Attack On India's Twin-Towers, Adani-Modi; Unlikely Democracy; And How Mr Hindu-Hriday-Samrat Gave Away Indian Territories to China On a Thali
I’ve been a freelancer for much of my career. In 1969, I broke the story of a unit of American soldiers in Vietnam who had committed a horrific war crime. They were ordered to attack an ordinary peasant village where, as a few officers knew, they would get no opposition—and told to kill on sight. The boys murdered, raped and mutilated for hours, with no enemy to be found. The crime was covered up at the top of the military chain of command for eighteen months—until I uncovered it.
That is Seymour Hersh writing on his substack page. Imagine if any Indian journalist had published such a report on the Indian army in, say BBC. Forget others, how would you react? Would you consider it for what it is or would you see a sinister plot to malign India or the Indian army by an anti-Indian force? And it’s not like the Indian army has had a stellar human rights record. An army general few years ago had tied a civilian to a bonnet of an army vehicle and paraded him through the village. This major instead of being reprimanded for a despicable act was later honoured. It is another matter that he was later found with a local girl in a Srinagar hotel in May 2018. Our army regiments have been called out for mass rapes in past. Indian mothers have gone naked outside an army camp in protest against rape and murder. I wrote about some of these cases in an old post.
It baffles me how some things are possible in the US but seems outrageous in India. The way the US public reacts to a work of journalism stands in stark contrast to how Indians react to something of the exact nature. Take for instance the case of Hindenburg research. Its first and later reports were on US-based companies. It has in past also published reports against a Chinese firm. None of this was/is a secret. You could just scroll their home page and see this for yourself. And yet Indian public and news channels targeted them for attacking India and the Indian economy after they published a scathing report on the Adani group of companies titled “Adani Group: How The World’s 3rd Richest Man Is Pulling The Largest Con In Corporate History.” Some also claimed they were funded by China! Why do we do this? Why do we shame ourselves on such scale? If you are keen you can read about Adani saga through following explainers - the author explains the whole matter in simple language without boring his readers with economic jargon.
Although I suggest you read both pieces above but for some reason, you instead wanted a video explainer then Atul of Newslaundry has you covered with this crisp tippani. Oh! I love Atul ji’s Hindi.
Let’s move on.
Are we a democracy?
Democracy is defined in varied terms by different dictionaries. But majorly it is,
a Government by the people; exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
A political or social unit that has such a government.
The common people are considered the primary source of political power.
the belief that everyone in a country has the right to express their opinions
At its periphery what one needs to understand is, in a democracy, common people are the masters, they might not be in a practical sense but on paper and in theory at least, that is so. And we all must constantly remind ourselves of this because democracy unlike other systems of governance is not a definitive or formulaic system. It is supposed to constantly change for the better. And better for who? Its masters - the common people - citizens. Meaning, every day and every year, the scales of power should tilt towards the masses. It should become harder and harder for the state to prosecute and constrain the freedoms of its citizens. Law enforcement should get tougher in the sense that for police to arrest and imprison a citizen, every year, the evidence they have to produce so as to curtail someone’s freedom must get more and more solid.
Nisar-ud-din Ahmad spent 23 years in prison before the Supreme Court acquitted him and two others of all charges, setting aside their life sentence and ordering their immediate release on May 11. They were booked for five blasts onboard trains — on the first anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition — that killed two passengers and injured eight. “I was yet to be 20 years old when they threw me in jail. I am 43 today. My younger sister was 12 when I saw her last. Her daughter is 12 now. My niece was a year old. She is already married. My cousin was two years younger than me, she is now a grandmother. A generation has completely skipped from my life… I have clocked 8,150 days of the prime of my life inside the jail. For me, life is over. What you are seeing is a living corpse,” said Nisar. Nisar says he remembers January 15, 1994, when he was picked up by police near his home in Gulbarga, Karnataka. He was a second-year student in Pharmacy. “I had an exam in 15 days, I was on my way to college. A police vehicle was waiting. A man showed me his revolver and forced me to get in. The Karnataka Police had no idea about my arrest. This team had come from Hyderabad. They took me to Hyderabad,” he said.
The only evidence police produced was their alleged custodial confessions — the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) were later invoked to make these admissible.
What are we doing? So police essentially arrested them without having any evidence. The evidence - and we know too well how custodial confession is gathered by Indian police - was collected post their arrest. And for this Nisar spent 23 years in prison. And he isn’t alone. Bashir Ahmed Baba, a Kashmiri, was arrested by the Gujarat ATS in 2010. Branded the “Pepsi Bomber” by a section of the media, he spent 12 years in jail until a court in Surat, acquitted him of all charges, including under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). And there are scores of others if you were looking for them.
But we aren’t looking, aren’t we? If we were looking and we were paying attention we would ask for the immediate release of Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid (who recently got bail), Khalid Saifi, Gulfisha, Shifa Ur Rahman and just too many that were recently arrested over CAA-NRC protests.
Listen to the below speech from Professor Manoj Kumar Jha to understand the magnitude of what we are doing to our own citizens.
