGBT rights, lower caste rights and women’s rights to the valley along with economic development. This is from the administration that abstains from a UN resolution ending discrimination against LGBT UN employees; the administration that allows Lower Caste to be ill treated everywhere else provided they are not in Muslim majority Kashmir; and from the party whose MPs promised during election to bring women to men if they just ask for it, whose MPs have been accused of sexual harassment and who supported people accused of raping and killing a child. The admin didn’t contest SC’s striking down of gay sex criminalisation last year and they use that to show themselves as progressive.) 

4. 

Detention and jails, beating and curfews do not make you safe.

It only increases the number of people who hate you and want to hurt you.

5.

 Use Kindness and non-violence, debate and activism for change.

Pretty reasonable, no? Nothing that induces violence in my opinion. Or any seditious content.

My parents refused to allow me to hang it outside our home in plain view of the residents and passersby.

Oh, I didn’t mention did I? Due to many reasons, one of the main ones being that I work in the same city as my parents’ place of stay, I live with my parents. I have been reconsidering that choice, and now, have incentive to move out.

My father wanted to know if I wanted to ruin life in the colony for them? If I wanted to make life difficult for my parents?

And my mother told me that, I quote: What if you are jailed? You are a nobody. Nobody will come in support of you. Your entire life will be ruined. This is a matter of politics and you don’t know anything about politics. People like Sashi Tharoor (Indian opposition MP), can write books, and he may be safe. These days, not even politicians are safe. If you do this, not even close friends will stand by you or help you.

Great to know they don’t even trust our family and friends, many of whom are Modi supporters, to support me in case of such an event. Just to be clear, neither do I (well, most of them anyways).

Again father: Do you know if someone clicks a picture, shares, and then police registers an FIR against you, we can’t even travel next week. Have you thought of that? (I had).

Both: It would have been okay to endure personal harm and injury if it was of some benefit. But, you will achieve nothing by this. Kashmiris wouldn’t even know about it. What effect will this have? Nothing.

Don’t be so emotional and jump to actions that are useless and harmful.

Do something less political; like donations to poor people and orphans (I do that).

Me: If everyone thought like that, we would never have been a free country and there would never have been change.

Them: You are emotional and know nothing! (I am Jon Snow.)

Anyways, I decided that I cannot make life difficult for my parents and stress them out while staying in their home. So, any activism I do will have to wait until I get a house of my own once I am back from my trip.

Failure and retreat.

Thus!

So, that is who I am. A person at 38 years, and a failure at activism. :(

But, I am also the person who came out to my mother, cousins and friends, in 2013 when India recriminalised homosexuality.  (Yeah, that is a thing we did. We went back on progress. Similar to the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution except, well, that was more out of confusion; or how Great Britain allowed gay folks to remain in prison post WWII. At least, we are among great company.)

I am not going to stand by when my land and my planet is ruined. I will find a way to fight.

       ________________________________________________          

What is interesting is how much fear there is in the country. Reporters who report stuff against the administration have been prosecuted for disturbing peace. Ditto for activists who report against the state narrative. And of course, there is the matter of tweets and whatsapp humour being treated as sedition.

An attempt to discuss Kashmir in University was not allowed at University of Hyderabad.

This should not be considered normal. And if it is, this state of affairs need to be resisted.

        ________________________________________________                

A little bit of personal history

Isn’t it interesting though how my parents’ middle class values work? Standing up for one’s principles against the majority’s ignorance and indifference is not just a recipe for disaster but also useless and the actions of an overly emotional individual.

And, this has been a trend, you see.

When I was not yet 21, my mother campaigned for months until I gave in to an arranged marriage.

I had done so at the time with grave misgivings. And then, after our engagement, I had wanted to call the marriage off and my parents had asked: why didn’t you say this before? (I had, but they were convinced I was just inexperienced; and I thought may be I am. What did I know? PS: Definitely not that I was gay. Or, ace.)

It took only a few months after marriage for me to realise that I’d never be happy in it. And then, of course there were campaigns not just by my parents, but my entire extended cast of relatives who regularly called me up to say how I am ruining my life by divorcing my then husband (I had the notoriety of being the first divorcee in the family). And from his side, how I am a horrible selfish person for hurting him. 

Ugh! But, there were no threats of jail or a whole colony rising up against me, so I stood by my stance and got divorced. (I had to sent a suicide note for my parents and close relatives to decide okay, they are going to stand with me. They were pretty cool after that though.)

In 2013, when I came out, my mother wanted to know why I bothered telling her and by the way, did I know that no other girl is going to feel like me?

Recently, again, I had to campaign for months to get my parents from no to yes on resigning my job and getting a Masters in Canada. Because it would ruin my life. And, this time, they probably gave in because my position was non-negotiable.

When that didn’t pan out because Ca apparently was convinced I won’t return to India (and for some other mysterious reasons they haven’t made clear to me), I decided to take a leave of absence from my organisation to find out what to do with my life. And that too they protested because they thought I was headed for economic ruin.

So, if I ever expected my parents to support me at the first take, I should have given up on that by now. They have hardly ever done that.

In their defense, they have always come around; may be in weeks, at times in months, and others in years, if not to my point of view then to support my right to my point of view and appropriate actions.

I am hoping for that in this case.

You might wonder why that matters to me. Well, they are my parents and I love them. And on the whole, they are pretty decent people. So, it matters.

Anyways, I know that activism at any age doesn’t happen in one full swoop. It happens step by step. And, it needs resources and networks, and you have to build and work towards it.

It doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

And, not everyone contributes in the same way.

Here is hoping that I’d find my way.

       ________________________________________________                

What could you do about this if you so chose:

Whichever country (but India) you are in, send a note about Kashmir to your representative, MP etc. If there is international pressure, it’d help. Right now, there has been nothing but support for India from every quarter: Trump and Johnson, Middle East (UAE even gave Modi a medal). Bernie Sanders spoke against Indian action in Kashmir. And Rep Pramila Jayapal wrote to Secretary of State demanding action. Jeremy Corbyn spoke in support for Kashmir. But, nothing concrete from these countries.

Pakistan is the only country speaking against Indian action in Kashmir but Pakistan unfortunately has no clout or credibility with the big leagues these days.

If in India, vote BJP out please. But, also let your reps know that they need to support Kashmiris. Support Independent journalism like Caravan; because Press Freedom is in pretty bad shape in India.

Hopefully the next POTUS will do something about it. (While also steering your country right and helping the world right along; without starting any wars, please.)

If you know any Indian origin folks, talk to them about Kashmir and ask them if beating up of 12 year olds and rape threats against women are what they want their country of origin (or ancestry) to be known by. Or, detention of non-Hindu Bengalis in Assam (and possibly rest of India as well). Sam Manekshaw (of India) during Bangladesh war of independence and Wellington during Napoleonic wars managed to keep their men from raping (A People’s History of Britain, Rebecca Fraser). It is possible.

Why does that matter? Because a lot of support for BJP, both in political lobbying efforts as well as in terms of donations, come from the Indian diaspora. If this support can be weakened, even if slowly, that would weaken BJP.

Yeah: I am doing activism by the mode I know. Writing.

