All foreign funded organisations, under so called NGO's name should be completely under scan.
These NGO's are not helping people, what they are doing is propaganda, support terrosits, conversions.
Christian missionaries conversions are so rampant in India, Most of north-east is converted, punjab, tamil-nadu, andhra Pradesh, Kerala, are in-line for huge demographics change.
If this is not enough, these organisations which are belong to far-left even create riots, trying to white-wash historical atrocities, shame majority population, support terrosits, anti-government.
We are unable to bear the wrath which is being unleashed by foreign agencies on our country.
Their operations in India are financed by donations form Indians. From the linked update:
> For human rights work in India, it operates through a distinct model of raising funds domestically. More than four million Indians have supported Amnesty International India’s work in the last eight years and around 100,000 Indians have made financial contributions.
Please don't site, Wikipedia as truth, I have seen it with my own eyes, how moderators, are not even allowing right-wing people to even put out a point with proper sources.
It is not a right-wing mouth piece like Wikipedia claims, what it does is real journalism.
While Wire, Quint, ... can publish about Brahmins, patriarchy, ... all non-sense.
Hindu crimes, but OpIndia can't publish both Hindu and Islam crimes?
Ar.Ranganathan talks on facts, If you have any evidence against his statements, that is wrong, I will look into it.
I don't have any agenda, it just pains me as an Indian, when real dividers, talk about dividers.
Times now had a debate regarding the same, you seem deny all the donations which come to AI, breaking Indian laws.
If you are not a BJP shill and you claim not to be, you might be suffering from low self-esteem issues. Low self esteem men find solace in rightwing ideologies and this has been the case through out history. Solve your issue and thing will get better.
"most of the north-east is converted [to christianity]" is surprising, but actually that's true, for several Indian states that are in the enclave eastern of Bangladesh (Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya). Not "most" eastern states, though, only these ones.
I am certainly not in favor of acculturation, and I have no sympathy for religions such as christianity who advocate that nature exists just to be used by humans, however I am not sure that the current status is really evolving. These eastern states seem to have been converted long ago.
Well I grew up in the Northeast ('80s). One thing I can assert that these missionaries treated the population a lot more respect than the (for the lack of a better word) folks from mainland India. The common attitude towards Northeast people by my fellow countrymen was that of utter contempt to the point of treating them as inferior beings.
Sure the missionaries had an agenda. But given my options as an hypothetical person of northeastern ethnicity, given the education that I would get from the missionary organizations (they run many primary schools and high schools and vocational training schools) I would have made a wise choice and bettered my life.
First of all I don't need to be mansplained about what is happening in the Northeast with videos short or not. Neither do I need to be schooled in the nuances, thank you.
I am just sick and tired of the narrative that comes from the right wing "look missionaries did these horrible things". My rebuttal to that is (i) where were you and (ii) you (not you personally, the rightwing ideology) continue to do worse even today. So the right-wing does not really have a leg to stand on in this particular case.
Not everyone feels that way, at the end of the day Christians in India may feel special because they are "minority".
I have heard this from an India Christian family settled in Europe, their "christian identity" is not significant and they face all the 'othering' in their churches.
They were considering moving back to their Hindu roots as it gave them some identity.
As for the Christian benevolence, they lost thousands of ships before they found their way to a wealthy India. And when they left India was so impoverished that Indians were shipped off to remote plantations to "compensate" the white plantation owners after the slavery abolition.
The church encroached upon and accumulated so much land and wealth during the colonial era that they have not returned back to the communities or government and in many cases temple lands are under the control of the church.
Re. conversion - nilsocket, do you believe that every individual has agency in choosing their religion? Or do you believe that these choices should be made for them by “those that know better”? An analogy, do you think that your occupation should be something you can choose? Or should that choice be made for you by “those that know better”?
If the conversion is “forced” or “fake”, nothing changes on the ground anyway, and it doesn’t matter. If the conversion is genuine, why should society have a say on an individual’s belief?
That twitter handle is far from an unbiased source.
Again, my question here is -
Who decides that the reason someone has chosen for their conversion is “wrong”, for what is essentially an individual’s choice. I for one trust nobody but myself to make those judgements, within the framework of the law. I do not want the state to infringe on my personal freedom. Anti-conversion laws are a dangerous step in the direction of the state telling people what to believe and what not to.
I have no problem with sex, and if people really want it they pay for it, it is then called prostitution.
I do not have a problem with sex or prostitution. But we all know where it would lead - drugs, gun violence, sex trafficking, child trafficking, mafia, money laundering, government corruption/blackmail.
The certain organised religion/s have the same problem, imagine a neighbourhood mafia backed by a trillion dollar international conglomerate.
Interesting. Does the Indian government have a legitimate complaint?
There is a very wide spectrum of possibilities here. They range from the Indian government being horrible, through localised corruption, through the government having very legitimate concerns about foreign interference, through to AI India being corrupt and/or in league with western intelligence agencies.
Nah, you should have a complete understanding from all sides. India is heavily anti majority and hates Hinduism than any other country. All these NGOs and so called feminist organisations try to show hinduism in bad light. I don't really need to show references and links. A quick Google search will show it all. :)
I disagree. I am a South East Asian aka Malaysian. Most of the news articles related to India always show negative light about Hinduism and defame Hindu practices.
The government has been tracking foreign funding, as it should. There is no shortage of examples where external government agencies (mostly western) have tried to influence internal politics or topple governments (mostly 3rd world).
Government needs to ensure whether NGOs are working as per there declared mandate and need to ensure their mandatory legal compliance requirements. And it isn't "Conformance to their objective" is mandatory legal compliance in a democracy.
Previous govt had huge concerns as well. PM Singh said "The atomic energy programme has gone into difficulties because these NGOs [non-governmental organisations], mostly I think based in the United States, don't appreciate the need for our country to increase the energy supply."
Also, Important to note that some of the changes to laws for NGOs were done during congress led UPA govt as well. It is just that changes to laws have now been highlighted more by mainstream media.
It's not a question of legitimate complaint. They didn't complain, they froze assets and halted the organisation's activity.
The question is whether or not the Indian government's actions are legitimate, and whether or not their stated reasons are true. On the later, it seems to be a clear no.
The government didn't wake-up overnight to freeze NGO's assets.
Many NGOs were NOT filing annual reports that they were supposed to be filing, and their compliance(even pre-2014 norms) were not ensured by the govt.
UPA have used these NGOs to instigate protests in various state governments as Congress lacked strong real regional political activities and lack grass-root touch with people.
It was visible with the strong presence of NGO activists in the unconstitutional body of National Advisory Council.
Even after modification of norms, these NGOs were given sufficient notice and warning to file their reports.
There were certain documents that shoud have been filed, but in general the interpretation or norm was that they didnt need to be.
The new govt which came into power eforced this rule and of course, everyone struggled to fill it - the media scoop was "non compliance".
IN addition, this was all done on the backs of a terrible IB (intelligence bureau) report which was leaked.
The report was used as an excuse to demonize NGOs and reduce any statue they had in the market of ideas.
I have read the report, and it is so laughably bad, that I wouldn't doubt if someone told me that all of India's security apparatuses had been compromised and were run by foreign powers.
Sections of that document included parts which warned that NGOs had been able to plot, on a map, the location of extant, proposed and in construction nuclear power plants. "The use of handwritten notes was to foil the ability of text scanners."
Additionally, there are multiple sections that correlate receipt of foreign funds as signs of collusion with foreign powers. Even if it is Greenpeace getting funding from international members.
The amount of actual scrutiny in 2014 on this document was nil.
If anyone reads it, you will immediately see what is up, since the sight of a google map with pins being lauded as a villainous mastermind about to damage India was laughable.
Hey! someone else has that document saved. It is absolutely hilarious and tragic.
When it came out, I read the report and realized that it was a hack job, and sure enough - not one person knew its contents, despite the news channels and whatsapp declaring NGOs as enemy number 1.
I've commented elsewhere in this thread how that report says that writing hand written notes is an attempt to evade scanners, and that using google maps and adding pins to it is evidence of near super villain levels of plotting to end India's coal power dreams - by Greenpeace.
The slow judicial system is the biggest weapon that the government and other large entities with money have. Not everyone can afford to put their lives on hold for 3 years while a court case slowly winds its way up to a judge.
Toyota recently pulled out of the country due to ineffective bureaucracy and that's when they're pushing for more manufacturing. In cases like these there's no way for them to fight if they're against you.
Toyota is NOT pulling out of India, and neither is it not expanding/investing more money. It was a newsbyte spread by some papers w/o citing named sources. The news was refuted by Government officials as well as Toyota India's Vice Chairman, who said Toyota would be investing about 20 Billion INR over the next 12 months.
Its worse now. The Supreme Court Of India has capitulated; it is, for all practical purposes, in the hands of Modi & Shah. An institution that should check unwarranted excesses is looking the other way.
States that are not run by Modi Inc are in a lot of trouble. That's the point though... conformance.
This is all motivated reporting. India has such a strong and independent judicial system which does its job. If any charges are put incorrectly then courts will grant relief. India is democratic country.
The Constitution gives the judges enormous powers in the form of Contempt of Court act[1]. Unlike other draconian laws, this is not even talked about in open due to fear of courts. You have already mentioned Prashant Bhushan's case. There is this case of Justice Karnan, a sitting High Court judge, was punished for raising voice against some senior judges[2]. The outrage at the time was quite limited as he is not a known government antagonist. Ironically, Prashant Bhushan was also cheering the sentencing of Justice Karnan[3].
Tell me the Supreme Court is doing its job when it hears the long pending cases on Aadhaar, electoral bonds and others of critical national interest. So far, it's just been busy playing around with telecom company dues, Tata Sons' dispute with Cyrus Mistry, etc.
Letting article 370 reform go unchallenged would be one example.
It was an opportunistic edge case that allowed the federal body to decide on a state matter because the state government was temporarily missing and a caretaker government was in charge.
Court chose to look the other way.
One can arguesuch opportunism is legal as far as the letter of the law is concerned. It is common on legal proceedings for the spirit of the law to be upheld rather than the letter, except for business/commercial contracts.
According to AlJazeera, Afzal Guru is just a "Kashmiri separatist". I guess they missed the part where he was convicted for attacking the Indian parliament[1]. Interesting that Amnesty International questioned the way he was tried and punished[2].
Also interesting that they did not find a shred of evidence in that case. In fact the order mentioned that he was convicted to placate the “conscience of the nation”.
Supreme court had concluded that he arranged logistics and explosives for the attackers. I am not sure how they arrived at that conclusion without a "shred of evidence".
He was a trained militant that dropped out of medical college who went to Pakistan for militancy training to
wage ware against the sovereign state of India.
