Haq's Musings

Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ

Showing posts with label Hindutva. Show all posts

Saturday, March 14, 2026

India Hosts "Proud Islamophobe" Laura Loomer in New Delhi

Self-described "Proud Islamophobe" Laura Loomer was invited to speak this weekend at India Today Conclave, an annual conference sponsored by an Indian publication. Her speech focussed on what she called "Islamic Terrorism". She also apologized for anti-India racists X posts. To further please her Indian audience, she also engaged in Pakistan bashing. "Pakistan's biggest export to the world is Islamic terrorism, and I don't believe the US should be cozying up to the Pakistani government at all," she said.

Loomer is known to be very close to President Donald Trump. In her social media posts, she is also known for viciously attacking India and Indians almost as much as Muslims. But at the conference in Delhi, she apologized for her anti-India posts. She also deleted most or all such posts prior to showing up in India.

A Collage of Laura Loomer's anti-India Posts. Source: OpIndia

Loomer has described Indians as “third-world invaders” and questioned their place in the United States, claiming that America was built by “white Europeans.” She also mocked India’s sanitation practices. In one of the widely shared X messages, she questioned why Indians “still [defecate] in the water they bathe and drink from,” while another post mocked Indian immigrants as so-called “high-skilled” workers who supposedly come from a country without basic facilities. In her posts, she has referred to the “rape culture” in India. She asserts that Indians have a low IQ of just 76.

It was her "proud Islamophobe" label and her views on "Islamic terrorism" that attracted many Indians to find her fit to be given a spotlight in the Indian capital. When X briefly made users’ countries of origin public, several prominent pro-Israel accounts were found to be run from India, according to France24.

India has just 5.75% of global Twitter users but the country accounts for 55% of all anti-Muslim tweets, according to a report entitled "Islamophobia in the Digital Age" published by the Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV) in 2022. It also found that the US, the UK, and India contributed a staggering 86% of anti-Muslim content on Twitter during a three-year period. It should be noted that both the US and the UK have a sizable Indian diaspora infected by hateful Hindutva ideology.

India Accounts For 55% of Islamophobic Tweets. Source: ICV

Individuals and organizations connected to the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) are active users of social media. They are working to promote India's divisive Islamophobic politics among the Non Resident Indians (NRIs) and their children. Hundreds of the RSS shakhas (branches) are now found in at least 39 countries around the world. Hindutva is a Hindu supremacist ideology inspired by 20th century Fascism and Nazism in Europe; it is very different from the ancient Hindu faith, according to American history professor Audrey Truschke who teaches Indian history at Rutgers University in the US state of New Jersey. Top Indian economists have raised alarm about it.

Active Twitter Users. Source: Statista

India has only 23 million Twitter users, 5.75% of 400 million Twitter users worldwide, but Indians generate more than half of all Islamophobic tweets in the world. Numbers published in Twitter’s advertising resources indicate that Twitter had 3.40 million users in Pakistan in early 2022. ICV counted 15,766 Islamophobic tweets geolocated to Pakistan in a three year period.

Executives at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, recently told human rights groups that they wouldn’t release the full India Hate Speech study for their own security. An earlier 2020 company study concluded that Hindutva groups support violence against Muslims and Christians & should be banned from the platform, according to the Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt of the Wall Street Journal story:

"Meta has for years faced criticism from rights groups and has been probed by authorities regarding the presence of hate speech on its platforms in India, where more than 300 million people use Facebook and more than 400 million are on its WhatsApp messaging service. Meta has said it invests significantly in technology to find hate speech across languages in India. In 2020, Meta’s safety team concluded that a Hindu nationalist organization in India supported violence against minorities and likely qualified as an organization that should be banned from Facebook, the Journal reported that year. Facebook didn’t remove the group following internal security-team warnings that doing so might endanger both its business prospects and staff in India".

Social Media Expose Ugly Face of Violent Hindu Extremism

Silicon Valley's Indian-American Congressman Rejects Hindutva

Silicon Valley Hindu Americans Rally in Support of Yogi, Modi

Rape of 8-year-old Asifa Bano in Kashmir

Vast Majority of Hindu Americans Support Modi

Modi's Extended Lockdown in Indian Occupied Kashmir

Hinduization of India

Brievik's Hindutva Rhetoric

Indian Textbooks

India's RAW's Successes in Pakistan

Riaz Haq Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

Saturday, October 11, 2025

Major Hindu American Group Distances Itself From Modi's India

"We are not proxies for India in the US", wrote Suhag Shukla, co-founder and executive director of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) in a recent article for The Print, an Indian media outlet. This was written in response to Indian diplomat-politician Shashi Tharoor's criticism that the Indian-American diaspora was largely silent on the Trump administration policies hurting India. After a meeting with a US congressional delegation in September 2025, Tharoor had questioned why the Indian diaspora appeared apathetic to US policies affecting India, including H-1B visa fees and tariffs.