Returning back to the question of democracy.
Two things happened recently. Or like Arundhati Roy wrote in Guardian, there was “an attack on India’s twin towers – Narendra Modi, the prime minister, and India’s biggest industrialist, Gautam Adani, who was, until recently, the world’s third richest man.” Adani, we already mentioned. His friend, Mr Modi came under fire - not new fire though and anyway a fire that has been known only to make him stronger - BBC released a two part documentary on Modi’s hidden agenda of divisive politics bordering on hate and genocide of Muslims. First part dealt with 2002 genocide and the second on events after Modi became the Prime Minister of India. You can download and watch both parts from here1.
Modi and Adani have known each other for decades. Things began to look up for them after the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom, which raged through Gujarat after Muslims were held responsible for the burning of a railway coach in which 59 Hindu pilgrims were burned alive. Modi had been appointed chief minister of the state only a few months before the massacre.
At the time, much of India recoiled in horror at the open slaughter and mass rape of Muslims that was staged on the streets of Gujarat’s towns and villages by vigilante Hindu mobs seeking “revenge”. Some old-fashioned members of the Confederation of Indian Industry even made their displeasure with Modi public. Enter Gautam Adani. With a small group of Gujarati industrialists he set up a new platform of businessmen known as the Resurgent Group of Gujarat. They denounced Modi’s critics and supported him as he launched a new political career as Hindu Hriday Samrat, the Emperor of Hindu Hearts, or, more accurately, the consolidator of the Hindu vote-bank.
In 2003, they held an investors’ summit called Vibrant Gujarat. So was born what is known as the Gujarat model of “development”: violent Hindu nationalism underwritten by serious corporate money. In 2014, after three terms as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi was elected prime minister of India. He flew to his swearing-in ceremony in Delhi in a private jet with Adani’s name emblazoned across the body of the aircraft. In the nine years of Modi’s tenure, Adani’s wealth grew from $8bn to $137bn. In 2022 alone, he made $72bn, which is more than the combined earnings of the world’s next nine billionaires put together.
— Arundhati Roy in the Guardian
Remind yourself the definition of democracy again, done?
Though The Modi Question was broadcast exclusively for a British audience, and limited to the UK, it was uploaded by viewers on YouTube and links were posted on Twitter. It lit up the internet. In India, students received warnings not to download and watch it. When they announced collective screenings in some university campuses, the electricity was switched off. In others, police arrived in riot gear to stop them watching. The government instructed YouTube and Twitter to delete all links and uploads. Those sterling defenders of free speech hurried to comply. (from Roy’s above piece)
BBC in its documentary has given ample space for BJP to defend itself. There are BJP MPs defending Mr Modi. BBC also mentions how Supreme Court has cleared Modi of all charges. And yet, despite such balanced work of journalism, Mr Modi’s government decided to go ahead and use emergency censorship powers under Rule 16 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, and directed Youtube and Twitter to remove links to BBC’s Gujarat Riots documentary.
If India can call itself the democracy then I’m darn sure anyone can call themselves the Superman or God while they are at it. Fish curry is made with fish, if you no more adding fish into your curry you can no more call it one.
Now watch this beautiful ad and relax your senses.
Did You Know?
Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of Bengal (1772–1785), spoke Bengali, Persian and even bit of Hindi (or Hindvi). He also took great interest in Sanskrit and was in fact the first person to sponsor the first translation of Bhagvad Gita into English. In one of his letters he wrote, "I love India little more than my own country."
One fatal night in Covid lockdown
On Friday, June 19 of 2020, around 8 pm, Bennix was in his shop near the Kamarajar statue in Sathankulam town when his friend rushed to him with the news that his father Jayaraj had been picked up by the police. Worried about his 58-year-old father, Bennix rushed to the Sathankulam police station only to be called in by the police officers there for an ‘inquiry’. Three days later, on June 23, Bennix’s friends and family were told by the police that the duo had died at the Kovilpatti Government Hospital, around 100 kilometres from their town.
— The News Minute
Jayaraj and Bennix died in police custody from Tamilnadu police’s brutality leading to massive protests in the state. Tamilnadu is notorious for custodial torture and deaths - and you might have read one or the other news from the state. Suriya’s movie Jai Bhim also was centered around one such historic case from the state. But it appears Tamilnadu isn’t an outlier. As per the numbers, ‘a total of 669 cases of deaths under police custody were recorded across the country between 2017 and 2022, of which 80 were in Gujarat.’ How nice?
An aside, one of the main contentions of Vijay Mallya’s defence team in UK against his deportation to India is the “prison conditions in the country – which are ‘appalling’ and ‘deplorable’ – his extradition would be in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (ECHR).” UK has in past considered this defence.
Curb Your Enthusiasm is available on Hotstar, watch it whenever you get some time in your day. Also, in case you haven’t seen Seinfeld show, head over to Netflix and watch its Soup Nazi episode (S07E06, doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen all the previous episodes).
Now, take a deep breath and read the following.