He had knowledge of the criminal conspiracy and arranged logistical support to terrorists.
I don't think he was innocent.
But I don't think he deserved capital punishment.
The likes of Amnesty International was involved in proselytizing him as revolutionary hero and that was totally uncalled for.
Yes he was a terrorist but a repatriated one. India had a policy of bringing youth who have gone the terrorism way, served their sentence et be brought back into the folds of civil political society. Afzal Guru was such a case. Also as mentioned by police high ups who oversaw his case he was a pushover (actual words used "bhondu"). This all turned very convenient for the administration that was under pressure to show progress on the investigation.
The circumstantial evidence found on him related to the parliament attack are of such nature that could easily have been planted by the police (specific example, a scarp of paper with the terrorist handlers phone number found on his person).
Planting of evidence is quite common and rote in India. Judges with a spine discount those. In this case the justice bench didn't -- because the theatre was too important compared to a pushover reformed erstwhile terrorist.
> The likes of Amnesty International was involved in proselytizing him as revolutionary hero and that was totally uncalled for.
Source? The Amnesty International link upthread about his execution does nothing like that, but is criticism of a) the law under which he was sentenced and b) that and how the execution was done (which AI is strongly opposed to and criticizing everywhere)
FWIW, this sounds quite similar to criticism of orgs like them in the west when people also can't understand why they'd defend bad people
“The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender.”: [1]
But Afzal was hanged when India was ruled by Congress. And all parties including Far left supported it. So that case cannot be used to measure judiciary sleeping with present government.
My comment did not talk about the judiciary. It was more about just calling Afzal Guru a separatist.
I don't think the judiciary is sleeping with the government. In recent times, they have given verdicts like the decriminalization of homosexual relationships and abolishing of Triple Talaq. I do agree that they should be more proactive. One reason for them being a bit soft on the government is that the current government has stuff like NJAC in their arsenal, which threatens to dilute the power of the judiciary. While NJAC was declared unconstitutional by the SC some years back, the current leadership can still bring it back by mobilizing support for it.
If ever, courts will act a couple of years after the case. The judicial system is close to non-functional due to underfunding and mismanagement and lately due to political influence by the current fascist regime. The global public is slowly getting aware of all the human rights abuses happening in the country - good. India will only be a true democracy when Hinduism, which manifests in the caste system and brahmanic supremacy, will be annihilated.
Yes, very much. Locally in northern india higher castes like Jatt Brahmin are vocal & expressive about their higher caste. Same in central & other parts of India.
> India will only be a true democracy when Hinduism, which manifests in the caste system and brahmanic supremacy, will be annihilated.
Your hatred for Hinduism is shocking! I am utterly disappointing to read this in HN (a tech news discussion). Just for your info, all people regardless of religions have caste in India including Sikhs, Chritsians and muslims . Define "brahmanic supremacy". Brahmins are a group of people living by conducting temple rituals and they are mostly poor. The politicians are using religion as a weapon for increasing their votes. Can we stop using religion when discussing here ?
After seeing what this organization did when Bolsonaro got elected here in Brazil, unfortunately I can not say I believe anything that comes out of it. It's a politically biased organization, therefore you always must take any stance they take with a lot of grains of salt.
You sound like a government-funded internet troll paid to spread a certain line of thought or to just oppose any criticism to the government. Whose payroll are you on?
> Political liberalism in India is now under assault. The current right-of-center government, dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), appears intent on transforming India's pluralistic, open, and secular state into an ethnic and illiberal democracy. To that end it has sought to place ideologues in key governmental institutions, attempted to curtail academic freedoms at a leading university, and made efforts to curb an otherwise feisty mass media. A weak political opposition, which had in any case failed to demonstrate much mettle when in government prior to the BJP's 2014 electoral victory, now appears utterly incapable of stemming this illiberal tide. As a consequence, India's future as a liberal democracy appears to be at some risk.
> Kumi Naidoo, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, takes a different view, decrying an official effort to "[crush] dissent by demonizing and criminalizing activists, lawyers, and journalists working for some of the poorest and most marginalized communities in India." Amnesty International India has itself been targeted: Its bank accounts have been frozen, and police in Bangalore have accused it of sedition.
> The reports published by these orgs are prepared by some minimum wage worker
Author: Sumit Ganguly is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Rabindranath Tagore Professor of Indian Cultures and Civilizations at the Indiana University.
> Lancet and "Global Health Security Index"
I don't know what "Global Health Security Index" is, but no minimum wage worker is getting published in Lancet.
I think it makes it fairly clear he is well qualified to write on the topic. Only one of the his 8 books wasn't about India. He was awarded the "Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (Distinguished Overseas Indian)" award by the President of India!
In your provided link it points to Sweden as one of the best prepared countries for COVID. I am Swedish citizen. I am actually quiet surprised since it is still hard to get tested and test results take longer than two days (mine was a week but it was private and two months ago).
Sweden in general is handling it well, but it would take a long time to understand who handled covid better.
The point is not about covid per se. The point is veracity of the institution that are cited all over the globe and orgs like amnesty.
These are created, based and are funded by western govts and people -- their point of view is already biased and often times willfully.
To highlight the point I used pandemic preparedness. Some one in his/her infinite wisdom comes up with an index with 10 parameters and then publishes it. The parameters are mostly influences by where that person lives and his own political leanings.
Down voting comments by people with higher karma without any contributions --- is how the hypocrites work. If you do not agree with someone - use your power and down vote! That is how entire western worlds has worked for last 200 or more years!
I noticed that you seem to attack the sources of a lot of things you disagree with as biased.
I don't think that is obviously true, but in any case your arguments maybe better received if you explained why their claims are wrong.
I'd note that you used the same approach downthread, until it turned out the author himself was Indian and extremely well qualified to make the points he made.
I didn’t say Indian channels are biased or aren’t biased, my point was on freedom of press and how they don’t hesitate to ask or harass the govt or people alike. Re read my point
There is a fundamental difference Indian nationalism and other countries nationalism. Indian nationalism is all about bringing back the "varna system" which advocates stratification of society based on the birth and access to education is only allowed for the brahmins(priestly caste). This was the system implemented strictly before the Britishers arrived to India.
No country to my knowledge does denies education to its own people in the name of nationalism.
In contrast in other countries the nationalism is not about stratification of society or honoring privilege by birth.
Amazing to see an authentic source like the BBC! It is the same publication that cannot complete any ISRO/Science related article without highlighting first how poor india is!
So, if your source about RSS is BBC then good luck about having a non-biased conversation. You are part of the cliched narrative builders.
> It is the same publication that cannot complete any ISRO/Science related article without highlighting first how poor india is!
That's ad hominem. If you have a specific point mention that. If the only document you will accept is from RSS mouthpieces then there is no point in the conversation.
Funny, just to check I picked 5 random BBC articles about ISRO off Google search. 3 didn't mention anything like that, one said arguments that India shouldn't invest in space tech are misguided and one cited low salaries as part of why the project was so impressively cheap compared to western programs. That doesn't seem particularly worthy of outrage?
> Hinduism is based on the vedic books which advocate varna system
You are wrong. The Vedas have nothing to do with the varna (caste) system. The caste system came much later and they have nothing to do with the foundations of Hinduism. There are several sects of Hinduism which explicitly reject the caste system. Look up Arya Samaj etc.
I have a feeling have I wasted my time in engaging with facts for someone whose mind is already made up about my faith.
It think it is intellectually dishonest to cast Arya Samaj in the same category as Vedic Hinduism. Considering Hinduism's age it was an very recent revisionist reform that happened yesterday. It was nowhere close to main stream Hinduism and wasn't the only such attempt at a reform. Existence of such reforms does not take away the well entrenched nature of the caste system and how far back it goes in time.
There is a spectrum of right-wingness b/w BJP and RSS.
They don't really want Hindu Rashtra. Most of them issue Hindu Rashtra rhetoric for mass-appeal just like every politicians use "God" in western democracies.
That's just semantic skullduggery. RSS does not fight elections, but they play king maker in these right wing party politics and take part sending their emissaries through revolving door between "social" and the "political"
Nonsense. Own creative theories by medieval privileged set now become "propaganda" loving "reservationists" treasure trove for justifying their own vile anti-humanity protectionism as quota. Point is, there are two branches of Hindu (Rather I prefer to term it as “Ancient" worldview).1- <Smarta> etymology from <Smriti> or from memory.2- <Srautya> etymology from <Shruti> or from listening.Now,it is not made differences in common perception and sense among those who doesn’t know or trouble to research on the same. State to state or even region to region as ASEAN countries, so called Hinduism and it’s values are different. Hindi derivatives languages speaking belts are all obsessed with casteism and some Principalities of South India. But, East of mainland India including Thailand, Myanmar and Far East regions— things are different. Shrauttyas don’t believe in casteism, but Smartyas does. Presently in "Clerk-Grade Coaching Institute-esque Macaulay education system, their so called mainland pundits often fails to infer those intrinsic and inert social dynamics in their societies. Nowadays, it has more opportunities (albeit in fakery of Government services and Social Welfare)to be in so-called untouchable set than in so-called hierarchical upper caste system—and, to continue this open bias, deprivation and denialism- urban 3rd or 4rth middle class novo caste activists usually churn out this conspiracy theory of victim hood. Btw, we are politically Indian and historically prior to East India Company never ever under any invaders rule or subjugation. There is no casteism in our part despite people do practice ancient religion of the subcontinent. Same in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos or South Eastern a China, Vietnam and Myanmar. There Hinduism is known as Balamon. Deities are there but with different names.Brahma is known in South East China as Fantian, Shiva as Shu La, Buddha as Baojio, Narayan as Nan La as so on and on... Hinduism there is rather a philosophy than mere food habits or cows ! Brahmans and all other castes does exists in other places but not the "reservation-oriented-Bihar" politics and opportunists.
Do you have any evidence to back your premise that Indian nationalists want to bring back the varna system? That’s an extraordinary claim that requires sourcing.
From what I’ve seen it’s like any other nationalist movement.
Yes. The BJP government is backed by the RSS and most of the members of the BJP party including Modi is former member of RSS. RSS is a religious organization supporting the varna system.
This is a weird claim. I have never seen any healthy mind supports Varna system in India. Only few delusioned imagine that someone is working towards it. Come on guys!
If you are talking about Dayand Saraswati, he is a 18th century philosopher. You cannot cite 18th century philosopher's word as today's.
Please quote a statement by BJP or RSS which supports Varna system in recent age(25 years).
In old age people used to believe earth is in the center of the universe. One should not quote anything which is more than 25 years old. World is changing rapidly.