Suhag Shukla (L) and Shashi Tharoor

The HAF is seen by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's critics and human rights advocates as an American proxy for the Hindutva movement and its Hindu Supremacist ideology. HAF spun off in 2003 from the American branch of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an organization with ties to anti-Muslim violence in India. HAF co-founder Mihir Meghani published a manifesto praising the demolition of the Babri Mosque by a Hindu mob in 1992.

HAF's Shukla's article has been published amid a growing backlash against the Indian diaspora in Australia, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. All of these countries and regions have seen very public expressions of disgust at the behavior of Indians in these countries. This is in part attributed to the politics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proclaimed his country as "Vishwaguru", meaning the world's guru. It is often seen as an expression of Hindu Supremacy and denigration of all others.

The arrogance of the Indian diaspora was highlighted last year when Vivek Ramaswamy, then a candidate for the Republican Party's presidential nomination, said Americans don't have a good enough work ethic as American culture "venerated mediocrity over excellence." He offered it as a key justification to bring in more Indians to work in the United States. The backlash in the United States was immediate and strong. The essence of the response to the Hindu supremacist criticism of the US culture went like this: People from India, a "shit-hole" country, are jealous of America. Earlier, Professor Amy Wax of University of Pennsylvania, told Tucker Carlsen that “the role of envy and shame in the way the third world [sic] regards the first world […] creates ingratitude of the most monstrous kind.” She also said that ‘Brahmin women’ of India are taught that they are better than everybody.

American social media, particularly Trump's MAGA base, have turned against India and Indians, making them the most hated diaspora in the United States. They are getting a taste of the kind of hate that the BJP, India's ruling party, has been promoting against Muslims. Anti-Indian slurs like "pajeet", "dirty Indian" and "coolie" have become common.

Ashley Tellis, a strongly pro-India analyst in the United States, recently published an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine titled "India's Great Power Delusions" in which he wrote that "the country (India) is shedding one of its main sources of strength—its liberal democracy—by embracing Hindu nationalism. This evolution could undermine India’s rise by intensifying communal tensions and exacerbating problems with its neighbors, forcing it to redirect security resources inward to the detriment of outward power projection. The country’s illiberal pivot further undermines the rules-based international order that has served it so well".

The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi has warned Indians traveling to the United States they could have their American visas revoked if they commit serious crimes on American soil. The advisory was issued days after police bodycam footage of an Indian woman allegedly shoplifting goods worth around $1,300 from a Target store in Illinois was widely shared online, according to The Independent.

In recent years, India has emerged as a major hub for global scams. The US government has alleged in court documents that a large enterprise originating from India was involved in stealing nearly $1.5 billion from elderly Americans. Recently, two Indian nationals, Pranay Mamindi and Kishan Patel, were found guilty of participating in a money laundering conspiracy, concealing the source of the money, and using the illegally gained money to further promote a criminal enterprise. Six other defendants from India also pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

These global scams appear to have started amid widespread unemployment in India. Many of the scammers previously worked in call centers where they learned to use computers and telecommunications networks to reach out and talk to Americans. In 2022, U.S. citizens fell victim to a massive loss of over $10 billion from phishing calls orchestrated by illegal Indian call centers, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Indian-Americans, too, have been found guilty in a number of high-profile scams. A federal jury convicted former Theranos executive Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, an Indian-American entrepreneur, on all 12 counts of fraud in 2022. Balwani was born in 1965 in Pakistan to a Sindhi Hindu family. His one-time girlfriend and partner Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, was convicted on similar charges earlier that year. Both face up to 20 years in prison.

Last year, a federal judge sentenced former Outcome Health CEO Rishi Shah, an Indian-American, to 7½ years in prison for a massive fraud scheme that prosecutors say enabled a “jet-set lifestyle” featuring private aircraft, yachts and a tony Chicago home.

In 2020, Dr. John Nath Kapoor, Indian-American CEO of Insys Therapeutics, was found guilty of conspiring to recklessly and illegally boost profits from the opioid painkiller Subsys, a fentanyl spray designed to be absorbed under the tongue, according to multiple media reports.

Rajat Gupta, an Indian-American former global head of McKinsey & Company, was convicted of insider trading in 2012. He was charged with passing on confidential business information about Goldman Sachs to hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. Gupta was found guilty on multiple counts of conspiracy and securities fraud and served a two-year prison sentence.

India Ranks Number One For Misinformation and Disinformation

Beyond the hub of scams and frauds, it seems that India has earned a reputation as the epicenter of misinformation and disinformation. According to experts surveyed for the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Risk Report, India was ranked highest for the risk of misinformation and disinformation. This was on full display during the recent conflict with Pakistan.

After the recent Pahalgam militant attack in Kashmir, the Indian government immediately blamed it on Pakistan without any investigation or evidence. More than a month later, the perpetrators have neither been clearly identified nor apprehended. And yet, the government of Prime Minister Modi proceeded with air strikes inside Pakistan. Pakistan retaliated and shot down several Indian fighter jets, including its most advanced French Rafales. The conflict began to quickly escalate with strikes and counter-strikes, with the world fearing a nuclear exchange. This prompted the United States and several other countries to intervene and force a ceasefire in less than 4 days of armed conflict.