[rithwick]

Vandé Mātaram: Album Art, Tujhe Salaam

In 1997, India celebrated its 50th year of Independence. Cable & Satellite TV and private FM radio were in their glory days and Indians all over the world were brimming with nationalistic pride. The Maestro of Madras, A.R. Rahman dropped his first Independent International Music Album, Vandé Mātaram.

This article is not about the amazing music that was both critically and commercially successful nor about the beautiful black & white music videos shot by Bharat Bala & team. Or how I could never pick a favourite between Maa tujhe salaam penned by Mehboob and Thai manné vannakkam by Vairamuthu.

This is about the humble yet timeless album cover designed by Sunil Mahadik with a beautiful oil on canvass painting of the tricolour by production designer, painter and sculptor Thotta Tharani.

When an album of this magnitude must have dropped, am sure there must have been a lot of inputs from various key stake-holders.

The Studio heads would have loved to lead with a huge image of the musical icon in front of the tri-colour. The marketing whizz team would have loved it to appeal to pan-indian audience with A.R.R in jeans and a t-shirt standing amidst a crowd of Indians in traditional outfits. Bharat Bala and team would have loved to showcase the vast vistas they shot of the Himalayas with a floating head of the Maestro like Mufasa in the Lion King poster. And the graphic designer might have taken the easy route of choosing one and as they all suggestions shared with good intent. I don't know what really happened.

But instead, collectively they decided to hire the very talented Thotha Tharani to render the tricolour on canvas. Not a stock image, not a talent portrait, not a collage, but a piece of art.

I thank the conviction of Designer & Art Director Sunil Mahadik, the trust of the studio executives, the faith of the marketing team and the magnanimity of the talent, A.R. Rahman to give us this timeless album cover.

As a school kid, I could only appreciate the music. Today, after several years of working in the industry, I can truly appreciate the cover art.

In '97, I showed my gratitude by buying an original cassette.In '22, I show my gratitude with this article.

Aap sabko...mera Salaam 🙂

#VandeMataram #ARRehman #Maatujhesalaam #Coverart #nostagia #graphicdesign #ThothaTharani #SunilMahadik #50yrsofIndependence #75yrsofIndependence #Mehboob #Vairamuthu #BharathBala #BharathBalaProductions #Cassettecoverdesign #AlbumArt

[shystoryrebel]

GONE WITH THE WIND

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It happens only with dreamy Indians. Children are the happy dreams of their parents. To fulfill their dreams, I had obtained B.Tech. degree in Computer Engineering, from I.I.T... After B.Tech. I acquired masters’ degree in Management from I.I.M... After working for few years in India, like any other Indian, I joined a multinational company in USA.

America is now treated as a dream country especially in India. It is the cherished dream of every Indian to touch the soil of that dreamy land, the land of braves, patriots and vast opportunities. Americans are born with three Ts in their mind; TRY---for better future; TRUE---To your nation, religion and work; TRUST---in God and self. So in my case also that long cherished dream had come true. My parents were very happy on this achievement.

Every entry point has an exit point, so I resolved to make my exit from my dear motherland to enter into the land of dreams as a wonderful experience, with lots of joys and graceful achievements. Here at last I reached a place where I truly deserved and where my merit and talent has got respect. Here I saw a beautiful world, waiting for me. I decided to walk with an aim. Bubbling with happiness and confidence I planned to stay in this country for about five years in which time I hoped to earn enough money to settle down

comfortably back home in India.

We belong to a Brahman priestly family. But my father did not have any interest in our traditional profession because in our country it was almost a

secular and intellectual fashion to abuse and curse Brahmans and Brahman priests. In some states like Jammu & Kashmir and Tamilnadu, Brahmans are treated worse than slaves and animals.

As a result of this scenario my father preferred to be a teacher. As honesty, hard work, patriotism and Sanskars were in his blood which he inherited from his parents. He could not do much for his family and his economic condition remained grim through out his life. Only after his retirement he could purchase an ordinary one bedroom flat in a slum type locality. More over he had to pay hefty bribe to government babus to get his day today work done in government offices. Even still he has to pay bribe to get his PF and other dues cleared and get his monthly pension from the same department which he served for thirty five years. But ambitions could not touch him. He believed in,” When nails are growing, we cut nails, when ambition is growing; we cut ambition but maintains relations and character.

I wanted to do much more than my nationalist father. I wanted to earn and earn like secular leaders of the country. But in AmericaI could not adjust comfortably and started homesick and lonely as the time passed. My patriotism and love to my roots always troubled me there on the foreign soil. Moreover in America, Indians were not treated respectfully. As upper castes Hindus are insulted and abused in India, in the same manner Indians are treated in America as a community who are there only to mint fast bucks only,

come what way. There too I saw each heart had pain, only the way of

expressions were different; some hide it in tears in their eyes while others’ hide it behind their beguiling smile.

I used to call my parents almost once a week using low cost international phone sim cards. In this manner three years passed and my contract with my employer was over but my employer extended my contract for another three

years as in Americaperson is recognized by merit, talent and work where as in India quota castes, minority religion, language and region are recognized and not the merit, talent and work.

Another one year passed on burgers, pizzas, chowmin, potato chilies etc... Years and months passed, watching foreign currency rates and getting happier whenever the value of Indian rupee went down. One thing I learnt from Americans that getting upset would not help. Always getting up, to set the things right.

The problem of marriage always was a big issue for my aging parents. Finally I decided to get married and gave nod and told my parents that I had

only ten days of holidays and everything must have to be settled down within these ten, very important ten days of my life. I got my ticket booked to India in

the cheapest economic class. I was on seventh cloud and was actually trying

to purchase gifts from the cheap duty free shops, for all my relatives and friends back home. If I fail to do follow this custom, there will be talks because in Indiait is believed, if one is in America, he must be rolling in money. Right from the babu at the airport to the dancing terror eunuchs, this great Indialoot is a part of life.

After reaching India, I spent some time at home with my parents. All the time we all were involved scanning photographs of girls and as the time was very short I was almost forced to select a girl as my future life partner. Bride’s side was in much more hurry as they did not want to let out this America settled son-in-law. They told that I had to get married within three-four days. After the marriage, my departure time to U.S.A.was very close. After giving some money to my parents I again had to leave India and requesting my relatives and neighbor friends to look after my parents. We both returned to U.S.A.

In the beginning my wife was very happy in America and she enjoyed her stay here. But after some time she started feeling lonely. Her frequency of calling her parents, back home in India increased and sometimes almost everyday. As a result of her extravagant nature my savings started vanishing rapidly. I tried to get some job for her but I failed and could not arrange a job for her. She used to receive wise upbraiding from her parents especially from

her mother every day. In my case it was very true, “If the first button of your shirt is wrongly stitched, all the rest will definitely be crooked. So always be careful on your first step, success will automatically follow you”.

Although she was Ph.D from Gazab Singh University, India, but to my horror I came to know that she was not capable even to write a letter. All her degrees were almost manipulated through corrupt methods. Her father was a judge and her mother was a professor in Gazab Singh University, India. She boosts of guiding forty five, Ph.D.s to her credit, through lifting, scissoring and pasting methods. This university was notoriously famous for selling fake degrees.