How many believes that now except few delusioned individuals who still believe earth is flat and is in the center of the universe and rest of the talks are propaganda?
Not discounting the negative effects of the nationalism, but I don't think caste system is behind the current rise of nationalism. The prime minister himself is from the lower caste.
Modi himself added his trader community to backward caste for reaping benefits while he was running for CM of Gujarat using BJP govt at centre. Modh-Ghanchis are a middle caste which is a beneficiary of caste system and is by no means an OBC.
If you are still not convinced, look at what "Subramanian swamy" had to say when every one in BJP party was changing their twitter profile last name to "chowkidar"(meaning soldier or protector). He said he is a brahmin and its brahmins duty to advice how the country should be run and not be a soldier as vedas consider brahmins as superior to all the other varnas.
Subramanya Swamy is 81 yrs old. A person who has remnants and values of old-school of casteist thought.
I don't expect him to be post-modernists egalitarian.
However at the same it doesn't mean he can't say his casteist comments openly. ;)
After all, its better if people say it openly so that they can be criticized for their casteist comment. The likes of him is politically insignificant as he is NOT competing in elections.
Subramanian Swamy always denounced birth based caste system and always said anyone with 3 qualities - knowledge, sacrifice, courage should be considered as a brahmin and he has also said in many places that as per this Dr.Ambedkar is a brahmin and Nehru is not.
Would it surprise you to hear that there are many women in India who support for existing misogynistic aspects of traditional culture?
It's hard for people to understand how deeply woven caste-based motivations are in Indian society. At a large scale it may seem like some globally stratified layer cake. On the ground, it devolves into regional tribes.
The "caste associations" rural people associate themselves with in rural areas are loosely formed tribes of 10 thousand to 100-thousand strong members.
The perspective of many who choose to be invested in this system - which is most people living in those areas (what else are you gonna do? not support your tribe? who else is gonna have your back if there's trouble?) - is one of trying to gain status for their caste/tribe over others.
Caste rivalries are often regional, and localized.
Identifying India's current PM as not coming from one of the well-recognized "higher castes" is really meaningless. It'd be sort of like saying "yeah, this politician is unlikely to be a hardline christian dominionist, he's a 7-th day adventist, which is clearly a minority sect".
I agree with you on all the points except the last and in no way I am saying the there are no caste based discrimination in India. In fact caste based discrimination and the effects of it is one of the main reasons of India being "developing country" forever, I think.
My point is that the current rise of nationalism is not because of the caste system, but rather in spite of it. I see many people from lower caste(including my relatives) being active in the local rightwing politics and RSS.
>> which advocates stratification of society based on the birth
Not a unique to Indian nationalism. American nationalism is very similar. See the "birther" movement. Or the president's push to withdraw birthright citizenship, a concept that would deny far more than just education. Or the references to "anchor babies". The location of one's birthplace, and the birthplace of one's parents, is of fundamental importance in US nationalist movements just as in India.
Lol comparing India's traditional caste system to the Constitution's requirement that the President be a natural born citizen -- the only role in our government like this -- is a real stretch. So is the birthright citizenship, something only common in the New World to begin with.
Birthright citizenship is pretty unique to America though. Nowhere in Europe you would find such a thing, although most people won't count Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden etc. as human right violators.
Maybe I missed something or forgot how citizenship works here in France (since I learned how it is acquired as a student), but birthright citizenship seems pretty similar to what we have here
Just checked the wiki, looks like France defines something called double jus soli, which means a person who was born in France to a parent who themselves is born in France (even though they might not be a French citizen) gets the citizenship.
That's a bit closer to birthright citizenship that what we have in Germany, but nowhere as liberal as USA laws, which give citizenship to anyone born in the USA even if their parents entered the country one day before the birth and left next day after the birth. That is something that doesn't exist anywhere in Europe to my knowledge.
The idea of the new policy of introducing public exams for the 5th and 8th grade is to discourage students to go to school. Once the govt school has the exams they are forced to fail few percentage of the students and very likely they will discontinue the school. This is the reason in the past till 9th students were promoted in tamilnadu which has the highest college goers because the students who were not performing in the mid school got a chance later.
The important question is what is driving this educational policy. Its the belief of the vedas that for a society to function well not everyone should have the same opportunity and access to education. Everyone has duty based on the family they were born and should not be allowed to change.
Exam is not a discouragement. Its rather a test of progress.
TN has been plaguing with higher dropout rates for a while.
>Forced to fail
Seriously ???
Expecting students to pass a standard test is not denying education. If students fail the tests, they FAIL. That is the purpose. Its not the responsibility of the govt to be "PASS" the student. Rather its the responsibility of the govt to provide education institutional access. What is the point of letting students PASS if they cant even do basic math and communicate.
Unskilled graduates is one of the highest ranked problem that the govt is facing in getting them employed.
And I don't know why even without providing any shred of evidence you keep bring Veda,Caste and Hindutva into discussion into Educational Policy.
You're conflating nationalism with a cultural supremacy movement. They're similar to outsiders, they often overlap, but they are not necessarily the same thing.
The field of Political Science does not treat nationalism as inherently bad, nor does it use "nationalism" and "ethnic nationalism" interchangeably. There are a million real-life examples of even ethnic nationalism that people generally consider good.
Hindu nationalism is certainly way different, it is an umbrella term that encompasses all Indic cultures, tradition and systems that have evolved for thousands of years.
This is against a mostly one book, one god/no god, one agenda and one power centre ideology being enforced on the people - Marxism, Christianity, Islam, "Atheism", "Feminism"
Especially in a country with a million gods and small unique communities, it falls on the government to protect them from ideologies with a track record for violence and genocide.
Indians are very pleased at this decision. Amnesty has been a major organization to hold biased views of human rights of terrorist in Kashmir without accounting for the loss of citizens life that are damaged due to terrorism. Their agenda has always been motivated while operating in India. A diverse and large country like India doesn't need such an organization preaching whats right. India is largest democracy on face of earth.
Amnesty's resources are better spent in operating in those countries where there is no democracy such as middle east, africa, china, etc. Good they got an exit from India where they are useless :)
Your line of questioning tells me you have little to no knowledge, period. Visit India and figure it out yourself. Comparing India to SA or Bowtswana tells me that You weren’t taught well, so not your fault, it’s ok, there is still time for you to go back to school.
Have you been to Botswana? It is a pretty modern nation and a well run country. Lets look at some numbers and COMPARE.
GDP per capita (2017):
India: $1,980
Botswana: $7,894
China: $8,612
Botswana: has a better GDP/capita AND higher ranked democracy than India. Less corruption too (if you look it up). Always good to school yourself - with facts.
So you look at GDP as the one factor to determine your facts. The fact that you are comparing a Country with 2.5 million People vs a country with 1.3 billion people tells me more about you than I need to.
Trying to school others on numbers and gets schooled himself on what the word compare means. Not your fault. It’s ok you will learn in time
Leftists lost their control over the global (and local) narrative with the rise of social media. So, now they have to hide behind the disguise of NGO's to push their narrative because nobody trusts their news.
It turns out that not everyone appreciates being turned into an economic client state of the US. Nationalism is a direct reaction meant to (whether effective or not) reaffirm sovreignty.
Shipping India's able-bodied workforce to the US and driving the rest of the local economy with low-wage factory jobs absolutely hampers a country's ability to govern and develop itself. The threat of pulling manufacturing out of a country becomes too great and forces governments to bend to the will of foreign investment.
>Shipping India's able-bodied workforce to the US [...]
I wonder why the blame is on the US or American companies, which offer better working conditions and pay, rather than Indian companies for not being competitive enough, or the expats for "defecting" from their home country.
And what about the laws and treaties that enable enacted by the indian government? If they wanted to they could do what the soviet union did and impose borders controls to prevent indian engineers from escaping india.
"Thank" 9/11 for that one. The reactions to this attack was the first crack in the dam of human rights, and unscrupulous/authoritarian politicians dismantled it until unrecognizability over the last decades.
World's largest democracy vs NGO with shady foreign funding, forced to shutdown because they are asked to make their operations transparent.
Enough said, India is the only major functional democracy in region filed with autocratic communist and theocratic states, where stoning people for blasphemy and organ harvesting is the norm.
At the end of the day that is how democracies need to work and those of you spewing rhetoric against the current disposition have revealed the wolf within your sheep clothing.
that just says the government agencies raided the offices of AII, it doesn't prove any wrongdoing. Exactly the kind of harassment AII is talking about in the article linked above, only if you had read it in the first place before making his comment.
HN should take down this post. The country has been heavily polarized into two sections (pro-bjp and against-bjp) with both the sections heavily incentivised by the "IT" deptt of respective political parties.
Very few will talk about the actual issue and most of the comments will be rhetorical, only focusing on what they believe is right.
this post is from a reputed source, I see no reason why it should be taken down.
As far as I am concerned, this is not a subjective thing,
the crack down on Amnesty International in the country is not subject to individual opinions.
lol, dude, the criticism is mostly from authoritarian countries, China, Iran, Russia, or countries that violate human rights, Sri Lanka(the entire issue with tamils), or US(Guantánamo Bay).
The Indian government is answerable to the people, Amnesty International is answerable to the government, the courts and perhaps its "donors".
There is a robust system for the former, not so much for the later. AI can complain all it wants but they are just bringing in more scrutiny into their activities.
One thing that comments so far down here do not highlight is that there was a recent change in the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act where there were changes in the amount of money / limit of administrative expenditure that can be allocated to foreign contributions to 20 percent from the previous 50 percent and, Enforcement Directorate had issued a show-cause notice to Amnesty International India recently (I think in 2019).
So while yeah, online discussions mostly conclude to simplest possible explanation i.e. authoritarian / totalitarian / nationalism / and what not - This notice comes just days after FCRA was changed in India, that might be the pushing point / breakpoint towards closure rather than "Government Witchhunt", because Amnesty has been getting the show-causes notices for some time now.
Rose by any other name... Amnesty India has not been convicted of any FCRA violation. India has frozen Amnesty's bank accounts without any judicial oversight making sure Amnesty India cannot function normally.
FCRA was amended with a specific aim in mind. Hindu Nationalist groups have been vocal about religious conversions. FCRA was recently used to target 4 Christian organizations and choke their foreign funding [1].
It is a witch-hunt specifically because Amnesty was harassed by Delhi Police about why they were probing Delhi Religious Riots 2020 and had released the report about the Police excesses in the same? It was after this that Delhi Police targeted Amnesty using FCRA law. [2]
Amnesty India's former head put it succintly: "It has become a crime to work on human rights in India." "Amnesty has not been convicted. It has not even been put on trial in court. Shutdown refers to inability to pay salaries because accounts frozen for second time without any determination of guilt." [3]
FCRA is just bureaucratic powerslam without going through courts to target organization that asks for transparency. India joins highly regarding company of Russia in pushing Amnesty from their country.