During this short 4-day period, the Indian mainstream media was filled with lies. Here's how the Washington Post reported this: "Times Now Navbharat reported that Indian forces had entered Pakistan; TV9 Bharatvarsh told viewers that Pakistan’s prime minister had surrendered; Bharat Samachar said he was hiding in a bunker. All of them, along with some of the country’s largest channels — including Zee News, ABP News and NDTV — repeatedly proclaimed that major Pakistani cities had been destroyed".

It is unfortunate but true: Fraud and falsehood have become endemic in Indian society. Part of the blame falls squarely on the ruling BJP party which promotes falsehoods. In 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-hand man and home minister Amit Shah told his party's volunteers commonly known as Modi Bhakts: "We can keep making messages go viral, whether they are real or fake, sweet or sour". "Keep making messages go viral. We have already made a WhatsApp group with 32 lakh people in Uttar Pradesh; every morning they are sent a message at 8 am", Shah added, according to a report in Dainik Bhaskar, an Indian Hindi-language daily newspaper.

PakAlumni Social Network

Monday, September 15, 2025

Modi's Hindutva: Has BJP's Politics Hurt India's International Image?

The Indian cricket team's crass behavior after defeating the Pakistani team at the Asia Cup 2025 group encounter has raised eyebrows among sports fans around the world. Not only did Suryakumar Yadav, the Indian team captain, refuse to do the customary handshake before and after the match in Dubai but he also made controversial statements linking the match with the recent India-Pakistan conflict. “A few things in life are above sportsman’s spirit ......We stand with all the victims of the Pahalgam terror attack and with their families, and dedicate this win to our brave armed forces who took part in Operation Sindoor”, he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

This latest incident in the UAE illustrates one of the reasons why there is a growing backlash against the Indian diaspora in Australia, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. All of these countries and regions have seen very public expressions of disgust at the behavior of Indians in these countries. This is in part attributed to the politics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proclaimed his country as "Vishwaguru", meaning the world's guru. It is often seen as an expression of Hindu Supremacy and denigration of all others.

India Ranks Number One For Misinformation and Disinformation

It is unfortunate but true: Fraud and falsehood have become endemic in the Indian society. Part of the blame falls squarely on the ruling BJP party which promotes falsehoods. In 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-hand man and home minister Amit Shah told his party's volunteers commonly known as Modi Bhakts: "We can keep making messages go viral, whether they are real or fake, sweet or sour". "Keep making messages go viral. We have already made a WhatsApp group with 32 lakh people in Uttar Pradesh; every morning they are sent a message at 8 am", Shah added, according to a report in Dainik Bhaskar, an Indian Hindi-language daily newspaper.

Related Links:

PakAlumni Social Network

Saturday, October 19, 2024

India: A Rogue State Ruled By Gangsters?

The United States and Canadian governments are alleging that Indian government agents plotted assassinations of Sikh dissidents on their soils. Their investigations paint a shocking picture of how recklessly Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government operates.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) and Home Minister Amit Shah

The criminal charges announced by Washington and Ottawa are backed by Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the remaining three countries that make up the 5-nation intelligence sharing alliance known as the Five Eyes. Revelations made by the US Justice Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) indicate that the authorization for Sikh assassinations came directly from the top Indian government officials, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-hand man Amit Shah. International criminal gang leader Lawrence Bishnoi is listed among the people tasked with carrying out the murders. These allegations are based on intelligence gathered from multiple communication intercepts among Indian government officials in New Delhi and Indian diplomats posted in Canada.

Sikh Leaders Targeted in Assassinations Campaign by Modi Government

RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme has warned of widespread violence, homicides and a public security threat linked to agents of the Indian government. Duheme said the RCMP has charged “a significant number” of people with direct involvement in homicides, extortions and other criminal acts of violence over the past few years and is aware of more than a dozen threats to members of the south Asian community and the pro-Khalistan movement, according to the Canadian news media.

Meanwhile, the United States Justice Department (US DOJ) has charged a former Indian intelligence agent Vikash Yadav for allegedly orchestrating a foiled plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American citizen living in New York City. Last year, the DOJ first announced charges in the case, indicting an Indian national and alleged drug and weapons trafficker, Nikhil Gupta. That indictment also referred to an unnamed Indian government official whom prosecutors said directed the scheme.

New Delhi is responding very differently to almost identical allegations made by the US and Canadian governments. While the Canadians are treated with total disdain, the Americans are being taken very seriously. The behavior of the Modi officials toward Canada is just as hostile as it has been toward Pakistan which has also documented a campaign of assassinations of Sikhs and Kashmiris orchestrated by Indian agents on its soil.

Reacting to the report of Canadian allegations against the Indian government, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Syrus Qazi said: “We are aware of the nature of our eastern neighbor, we know what they are capable of … so it is not a surprise for us. “We caught [one of their] serving naval intelligence officers on our soil. He (Kulbhushan Jadhav) is in our custody and admitted that he came here to create instability and spread evil,” he added.