In this way two more years passed, and we were blessed with two lovely kids, a daughter Ganga and a son Brahmputra. Every time I rung to my parents, they asked me to come to India so that they could see their grand children before their eyes are closed for ever. But work pressure coupled with difficult monetary conditions, I could not visit India. Months and years passed and visiting Indiato see my aging parents was a distant dream.

Then one day at around mid-night, my phone rang and I got a message that my father was seriously ill. I tried to get leaves but failed to get the leaves

sanctioned, to go to India. The next message I got was the death of my

father. As there was no one to perform the last rites, the close relatives helped by the neighbors performed the last rites.

The death of my father shattered me and I was badly depressed. My father passed away without had a glimpse of his grand children.

One day he came to me to meet me in my dream and cried at me:

Three, four years passed. I decided to return to Indiaand to settle down there. This decision was not appreciated by my children but my wife was very happy on this decision. I started to look for a good and affordable property. But now here Dr. Man Mohan Singh was the Prime Minister and to my shock my savings and pocket were much short and the price of property gone up very high during all these years. I had to again return to the USA.

But this time my wife was very intelligently tutored by her mother. She was not ready to come back to USA with me nor was ready to live with my aged mother. On the other hand I and my children were not ready to live in Indiaunder these circumstances. I, with my two children returned to USA after promising my mother and wife to come back within three years. Every thing about our future was uncertain but God has arranged every thing for our tomorrow. You just have to trust Him. He grants us the power to accept things you cannot change.

Time passed by and my daughter decided to get married to an American on her own. Neither due to financial constrains, my wife nor could my mother join us to bless our daughter. My son was happy living in USA because he was very comfortable with American life style. Suddenly I received the news of the death of my mother due to heart failure.

Now I was fed up with this type of life. It was enough and decided to wound up every thing and returned to India. Relationship is like fragrance, you can never touch it but you feel it. Now I had just enough money to buy a decent three room flat in a posh colony in India.

With this vagabond type of life I became sixty years old. Beaten from all sides I became highly religious and a regular visitor to the near by temple. My faithful wife was still living with her parents. She was not ready to leave me nor was ready to leave her parents. I was a cash card to her and her family. As her father was a judge he knew the hazards of filing and settling divorce cases. So my wife was happy living as a married lady but her parents’ daughter, financing her rogue brother by the money I used to send her as a peace package. She was like Stephen Blackpool’s wife in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times:

Again another mishap happened in my life. Papa’s daughter, but my faithful wife also left me high and dry and gone to the last abode from where no body returns. Now I started wondering the meaning of life. Is it worth all this? My father, even after staying in this country as a poor teacher, had a house to his name but he never was alone. I too have the same, nothing more. But I have lost every thing, my parents, my wife, my children, my mental peace and near and dear ones. Life is like onion which has many layers of relationships. If you do not cut it adds taste to life but if you cut it, you will get tears only.

Looking out from the balcony I see a lot of boys and girls riding on bikes and dancing. This modernization and liberty has spoiled our new generation and these children have no values in life. I get occasional greeting cards from my children on different days. I wanted to cry, I wanted to hug some one dear, but no dear ones were around. You cannot hug yourself, you cannot cry on your own shoulder; perhaps life is all about for living others. So live with those who love you, not with those whom you love. World’s happiest relations never have the same nature. They just have the best understanding of their difference, which we missed in our life.

Now perhaps I will also die and my neighbors again will be performing my last rites. God bless them. At least this one thing is still there that at least last rites are performed with full honors. But again the question remained unanswered, is life all this worth? A failed son, who could not serve his parents, when they need him most, a failed husband, who could not be with his wife, a failed father, who could not continue the legacy of a family…and a failed Indian who could not serve his nation. Whatever life throws at us: it will be easier to comfort if we feel loved.

My children and the grand children will not realize this pain and pain of losing my culture for ever and for ever-----is it really worth so many souls alienated. On a one fateful morning I was reading the divine Bhagavad Gita. My phone rang. From the other side I was overwhelmed to listen the sweet voice of my dear son, hello papa, can you give me an appointment to bless your grand child, mothered by a close friend of mine, means born out of wed lock.

Shocked, I sank into the chair on which my father used to sit and teach. Slowly and slowly darkness gripped me, perhaps I shall never be able to give an appointment to bless my grand child and its mother. But my question remained unanswered; was life worth this? With this I lost somewhere and sagged down.

Know that all beings have their birth in this. I am the origin of all in this world and its dissolution as well. All things are dissolved in me.

(The Bhagavad Gita, Ch.VII. Sl.-6 (Trans.))

[kaofeather]

MG V

The Last Phase

With the outbreak of World War II, the nationalist struggle in India entered its last crucial phase. Gandhi hated fascism and all it stood for, but he also hated war. The Indian National Congress, on the other hand, was not committed to pacifism and was prepared to support the British war effort if Indian self-government was assured. Once more Gandhi became politically active. The failure of the mission of Sir Stafford Cripps, a British cabinet minister who went to India in March 1942 with an offer that Gandhi found unacceptable, the British equivocation on the transfer of power to Indian hands, and the encouragement given by high British officials to conservative and communal forces promoting discord between Muslims and Hindus impelled Gandhi to demand in the summer of 1942 an immediate British withdrawal from India—what became known as the Quit India Movement. In mid-1942 the war against the Axis powers, particularly Japan, was in a critical phase, and the British reacted sharply to the campaign. They imprisoned the entire Congress leadership and set out to crush the party once and for all. There were violent outbreaks that were sternly suppressed, and the gulf between Britain and India became wider than ever before. Gandhi, his wife, and several other top party leaders (including Nehru) were confined in the Aga Khan Palace (now the Gandhi National Memorial) in Poona (now Pune). Kasturba died there in early 1944, shortly before Gandhi and the others were released. A new chapter in Indo-British relations opened with the victory of the Labour Party in Britain in 1945. During the next two years, there were prolonged triangular negotiations between leaders of the Congress, the Muslim League under Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and the British government, culminating in the Mountbatten Plan of June 3, 1947, and the formation of the two new dominions of India and Pakistan in mid-August 1947.

It was one of the greatest disappointments of Gandhi’s life that Indian freedom was realized without Indian unity. Muslim separatism had received a great boost while Gandhi and his colleagues were in jail, and in 1946–47, as the final constitutional arrangements were being negotiated, the outbreak of communal riots between Hindus and Muslims unhappily created a climate in which Gandhi’s appeals to reason and justice, tolerance and trust had little chance. When the partition of the subcontinent was accepted—against his advice—he threw himself, heart and soul, into the task of healing the scars of the communal conflict, toured the riot-torn areas in Bengal and Bihar, admonished the bigots, consoled the victims, and tried to rehabilitate the refugees. In the atmosphere of that period, surcharged with suspicion and hatred, that was a difficult and heartbreaking task. Gandhi was blamed by partisans of both the communities. When persuasion failed, he went on a fast. He won at least two spectacular triumphs: in September 1947 his fasting stopped the rioting in Calcutta, and in January 1948 he shamed the city of Delhi into a communal truce. A few days later, on January 30, while he was on his way to his evening prayer meeting in Delhi, he was shot down by Nathuram Godse, a young Hindu fanatic. Place In History The British attitude toward Gandhi was one of mingled admiration, amusement, bewilderment, suspicion, and resentment. Except for a tiny minority of Christian missionaries and radical socialists, the British tended to see him at best as a utopian visionary and at worst as a cunning hypocrite whose professions of friendship for the British race were a mask for subversion of the British raj. Gandhi was conscious of the existence of that wall of prejudice, and it was part of the strategy of satyagraha to penetrate it.