There are massacres going on it seems. In America we are seeing rioters constantly classified by the media as protestors. If a group is literally slaughtering the other group, protestor seems like the wrong word.
The fact that you've heard this and haven't seen it, shows just how terrible, corrupt and useless the American media is. Our media is only pushing hate:
I see this thread is being brigaded by the usual right-wing Indian nationalists who think Modi can do no wrong and the Hindu majority is somehow, inexplicably, under threat.
Modi can't be always right just like Amnesty India. If they are so sure about honesty of their work, they should fight the court case instead of running away.
It’s easy to diss India without knowing the ground facts. There has been major bias by these organizations where they show mercy and protests for terrorits but none for the people killed by them.
Being anti govt by calling right wing Hindu nationalist is BS. India has seen years of corruption and I can attest that things have never been better and improving Commenting on the recent CAA legislation without reading it fully tells me that you failed your schooling.
While you scream BJP as Hindu nationalist party, it has many Muslim members and a majority of Muslims voted for BJP because of its strong leadership.
Why don’t you and Amnesty take time to address the Uighurs Muslims who are in a Chinese camp being brain washed, all 10 million of them while their mosques are being destroyed? Oh wait i forgot, a lot of hypocrites linger here.
What has this post got anything to do with Startups? HN has become irrelevant when the reason is to make impacts in the startup world and less on how the political landscape works.
The only reason this post is important is because a lot of the techies are Indians and you can see from the comments on why these discussions are so important for them.
We could go on and bring up political unrests in China, Afghanistan, ISIS, Russia, Palestine/Israel, America and so on however the fact is that HN policies should down vote such posts.
You have never seen a non-startup post here? Nothing about racism or job or caste discrimination?
You can completely avoid participating in this discussion. Worst case, the article takes up two lines on the main story page. Two lines that your eyes can scroll by. You do not have to click.
I see a lot of users are triggered by the reality of whats happening in India. In general, we see a lot of that when any anti-caste or stories not favorable to the current govt are posted.
This post will pretty quickly fall off the front page. Political and controversial posts often do. If you find one, be glad. Look at it closely.
Look how many comments are in the grey. There is a lot of controversy. Always scroll to the bottom too and look at the heated debate.
I've had friends in Australia who would always criticize Amnesty International and talked about the harm the organization harmed. I liked a lot of the videos they produced in the 2000s, including their video against US torture by the CIA and the documentary The Anatomy of Hate.
But it's important to see all sides of and organization, and reading these comments and looking at all of the sources on all sides, I can see why a lot of people oppose them and how they can also do a lot of harm.
These posts don't stay on the front page for long. Learn from them. This is the information the main stream media keeps from you.
Is it just my skewed perception of more or less recent reporting about India's politics or is the supposed largest democracy on Earth slowly turning into an authoritarian nationalist state to a degree it hasn't seen in many years. Honestly curious, not a rhetorical question, in case anyone can clarify this with better information or first-hand understanding.
I think it's less recent reporting. I don't know a ton about the country's recent history, but India was very much founded as a nationalist state, and the PM position was held by the same family for about 50 years after independence.
As an Indian residing in India this certainly feels so.
Things have become bad enough that people self-censor. People have been arrested for sharing jokes about politicians to their personal friends over email or social media. Some have been heckled and beaten up. Such people have no recourse. Even if the local govt pretends to act, the perpetrators immediately gets a bail, because the courts are very much in bed with the politics, more so at the lower courts.
Made up and nonbailable charges have been slapped on university professors who have criticized the government. They are not tried on the usual court but handled by a special anti-terrorism body called the NIA that has special powers and provisions to secrecy that ordinary courts do not have.
Political opponents are harassed by income tax raids even when nothing much come put of the raids. Its just an intimidation tactic where people with government authorization tear your apartment apart and grab documents that they can hold on to as long as they want for the harassments value.
Sorry I don't take my driving instructions from a propaganda outlet whose editor has admitted [0] on twitter that it had been a political outlet.
Once they approach the neighborhood of Teltumbde credibility and service built up through decades, I will think about it.
> Okay you follow fake news scroll.
> Don't say OpIndia is right-wing citing Wikipedia and non-sense.
Oh the irony !
I didn't name call, [0] has a link to a spreadsheet that documents just a few (some 40 odd) of opindia's efforts at propaganda by airing fake news and deliberately slanted misreporting.
Let me tell you, ALT-News didn't have the courtesy and they weren't humble enough to say they were wrong, it's been three years. Nor can they write a rebuttal.
My point clearly stays the same, you are just spreading fake news.
Edit:
I have never shared any link which is sited as fake news from OPIndia in your document.
I'm not a fake peddler like you.
True Indology have taken up idols of left like Irafan Habib, ... and other western historians.
All they could do is block him without any rebuttal.
Look at you, how you are keeping on goal-shifting the discussion.
I asked you to refute article, without discussing about OPIndia, you have done exactly same (Goal-shift).
I asked you to refute AR.Ranganathan points, once again you have done the same just pass it.
For your Information, I'm not a BJP shill. I just like to stand with truth. It seems you are completely against it.
Once again to bust your bubble, I'm not a low self-esteemed person, I very much know what I'm capable of.
I'm 23 and I'm humble enough to learn if I was wrong, not an arrogant, who keeps goal-shifting and spread fake news.
> I'm sorry to inform, what you consider as ultimate source of truth ALT-News is nothing but a propaganda website.
I have said nothing about alt-news. First time I heard of them.
Its you who started quoting from opindia in gay abandon all over two stories on HN. Same links again and again. At that point you gave the impression to the rest of the HN audience that they were a reliable source.
Its only when you got caught out on how shady the source is ( [0] admission on twitter by the editors of OpIndia and 43 cases of fake news) that you now invent an excuse for quoting them.
A person is known by the sources one quotes. You attempted to school me on Koregaon history and on NorthEast. Not sure why, because I was referring to Teltumbde incarceration by the NIA and charges brought on him by the UAPA act that does not even require the charges of terrorism to be proved.
Oh such an inconvenience of proving things, lets just put people in jail just because they disagree.
You may claim not to be a shill, your behavior on HN has been indistinguishable from them.
>I asked you to refute AR.Ranganathan
I see, I should be taking orders from you on whom I should not refute (opindia) and whom I should. OK.
I refuse to get dragged into the muck that you want to drag us into. I think I have made a good enough case to show your intentions by calling out a source that you have been using repeatedly. That's enough of dumpster garbage harvesting for me for a day. The less I do those the better for me.
> Its only when you got caught out on how shady the source is ( [0] admission on twitter by the editors of OpIndia and 43 cases of fake news) that you now invent an excuse for quoting them.
Debating 101: The way you refute a point is by providinga counter-argument against it.
Not by showing some unrelated stuff, here discussion is about amnesty. Not, did OPIndia, ever create fake news or not?
> You attempted to school me on Koregaon history and on NorthEast. Not sure why, because I was referring to Teltumbde incarceration by the NIA.
Because, you are speaking in support of Teltumbde, so called dalit actvist, who create fake-history for dividing societies.
I'm giving a lecture to you,to show how fake news is generated by your masters.
> I refuse to get dragged into the muck that you want to drag us into.
Didn't refute a single point, When challenged, kept moving goal-posts all over the place. When pointed about goal shiftting say, "I refuse to get dragged" nonsense.
Claims oneself to be more intelligent than National Investigating Agency, How?
> By reading propaganda articles on internet.
You seem to have too much of a high stature of yourself: As Russians say it:
"You are nothing but a 'Useful Idiot'".
A fake narrative being built against India. To be honest everything boils down to religious issues. The dominant two world religions see India as an unfinished conquest. But this is not politically correct view so all other weasel issues are created/spread. Always follow the funding.
I read in another thread. reproducing the comments here for balanced point of view.
"If more than 20% of your funds goes to administrative expenses (office supplies, stationary, tea/coffee, misc), you know there is something shady. Satyam computers, did the same thing, created fake employees, posted huge expenses under admin category for almost 5 years. Later it was found that they were laundering money for YSR from overseas, and went bust and was later acquired by TechMahindra for paisa on the rupee.
Amnesty india is probably in knee deep shit and exiting before anything comes to light."
In the US, <15% admin expense is considered good for a charity, and in the US admin expense also include rent, business services (accounting, legal, IT), and leadership costs (for a small org, the leader might be categorized as management but actually be providing services).
I am very glad foreign funded vested interest groups working as
NGOs like Amnesty International is leaving India for good.
NGOs like Amnesty and Greenpeace has been involved in shady work in
many places in India, including religious conversion and paid protests
in remote villages. Hindus being a global minority need to be cautious
and are worried about such conversion activities.
Indian govt has been asking NGOs to comply with FCRA Norms and many
including Amnesty Internation has failed to file annual returns
despite mandatory legal(pre-2014 norms) requirements.
India has millions of people living under poverty. To lift them out of
poverty they need JOBS. Being an trade partner of US and UK, India
has let functioning of shady NGOs like these work wrecklessly.
Whether it is Nuclear power plant or Copper plant, NGOs have been
involved in mass mobilisation of people by using foreign funds to
stall projects so that donor companies benefit.
If NGOs are so committed to their objective, they can raise funds from
India itself to work for it. They don't need large donations from
Multinational Corporation from abroad to raise objections in a
democratic manner. By using foreign funds these NGOs have been
successful in sabotaging Govt and Public-Private projects. So that
donor Corporations can get benefitted. Similar mobilisation was also
observed in Australia when Adani has been bidding for Coal mines.
NGOs were not working for their objective, but also were transferring
money from their account to other NGOs without proper clearance.
Shady foreign money transfers from NGOs also prompted authorities to
investigate these firms on FEMA Act. If NGOs were so clean, they
can fight the battle with local money than CRYING.
Foreign fund is NOT needed to fight so-called Hindu nationalism.
Foreign fund is NOT needed to raise political objections in a democratic system.
One cannot even read a recipe of a proper Gujrati Dhokla nowadays without constant screaming of "rising Hindu nationalism". XD
Some of these mines that have been stopped for environmental concerns ship ore to foreign countries at peanut rates, literally a few rupees per ton. These are made into products that are then imported into India. If you really think that the way out of poverty is by selling raw ore and irreparably damaging environment, which by the way is a genuine wealth of the country, then you have either not thought it through or are intentionally shilling with dishonest intent.
As far as FCRA goes, that violates international laws
I'm not sure people are aware, but most countries find Amnesty International annoying.