Last year, Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said her country remained a “target of a series of targeted killings and espionage by (Indian Intelligence Agency) RAW". “In December last year, Pakistan released a comprehensive dossier providing concrete and irrefutable evidence of India’s involvement in the Lahore attack of June 2021. The attack was planned and executed by Indian intelligence,” she said, adding that in 2016, a high-ranking Indian military officer Kulbhushan Jadhav confessed to his involvement in directing, financing and executing terror and sabotage in Pakistan.

The US government has openly bracketed Mr. Modi with several murderous dictators. Speaking about the US decision to grant immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman in 2022, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said that it was “not the first time” that the US government has designated immunity to foreign leaders and listed four cases. “Some examples: President Aristide in Haiti in 1993; President Mugabe in Zimbabwe in 2001; Prime Minister Modi in India in 2014; and President Kabila in the DRC in 2018. This is a consistent practice that we have afforded to heads of state, heads of government, and foreign ministers,” he said.

Modi has a long history of murdering minorities in his country. After the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002, Narendra Modi made the cover of India Today magazine with the caption "Hero of Hatred". Modi was denied a visa to visit the United States. The US visa ban on Modi was lifted in 2014 after he became prime minister. Since then, Narendra Modi's image has been rehabilitated by the West as the US and Western Europe seek allies in Asia to counter the rise of China. However, Modi's actions on the ground in India confirm that he remains "Hero of Hatred" and "Divider In Chief" at his core. A two-part BBC documentary explains this reality in significant detail. The first part focuses on the 2002 events in Gujarat when Modi as the state chief minister ordered the police to not stop the Hindu mobs murdering Muslims and burning their homes and businesses. The second part looks at Modi government's anti-Muslim policies, including the revocation of Kashmir's autonomy (article 370) and a new citizenship law (CAA 2019) that discriminates against Muslims. It shows the violent response by security forces to peaceful protests against the new laws, and interviews the family members of people who were killed in the 2020 Delhi riots orchestrated by Modi's allies.

Here's Indian National Security Advisor on how to use Taliban to attack Pakistan:

https://youtu.be/eYRuk8H5M9E?si=ZB1c7Dd8ntQdKeFi

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

Friday, February 2, 2024

Soaring Illegal Immigration of Indians into the United States

Illegal immigration from India to the United States is soaring. A record 96,917 Indians were detained while attempting to enter the US illegally from October 2022 to September 2023, representing a 50% jump from the corresponding period in the prior year. Vast majority of the arrested Indians came from Prime Minister Modi's state of Gujarat while others came from the state of Punjab. There are about 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US – the third-largest population of illegal immigrants after Mexicans and El Salvadorans – according to a Pew Research Centre report.

Illegal Immigration to the US From India. Source: Strait Times

The number of Indians attempting to cross into the United States illegally has accelerated in recent years on Prime Minister Modi's watch. These immigrants take the Latin American route to reach the US-Mexico border before making a run for the US. They cross the Darien Gap, a dangerous thick forest region between Colombia and Panama, taking three days to a week while taking huge risks ranging from lack of food and drinking water, wild animals and violent gangs.

There are multiple drivers of mass illegal migration of Indians to other countries. These include increasing violence under Mr. Modi's Hindutva rule and lack of jobs for thee growing working-age population. Human traffickers are exploiting these conditions to profit from vulnerable groups most impacted by political and economic problems in the country.

Christians, low caste Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are among the main targets of the far-right Hindu mob attacks across India. In 2023, the Modi government’s discriminatory and divisive policies led to growing violence against minorities, creating a pervasive environment of fear and a chilling effect on government critics, Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2024.

India's labor force participation rate (LPR) has been declining for several years. Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data shows that the labor participation rate fell to 39.5% in 2022-23, from an already low 40.1% in 2021-22. This indicates that more than half of India’s working age population is not employed. This is especially the case for women 90% of whom are out of the labor force. India’s LPR is among the lowest in the world. The global average LPR is 60%.

Labor Participation Rate in India. Source: CMIE Via Reuters

The rapid GDP growth claimed by India is not creating enough jobs for its massive young population. The much-hyped "Make in India" initiative of the Modi government is just not working well enough to keep pace with the demand for jobs. Manufacturing’s contribution to India’s GDP has declined from 17% two decades ago to just 13% in 2022, according to the World Bank. India has added only 5 million factory jobs since Mr. Modi was first elected, for a total of 65 million such jobs now, according to the Wall Street Journal. Unable to find jobs in cities, a very large number of Indians are going back to subsistence farming to eke out a meager living.

Indian economist Ritesh Kumar recently wrote a piece for Nikkei Asia titled "Few are benefiting from India's rapid GDP growth". His conclusion: What India really needs is a growth trajectory that is inclusive, sustainable and can foster shared prosperity across all segments of the economy rather than benefiting only a privileged few.

Pakistan Floods 2022

Food in Pakistan 2nd Cheapest in the World

India in Crisis: Unemployment and Hunger Persist After COVID

India Rising, Pakistan Collapsing

Record Number of Indians Seeking Asylum in US

The Great Indian Brain Drain

Is Modi's "Make in India" All Hype?