His three major campaigns in 1920–22, 1930–34, and 1940–42 were well designed to engender that process of self-doubt and questioning that was to undermine the moral defenses of his adversaries and to contribute, together with the objective realities of the postwar world, to producing the grant of dominion status in 1947. The British abdication in India was the first step in the liquidation of the British Empire on the continents of Asia and Africa. Gandhi’s image as a rebel and enemy died hard, but, as it had done to the memory of George Washington, Britain, in 1969, the centenary year of Gandhi’s birth, erected a statue to his memory. Gandhi had critics in his own country and indeed in his own party. The liberal leaders protested that he was going too fast; the young radicals complained that he was not going fast enough; left-wing politicians alleged that he was not serious about evicting the British or liquidating such vested Indian interests as princes and landlords; the leaders of the Dalits doubted his good faith as a social reformer and Muslim leaders accused him of partiality to his own community. Research in the second half of the 20th century established Gandhi’s role as a great mediator and reconciler. His talents in that direction were applied to conflicts between the older moderate politicians and the young radicals, the political terrorists and the parliamentarians, the urban intelligentsia and the rural masses, the traditionalists and the modernists, the caste Hindus and the Dalits, the Hindus, and the Muslims, and the Indians and the British. It was inevitable that Gandhi’s role as a political leader should loom larger in the public imagination, but the mainspring of his life lay in religion, not in politics. And religion for him did not mean formalism, dogma, ritual, or sectarianism. “What I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years,” he wrote in his autobiography, “is to see God face to face.” His deepest strivings were spiritual, but unlike many of his fellow Indians with such aspirations, he did not retire to a cave in the Himalayas to meditate on the Absolute; he carried his cave, as he once said, within him. For him truth was not something to be discovered in the privacy of one’s personal life; it had to be upheld in the challenging contexts of social and political life. Gandhi won the affection and loyalty of gifted men and women, old and young, with vastly dissimilar talents and temperaments; of Europeans of every religious persuasion; and of Indians of almost every political line. Few of his political colleagues went all the way with him and accepted nonviolence as a creed; fewer still shared his food fads, his interest in mudpacks and nature cure, or his prescription of brahmacharya, complete renunciation of the pleasures of the flesh. Gandhi’s ideas on sex may now sound quaint and unscientific. His marriage at the age of 13 seems to have complicated his attitude toward sex and charged it with feelings of guilt, but it is important to remember that total sublimation, according to one tradition of Hindu thought, is indispensable for those who seek self-realization, and brahmacharya was for Gandhi part of a larger discipline in food, sleep, thought, prayer, and daily activity designed to equip himself for service of the causes to which he was totally committed. What he failed to see was that his own unique experience was no guide for the common man. Scholars have continued to judge Gandhi’s place in history. He was the catalyst if not the initiator of three of the major revolutions of the 20th century: the movements against colonialism, racism, and violence. He wrote copiously; the collected edition of his writings had reached 100 volumes by the early 21st century. Much of what he wrote was in response to the needs of his coworkers and disciples and the exigencies of the political situation, but on fundamentals, he maintained a remarkable consistency, as is evident from the Hind Swaraj (“Indian Home Rule”), published in South Africa in 1909. The strictures on Western

materialism and colonialism, the reservations about industrialism and urbanization, the distrust of the modern state, and the total rejection of violence that was expressed in that book seemed romantic, if not reactionary, to the pre-World War I generation in India and the West, which had not known the shocks of two global wars or experienced the phenomenon of Adolf Hitler and the trauma of the atom bomb. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s objective of promoting a just and egalitarian order at home and nonalignment with military blocs abroad doubtless owed much to Gandhi, but neither he nor his colleagues in the Indian nationalist movement wholly accepted the Gandhian models in politics and economics. In the years since Gandhi’s death, his name has been invoked by the organizers of numerous demonstrations and movements. However, with a few outstanding exceptions—such as those of his disciple the land reformer Vinoba Bhave in India, and of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States—those movements have been a travesty of the ideas of Gandhi. Yet Gandhi will probably never lack champions. Erik H. Erikson, a distinguished American psychoanalyst, in his study of Gandhi senses “an affinity between Gandhi’s truth and the insights of modern psychology.” One of the greatest admirers of Gandhi was Albert Einstein, who saw in Gandhi’s nonviolence a possible antidote to the massive violence unleashed by the fission of the atom. And Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist, after his survey of the socio-economic problems of the underdeveloped world, pronounced Gandhi “in practically all fields an enlightened liberal.” In a time of deepening crisis in the underdeveloped world, of social malaise in the affluent societies, of the shadow of unbridled technology, and the precarious peace of nuclear terror, it seems likely that Gandhi’s ideas and techniques will become increasingly relevant. Much of what he wrote was in response to the needs of his coworkers and disciples and the exigencies of the political situation, but on fundamentals, he maintained a remarkable consistency, as is evident from the Hind Swaraj (“Indian Home Rule”), published in South Africa in 1909. The strictures on Western materialism and colonialism, the reservations about industrialism and urbanization, the distrust of the modern state, and the total rejection of violence that was expressed in that book seemed romantic, if not reactionary, to the pre-World War I generation in India and the West, which had not known the shocks of two global wars or experienced the phenomenon of Adolf Hitler and the trauma of the atom bomb. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s objective of promoting a just and egalitarian order at home and nonalignment with military blocs abroad doubtless owed much to Gandhi, but neither he nor his colleagues in the Indian nationalist movement wholly accepted the Gandhian models in politics and economics. In the years since Gandhi’s death, his name has been invoked by the organizers of numerous demonstrations and movements. However, with a few outstanding exceptions—such as those of his disciple the land reformer Vinoba Bhave in India, and of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States—those movements have been a travesty of the ideas of Gandhi. Yet Gandhi will probably never lack champions. Erik H. Erikson, a distinguished American psychoanalyst, in his study of Gandhi senses “an affinity between Gandhi’s truth and the insights of modern psychology.” One of the greatest admirers of Gandhi was Albert Einstein, who saw in Gandhi’s nonviolence a possible antidote to the massive violence unleashed by the fission of the atom. And Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist, after his survey of the socio-economic problems of the underdeveloped world, pronounced Gandhi “in practically all fields an enlightened liberal.” In a time of deepening crisis in the underdeveloped world, of social malaise in the affluent societies, of the shadow of unbridled technology, and the precarious peace of nuclear terror, it seems

likely that Gandhi’s ideas and techniques will become increasingly relevant. All Credits for...

B.R. Nanda Former Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Author of Mahatma Gandhi: A Biography and others. Last Updated: Feb 12, 2021

[Gandhi, a British-Indian historical film, released in 1982, tells the story of Mahatma Gandhi and his struggle to win independence for India through nonviolent civil disobedience. The movie won eight Academy Awards, including that for best picture, and five Golden Globe Awards, including that for best foreign film. It was also named best film at the BAFTA ceremony and took four additional BAFTA Awards.]