My own country - Australia - has been frequently criticised by Amnesty (eg [1]).
Amnesty's job is to call out human right violations. Citizens of a country may very well say "oh, we don't like these asylum seekers, so we will keep voting for the government that put these laws in place" (in Australia's case). But it isn't Amnesty's job to look at justifications, only violations.
A robust, functional democracy should have space to allow critics, and while it might be unrealistic to expect the government to welcome that criticism, a government shouldn't use its power to act in reprisal against critics.
Some people in this discussion should consider this carefully. It's one thing to disagree with critics, but quite another to approve of reprisals against those critics.
This is true, but sadly, organizations that value and promote human rights are always going to be targeted right-wing extremists, as they are fundamentally opposed to this ideal.
Especially true in India now that they have their own Hindu Hitler.
> transparency in the government, more recently for accountability of the Delhi police and the Government of India regarding the grave human rights violations in Delhi riots and Jammu & Kashmir
all of these have been issues with every Indian Govt. for decades. I don't see anything about 2021 that would be a straw that'd break a camel's back.
The FRCA too has been the favorite tool for every govt. from 1976, for harassing NGOs. The changes to the law itself aren't as terrible.
> The NGO/FRCA license now expires in 5 years instead of being permanent
Not a terrible idea in a functioning society. In India, it becomes a tool getting fresh bribes out of groups and trapping them in bureaucracy.
> Less than 50% of foreign funds can be used for administrative expenses
IMO, really smart change. I personally know of Indian NGOs that primarily serve as money laundering mechanisms. On paper, doesn't seem like a bad change at all.
> The law now extends to trade/student/workers' unions, women’s wing of a political party, farmers’ organisations, youth organisations based on caste, community, religion, language and organizations that engage in strikes/ blockages/ protests / political action.
Some of these changes are sensible. unions and youth organizations in India are well known to be tools of political parties. If a law had to be applied, it has to at least be consistent.
The part of orgs. that engage in protest is more divisive, especially with the discussion around foreign funding to control opinion becoming a huge thing in the US.
Should outside funding be allowed to facilitate political opinion in a nation? To me, the answer isn't that clear. Both sides of the argument have strong points in favor.
______________
I am generally averse to expanding Govt. power, especially given how corrupt every Indian one has been. The FRCA was terrible, and like the patriot act is something that only serves to expand state power.
That being said, to spin it as a "hindu nationalist" initiative is political posturing.
Anyone who believes that Indian Media's pro-ruling party agenda, religious riots, sedition charges or harassment of activists started or even peaked in the Modi Govt., has been willfully ignorant about the continuing violation of freedoms that Indian Govts. have been part of since Indira Gandhi in the 70s.
______________
In the spirit of transparency, I have an incredibly low opinion of both journalists and activists in India. The complete lack of nuance in how they approach the issues they champion is a glaring example of it. The worst aspect, is that the most egregious ones get widespread coverage in respected western outlets.
Western thought leaders have time and again demonstrated an incredibly limited understanding on complex non-western societies. Whether that be in Africa, China, SEA or India. However, english, open-ness of Indian society, post colonial guilt and its size lead to the most egregious cases being in India.
Lastly, can't be pointing out problems without suggesting solutions. Recently, one of the few journalists I respect immensely (Shekhar Gupta) has started an online-only subscription based media house called the Print. I have found them to be the closest thing to fair journalism in India. The Caravan is another subscription based media outlet that is well respected among my peers (whom I respect) although I personally I am less impressed by it.
Indian Hindu Nationalist government has now removed all garbs and is a full on fascism. They have scant regard for law or constitution. They have absolute control over all the 4 pillars of democracy and is effectively controlling popular opinion.
314 comments
[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 251 ms ] threadAll foreign funded organisations, under so called NGO's name should be completely under scan.
These NGO's are not helping people, what they are doing is propaganda, support terrosits, conversions.
Christian missionaries conversions are so rampant in India, Most of north-east is converted, punjab, tamil-nadu, andhra Pradesh, Kerala, are in-line for huge demographics change.
If this is not enough, these organisations which are belong to far-left even create riots, trying to white-wash historical atrocities, shame majority population, support terrosits, anti-government.
We are unable to bear the wrath which is being unleashed by foreign agencies on our country.
We just want to live, leave us alone.
Please stop perpetuating such arrant nonsense.
> For human rights work in India, it operates through a distinct model of raising funds domestically. More than four million Indians have supported Amnesty International India’s work in the last eight years and around 100,000 Indians have made financial contributions.
What do you say about this,
https://twitter.com/ARanganathan72/status/131096945905453875...
https://twitter.com/ARanganathan72/status/117000966338502656...
https://www.opindia.com/2019/09/the-life-and-crimes-of-amnes...
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/india-h...
https://swarajyamag.com/culture/how-northeast-india-was-chri...
https://tfipost.com/2016/09/christian-missionaries-conversio...
https://thewire.in/communalism/bihar-opindia-khabartak-minor... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpIndia
That you get your news from there, or if not, choose to paste links to their reporting tells a lot about your agenda here.
Swarajyamag is rightwing mouthpiece. Opinion of one person on the internet who happens to have a twitter account counts for very little.
Indian Express is reliable and all that report says that there are a lot of shady NGO's in India. That has no relevance on whether AI is shady or not.
People can make mistakes, they also have courtesy to accept their mistake.
https://www.opindia.com/2020/05/bihar-gopalganj-hindu-family...
Please don't site, Wikipedia as truth, I have seen it with my own eyes, how moderators, are not even allowing right-wing people to even put out a point with proper sources.
It is not a right-wing mouth piece like Wikipedia claims, what it does is real journalism.
While Wire, Quint, ... can publish about Brahmins, patriarchy, ... all non-sense.
Hindu crimes, but OpIndia can't publish both Hindu and Islam crimes?
Ar.Ranganathan talks on facts, If you have any evidence against his statements, that is wrong, I will look into it.
I don't have any agenda, it just pains me as an Indian, when real dividers, talk about dividers.
Times now had a debate regarding the same, you seem deny all the donations which come to AI, breaking Indian laws.
I had just given one example of opindia's deliberate attempts to flame antimuslim feelings. Here's 42 more that I found about now
[OpIndia – A dossier on false news and misreporting] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KZ8uboNOOhGztxSMMJOH...
If you are not a BJP shill and you claim not to be, you might be suffering from low self-esteem issues. Low self esteem men find solace in rightwing ideologies and this has been the case through out history. Solve your issue and thing will get better.
I am certainly not in favor of acculturation, and I have no sympathy for religions such as christianity who advocate that nature exists just to be used by humans, however I am not sure that the current status is really evolving. These eastern states seem to have been converted long ago.
But Many media doesn't cover it, but Evangelism very high, in north-eastern states, almost 70% of the population became Christians.
I'm all in, if people with their knowledge want to take Christianity.
But de-generation of native faiths, Money, ... and other facilities for conversion are being provided.
https://swarajyamag.com/culture/how-northeast-india-was-chri...
Sure the missionaries had an agenda. But given my options as an hypothetical person of northeastern ethnicity, given the education that I would get from the missionary organizations (they run many primary schools and high schools and vocational training schools) I would have made a wise choice and bettered my life.
But in-order to understand the nuances, one needs to see this in context of history.
unfortunately, its too big to explain.
Support for native traditions is very bad, no denial. Mainland Indians leave out north-east, no denial.
But, this is same in case of every region, every community is on their own protecting themselves.
And what do they get in return for protecting their culture, obviously nothing.
Short video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmGQ_jFP6ao
Please understand, morale of this country is being broken from nearly 1200 years.
It's only now we got freedom, it will take time to settle things, maybe 40 to 50 years more.
We are a democratic country, it takes time.
Edit: grammatical mistakes
I am just sick and tired of the narrative that comes from the right wing "look missionaries did these horrible things". My rebuttal to that is (i) where were you and (ii) you (not you personally, the rightwing ideology) continue to do worse even today. So the right-wing does not really have a leg to stand on in this particular case.
It talks about how bad Hindus are in supporting each other, when it comes to religion.
What is so called right-wing ideology doing?
I have heard this from an India Christian family settled in Europe, their "christian identity" is not significant and they face all the 'othering' in their churches.
They were considering moving back to their Hindu roots as it gave them some identity.
As for the Christian benevolence, they lost thousands of ships before they found their way to a wealthy India. And when they left India was so impoverished that Indians were shipped off to remote plantations to "compensate" the white plantation owners after the slavery abolition.
The church encroached upon and accumulated so much land and wealth during the colonial era that they have not returned back to the communities or government and in many cases temple lands are under the control of the church.
If the conversion is “forced” or “fake”, nothing changes on the ground anyway, and it doesn’t matter. If the conversion is genuine, why should society have a say on an individual’s belief?
I don't have any problem, if people convert to Christianity with their self-will and knowledge.
Look at this handle, https://twitter.com/noconversion
How many kinds of deceptions are being used by Christians in order to convert native people:
Money to Defend rioters and convertions: https://twitter.com/Satyanewshi/status/1310562881469952000?s...
Backed by state government in Andhra Pradesh: https://twitter.com/Ashwinkiing/status/1310856515838865409
Deception: So native people don't know, it is some other religion, act like Hindus but convert to Christianity: https://twitter.com/noconversion/status/1310376999148494848
Fake promises of healing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyyQj1Z25eI
Again, my question here is - Who decides that the reason someone has chosen for their conversion is “wrong”, for what is essentially an individual’s choice. I for one trust nobody but myself to make those judgements, within the framework of the law. I do not want the state to infringe on my personal freedom. Anti-conversion laws are a dangerous step in the direction of the state telling people what to believe and what not to.
I do not have a problem with sex or prostitution. But we all know where it would lead - drugs, gun violence, sex trafficking, child trafficking, mafia, money laundering, government corruption/blackmail.
The certain organised religion/s have the same problem, imagine a neighbourhood mafia backed by a trillion dollar international conglomerate.
There is a very wide spectrum of possibilities here. They range from the Indian government being horrible, through localised corruption, through the government having very legitimate concerns about foreign interference, through to AI India being corrupt and/or in league with western intelligence agencies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-17150953
Also, Important to note that some of the changes to laws for NGOs were done during congress led UPA govt as well. It is just that changes to laws have now been highlighted more by mainstream media.
The question is whether or not the Indian government's actions are legitimate, and whether or not their stated reasons are true. On the later, it seems to be a clear no.
Many NGOs were NOT filing annual reports that they were supposed to be filing, and their compliance(even pre-2014 norms) were not ensured by the govt.
UPA have used these NGOs to instigate protests in various state governments as Congress lacked strong real regional political activities and lack grass-root touch with people.