Pakistanis Consuming More Calories, Fruits & Vegetables Per Capita

How Grim is Pakistan's Social Sector Progress?

Pakistan Fares Marginally Better Than India On Disease Burdens

COVID Lockdown Decimates India's Middle Class

Pakistan Child Health Indicators

Pakistan's Balance of Payments Crisis

How Has India Built Large Forex Reserves Despite Perennial Trade Deficits

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

Monday, October 9, 2023

Modi and Netanyahu: Two Sides of The Same Coin

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently tweeted that he is "shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in Israel", adding that "We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour". This tweet was posted immediately after the Hamas militants' unprecedented attack on Israel by air, land and sea. Modi's critics have noted that he has yet to tweet any condemnation of months-long killings of his fellow countrymen in Manipur which are continuing unabated. Nor has he issued any similar condemnation of the long and brutal Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. To those who know Modi, his reaction makes sense given the similarities between Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both leaders are extreme right-wing divisive politicians. Modi is a Hindu Supremacist and Netanyahu is a Jewish Supremacist. Both have a long history of murdering large numbers of Muslims living under their rule. Both are pursuing settler colonial policies; Modi in Kashmir and Netanyahu in Palestine.

India's Narendra Modi and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu in New Delhi. Source: BBC

Indians, particularly Hindu Nationalists, have suffered from what Shashi Tharoor calls "India's Israel Envy". Here's an excerpt of Tharoor's piece published in "Project Syndicate" in January 2009:

"Yet, when Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks of the conflict spiraling out of control too acute to contemplate such an option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch, with ill-disguised wistfulness, as Israel does what they could never permit themselves to do".

In a piece titled "The Settler Colonial Alliance of India and Israel" published in The Nation, Indian journalist Deeksha Udupa interviewed Azad Essa, author of “Hostile Homelands” – The new alliance between India and Israel". Here's what Essa told Udupa:

"Kashmir is a perfect example of another region being turned into a sort of testing ground (for Israeli weapons and methods). Both India and Israel already share many tactics. They both attack journalists and criminalize civil society. They both exercise collective punishment on Palestinians and Kashmiris. They both maim protesters. In Palestine, protesters are shot in the limbs. In Kashmir, protesters are blinded by lead pellets. Israeli drones, sensors, surveillance, and machine guns are all there, and Israeli methods of controlling the population have long existed in Kashmir—so much so that India is now producing some of these Israeli weapons in factories across India.".

Azad Essa argues that the Israeli occupation of Palestine has served as a model that Indians are replicating in Kashmir. He says that Israeli weapons, developed and field tested on Palestinians, have been used in Kashmir. Here are a couple of excerpts from his book "Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel": :

"So how did India, which once considered Zionism a form of racism, become Israel’s number one weapons trade buyer, accounting for 42% of Israel’s arms exports since Modi came to power in 2014?* How did India, the first non-Arab state to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement that opposed colonialism and apartheid, simultaneously maintain its colonial occupation of Kashmir since 1947 and metamorphose into extolling Israel’s settlements as a model to colonize Kashmir with its own Indian settlers?"

"In the days leading to August 5, 2019 and in the weeks and months to come, Kashmir became a site of unfathomable cruelty. Thousands of Kashmiris were detained; pro-India politicians were placed under house arrest, pro-freedom leaders as well as minors were rounded up and thrown in jail. Young boys were shipped off to Indian prisons 1,500km away in Agra and Varanasi. Foreign journalists and international human rights groups were banned from access to Kashmir. The region was placed under a complete communication blackout. Cellular phones, Internet, landline services, and even the postal services were dismantled. News traveled by word of mouth. Journalists compressed photos and video onto memory cards and smuggled them out with passengers en route to Delhi. Schools, offices, banks, and businesses were closed for months. Life came to a standstill".

Here's India's JNU Professor speaking about illegal Indian occupation of Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland:

https://youtu.be/KWp1E8xrY5E

Thursday, August 24, 2023

Modi Co-opting Chandrayaan-3 Success For Hindutva Propaganda?

Well before India's Chandrayaan-3 landed on the moon on August 23, India's "Godi Media" started showing split screens with the landing craft’s animated image (no pictures or live video) alongside a photo of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was clearly meant to give him exclusive credit for ISRO scientists' major accomplishment after their decades-long hard work. This Hindutva propaganda has echoes of Adolf Hitler’s use of the 1936 Berlin Olympics to promote his Nazi ideology. It is boosting the morale of the hateful Hindu supremacist trolls unleashed by the BJP “IT cell” on social media. It is easy to conclude that the Chandrayaan is now essentially a prestige project for the Hindu Nationalist government in New Delhi. Funding such projects is easier for politicians than implementing social sector programs to uplift hundreds of millions of poor and hungry Indians who are deprived of the most basic necessities.

