A diminished India

[vsdoc]

Since 1992, for me, as far as the pronounced hostility to religious bigotry is concerned. That is 32 years, not 15, and apologies for the quibble.
Since 2008, as far as the entrance to Pakistani fora is concerned; that is 16 years, as you noted.

1992 I had a ear stud in my left ear, a sunset bronze dyed mohawk, had failed my first MBBS, and was stoning and fkng a different girl every night.

 

[Mrloveday]

Rubbish.

Why did he withdrew his movements when they started to hurt the British?

 

[Guynextdoor]

Imran Jan​

July 11, 2024

There is an interesting scene in one of Quentin Tarantino’s movies titled Django Unchained. DiCaprio is the white slave owner of Black men, depicting the days of slavery in America. In the scene, DiCaprio is having two Black men fight with each other where victory means the death of the opponent. That is the sort of entertainment white men liked to enjoy back then. The victorious Black man kills his intra-racial fellow and earns a large bottle of some kind of alcoholic drink along with a slave girl for the night. He stands tall and appears physically very strong and grand but very small in terms of respect and dignity.

I described that scene because there is a strong parallel between that scene and how India behaves in global politics nowadays. I had a chance to watch an Indian news channel on YouTube, which for some reason was in English. Some female anchor in her thick Indian accent was talking about news in English. Not only was she describing India in a manner like India was perhaps the most important player on the world political scene but also that India was this badass nation-state that could intimidate others. The show could easily pass for a comedy one but that is not how they had categorized it. Perhaps YouTube’s algorithm should evolve a little.

She was talking about India being this strong and powerful nation that can scare China into changing the latter’s foreign policy. She also said something along the lines where India was so important and aggressive that a global meeting being held soon would be attended by Putin and Xi but only the Indian foreign minister would go and that Modi decided to skip because India had better things to do. Pure comedy.
India is evolving its global posturing toward Russia and China in a quite aggressive manner. But none of this is India’s own policies. Just as Pakistan since its inception believed in borrowed power using alliances with the west, today’s India is using what could rightly be called as borrowed posturing. Russia and China are not India’s enemies as much as India is being told to see them as such. In fact, Russia was quite an ally of India during the Cold War. Even Bollywood in so many movies of Amitabh and others favoured a sympathetic stance toward communism. That, as much as Pakistan and America would have been against, was India’s own organic stance. This current Indian saber rattling at China and Russia are totally synthetic stances made in Washington DC.
If the past is any indication, the US foreign policy goals executed by another state have never served that state. India tries to appear aggressive and tall but in reality has become a proud puppet state of the United States. What is more alarming is that other US puppet states are enlisted by merely enlisting some of the strongmen inside the country. In India’s case, however, the entire nation of 1.6 or so billion people is very welcoming to the daily teachings of the media that somehow being the US puppet state was the most miraculous thing to have happened to this nation. Perhaps that is what they mean by the dark side of democracy. Just like the Black man in that scene described above, India also hates because the hate is manufactured for it by people other than its own. It may like to congratulate itself for signaling aggressive postures to heavyweights such as Russia and China, but it is only causing its own standing to diminish. India has become a textbook puppet state that is not even objecting to it.

Hitler and his followers were quite educated people and they also believed very genuinely that theirs was a just cause and that they were on to a righteous mission.

I'm sorry for using colorful language but I can't stand bull$hit.

So called 'US puppet', you fatty (referring to the author) got
a) Billions of $$ in investments from the US companies
b) 150 billion in exports every year in IT alone
c) additional invetsments to build iphone factories and manufacturing faclities

all the while buying billions of $$ worth of oil from Russia and stuffing Russian economy with Indian rupees.


That Indian anchor with thick accent (pretty sure he's referring to Palki here), has far greater audience than you.

You are NOTHING.

 

[Joe Shearer]

This is how the Hindu right grew under our noses and we were too busy rescuing India, growing India, riching (is it a word?) India, to notice. Or consider it a threat more than a peripheral irritant.