It was visible with the strong presence of NGO activists in the unconstitutional body of National Advisory Council.
Even after modification of norms, these NGOs were given sufficient notice and warning to file their reports.
On failure to which govt took drastic measure.
There were certain documents that shoud have been filed, but in general the interpretation or norm was that they didnt need to be.
The new govt which came into power eforced this rule and of course, everyone struggled to fill it - the media scoop was "non compliance".
IN addition, this was all done on the backs of a terrible IB (intelligence bureau) report which was leaked.
The report was used as an excuse to demonize NGOs and reduce any statue they had in the market of ideas.
I have read the report, and it is so laughably bad, that I wouldn't doubt if someone told me that all of India's security apparatuses had been compromised and were run by foreign powers.
Sections of that document included parts which warned that NGOs had been able to plot, on a map, the location of extant, proposed and in construction nuclear power plants. "The use of handwritten notes was to foil the ability of text scanners."
Additionally, there are multiple sections that correlate receipt of foreign funds as signs of collusion with foreign powers. Even if it is Greenpeace getting funding from international members.
The amount of actual scrutiny in 2014 on this document was nil.
You can read the report here: https://kractivist.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/NGO-Report...
If anyone reads it, you will immediately see what is up, since the sight of a google map with pins being lauded as a villainous mastermind about to damage India was laughable.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/amnesty-received-rs-46...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/21/indias-ngo-backlash/ https://www.firstpost.com/india/kudankulam-protests-3-ngos-l...
[0] https://www.scribd.com/document/229493571/IB-Report-NGO
When it came out, I read the report and realized that it was a hack job, and sure enough - not one person knew its contents, despite the news channels and whatsapp declaring NGOs as enemy number 1.
I've commented elsewhere in this thread how that report says that writing hand written notes is an attempt to evade scanners, and that using google maps and adding pins to it is evidence of near super villain levels of plotting to end India's coal power dreams - by Greenpeace.
That is incorrect. Toyota is halting expansion in India not pulling out.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/auto/cars-uvs/...
"In China they roll out the red carpet, in India they roll out the red tape."
States that are not run by Modi Inc are in a lot of trouble. That's the point though... conformance.
This has been going on for decades, no govt wants to expand the judicial system for some reason.
India: Arrests of Activists Politically Motivated https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/16/india-arrests-activists-...
Under Modi, India's Press Not Free Anymore https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/world/asia/modi-india-pre...
Critics of India’s Modi Government Face Sedition Charges https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/critics-of-indias-modi-gover...
Is free speech under threat in Modi’s India? Activists, journalists, lawyers and academics are concerned that free speech in India is deteriorating (2017) https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/08/03/is-free-speech...
Eh... no it does not. The Supreme Court has capitulated; it rubber stamps anything coming out of Modi Inc. Do you not follow whats going on?
Why don't you address all of the issues that the parent poster bought up?
What you may be complaining about is why is it illegal to contempt Indian Judiciary —- which is a different topic.
1. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/the-hindu-explains-wh...
2. https://theprint.in/opinion/india-turned-a-blind-eye-to-just...
3. https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/861823918289571841?ref_...
Letting article 370 reform go unchallenged would be one example.
It was an opportunistic edge case that allowed the federal body to decide on a state matter because the state government was temporarily missing and a caretaker government was in charge.
Court chose to look the other way.
One can arguesuch opportunism is legal as far as the letter of the law is concerned. It is common on legal proceedings for the spirit of the law to be upheld rather than the letter, except for business/commercial contracts.
Afzal Guru is a terrorist. There ends the matter, but for people like you Afzal Guru is innocent even after proven guilty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHzMoltemdg
For people like it doesn't matter, when > 4Lakh people were driven out of Kashmir by radical Islamists, with slogans:
"Convert, Die and leave your women behind".
It will also not matter, when a wife is forced to eat soaked rice of her husband's blood.
It doesn't matter when women were raped, people were killed.
It also doesn't matter when so many people were being radicalized in the name of religion.
http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/kashmiri-pandits-off...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Indian_Parliament_attack
2. https://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/india-ne...
https://scroll.in/article/805427/the-quick-guide-to-sar-gila...
He was a trained militant that dropped out of medical college who went to Pakistan for militancy training to wage ware against the sovereign state of India.
He had knowledge of the criminal conspiracy and arranged logistical support to terrorists.
I don't think he was innocent. But I don't think he deserved capital punishment.
The likes of Amnesty International was involved in proselytizing him as revolutionary hero and that was totally uncalled for.
No wonder they are being investigated.
Yes he was a terrorist but a repatriated one. India had a policy of bringing youth who have gone the terrorism way, served their sentence et be brought back into the folds of civil political society. Afzal Guru was such a case. Also as mentioned by police high ups who oversaw his case he was a pushover (actual words used "bhondu"). This all turned very convenient for the administration that was under pressure to show progress on the investigation.
The circumstantial evidence found on him related to the parliament attack are of such nature that could easily have been planted by the police (specific example, a scarp of paper with the terrorist handlers phone number found on his person).
Planting of evidence is quite common and rote in India. Judges with a spine discount those. In this case the justice bench didn't -- because the theatre was too important compared to a pushover reformed erstwhile terrorist.
Source? The Amnesty International link upthread about his execution does nothing like that, but is criticism of a) the law under which he was sentenced and b) that and how the execution was done (which AI is strongly opposed to and criticizing everywhere)
FWIW, this sounds quite similar to criticism of orgs like them in the west when people also can't understand why they'd defend bad people
[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/parliament-attac...
I don't think the judiciary is sleeping with the government. In recent times, they have given verdicts like the decriminalization of homosexual relationships and abolishing of Triple Talaq. I do agree that they should be more proactive. One reason for them being a bit soft on the government is that the current government has stuff like NJAC in their arsenal, which threatens to dilute the power of the judiciary. While NJAC was declared unconstitutional by the SC some years back, the current leadership can still bring it back by mobilizing support for it.
I have no words.
It gets really bad when it is exported. See the recent HN post (or actual court case) re caste discrimination https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24552047.
Your hatred for Hinduism is shocking! I am utterly disappointing to read this in HN (a tech news discussion). Just for your info, all people regardless of religions have caste in India including Sikhs, Chritsians and muslims . Define "brahmanic supremacy". Brahmins are a group of people living by conducting temple rituals and they are mostly poor. The politicians are using religion as a weapon for increasing their votes. Can we stop using religion when discussing here ?
References: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/are-brahmins-today-s-da...
> Political liberalism in India is now under assault. The current right-of-center government, dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), appears intent on transforming India's pluralistic, open, and secular state into an ethnic and illiberal democracy. To that end it has sought to place ideologues in key governmental institutions, attempted to curtail academic freedoms at a leading university, and made efforts to curb an otherwise feisty mass media. A weak political opposition, which had in any case failed to demonstrate much mettle when in government prior to the BJP's 2014 electoral victory, now appears utterly incapable of stemming this illiberal tide. As a consequence, India's future as a liberal democracy appears to be at some risk.
> Kumi Naidoo, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, takes a different view, decrying an official effort to "[crush] dissent by demonizing and criminalizing activists, lawyers, and journalists working for some of the poorest and most marginalized communities in India." Amnesty International India has itself been targeted: Its bank accounts have been frozen, and police in Bangalore have accused it of sedition.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/713724
From the Journal of Democracy (Jan 2019)
The reports published by these orgs are prepared by some minimum wage worker which is then rubber stamped.
If these institutes were so credible then US and UK would have not been impacted by COVID so badly.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/countries-preparednes...
Western narrative about right, wrong and perfect system needs to be called out as they are -- hypocrite.
> The reports published by these orgs are prepared by some minimum wage worker
Author: Sumit Ganguly is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Rabindranath Tagore Professor of Indian Cultures and Civilizations at the Indiana University.
> Lancet and "Global Health Security Index"
I don't know what "Global Health Security Index" is, but no minimum wage worker is getting published in Lancet.
I think it makes it fairly clear he is well qualified to write on the topic. Only one of the his 8 books wasn't about India. He was awarded the "Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (Distinguished Overseas Indian)" award by the President of India!
Additionally he has published extensively specifically about India and democracy since at least 1997: https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=S...
I'd note in particular his contribution to the 1997 classic in the field "Paths to Peace - Is Democracy the Answer?"
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paths-peace
Sweden in general is handling it well, but it would take a long time to understand who handled covid better.
These are created, based and are funded by western govts and people -- their point of view is already biased and often times willfully.
To highlight the point I used pandemic preparedness. Some one in his/her infinite wisdom comes up with an index with 10 parameters and then publishes it. The parameters are mostly influences by where that person lives and his own political leanings.
I don't think that is obviously true, but in any case your arguments maybe better received if you explained why their claims are wrong.
I'd note that you used the same approach downthread, until it turned out the author himself was Indian and extremely well qualified to make the points he made.
Tune into an Indian news channel and validate your free press claims, you will see why nytimes is biased.
Can you name a single unbiased channel?
There is a fundamental difference Indian nationalism and other countries nationalism. Indian nationalism is all about bringing back the "varna system" which advocates stratification of society based on the birth and access to education is only allowed for the brahmins(priestly caste). This was the system implemented strictly before the Britishers arrived to India.
"Indian nationalism is all about bringing back the "varna system" " ---- You have done a Phd in the subject-- any links?
RSS ideology is to make india a hindu religous state. Hinduism is based on the vedic books which advocate varna system.
So, if your source about RSS is BBC then good luck about having a non-biased conversation. You are part of the cliched narrative builders.
That's ad hominem. If you have a specific point mention that. If the only document you will accept is from RSS mouthpieces then there is no point in the conversation.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/indianexpress.com/article/trend...
RSS ideology is to make india a hindu religous state. Hinduism is based on the vedic books which advocate varna system.
You are wrong. The Vedas have nothing to do with the varna (caste) system. The caste system came much later and they have nothing to do with the foundations of Hinduism. There are several sects of Hinduism which explicitly reject the caste system. Look up Arya Samaj etc.
I have a feeling have I wasted my time in engaging with facts for someone whose mind is already made up about my faith.
People have elected BJP leaders.
There is a spectrum of right-wingness b/w BJP and RSS.
They don't really want Hindu Rashtra. Most of them issue Hindu Rashtra rhetoric for mass-appeal just like every politicians use "God" in western democracies.
That's just semantic skullduggery. RSS does not fight elections, but they play king maker in these right wing party politics and take part sending their emissaries through revolving door between "social" and the "political"
From what I’ve seen it’s like any other nationalist movement.
There is 0 instances of the word "varna" or "caste" on that article.