Chadrayaan3-Modi Split Screen Godi Media Propaganda

It is clear that Mr. Modi wants to claim credit for the moon landing but he refuses to take responsibility for high unemployment and widespread malnutrition in the world’s largest population living in extreme poverty in India. Nor does the Modi regime accept the blame for millions of preventable COVID19 deaths in India in 2020-21. This is what Princeton economist Professor Ashoka Mody, the author of “India is Broken”,refers to as India’s “lived reality”. Here's an excerpt from Mody's book:

"The grim reality is that, to employ all working-age Indians, the economy needs to create 200 million jobs over the next decade, an impossible order after the past decade of declining employment numbers.1 Right from independence, the Indian economy produced too few jobs. For more than 80 percent of Indians, the informal sector employment became the safety net, where workers idled for long stretches, earning below- or barely-above-poverty wages. Demonetization in 2016, a poorly executed goods and services tax in 2017, and COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 struck hammer blows on the informal sector while creating no new options. Indeed, technology accelerated job destruction, especially in retail and wholesale trade. More Indians just stopped looking for work. Set against this bleakness, many pundits and leaders look back to celebrate and draw hope from India’s high GDP growth rates of the 1990s and 2000s. That celebrated celebrated growth, however, was an outcome of unusually buoyant world trade, rampant natural resource use, and a domestic finance-construction bubble. Even as wealthy Indians accumulated astonishing riches, job creation remained weak. The most severe forms of poverty came down, but still afflicted over 20 percent of Indians; another 40 percent lived precariously, ever at risk of falling back into a dire existence. The median Indian lived in that vulnerable zone—and, looking through a government-induced data fog, still lives there. The unchanging problem through the post-independence years has been the lack of public goods for shared progress: education, health delivery, functioning cities, clean air and water, and a responsive and fair judiciary. Along with scarcity of jobs, the absence or poor quality of public goods makes the lived reality of vast numbers."

India Ranks Low on Social Progress Indicators. Source: Economist

India ranks 110 among 170 countries on the Social Progress Index (SPI), according to a dataset published by the Social Progress Imperative, a non-profit organization. The Social Progress Index combines 52 social and environmental indicators.

Over 75% of the world's poor who are deprived of basic living standards (nutrition, cooking fuel, sanitation and housing) live in India compared to 4.6% in Bangladesh and 4.1% in Pakistan, according to a recently released OPHI/UNDP report on multidimensional poverty. Here's what the report says: "More than 45.5 million poor people are deprived in only these four indicators (nutrition, cooking fuel, sanitation and housing). Of those people, 34.4 million live in India, 2.1 million in Bangladesh and 1.9 million in Pakistan—making this a predominantly South Asian profile".

Hindu Nazis Join Forces With White Supremacists

America Does Not Respect India

India in Crisis: Unemployment and Hunger Persist After COVID

Impact of Russia Sanctions on Food, Fuel Availability

Record Number of Indians Seeking Asylum in US

Vast Majority of Pakistanis Support Imran Khan's Handling of Covid19 Crisis

Incomes of Poorest Pakistanis Growing Faster Than Their Richest Counterparts

Pakistanis Consuming More Calories, Fruits & Vegetables Per Capita

How Grim is Pakistan's Social Sector Progress?

Pakistan Fares Marginally Better Than India On Disease Burdens

COVID Lockdown Decimates India's Middle Class

Pakistan Child Health Indicators

Pakistan's Balance of Payments Crisis

How Has India Built Large Forex Reserves Despite Perennial Trade Deficits

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

Saturday, July 15, 2023

Is the West Unwittingly Helping Modi Realize His Akhand Bharat Hindutva Dream?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently opened a new parliament building in New Delhi. Prominently displayed in this new building is a provocative map of "Akhand Bharat" (Greater India) that includes neighboring nations of Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as part of India. After the inauguration, Modi's parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi tweeted a picture of the mural and wrote: “The resolve is clear – Akhand Bharat.” Akhand Bharat is part of the Fascist Hindutva ideology of Modi's party. In the last two months since this chauvinistic display, the tight embrace and arming of Modi by the West is raising fears of destabilizing South Asia. Pakistani officials have recently talked about a revision of the country's "full-spectrum" nuclear doctrine with the addition of "zero-range" nuclear weapons as a deterrent against western-armed Hindutva-fueled Indian aggression.

Akhand Bharat Mural in Indian Parliament. Source: Pralhad Joshi

Akhand Bharat:

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Modi's ideological leader chief Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the right-wing Hindu organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said ‘Akhand Bharat’ was the undisputed truth and a divided Bharat was a nightmare.

Now the Akhand Bharat mural and its justification by an Indian minister have drawn condemnation from Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan. “The gratuitous assertion of ‘Akhand Bharat’ is a manifestation of a revisionist and expansionist mindset that seeks to subjugate the identity and culture of not only India’s neighboring countries but also its own religious minorities,” said Pakistani foreign office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch.

Western Arms Deals:

Large arms deals have been recently announced during Prime Minister Modi's recent visits to Washington and Paris. New weapons acquisitions range from modern fighter jets to submarines. India is already the world's largest arms importer. India's defense budget ($81 billion) is the fourth largest in the world, according to Stockholm-based think tank SIPRI. Coming soon after the unveiling of the Akhand Bharat mural, these new modern lethal weapons' purchases by New Delhi are seen as a serious threat by India's neighbors.