[fission-mailure]

Oh, man. So, not a complete list, also Spoilers, but:

-- Sudden full frontal nudity. Like, I don’t have a problem with nudity in television, and it is an adult cartoon, but a) It’s very jarring, after an entire series with little to no nudity, to suddenly spring on us a several minute long scene of full, uncensored nudity, and an explicit sex scene, and b) Like, the scene of nudity in question is just ... silly and obviously for fanservice, as it involves Miranda just casually having a conversation with someone while stark naked, and c) It looks ... bad, man. Like, the intent is clearly to titillate, but they’ve somehow managed to animate the least titillating looking naked bodies possible.

-- Characters acting wildly out of character. Season 1 Marin is a harsh, embittered, and cynical leader who nevertheless acts as a kind of mother figure for the cast; Season 2 Marin is a relentless war hawk who we’re told deliberately started the war for Reasons, and who begins the series by committing a massive ethical crime and a huge breach of trust of the rest of the cast, and who most recently has chosen to fire a superweapon on her own troops. Season 1 Miranda is cynical and tired, but highly intelligent and fiercely loyal to her team; Season 2 Miranda is a nationalist who sells out Chase after they have a conversation in confidence. Season 1 Kazu is hot-headed and irreverent, but highly competent and surprisingly insightful; Season 2 Kazu is the comedy relief, and for some reason his fanboying of a tokusatsu show from Season 1 is now taken to full blown obsession status? 

-- Just, like, forgetting characters’ backstories? In Season 1, Yaz is a Union pilot who defects to the Polity after her parents are outed as intellectuals. This is kind of an important part of her character, as a) She was a true believer at one point, and b) It explains why she’s a good pilot. It’s because, like Chase, she was a pilot. In Season 2, Yaz has always been a rebel against the Union and never worked for them, and her parents weren’t outed but instead were willing true believers all along. 

-- There’s basically no supporting cast anymore. There’s the Gen:lock team, there’s Marin and Miranda as minor antagonists, there’s the Union as major antagonists, and that’s it. 

-- We’re shown the Union, and it’s portrayed as being very ... like, Scary Non-American. Like, it’s a blend of Middle Eastern, Indian, and East Asian aesthetics with a little bit of Catholicism thrown in, in a very ‘ooooh, look how Foreign they are’ kind of way. When characters remark on how they look nice, they get shut down in a very Garth Marenghi “My aunt went to Scotland once, she said it was quite nice -- ...” “WELL, SHE’S WRONG,” kind of way.

-- The theme song is replaced with generic royalty-free music over reused clips. That’s not a huge problem, but it’s demonstrative of the lack of effort put in.

-- Just in general, the dialogue and storytelling is about half as smart. Things like ‘Nemesis isn’t crazy and evil because he’s spent years stuck in a mech constantly fighting, he’s crazy and evil because Brother Tate turned a dial marked ‘crazy and evil’ up to maximum.’ And yes, there’s a Watsonian precedent for that in Cammie turning up her aggression parameters in S1, but there’s a huuuuge difference between ‘a character meddles with her own emotions as part of an arc about learning to cope with war,’ and ‘this villain is a villain because someone flicked the switch marked ‘evil’ on him.’

-- The animation is ... noticeably worse. Special mention goes to when the mass-produced Holons were blowing themselves up with, like, obvious stock-animation-bought-off-the-internet explosion graphics.

-- Plot points just don’t make a lot of sense. Episode 2 is a prolonged flashback showing how Marin started the war, except either it’s achronological and they did a bad job of indicating it, or it’s a jumbled mess where they forgot their own plot order, because it makes it look like the New York attack happens first, stuff happens in between, and then Marin launches her attack ... which we’re told happened thirty days before the New York attack. Episode 4 has Taking Back The Anvil as a big plot point, and characters keep referring to it as ‘ending the war’ even though the war was still going on even when the Polity held the Anvil back in Season 1, so why ... would this end ... that? There’s a whole thing about a politician offering fake Mars colonisation to give people hope, it’s a major plot point, except apparently people have already left for Mars and it’s not clear where they actually went. Not in a mystery way either, just in a ‘the show forgot to mention it’ way.

-- They had two queer characters have sex and then, seemingly, one immediately died. 

after everything with gen:lock i never want to see a single person ever try and say rwby would be better taken care of in the hands of another company ever again

[theheartsjourney]

The Public Square (1923) - Will Levington Comfort

D. Appleton and Company, New York. 320 pages.

“This isn’t an English-Indian story. It’s a story of all the world.“

CW: murder/massacre, animal (horse) death, war

The book primarily follows its first narrator, Pandora "Pidge" Musser, although it varies from chapter to chapter. Fresh from Los Angeles to New York to work independently as a writer, nineteen-year-old Pidge enters a rooming house on 54 Harrow Street in Greenwich Village. The owner is the calm and experienced figure of Miss Claes, an Indian-American, who takes the role of a mentor figure to Pidge.

Others who take residence in the building are Nagar, or Mr. Naidu, Richard "Dicky" Cobden, and a "couple of girl-pals; one works in a restaurant to support the other who is to become a prima donna; [and] a couple of decayed vaudeville artists looking for a legacy" (32) who--to my great disappointment--never appear.

Nagar is the writer and Hindu friend of Miss Claes. He presents his story, "The Little Man" to the Public Square, where Dicky, the weekly paper's reader, is enthralled by the narrative of Gandhi. Dicky leaves his wealthy home on East 50th Street to join the others at Harrow. There, he believes he'll find inspiration among the artist-types to write his magnum opus.

Loves tangle from there. Two additional characters are introduced to complete Comfort's commentary on relationships: Fanny Gallup and Rufus Melton. Fanny, the destitute, worldly girl from the Lenox way factory, embodies woman ruined in her search for love, and Rufus the type of confident man who loves for himself--even if he must beguile and silence for it.

Pidge's struggles with love are raw and convincing. Despite craving comfort, she refuses to allow Dicky to love her by his imaginary ideal of her. She prefers the independence she escaped Los Angeles for--even if it exhausts her and starves her to keep. The peace a husband's salary could give her is too easily won for her to accept.

Yet the past combines with her need for "experiences, life" (107) in Rufus Melton, a man whose self-serving love is still a constant battle for her to accept. She never manages to change herself for him--rather, in the same way she did for her father, she adapts, ignores, and tolerates his presence as she can. Comfort compares the two directly: "she was lacking in the ability to detach herself from Melton, as from the influence of her father" (93). When she first capitulates to Rufus' advances, she even blames it on being her “father's child (134). As her tenderness for Rufus wanes, the narration also comments that “Rufus thought her extremely selfish. So had her father" (157).

Rufus again acts as a foil to her father in the way his character is treated off-scene. Chasing a story, he departs for WWI France--and is promptly forgotten by the narrative. When he reappears, he is trapped in a new marriage and is potentially shell-shocked. Dicky frees him--and he is forgotten again. His absence does not have the same power over her as Adolf Musser did, yet even his wanes as Pidge matures: when Adolf falls ill and Pidge rushes to him, she “suddenly discovered she had a father” (221) as though she had forgotten him.

