Commensurate with India’s growing power and significance in the world, political developments in India are closely watched not only inside the country but also abroad. And so it was that the debate, theatrics and the antics of Indian Parliamentarians during the recent No Confidence Motion attracted comments from people all over the globe.
Including from Imam Tawhidi, an Australian Imam who owns the Twitter handle @Imamofpeace.
You could agree with him or not. You could choose to simply move on.
But not if you are a Wire reporter who cannot tolerate a word of criticism against The Great Naamdar of the Gandhi Dynasty. How dare someone shows disrespect to Rahul Gandhi? He MUST be thrown in jail! The Wire’s Arfa Khanum Sherwani couldn’t bear this.
That’s all it takes folks. That’s all it takes to strip away the carefully conjured mask of tolerance created by Islamists on the left. One word against Rahul Gandhi and the facade falls away completely.
I should mention here that Imam Tawhidi gets tons of hate from the ‘secular’ left because of his outspoken stance against Islamic fundamentalism. And now someone wants him to be charged for ‘interfering’ in internal affairs of India. All because he called Rahul Gandhi a ‘joke.’
Charged? For what? Is Wire’s Arfa Khanum living in the 7th century or what?
That’s not how we do it in this century any more, Arfa. You’re thinking about the wrong point in time.
Just think about your social media feed for a moment. Think about the thousands of caustic comments, cartoons and memes on President Trump, on Obama and other politicians in countries across the globe. Imagine if everyone who called Trump a ‘joke’ was charged by the US government of interfering in their internal affairs.
The Wire itself is deeply plugged into this new media universe and thrives in its culture of irreverence.
But all it takes is one tweet calling their dear leader Rahul Gandhi a ‘joke’ and Wire reporters go reeling backwards from the 21st century to the 7th century. Back to their real philosophical roots.
This must be a symptom of the ‘moolbhoot soch‘ (ideological roots) and ‘chatpatahat‘ (uneasiness) that Modi touched on in his farewell to Hamid Ansari.
Incidentally, the same Arfa Khanum used to be at Rajya Sabha TV back in the day when Hamid Ansari was running it.
Right now, with a BJP government in power, we can feel the chatpatahat in the mind of Wire reporters as they have to adopt a 21st-century mindset towards dissent and free speech. They can’t wait for Rahul Gandhi to become PM so that they can return to their ideological roots in the 7th century.