America's Bad Bet:

While the western nations are seeking an alliance with India to counter rising China, the Hindutva leadership of India has no intention of confronting China. In a piece titled “America’s Bad Bet on India”, Indian-American analyst Ashley Tellis noted that the Biden administration had “overlooked India’s democratic erosion and its unhelpful foreign policy choices” in the hopes that the US can “solicit” New Delhi’s “contributions toward coalition defense”.

Earlier this year, India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar confirmed New Delhi's unwillingness to confront China in an interview: “Look they (China) are a bigger economy. What am I going to do? As a smaller economy, I am going to pick up a fight with bigger economy? It is not a question of being a reactionary; it is a question of common sense.”

Modi's India is driven much more by a desire to bring back what the right-wing Hindus see as the "glory days" of India through "Hindu Raj" of the entire South Asia region, including Pakistan. The arms and technology being given to Modi will more likely be used against India's smaller neighbors, not against China.

Pakistan's Likely Response:

General Khalid Kidwai, Advisor to Pakistan’s National Command Authority and pioneer Director General of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, has warned about the ‘toxic mix of poisonous ideology’ posing a serious threat to strategic stability in South Asia. “I have no hesitation in stating that minimum Pakistani counter measures would be put in place if a reckless imbalance is induced in South Asia, it is not a warning, it's a contingency foreseen,” General Kidwai added, according to Pakistani media reports.

In May this year, retired Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai provided new details of Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine. He has talked about "zero range" nuclear weapons. Prior to this, the officially acknowledged lowest range in Pakistan’s nuclear inventory was the Nasr, or Hatf-9 ballistic missile, with a range of 60 kilometers (about 37 miles). Kidwai described two dimensions of Pakistan's Full Spectrum Deterrence: “horizontal,” which comprises of a robust land, air and sea inventory of a variety of nuclear weapons, and “vertical,” which encapsulates adequate range coverage of its vectors from “zero meters to 2,750 kilometers”with “destructive yields suited for strategic, operational, and tactical levels.” Such an elaborate arsenal, he argued, provides Pakistan with a “strategic shield”, blunting the extant conventional asymmetry with India. Most significant was his statement that “vertically the spectrum encapsulates adequate range coverage from 0 meters to 2,750 kilometers [about 1,700 miles] as well as nuclear weapons destructive yields at three tiers—strategic, operational, and tactical.” Talking about "zero range" weapons, analyst Sitara Noor explained it as follows in a recent article that appeared in Foreign Policy magazine:

"Talk of zero-range weapons suggests that Pakistan is either going to develop artillery shells as the United States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom did during the Cold War—raising questions of whether it is going to be an M28/M29 Davy Crockett-style recoilless rifle system, the smallest weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, developed during the 1950s as a front-line weapon with yields as low as a fraction of a kiloton—or it could be a hint that Pakistan could possibly lay nuclear land mines across the India-Pakistan border to deter Indian advances. Observers, especially in India, are left wondering whether this statement is based on some existing scientific research and design testing and necessary doctrinal thought process. Kidwai’s statement does not provide any such details, and in the spirit of ambiguity that Pakistan seems to have benefited from, there is unlikely to be a follow-up soon to clear the air".

Summary:

The West is making a "bad bet" on Modi's India as a check against rising China. Modi and his fellow right-wing Hindus have no interest in confronting China. They are much more obsessed in realizing their Hindutva dream of Akhand Bharat (Greater India) by attempting to subjugate their smaller neighbors. This obsession could lead to a destabilization of the South Asia region, including an India-Pakistan nuclear war.

Vast Majority of Indians Believe Nuclear War Against Pakistan is Winnable

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Saturday, July 8, 2023

Are India's Leaders Uneducated? What is Modi's Education Level?

Bollywood star Kajol has said at a recent event that Indian political leaders are uneducated. Though she did not name anyone, she is facing vicious attacks by Modi Bhakts, a label embraced by the staunch supporters of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Here's what she said, "Change especially in a country like India is slow. It’s very very slow because for one we are steeped in our tradition, steeped in our thought process and, of course, it has to be with tradition. You have political leaders who do not have educational system background. I’m sorry I’m going to go out and say that.” “We are being ruled by leaders, so many of them, who do not have that viewpoint which I think education gives you”, she added.

Copies of Modi's Degrees. Source: BJP

There have long been questions about the educational qualifications of Mr. Modi who has talked about his humble origins as chaiwalla (tea seller) . These questions have been stoked by contradictory assertions by Mr. Modi and his closest lieutenants in the BJP party. First, Mr. Modi allegedly said in a 1990s interview, well before he ascended to the office of the prime minister, that he did not have any formal education. In multiple video clips that circulated on social media, most of them before the 2014 general election, Modi mocked himself for being ‘uneducated’. But in 2016, Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley showed copies certifying that Mr. Modi was awarded a BA (division III) from Delhi University in 1978 and Gujarat University gave him an MA (division I) in Entire Political Science in 1983 as an external candidate. In response to an RTI (right to information) query, seeking a list of students who had qualified for a BA degree in 1978, the SOL (School of Open Learning) said, "The data is not maintained in the branch in the order as desired by the applicant." It should be noted that there's no such discipline as "Entire Political Science" offered at Gujarat University.