To an extent, the act of saving Rufus and forgetting him places Dicky in the same role as Pidge. While Dicky is away in India and France, Pidge has taken his place in The Public Square as reader, completing the exchange of roles. Their codependence and unshakable link remains throughout the novel. This relationship asserts that their link is not as lovers but comrades. 

When rejecting Dicky's proposal a second time, Pidge states:

“Do I have to begin by saying how dear you are— how kind, how utterly good it is to know you; what it means to have faith and trust in one man?”

“Please not, Pidge.”

“But never forget it, Dicky. It’s the pedestal upon which everything’s builded. Always remember that I know you underneath; that I turn to you in trouble—not like a brother or father or lover, but what our word *comrade* means—what it will sometime mean to many people!" (106)

The word "comrade" calls to Comfort's language in his Will Levington Comfort Letters (1920). He dedicated the volume of letters "To The Comrades," referring to his compatriots in the spiritual sect he headed called The Glass Hive. In the first letter, he states that "We should belong to one another better in the Long Road sense, in the sense of the real meaning of the word Comrade" (WLC Letters, 2). The second letter clarifies that his purpose in the volume is "to touch the real Comrade within you, for I have an Immortal Friend there, one who would die for me every day" (WLC Letters, 8).

When Dicky attempts to make a lover of her, she refuses: comradeship is the higher relationship to her. None of Pidge's relationships have the power to alter her character but the one with Dicky. Her empathy for others in financial hardship is sourced from her time working in the exhaustion and hunger of the labeling factory. Nothing in her sense of value or work ethic was dictated to her by another.  But after rejecting her novel manuscript for being too shallow, Dicky unwittingly changes Pidge: she sets her writing aside, understands the naivety of it and herself, and matures as a reader instead. 

Dicky does not understand this relation at first, and in contrast, he does nothing but develop based on others' influences. Most of those influences are Indian: Nagar's "Little Man" tale inspiring him to write an equivalent story, Miss Claes' wisdom at the Punjabi dinner where they gather after the fallout of his first failed proposal, Gandhi's comment on marriage that reawakens Dicky's love for Pidge. In the critical scene of Pidge's second refusal of Dicky’s proposal, she states, "Miss Claes and Nagar lose themselves in nations. You’re getting to be like them" (107). Furthermore, Dicky’s development  moves in tandem with that of India throughout the climax, which Comfort summarizes as "there had been death and birth for India and for himself" (283).

In its later pages, the novel places Dicky amidst the Indian nationalist movement of Gandhi. In particular, Comfort references "The Rowlatt Bills," likely referring to the "Black Bills" which preceded the Rowlatt Act. Introduced March 18, 1919, this act allowed the government to arrest and incarcerate without trial anyone on grounds of inciting terrorism in support of the Indian nationalism. Dicky arrives in late May to reunite with Gandhi and understand the position of "The Little Man" in international politics. The pacing swiftly moves onto April, where Dicky is nearby the arrest of Dr. Satyapal and Dr. Kitchlew--public figures who campaigned against the Rowlatt Act and who, being Hindu and Muslim respectively,  promoted unity. The resulting Jallianwala Bagh massacre is also covered.

I adore this excerpt of from the Jallianwala Bagh scene. Dicky confronts General Fyatt (Reginald Dyer) at the head of the massacre

Dicky felt the horrible slowness over everything—that somehow there was not in this man’s volition the power to order the firing to cease. No recognition showed in Fyatt’s eyes. He stared. It was like the man who had stared at him on the docks in Bombay, when he heard that America had entered the War.

“I only wanted to ask —” Dicky stopped and raised his voice above the tumult of shots and voices. “Cobden of New York—saw you in France!’’

[...] “Ah, Cobden. Heard you were in town. Busy, you know!”

“I see!” the American yelled back. He felt like a maniac. “I see! I merely wanted to ask, General, if you had gone mad—or have I?” (277-8)

Comfort’s description style of the massacre closely resembles his techniques to describing the trauma of WWI combat in Red Fleece (1915). His sentences are fragmented and disorderly, and smooth comprehension is abandoned for the narrator’s uncertainty. Another mirror in his combat writing is through specters. Dicky notes feeling as though Pidge were with him through his transformation into a “world citizen” (292). Despite recognizing the absurdity of it, he allows himself to find comfort in her imagined presence--and he notes that "things of this kind had often happened to soldiers on the battlefields of France" (285). The phrase has merit in Comfort's experience and in others. Sassoon (Diaries 1915-1918, 68) and Bird (Ghosts Have Warm Hands, 38), for example, describe seeing loved ones in moments of stress. Twice the protagonist in Comfort's second WWI novel senses his love nearby: "he fancied her near..." (Red Fleece, 134) and "she had been near" (Red Fleece, 148). 

Still--not wishing to distract from the novel's theme towards India--Comfort spends a brief time in WWI France and Arabia "with young Tom Lawrence, whose fame Dicky Cobden helped to make" (137). The French portion receives a short chapter set near the Meuse��Argonne offensive ("The 'Oregon' forest," 197) which contains a passage I found memorable:

His mount had turned gently away in the thickening dusk, turned on his toe corks through the slush to follow a wind-blown leaf. Plop — a water-soaked trench-siding gave way, and Yorick disappeared into an unused pit. [...] Yorick looked like a monster in the process of being born out of the mud. There was something both humorous and hopeless about the gaunt lifted head that came up into the ray. And now Dicky discovered that Yorick’s left foreleg below the knee veered off suddenly to the left, at a decided angle from the way it should lie. Dicky felt alone in a harrowing underworld. [...]

“Pretty lucky old boy, you are,” Dicky said. “Work done, war over for you, nice warm ditch to lie up in at the last, and I’ve got to take all the responsibility.”

He drew the pistol from his belt and placed it on the little twist of hair halfway between the eyes.

“I ought to take the saddle off first, but I’m not going to. So long, old kid, and best luck.”

The pistol banged in the dugout like a cannon cracker under a flower pot, and the voice of an American sentry above was heard to say:

‘‘Some fool’s blowed his head off, down there. Why in hell can’t a man be patient!”

Although not a complete surprise coming from Comfort's strong anti-war background, the novel references support for the pacifist movement. John Higgans, the Public Square's editor, wrote a pacifist article in outrage of his conscientious objector friend's arrest. Despite knowing it would doom the Public Square, Higgans pushes to publish the article. Pidge convinces him not to, and he cedes ownership of the paper to her and Dicky. Thus, despite its feature on little more than a page, the scene contributes to the novel's imaginary future story: the tale of the press in the hands of Pidge and Dicky.

But the Public Square is not the ultimate point of the novel. Neither is Pidge--which weakens the novel’s impact after spending so much time wither her. Dicky is key. The value of the story is in his transformation, but even that is muddled toward the end.

Even after every change India and Indian culture has wrought in Dicky, he concludes though the trauma specter of Pidge that it was her influence that matured him. He goes so far as to say “The Little Man has made me see [...] the great thing you have done [...] pushing me back into myself ” (292-3). By relegating Gandhi--and India in extension--to a supportive role for Pidge, the novel completely undermines the strength of Dicky’s world citizenship. All his work towards his journalism--watching Nagar be whipped, drilling himself to avoid partisanship, neglecting his family for India--is abandoned for what he suddenly realizes is to “at last to become connected to her this way, though across the world" (286).