In old age people used to believe earth is in the center of the universe. One should not quote anything which is more than 25 years old. World is changing rapidly.
How many believes that now except few delusioned individuals who still believe earth is flat and is in the center of the universe and rest of the talks are propaganda?
This does not change anything. Modi is just a pawn. He does not have any original ideology, he is there for power.
Look at the number of brahmins and non-brahmins in the key position in the BJP. Look at the analysis here https://theprint.in/politics/ambedkar-on-its-agenda-but-bjp-...
If you are still not convinced, look at what "Subramanian swamy" had to say when every one in BJP party was changing their twitter profile last name to "chowkidar"(meaning soldier or protector). He said he is a brahmin and its brahmins duty to advice how the country should be run and not be a soldier as vedas consider brahmins as superior to all the other varnas.
https://www.indiatoday.in/elections/lok-sabha-2019/story/can...
The point is the ideology that is driving BJP is all about bringing back the privilege based on the birth.
Total upper/forward caste - ~ 29 % OBC + SC + ST - ~71 %
BJP(NDA) vote share - 37 %
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class
I don't expect him to be post-modernists egalitarian.
However at the same it doesn't mean he can't say his casteist comments openly. ;)
After all, its better if people say it openly so that they can be criticized for their casteist comment. The likes of him is politically insignificant as he is NOT competing in elections.
Don't just rely on Indian fake news media.
It's hard for people to understand how deeply woven caste-based motivations are in Indian society. At a large scale it may seem like some globally stratified layer cake. On the ground, it devolves into regional tribes.
The "caste associations" rural people associate themselves with in rural areas are loosely formed tribes of 10 thousand to 100-thousand strong members.
The perspective of many who choose to be invested in this system - which is most people living in those areas (what else are you gonna do? not support your tribe? who else is gonna have your back if there's trouble?) - is one of trying to gain status for their caste/tribe over others.
Caste rivalries are often regional, and localized.
Identifying India's current PM as not coming from one of the well-recognized "higher castes" is really meaningless. It'd be sort of like saying "yeah, this politician is unlikely to be a hardline christian dominionist, he's a 7-th day adventist, which is clearly a minority sect".
Not a unique to Indian nationalism. American nationalism is very similar. See the "birther" movement. Or the president's push to withdraw birthright citizenship, a concept that would deny far more than just education. Or the references to "anchor babies". The location of one's birthplace, and the birthplace of one's parents, is of fundamental importance in US nationalist movements just as in India.
It's not ironic. It's not even relevant.
This site sometimes and its weird desire to turn every discussion into one that is critical of the US or Trump.
Yeah keep pressing the downvote button and I'll keep using carrier grade NAT to make new accounts. Fuck you anti American assholes.
I was commenting on the use of nativism by a politician whose grandfather was an immigrant.
Though over time some groups formerly seen as undesirables become honoury whites Irish German Catholics etc.
It wasn't that long ago that having a catholic president Kennedy was seen as problematic
And to follow up German immigrants where not liked as the liked their beer and some where gasp Catholic
Give me a break.
That's a bit closer to birthright citizenship that what we have in Germany, but nowhere as liberal as USA laws, which give citizenship to anyone born in the USA even if their parents entered the country one day before the birth and left next day after the birth. That is something that doesn't exist anywhere in Europe to my knowledge.
What is central-govt doing to "DENY" education and that based on "caste" ? I still didn't find any evidence.
The important question is what is driving this educational policy. Its the belief of the vedas that for a society to function well not everyone should have the same opportunity and access to education. Everyone has duty based on the family they were born and should not be allowed to change.
You are grasping at straws here.
Exam is not a discouragement. Its rather a test of progress.
TN has been plaguing with higher dropout rates for a while.
>Forced to fail
Seriously ???
Expecting students to pass a standard test is not denying education. If students fail the tests, they FAIL. That is the purpose. Its not the responsibility of the govt to be "PASS" the student. Rather its the responsibility of the govt to provide education institutional access. What is the point of letting students PASS if they cant even do basic math and communicate.
Unskilled graduates is one of the highest ranked problem that the govt is facing in getting them employed.
And I don't know why even without providing any shred of evidence you keep bring Veda,Caste and Hindutva into discussion into Educational Policy.
What is your point here?
Any source of this? Or have we reduce Hacker news to random accusations?
The previous PM advocated for Muslims having first rights on resources.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Muslims-must-have-...
I am not really sure how that is secular.
This is against a mostly one book, one god/no god, one agenda and one power centre ideology being enforced on the people - Marxism, Christianity, Islam, "Atheism", "Feminism"
Especially in a country with a million gods and small unique communities, it falls on the government to protect them from ideologies with a track record for violence and genocide.
Only one of those is a country. Do you actually think India is better off than South Africa or Botswana (these are actual countries).
> Comparing India to SA or Bowtswana
Have you been to Botswana? It is a pretty modern nation and a well run country. Lets look at some numbers and COMPARE.
GDP per capita (2017):
India: $1,980
Botswana: $7,894
China: $8,612
Botswana: has a better GDP/capita AND higher ranked democracy than India. Less corruption too (if you look it up). Always good to school yourself - with facts.
Trying to school others on numbers and gets schooled himself on what the word compare means. Not your fault. It’s ok you will learn in time
In fact it was democratic governments who gave and took away kashmir's autonomy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_in_Jammu_and_Kashmi...
Do you speak for all Indians?
I wonder why the blame is on the US or American companies, which offer better working conditions and pay, rather than Indian companies for not being competitive enough, or the expats for "defecting" from their home country.
On one hand being baffled may be a symptom of not seeing certain things and on the other it maybe a reaction to seeing things and feeling powerless.
I would caution against simple answers to things though. Me right, them wrong is never a useful explanation.
Enough said, India is the only major functional democracy in region filed with autocratic communist and theocratic states, where stoning people for blasphemy and organ harvesting is the norm.
At the end of the day that is how democracies need to work and those of you spewing rhetoric against the current disposition have revealed the wolf within your sheep clothing.
What you consider reputed is your opinion, not a fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amnesty_Internati...
https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
If you do read Wikipedia, always do two things:
1) Read the Talk page
2) Go to the history and read the same article from 2005 ~ 2010
There is a robust system for the former, not so much for the later. AI can complain all it wants but they are just bringing in more scrutiny into their activities.
So what is "right" as per your belief?
We've banned several accounts and will probably moderate more aggressively next time.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/icj-says-fcra-bill-in...
https://scroll.in/article/973909/behind-the-new-rules-for-ng...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/pa...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia...
So while yeah, online discussions mostly conclude to simplest possible explanation i.e. authoritarian / totalitarian / nationalism / and what not - This notice comes just days after FCRA was changed in India, that might be the pushing point / breakpoint towards closure rather than "Government Witchhunt", because Amnesty has been getting the show-causes notices for some time now.
FCRA was amended with a specific aim in mind. Hindu Nationalist groups have been vocal about religious conversions. FCRA was recently used to target 4 Christian organizations and choke their foreign funding [1].
It is a witch-hunt specifically because Amnesty was harassed by Delhi Police about why they were probing Delhi Religious Riots 2020 and had released the report about the Police excesses in the same? It was after this that Delhi Police targeted Amnesty using FCRA law. [2]
Amnesty India's former head put it succintly: "It has become a crime to work on human rights in India." "Amnesty has not been convicted. It has not even been put on trial in court. Shutdown refers to inability to pay salaries because accounts frozen for second time without any determination of guilt." [3]
FCRA is just bureaucratic powerslam without going through courts to target organization that asks for transparency. India joins highly regarding company of Russia in pushing Amnesty from their country.
[1] - https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/government-suspends-f...
[2] - https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/amnesty-report-on...
[3] - https://twitter.com/Aakar__Patel/status/1310844601767309312
> In July 2019,the ambit of UAPA was expanded. It was amended allowing the government to designate an individual as a terrorist without trial.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Activities_(Preventio...
There are massacres going on it seems. In America we are seeing rioters constantly classified by the media as protestors. If a group is literally slaughtering the other group, protestor seems like the wrong word.
Could you show me some instances of this? I've heard this repeated but I haven't actually seen it myself.
https://battlepenguin.video/videos/watch/9f81cd38-3ee9-4f26-...
Here are some of the rioters in Portland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zthJUf31MA
Here are some peaceful protestors trying to break into a Federal Courthouse in Portland using a circular saw:
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1286915433828724736
Portland rioters were also disguising themselves as press:
https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/status/1286944321107763200
Donut does a good job of documenting the riots in Portland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHb3xVqxcp8
The fact that you've heard this and haven't seen it, shows just how terrible, corrupt and useless the American media is. Our media is only pushing hate:
https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/130029089792245350...
But you said that the media was misrepresenting cases of this as peaceful protests and I said I haven't seen anything like that.
The links you posted are mostly them being called rioters (and one super-cut of something that's not a protest or a riot).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nTyCiZFztw
Did you create an account just to bait here?
Being anti govt by calling right wing Hindu nationalist is BS. India has seen years of corruption and I can attest that things have never been better and improving Commenting on the recent CAA legislation without reading it fully tells me that you failed your schooling.
While you scream BJP as Hindu nationalist party, it has many Muslim members and a majority of Muslims voted for BJP because of its strong leadership.
Why don’t you and Amnesty take time to address the Uighurs Muslims who are in a Chinese camp being brain washed, all 10 million of them while their mosques are being destroyed? Oh wait i forgot, a lot of hypocrites linger here.
The only reason this post is important is because a lot of the techies are Indians and you can see from the comments on why these discussions are so important for them.
We could go on and bring up political unrests in China, Afghanistan, ISIS, Russia, Palestine/Israel, America and so on however the fact is that HN policies should down vote such posts.
You can completely avoid participating in this discussion. Worst case, the article takes up two lines on the main story page. Two lines that your eyes can scroll by. You do not have to click.
I see a lot of users are triggered by the reality of whats happening in India. In general, we see a lot of that when any anti-caste or stories not favorable to the current govt are posted.
Read more https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/157/what-is-the...
Look how many comments are in the grey. There is a lot of controversy. Always scroll to the bottom too and look at the heated debate.
I've had friends in Australia who would always criticize Amnesty International and talked about the harm the organization harmed. I liked a lot of the videos they produced in the 2000s, including their video against US torture by the CIA and the documentary The Anatomy of Hate.
But it's important to see all sides of and organization, and reading these comments and looking at all of the sources on all sides, I can see why a lot of people oppose them and how they can also do a lot of harm.
These posts don't stay on the front page for long. Learn from them. This is the information the main stream media keeps from you.