The last 10 years, in fact the last 30-40 years, is an immense lesson to us, or where both our generations fell short. Let our guard down. And ceded the public perception and information space to rhe Sangh ecosystem.

We need to grab that back. I realize it. Rahul realizes it.

Please realize it.

Just by being a friendly dad, without indoctrinating them with my own world view, I have seen my kids change. From Oh hes a druggie na? To the frank admiration them and their friends have for him and the disgust they feel for La Ecosystem. This happened unknown to me, and was a happy unexpected surprise. Busy as I was with my own work, my own fight.

Let me try and order my responses to this very insightful post.

Yes, we allowed the lock-stepping right wing fascist organisation to infiltrate its theories into a very wide swathe of Indian society, and failed to notice it and detect it in time, or counter-act it.

We need to grab it back, and restore India to normalcy. What this is today is NOT normal.

The question is, how? How do we reset the clock?

At this point, we diverge.

In my opinion, we can do nothing as individuals, other than quell idiots who have been brainwashed and spend their time on social media spreading right wing propaganda. For any course correction to take place, we must use institutions, and channels of education - the entire primary and secondary education system.

Is there nothing we can do in the interim? Of course! We can support those opposed to the lunatics in charge, and help them to win power, and HOPE VERY HARD that they will take the right corrective action, because that is NOT a given. We can keep telling them what might work, but we cannot step in and make things go our way.

I agree, interaction is key. The question, again, is 'interaction with whom?' About what? and When?

 

[Joe Shearer]

Why did he withdrew his movements when they started to hurt the British?

If you do not want to be a stone-washed bhakt, read.

There are thousands of references to his reasoning, and to its pros and cons.

 

[Guynextdoor]

Why did he withdrew his movements when they started to hurt the British?

He didn't withdraw because it hurt the British. He withdrew because there was violence.

 

[r3alist]

Opinions, thoughts, souls and identities are being shaped on tik tok , Facebook, films, Instagram... techno modernity, you guys had your minds formed before this, for you it's amusement, for the younger generation it's all consuming reality

There is little room for anything other than what's available there for the young.

Control the tech, the tech agenda, rest are consumer's

 

[vsdoc]

Let me try and order my responses to this very insightful post.

Yes, we allowed the lock-stepping right wing fascist organisation to infiltrate its theories into a very wide swathe of Indian society, and failed to notice it and detect it in time, or counter-act it.

We need to grab it back, and restore India to normalcy. What this is today is NOT normal.

The question is, how? How do we reset the clock?

At this point, we diverge.

In my opinion, we can do nothing as individuals, other than quell idiots who have been brainwashed and spend their time on social media spreading right wing propaganda. For any course correction to take place, we must use institutions, and channels of education - the entire primary and secondary education system.

Is there nothing we can do in the interim? Of course! We can support those opposed to the lunatics in charge, and help them to win power, and HOPE VERY HARD that they will take the right corrective action, because that is NOT a given. We can keep telling them what might work, but we cannot step in and make things go our way.

I agree, interaction is key. The question, again, is 'interaction with whom?' About what? and When?

Joe, we have had the luxury of a good upbringing, a privileged up bringing, and schooling and further education. Be the engine of the change you want. I personally believe that leaving everything to the "people in charge" is not the answer for social churn. We are the component parts and drivers of that. Collectively. The last 5 years, once we had gotten over the shock and disgust of the first 5, is a brilliant demonstrator of an organic pan India pushback. That had no leader, no organisation, and was being fought in millions of homes and offices and on the air, daily. Without fear. Without fatigue. In a myriad different ways. But that is how you turn momentum in a continent of 1.5 billion people. We are not China. We will hate being told what to do. We all love having an opinion. Loudly. And we all love feeling we are right.