Furthermore, Pidge’s character relied deeply on the concept of the Comrade. Instead, her role in maturing him is as a “the man-maker a wife must be” (292). While the novel’s final pages do not state explicit romance, the intention is obvious: Pidge is to be divorced from Rufus, she confesses that she is “dying to be a woman” (318), and she repeatedly asks Dicky for rest--the thing he offered her in his original proposal.

It’s a disappointing finish on an otherwise well-done book. Comfort’s love for his settings genuinely shows. His characters--while not very complex--are effective and generally interesting. The language he uses is beautiful and rewarding, and the way he conveys empathy is clear and moving without grim moralizing.

---

The Public Square dust cover from Yesterday’s Gallery.

Everybody’s Magazine Feb 1923 cover from rarerecordsncollectibles on eBay.

Everybody’s Magazine Mar 1923 image, page 105 by C. R. Chickering.

Everybody’s Magazine Apr 1923 image, page 155 by C. R. Chickering.

Everybody’s Magazine May 1923 image, page 149 by C. R. Chickering.

[josfolioshelf]

"The sun never set on the British empire, an Indian nationalist later sardonically commented, because even God couldn’t trust the Englishman in the dark" . A history defying eye opener to the other side of the coin. This story (or his story) indulges us then into both the head and tales before we toss the coin and have a word about it. . ▪️▪️An era of darkness▪️▪️ . Check the blog to read. Happy reading 🔎 Click on the link in bio or copy this link to follow blog Link : https://www.josfolio.com/ ___________________________________________________ #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #bookstack #vintagebooks #penguinbooks #prettybooks #bookaesthetic #bookphoto #booksofinstagram #instabooks #igbooks #biblophile #bookish #booklover #josfolioshelf #writersofinsta #instaquotes #readersofinsta #bibliophile #love #instagood #readersofinstagram #shasitharoor #aneraofdarkness #aleph #alephbooks https://www.instagram.com/p/CGSAcU4AZTt/?igshid=axk7jkdq5hy8

[itsfinancethings]

New story in Technology from Time: Facebook’s Ties to India’s Ruling Party Complicate Its Fight Against Hate Speech

In July 2019, Alaphia Zoyab was on a video call with Facebook employees in India, discussing some 180 posts by users in the country that Avaaz, the watchdog group where she worked, said violated Facebook’s hate speech rules. But half way through the hour-long meeting, Shivnath Thukral, the most senior Facebook official on the call, got up and walked out of the room, Zoyab says, saying he had other important things to do.

Among the posts was one by Shiladitya Dev, a lawmaker in the state of Assam for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He had shared a news report about a girl being allegedly drugged and raped by a Muslim man, and added his own comment: “This is how Bangladeshi Muslims target our [native people] in 2019.” But rather than removing it, Facebook allowed the post to remain online for more than a year after the meeting, until TIME contacted Facebook to ask about it on Aug. 21. “We looked into this when Avaaz first flagged it to us, and our records show that we assessed it as a hate speech violation,” Facebook said in a statement to TIME. “We failed to remove upon initial review, which was a mistake on our part.”

Thukral was Facebook’s public policy director for India and South Asia at the time. Part of his job was lobbying the Indian government, but he was also involved in discussions about how to act when posts by politicians were flagged as hate speech by moderators, former employees tell TIME. Facebook acknowledges that Thukral left the meeting, but says he never intended to stay for its entirety, and joined only to introduce Zoyab, whom he knew from a past job, to his team. “Shivnath did not leave because the issues were not important,” Facebook said in the statement, noting that the company took action on 70 of the 180 posts presented during the meeting.

Eric Miller—World Economic ForumShivnath Thukral at the Moving to Better Ground session during the India Economic Summit in Mumbai, November, 2011.

The social media giant is under increasing scrutiny for how it enforces its hate speech policies when the accused are members of Modi’s ruling party. Activists say some Facebook policy officials are too close to the BJP, and accuse the company of putting its relationship with the government ahead of its stated mission of removing hate speech from its platform—especially when ruling-party politicians are involved. Thukral, for instance, worked with party leadership to assist in the BJP’s 2014 election campaign, according to documents TIME has seen.

Facebook’s managing director for India, Ajit Mohan, denied suggestions that the company had displayed bias toward the BJP in an Aug. 21 blog post titled, “We are open, transparent and non-partisan.” He wrote: “Despite hailing from diverse political affiliations and backgrounds, [our employees] perform their respective duties and interpret our policies in a fair and non-partisan way. The decisions around content escalations are not made unilaterally by just one person; rather, they are inclusive of views from different teams and disciplines within the company.”

Facebook published the blog post after the Wall Street Journal, citing current and former Facebook employees, reported on Aug.14 that the company’s top policy official in India, Ankhi Das, pushed back against other Facebook employees who wanted to label a BJP politician a “dangerous individual” and ban him from the platform after he called for Muslim immigrants to be shot. Das argued that punishing the state lawmaker, T. Raja Singh, would hurt Facebook’s business prospects in India, the Journal reported. (Facebook said Das’s intervention was not the sole reason Singh was not banned, and that it was still deciding if a ban was necessary.)

Read more: Can the World’s Largest Democracy Endure Another Five Years of a Modi Government?

Those business prospects are sizeable. India is Facebook’s largest market, with 328 million using the social media platform. Some 400 million Indians also use Facebook’s messaging service WhatsApp — a substantial chunk of the country’s estimated 503 million internet users. The platforms have become increasingly important in Indian politics; after the 2014 elections, Das published an op-ed arguing that Modi had won because of the way he leveraged Facebook in his campaign.

But Facebook and WhatsApp have also been used to spread hate speech and misinformation that have been blamed for helping to incite deadly attacks on minority groups amid rising communal tensions across India—despite the company’s efforts to crack down. In February, a video of a speech by BJP politician Kapil Mishra was uploaded to Facebook, in which he told police that unless they removed mostly-Muslim protesters occupying a road in Delhi, his supporters would do it themselves. Violent riots erupted within hours. (In that case, Facebook determined the video violated its rules on incitement to violence and removed it.)

WhatsApp, too, has been used with deadly intent in India — for example by cow vigilantes, Hindu mobs that have attacked Muslims and Dalits accused of killing cows, an animal sacred in Hinduism. At least 44 people, most of them Muslims, were killed by cow vigilantes between May 2015 and December 2018, according to Human Rights Watch. Many cow vigilante murders happen after rumors spread on WhatsApp, and videos of lynchings and beatings are often shared via the app too.

Read more: How the Pandemic is Reshaping India

TIME has learned that Facebook, in an effort to evaluate its role in spreading hate speech and incitements to violence, has commissioned an independent report on its impact on human rights in India. Work on the India audit, previously unreported, began before the Journal published its story. It is being conducted by the U.S. law firm Foley Hoag and will include interviews with senior Facebook staff and members of civil society in India, according to three people with knowledge of the matter and an email seen by TIME. (A similar report on Myanmar, released in 2018, detailed Facebook’s failings on hate speech that contributed to the Rohingya genocide there the previous year.) Facebook declined to confirm the report.