Attempts by Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Admi Party (AAP) Chief Arvind Kejriwal to get Gujarat University to confirm the BJP leaders' claim have so far failed. The AAP chief has now filed a review petition after the High Court set aside an order from the Central Information Commission (CIC) that had directed the university to "search for information" regarding PM Modi's degree, according to ANI reports.

In an open letter, Aam Aadmi Party leader Manish Sisodia has warned that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “lack of educational qualification” was dangerous for India. “Modi does not understand science…” Sisodia alleged. “He does not understand the importance of education. It is necessary to have an educated prime minister for the progress of India.”

The Indian Prime Minister's poor education is reflected in his lack of understanding of the complexity of the idea of Indian nationhood and its long contentious history. It also shows in his poor decision-making processes in demonetization and nation-wide covid lockdown.

Modi's attempts to forge India's new Hindutva identity as a Hindu Rashtra are raising serious doubts about maintaining its unity. Hatred against religious minorities, particularly Muslims, has reached new heights. In a recent Op Ed, Mr. Shashi Tharoor summed it up in the following words: "The BJP’s belligerent Hindutva nationalism – which promotes a narrow interpretation of history and demonizes India’s minorities, particularly Muslims – can be likened to a toxin injected into the veins of Indian society".

Gopal Krishna Pillai, one of India’s most highly regarded former home secretaries, says “secular Hindus are uncomfortable, frustrated” adding “and don’t know what should we do in Modi’s India”. He told Karan Thapar in a recent interview that India could be 10 years away from danger point which he described as “civil disturbance” if the present treatment of Muslims is not checked and reversed, At one point in the interview he even briefly accepted that India could face “civil war”.

In a recent interview to CNN, former US President Barack Obama has pointed out the consequences of BJP's anti-Muslim policies. “If the (US) President meets with Prime Minister Modi, then the protection of the Muslim minority in a Hindu majority India is worth mentioning. If I had a conversation with Prime Minister Modi, who I know well, part of my argument would be that if you don't protect the rights of ethnic minorities in India, there is a strong possibility that India would at some point start pulling apart,” Obama had said. “We have seen what happens when you start getting those kinds of large internal conflicts. So that would be contrary to the interests of not only the Muslim India but also the Hindu India. I think it is important to be able to talk about these things honestly,” said Mr. Obama.

The poor handling of demonetization and the Covid pandemic by the Modi government have caused untold suffering for the Indian people, particularly the poor. Modi's attempts to accelerate the documentation of the Indian economy have killed the informal sector which employs the bulk of India's workers, causing persistently high unemployment. Nationwide COVID lockdown has further exacerbated the situation for India's poor. It has resulted in worsening inequality in the country. A recent survey found that the income of the poorest 20% of the country declined by 53% over the last 5 years. The survey, conducted by the People's Research on India's Consumer Economy (PRICE), a Mumbai-based think tank, also shows that in contrast, the same period saw the annual household income of the richest 20% grow by 39%, according to a report The Indian Express.

Modi's false claims of India's glorious Hindu past seems to have been accepted by his followers without question. These claims include the inventions of computers, rockets, spacecraft, the internet, plastic surgery and nuclear weapons in ancient India—long before Western science came on the scene. Here's an excerpt of a report on Indian Science Congress held in 2019:

"The most widely discussed talk at the Indian Science Congress..... celebrated a story in the Hindu epic Mahabharata about a woman who gave birth to 100 children, citing it as evidence that India's ancient Hindu civilization had developed advanced reproductive technologies. Just as surprising as the claim was the distinguished pedigree of the scientist who made it: chemist G. Nageshwar Rao, vice-chancellor of Andhra University in Visakhapatnam. "Stem cell research was done in this country thousands of years ago," Rao said".

Hindutva ideologues are now in charge of school textbooks. They are deleting references to India's long Muslim history, particularly the Mughal period that produced top tourist attractions like the Taj Mahal in Agra and the Red Fort in Delhi.

India has also dropped Darwin's theory of evolution and the periodic table of elements from some school textbooks, part of a widening campaign by Modi's Hindu nationalist government that has prompted warnings from educators about the impact on teaching and the country's vital technology sector, according to media reports.

Prime Minister Modi's poor education was obvious when he addressed the joint session of the US Congress during his recent state visit to Washington D.C. He had trouble reading his speech from a teleprompter. He said "investigate" instead of "invest" in girls. He incorrectly read "optical" fiber as "political" fiber. He pronounced "relationship" as "relasonsippi". It's amazing how wildly popular he is with the Indian diaspora, particularly in the United States where Indians are considered to be the best educated ethnic group.