Things have become bad enough that people self-censor. People have been arrested for sharing jokes about politicians to their personal friends over email or social media. Some have been heckled and beaten up. Such people have no recourse. Even if the local govt pretends to act, the perpetrators immediately gets a bail, because the courts are very much in bed with the politics, more so at the lower courts.
Made up and nonbailable charges have been slapped on university professors who have criticized the government. They are not tried on the usual court but handled by a special anti-terrorism body called the NIA that has special powers and provisions to secrecy that ordinary courts do not have.
https://scroll.in/article/959082/i-cant-counter-state-propag...
Political opponents are harassed by income tax raids even when nothing much come put of the raids. Its just an intimidation tactic where people with government authorization tear your apartment apart and grab documents that they can hold on to as long as they want for the harassments value.
Real story about Bhima Koregaon, https://www.opindia.com/2018/01/battle-of-koregaon-lessons-i...
Don't say OpIndia is right-wing citing Wikipedia and non-sense.
How about you counter this with proper sources, like it is done in the above article with primary sources.
Or else, you will be spreading fake news.
Sorry I don't take my driving instructions from a propaganda outlet whose editor has admitted [0] on twitter that it had been a political outlet.
Once they approach the neighborhood of Teltumbde credibility and service built up through decades, I will think about it.
> Okay you follow fake news scroll.
> Don't say OpIndia is right-wing citing Wikipedia and non-sense.
Oh the irony !
I didn't name call, [0] has a link to a spreadsheet that documents just a few (some 40 odd) of opindia's efforts at propaganda by airing fake news and deliberately slanted misreporting.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24632299
https://trueindology.wordpress.com/2018/01/07/koregaon-ka-ko...
I'm sorry to inform, what you consider as ultimate source of truth ALT-News is nothing but a propaganda website.
Here alt-news have done a hit job on true-indology:
https://www.altnews.in/trueindology-truefraudology-debunking...
Here is clear rebuttal from him, for the lies which ALT-News is spreading against him.
https://trueindology.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/alt-news-or-fr...
Let me tell you, ALT-News didn't have the courtesy and they weren't humble enough to say they were wrong, it's been three years. Nor can they write a rebuttal.
My point clearly stays the same, you are just spreading fake news.
Edit:
I have never shared any link which is sited as fake news from OPIndia in your document.
I'm not a fake peddler like you.
True Indology have taken up idols of left like Irafan Habib, ... and other western historians. All they could do is block him without any rebuttal.
Look at you, how you are keeping on goal-shifting the discussion.
I asked you to refute article, without discussing about OPIndia, you have done exactly same (Goal-shift).
I asked you to refute AR.Ranganathan points, once again you have done the same just pass it.
For your Information, I'm not a BJP shill. I just like to stand with truth. It seems you are completely against it.
Once again to bust your bubble, I'm not a low self-esteemed person, I very much know what I'm capable of.
I'm 23 and I'm humble enough to learn if I was wrong, not an arrogant, who keeps goal-shifting and spread fake news.
I have said nothing about alt-news. First time I heard of them.
Its you who started quoting from opindia in gay abandon all over two stories on HN. Same links again and again. At that point you gave the impression to the rest of the HN audience that they were a reliable source.
Its only when you got caught out on how shady the source is ( [0] admission on twitter by the editors of OpIndia and 43 cases of fake news) that you now invent an excuse for quoting them.
A person is known by the sources one quotes. You attempted to school me on Koregaon history and on NorthEast. Not sure why, because I was referring to Teltumbde incarceration by the NIA and charges brought on him by the UAPA act that does not even require the charges of terrorism to be proved.
Oh such an inconvenience of proving things, lets just put people in jail just because they disagree.
You may claim not to be a shill, your behavior on HN has been indistinguishable from them.
>I asked you to refute AR.Ranganathan
I see, I should be taking orders from you on whom I should not refute (opindia) and whom I should. OK.
I refuse to get dragged into the muck that you want to drag us into. I think I have made a good enough case to show your intentions by calling out a source that you have been using repeatedly. That's enough of dumpster garbage harvesting for me for a day. The less I do those the better for me.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24632299
Debating 101: The way you refute a point is by providinga counter-argument against it.
Not by showing some unrelated stuff, here discussion is about amnesty. Not, did OPIndia, ever create fake news or not?
> You attempted to school me on Koregaon history and on NorthEast. Not sure why, because I was referring to Teltumbde incarceration by the NIA.
Because, you are speaking in support of Teltumbde, so called dalit actvist, who create fake-history for dividing societies.
I'm giving a lecture to you,to show how fake news is generated by your masters.
> I refuse to get dragged into the muck that you want to drag us into.
Didn't refute a single point, When challenged, kept moving goal-posts all over the place. When pointed about goal shiftting say, "I refuse to get dragged" nonsense.
Claims oneself to be more intelligent than National Investigating Agency, How?
> By reading propaganda articles on internet.
You seem to have too much of a high stature of yourself: As Russians say it: "You are nothing but a 'Useful Idiot'".
It seems you lack 'sense', you can get some here: https://youtu.be/UrS1qDcgdTk https://youtu.be/Y9TviIuXPSE
Please be careful, regarding the above videos it may break you, as your whole life is built on top of lies.
"If more than 20% of your funds goes to administrative expenses (office supplies, stationary, tea/coffee, misc), you know there is something shady. Satyam computers, did the same thing, created fake employees, posted huge expenses under admin category for almost 5 years. Later it was found that they were laundering money for YSR from overseas, and went bust and was later acquired by TechMahindra for paisa on the rupee.
Amnesty india is probably in knee deep shit and exiting before anything comes to light."
NGOs like Amnesty and Greenpeace has been involved in shady work in many places in India, including religious conversion and paid protests in remote villages. Hindus being a global minority need to be cautious and are worried about such conversion activities.
Indian govt has been asking NGOs to comply with FCRA Norms and many including Amnesty Internation has failed to file annual returns despite mandatory legal(pre-2014 norms) requirements.
India has millions of people living under poverty. To lift them out of poverty they need JOBS. Being an trade partner of US and UK, India has let functioning of shady NGOs like these work wrecklessly.
Whether it is Nuclear power plant or Copper plant, NGOs have been involved in mass mobilisation of people by using foreign funds to stall projects so that donor companies benefit.
If NGOs are so committed to their objective, they can raise funds from India itself to work for it. They don't need large donations from Multinational Corporation from abroad to raise objections in a democratic manner. By using foreign funds these NGOs have been successful in sabotaging Govt and Public-Private projects. So that donor Corporations can get benefitted. Similar mobilisation was also observed in Australia when Adani has been bidding for Coal mines.
NGOs were not working for their objective, but also were transferring money from their account to other NGOs without proper clearance. Shady foreign money transfers from NGOs also prompted authorities to investigate these firms on FEMA Act. If NGOs were so clean, they can fight the battle with local money than CRYING.
Foreign fund is NOT needed to fight so-called Hindu nationalism.
Foreign fund is NOT needed to raise political objections in a democratic system.
One cannot even read a recipe of a proper Gujrati Dhokla nowadays without constant screaming of "rising Hindu nationalism". XD
https://www.firstpost.com/india/enforcement-directorate-raid...
https://www.bloombergquint.com/law-and-policy/2019/09/05/ed-...
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/dining/indian-recipes.htm...
As far as FCRA goes, that violates international laws
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/icj-says-fcra-bill-in...
"International" includes theocratic & communist dictatorships.
My own country - Australia - has been frequently criticised by Amnesty (eg [1]).
Amnesty's job is to call out human right violations. Citizens of a country may very well say "oh, we don't like these asylum seekers, so we will keep voting for the government that put these laws in place" (in Australia's case). But it isn't Amnesty's job to look at justifications, only violations.
A robust, functional democracy should have space to allow critics, and while it might be unrealistic to expect the government to welcome that criticism, a government shouldn't use its power to act in reprisal against critics.
Some people in this discussion should consider this carefully. It's one thing to disagree with critics, but quite another to approve of reprisals against those critics.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/australia-pm-rejects-amnesty-internati...
Especially true in India now that they have their own Hindu Hitler.
> transparency in the government, more recently for accountability of the Delhi police and the Government of India regarding the grave human rights violations in Delhi riots and Jammu & Kashmir
all of these have been issues with every Indian Govt. for decades. I don't see anything about 2021 that would be a straw that'd break a camel's back.
The FRCA too has been the favorite tool for every govt. from 1976, for harassing NGOs. The changes to the law itself aren't as terrible.
> The NGO/FRCA license now expires in 5 years instead of being permanent
Not a terrible idea in a functioning society. In India, it becomes a tool getting fresh bribes out of groups and trapping them in bureaucracy.
> Less than 50% of foreign funds can be used for administrative expenses
IMO, really smart change. I personally know of Indian NGOs that primarily serve as money laundering mechanisms. On paper, doesn't seem like a bad change at all.
> The law now extends to trade/student/workers' unions, women’s wing of a political party, farmers’ organisations, youth organisations based on caste, community, religion, language and organizations that engage in strikes/ blockages/ protests / political action.
Some of these changes are sensible. unions and youth organizations in India are well known to be tools of political parties. If a law had to be applied, it has to at least be consistent.
The part of orgs. that engage in protest is more divisive, especially with the discussion around foreign funding to control opinion becoming a huge thing in the US.
Should outside funding be allowed to facilitate political opinion in a nation? To me, the answer isn't that clear. Both sides of the argument have strong points in favor.
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I am generally averse to expanding Govt. power, especially given how corrupt every Indian one has been. The FRCA was terrible, and like the patriot act is something that only serves to expand state power.
That being said, to spin it as a "hindu nationalist" initiative is political posturing.
Anyone who believes that Indian Media's pro-ruling party agenda, religious riots, sedition charges or harassment of activists started or even peaked in the Modi Govt., has been willfully ignorant about the continuing violation of freedoms that Indian Govts. have been part of since Indira Gandhi in the 70s.
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In the spirit of transparency, I have an incredibly low opinion of both journalists and activists in India. The complete lack of nuance in how they approach the issues they champion is a glaring example of it. The worst aspect, is that the most egregious ones get widespread coverage in respected western outlets.
Western thought leaders have time and again demonstrated an incredibly limited understanding on complex non-western societies. Whether that be in Africa, China, SEA or India. However, english, open-ness of Indian society, post colonial guilt and its size lead to the most egregious cases being in India.
Lastly, can't be pointing out problems without suggesting solutions. Recently, one of the few journalists I respect immensely (Shekhar Gupta) has started an online-only subscription based media house called the Print. I have found them to be the closest thing to fair journalism in India. The Caravan is another subscription based media outlet that is well respected among my peers (whom I respect) although I personally I am less impressed by it.