But activists, who have spent years monitoring and reporting hate speech by Hindu nationalists, tell TIME that they believe Facebook has been reluctant to police posts by members and supporters of the BJP because it doesn’t want to pick fights with the government that controls its largest market. The way the company is structured exacerbates the problem, analysts and former employees say, because the same people responsible for managing the relationship with the government also contribute to decisions on whether politicians should be punished for hate speech.

“A core problem at Facebook is that one policy org is responsible for both the rules of the platform and keeping governments happy,” Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief security officer, tweeted in May. “Local policy heads are generally pulled from the ruling political party and are rarely drawn from disadvantaged ethnic groups, religious creeds or castes. This naturally bends decision-making towards the powerful.”

Some activists have grown so frustrated with the Facebook India policy team that they’ve begun to bypass it entirely in reporting hate speech. Following the call when Thukral walked out, Avaaz decided to begin reporting hate speech directly to Facebook’s company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. “We found Facebook India’s attitude utterly flippant, callous, uninterested,” says Zoyab, who has since left Avaaz. Another group that regularly reports hate speech against minorities on Facebook in India, which asked not to be named out of fear for the safety of its staffers, said it has been doing the same since 2018. In a statement, Facebook acknowledged some groups that regularly flag hate speech in India are in contact with Facebook headquarters, but said that did not change the criteria by which posts were judged to be against its rules.

Read more: Facebook Says It’s Removing More Hate Speech Than Ever Before. But There’s a Catch

The revelations in the Journal set off a political scandal in India, with opposition politicians calling for Facebook to be officially investigated for alleged favoritism toward Modi’s party. And the news caused strife within the company too: In an internal open letter, Facebook employees called on executives to denounce “anti-Muslim bigotry” and do more to ensure hate speech rules are applied consistently across the platform, Reuters reported. The letter alleges that there are no Muslim employees on the India policy team; in response to questions from TIME, Facebook said it was legally prohibited from collecting such data.

Facebook friends in high places

While it is common for companies to hire lobbyists with connections to political parties, activists say the history of staff on Facebook’s India policy team, as well as their incentive to keep the government happy, creates a conflict of interest when it comes to policing hate speech by politicians. Before joining Facebook, Thukral had worked in the past on behalf of the BJP. Despite this, he was involved in making decisions about how to deal with politicians’ posts that moderators flagged as violations of hate speech rules during the 2019 elections, the former employees tell TIME. His Facebook likes include a page called “I Support Narendra Modi.”

Former Facebook employees tell TIME they believe a key reason Thukral was hired in 2017 was because he was seen as close to the ruling party. In 2013, during the BJP’s eventually successful campaign to win national power at the 2014 elections, Thukral worked with senior party officials to help run a pro-BJP website and Facebook page. The site, called Mera Bharosa (“My Trust” in Hindi) also hosted events, including a project aimed at getting students to sign up to vote, according to interviews with people involved and documents seen by TIME. A student who volunteered for a Mera Bharosa project told TIME he had no idea it was an operation run in coordination with the BJP, and that he believed he was working for a non-partisan voter registration campaign. According to the documents, this was a calculated strategy to hide the true intent of the organization. By early 2014, the site changed its name to “Modi Bharosa” (meaning “Modi Trust”) and began sharing more overtly pro-BJP content. It is not clear whether Thukral was still working with the site at that time.

In a statement to TIME, Facebook acknowledged Thukral had worked on behalf of Mera Bharosa, but denied his past work presented a conflict of interest because multiple people are involved in significant decisions about removing content. “We are aware that some of our employees have supported various campaigns in the past both in India and elsewhere in the world,” Facebook said as part of a statement issued to TIME in response to a detailed series of questions. “Our understanding is that Shivnath’s volunteering at the time focused on the themes of governance within India and are not related to the content questions you have raised.”

Now, Thukral has an even bigger job. In March 2020, he was promoted from his job at Facebook to become WhatsApp’s India public policy director. In the role, New Delhi tech policy experts tell TIME, one of Thukral’s key responsibilities is managing the company’s relationship with the Modi government. It’s a crucial job, because Facebook is trying to turn the messaging app into a digital payments processor — a lucrative idea potentially worth billions of dollars.

In April, Facebook announced it would pay $5.7 billion for a 10% stake in Reliance Jio, India’s biggest telecoms company, which is owned by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. On a call with investors in May, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke enthusiastically about the business opportunity. “With so many people in India engaging through WhatsApp, we just think this is going to be a huge opportunity for us to provide a better commerce experience for people, to help small businesses and the economy there, and to build a really big business ourselves over time,” he said, talking about plans to link WhatsApp Pay with Jio’s vast network of small businesses across India. “That’s why I think it really makes sense for us to invest deeply in India.”

Read more: How Whatsapp Is Fueling Fake News Ahead of India’s Elections

But WhatsApp’s future as a payments application in India depends on final approval from the national payments regulator, which is still pending. Facebook’s hopes for expansion in India have been quashed by a national regulator before, in 2016, when the country’s telecoms watchdog said Free Basics, Facebook’s plan to provide free Internet access for only some sites, including its own, violated net neutrality rules. One of Thukral’s priorities in his new role is ensuring that a similar problem doesn’t strike down Facebook’s big ambitions for WhatsApp Pay.

‘No foreign company in India wants to be in the government’s bad books’

While the regulator is technically independent, analysts say that Facebook’s new relationship with the wealthiest man in India will likely make it much easier to gain approval for WhatsApp Pay. “It would be easier now for Facebook to get that approval, with Ambani on its side,” says Neil Shah, vice president of Counterpoint Research, an industry analysis firm. And goodwill from the government itself is important too, analysts say. “No foreign company in India wants to be in the government’s bad books,” says James Crabtree, author of The Billionaire Raj. “Facebook would very much like to have good relations with the government of India and is likely to think twice about doing things that will antagonize them.”

The Indian government has shown before it is not afraid to squash the dreams of foreign tech firms. In July, after a geopolitical spat with China, it banned dozens of Chinese apps including TikTok and WeChat. “There has been a creeping move toward a kind of digital protectionism in India,” Crabtree says. “So in the back of Facebook’s mind is the fact that the government could easily turn against foreign tech companies in general, and Facebook in particular, especially if they’re seen to be singling out major politicians.”

With hundreds of millions of users already in India, and hundreds of millions more who don’t have smartphones yet but might in the near future, Facebook has an incentive to avoid that possibility. “Facebook has said in the past that it has no business interest in allowing hate speech on its platform,” says Chinmayi Arun, a resident fellow at Yale Law School, who studies the regulation of tech platforms. “It’s evident from what’s going on in India that this is not entirely true.”

Facebook says it is working hard to combat hate speech. “We want to make it clear that we denounce hate in any form,” said Mohan, Facebook’s managing director in India, in his Aug. 21 blog post. “We have removed and will continue to remove content posted by public figures in India when it violates our Community Standards.”

But scrubbing hate speech remains a daunting challenge for Facebook. At an employee meeting in June, Zuckerberg highlighted Mishra’s February speech ahead of the Delhi riots, without naming him, as a clear example of a post that should be removed. The original video of Mishra’s speech was taken down shortly after it was uploaded. But another version of the video, with more than 5,600 views and a long list of supportive comments underneath, remained online for six months until TIME flagged it to Facebook in August.

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