Nissim Mannathukkaren

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“The narrative of {{w|moral equivalence}} is persisted with regard to the Delhi violence, despite the overwhelming evidence of the police acting emphatically in favour of one side.”

“For the first time in Independent India, ordinary Muslims, especially women, have come out in large numbers, overwhelmingly in a peaceful fashion, breaking the shackles of the thoroughly self-serving and regressive religious and elite leadership, to protect Indian democracy and the constitution. This is a landmark moment. Yet, what does the legitimate and democratic protests get branded as? As “anti-nationals” and “traitors”.”

“It is not that Hindutva supporters equate vastly different phenomena with vastly different consequences, but they also willfully gloss over facts.”

“{{w|Moral culpability}} is denied through false equivalence.”

“To place the responsibility of violence on the illiterate, poor and unemployed mobs is to completely miss the pathologies amongst us, the privileged and the powerful, which are the greatest enablers of violence.”

“When the largest democracy in the world, and the oldest one in the Global South, displays authoritarian tendencies betraying the promise of its founding fathers, it has implications beyond India.”

“So, the emerging “manufacture of consent” in favor of the ruling government does not happen only through active participation, or {{w|self-censorship}} on criticism by the media, but also as a result of the egregious threats that the media personnel face.”

“As examples from history show, when jokes start circulating about a powerful leader, cracks in political legitimacy begin to appear.”

“All the fantastical claims are coupled with the fact that Mr Modi has not given a single press conference, or an unscripted interview. This makes it impossible to question the PM on critical policy matters, and his grasp of them. [...] Ultimately, I see this as a part of the greatest exercise in anti-intellectualism, propaganda/fake news seen in Independent India, in which it is normal to defend the most absurd statement, and in which it has become impossible to distinguish between truth and falsehood.”

“Other than these, the list of Mr Modi's gaffes is quite long. But again, what is crucial to note is that there has not been any scrutiny of this at all by the mainstream media. In this case, the biggest question to be asked is whether the PM actually ordered the Balakot air strike on the basis of his knowledge of radars, overriding military experts? In that case, it is shocking, and dangerous, for it is a national security issue.”

“Rather than reduce this to the personality of Modi or his lack of knowledge, I am more interested in the fact how the Hindu Right has made a virtue of anti-intellectualism, ignorance, and fake news/propaganda in the last five years, and how people have been asked to believe the most illogical, irrational, untruthful statements coming out, especially from the PM.”

“The joke is not on Modi. The joke is on the "educated" elite/middle class supporters of Modi who have made idiocy and ignorance fashionable.”

“While releasing the tax data, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that it should lead to enhanced insights for policymaking on taxation. What he did not say was that it was a scathing commentary on the nation. Unless the cultural idea of the nation as comradeship and fraternity is complemented by material and economic arrangements that realise this, the nation will remain only in name.”