Out Of Control
FOR THE FIRST TIME in forty-five years, on 15 June 2020, India and China recorded the death of Indian soldiers on the Line of Actual Control—the contested border between the two countries, which stretches from the Karakoram Pass in the west to Myanmar in the east. The deaths occurred in the Galwan Valley, in Ladakh, and these were the first military casualties in the territory since the 1962 Sino-India War. The full details of the incident are shrouded in ambiguity, but it involved Chinese soldiers pitching tents around the Galwan Valley and their forceful eviction by the Indian Army—there is little clarity on whether China’s People’s Liberation Army had agreed to abandon these positions. This led to a clash which claimed the lives of 20 Indian soldiers and at least four PLA soldiers. More than seventy Indian soldiers were injured while nearly a hundred more, including some officers, were taken captive by the Chinese. No Chinese soldier was in Indian captivity. “We were taken by surprise by how well prepared they were for the clash,” a top officer at the army headquarters in Delhi, who was part of the decision-making in the Ladakh crisis, told me.
The LAC has neither been delineated on the map nor demarcated on the ground by either side. The last attempt to do so failed nearly two decades ago. The difference in the two sides’ understanding of it is so vast that New Delhi claims the border between the two countries is 3,488 kilometres long while China says it is only around two thousand. It is the world’s longest disputed border. As the two countries do not agree on where the “actual control” exercised by either side ends, both are engaged in an uncompromising contest of asserting control over small parcels of land in a desolate Himalayan wasteland. The demonstration of territorial claims can take several forms, including soldiers patrolling up to certain points, building infrastructure along the border and controlling the limits to which people in border villages are allowed to graze their animals. The unforgiving terrain and harsh weather have not dissuaded India and China from deploying around fifty thousand additional soldiers each on the 832-kilometre LAC in Ladakh since the summer of 2020.
The deadly Galwan clash occurred at patrolling point PP14—an area that was not until then disputed, and which the Indian Army patrolled regularly. Days after it, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in Delhi that the Chinese had not “intruded into our border, nor has any post been taken over by them”—an attempt at saving face that China gleefully seized upon as proof that it had not encroached upon Indian territory.
[…]
India is struggling to find a way to reverse the Chinese incursions. New Delhi has deployed a mass of soldiers to prevent any further loss to the Chinese but no longer insists on the restoration of the situation as it existed in Ladakh in April 2020. This is the most open acknowledgement yet that the Chinese have altered the status quo permanently, essentially presenting India with a fait accompli. No longer describing it as a border dispute, Beijing now calls it a “sovereignty issue,” which makes any compromise on India’s terms difficult. The two countries have agreed to step back by a few kilometres each in the Galwan Valley […] There is a moratorium on patrolling in these buffer zones. By agreeing to them, India has, in effect, ceded control over its own claimed territories. The Indian Army can no longer patrol areas it had access to earlier. Nor are residents of these areas satisfied as the new limitations also deny them grazing areas and affect their livelihoods. Recent media reports state that people living in border villages see the latest disengagement as India “surrendering control” of its territory.
[…]
Bereft of alternatives, since the crisis began, New Delhi has been constrained to shifting its forces away from the border with its traditional adversary, Pakistan, and to the China border instead. To avoid the nightmare of a two-front war, the Modi government, in 2020, asked the United Arab Emirates to intervene in talks with Pakistan, reversing a longstanding Indian policy of no third-party mediation. […] These perceived signs of weakness vis-à-vis Pakistan and China are anathema to Modi’s strongman image. His hyper-nationalist government has chosen an undemocratic domestic strategy of keeping the Indian public in the dark by not formally providing any authentic information about the ground situation along the border, denying access to journalists and blocking questions and discussions in parliament.
[…]
Thanks to the Modi government’s hyper-nationalist propaganda, such is the distance of public perception from reality that a recent survey of seven thousand Indians by the Stimson Center found that 69.3 percent of respondents said India would “definitely” or “probably” defeat both China and Pakistan in a war, with the figure climbing to nearly ninety percent for defeating only Pakistan. These deluded views further add to the existing risk of conflict in Ladakh due to the augmented deployment of soldiers by both armies within close proximity in disputed areas. A public that mistakenly thinks a military victory is a foregone conclusion for India presses the government to go further in its optics to keep that expectation alive, creating conditions for bigger blunders. The Indian government uses the euphemism of “friction points” to describe areas of PLA ingress. It is exactly this “friction” that has the capacity to light a bigger fire.
All that is from Caravan Magazine’s October 2022 cover story titled, “How China outmanoeuvred the Modi government and seized control of territory along the LAC”.2
That’s all for this one. Stay safe and look after each other.
Enjoy this episode of Loose Talk.
While the link is active when I’m pasting it here, I cannot guarantee how long would it stay that way. The mighty Indian state has been actively removing links to BBC documentary from twitter/youtube etc. So if it is still active, I would suggest you download it ASAP.
I would highly recommend you subscribe to Caravan and read the piece. They regularly do in-depth reportage on important matters and produce long-form works. For some reason if you chose not so do so and only wish to read this one piece then feel free to download this PDF version (this is my own personal copy, use it wisely)