The trick is in making the critical mass of people feel that what we want and what we believe is right was their own brilliant deduction all the while. And let them be happy and converge to a satisfactory median.

But we have to crush the identified rats when the time comes. Brutally and mercilessly. So that they never again emerge too far from their burrows.

Cheers, Doc

 

[vsdoc]

Opinions, thoughts, souls and identities are being shaped on tik tok , Facebook, films, Instagram... techno modernity, you guys had your minds formed before this, for you it's amusement, for the younger generation it's all consuming reality

There is little room for anything other than what's available there for the young.

Control the tech, the tech agenda, rest are consumer's

What I said.

 

[r3alist]

I'm sorry for using colorful language but I can't stand bull$hit.

So called 'US puppet', you fatty (referring to the author) got
a) Billions of $$ in investments from the US companies
b) 150 billion in exports every year in IT alone
c) additional invetsments to build iphone factories and manufacturing faclities

all the while buying billions of $$ worth of oil from Russia and stuffing Russian economy with Indian rupees.


That Indian anchor with thick accent (pretty sure he's referring to Palki here), has far greater audience than you.

You are NOTHING.

You only needed to post the first sentence and last sentence.

But then if the last sentence was true for you, then why bother at all

 

[r3alist]

What I said.

What I said.

We are all, globally, consumers

You either somehow recapture tech to control it how you see fit, or you go off grid, abandon tech to a bigger extent, honestly I don't see any other choices.


Everytime the western world has innovated tech to project images and sounds more widely and pervasively, it's ended up in nonsense, some would say filth, or degeneracy


The upward trend for technology is dizzying, matched by an equal downward trend in spiritual rot


No point having a historical narrative if you can't control that.

 

[vsdoc]

No point having a historical narrative if you can't control that.

Somewhere along the way the Congress and now the BJP have both been guilty of assuming their vote banks to be captive ones.

And have lost the messaging war and connect with the people.

And the people have reminded them.

A narrative vacuum will never remain empty. And it spreads organically like wildfire.

The Samvidhan Khatre Mein narrative literally swung the election in less than 2 months. Even though the groundwork had been done over the preceding years.

 

[Krptonite]

how is this compromised by my separate empowerment as moderator.

I don't know, Joe. People get suspiciously polite during conversations when they see the other party holding a huge stick behind their back.

 

[Guynextdoor]

We are all, globally, consumers

You either somehow recapture tech to control it how you see fit, or you go off grid, abandon tech to a bigger extent, honestly I don't see any other choices.


Everytime the western world has innovated tech to project images and sounds more widely and pervasively, it's ended up in nonsense, some would say filth, or degeneracy


The upward trend for technology is dizzying, matched by an equal downward trend in spiritual rot


No point having a historical narrative if you can't control that.

yeah the kind of stuff that losers say. 'Oh they innovate tech but is it not true that spiritually we have come down'? a side viewer who has no ability to match that development can take satisfaction in this BS.

West doesn't 'just' innovate- they put bonecrushing amount of work and thinking to take things forward. They land on the moon and mars and then some. They created brilliant societies backed with massive education and infrastructure investments to achieve it.

 

[r3alist]

yeah the kind of stuff that losers say. 'Oh they innovate tech but is it not true that spiritually we have come down'? a side viewer who has no ability to match that development can take satisfaction in this BS.

West doesn't 'just' innovate- they put bonecrushing amount of work and thinking to take things forward. They land on the moon and mars and then some. They created brilliant societies backed with massive education and infrastructure investments to achieve it.

You are seemingly determined to create a disagreement or superiority/inferiority narrative, just to be angry in return.

I am not questioning the effectiveness of the innovation, I am in fact praising it's reach and projection, from early still projection to black and white TV, to right now. It will continue to be ever pervasive in it's trajectory.






I am then commenting on whether it's helping or hindering societies in any spiritual, inwardly directed or wholesome way, assuming you care about these things.

What do you think on this?