I will never get tired of pointing out how momentous the year 2019 was for India and the whole world. I’m not just talking about the Lok Sabha election. I’m talking about the fact that in 2019, India entered the club of the world’s five largest economies. This marks the end of one era and the beginning of another.
As a matter of principle, nobody likes a rising global power. They didn’t like it when China rose. They don’t like it now that India is breaking into the top five. In ten years, we would be in the top three. That upsets everything. The whole global order.
So it is no surprise that the global elite has become exceptionally cruel and vicious towards India. As usual, they have used their Gunga Dins in India to support and further their cause. I’m talking about the army of activists, intellectuals, op-ed writers, street protesters who have systematically undermined and shamed India for 70 years. They have always been the infantry of the global elite. Their livelihood depends on it. They grow up on a diet of lit fests, made up international conferences, fake degrees (honorary or otherwise) in fake subjects from real universities and so on.
It’s the lobby. We all know about it. If India is sending a space probe to Mars, their job is to write a drain inspector report to make the BBC feel better.
But in the second half of the last year, it really felt different. This was not the usual ‘ragging’ that a rising power can expect from jealous elite and their water carriers. There was an unusual hard edge to the anti-India hatred that we saw everywhere: newspaper columns, campuses, television reports and so on.
India got more bad press last year than North Korea did. The words “Hindu” and “Nazi” were declared synonymous. Not for a moment did the liberal complex back out from or temper its extreme rhetoric. “Indian state” and “Nazi Germany” were uttered in the same breath, ad infinitum. The Hindu swastika and the Nazi hooked cross were mixed together liberally. Things got so bad that supporters of Yakub Memon and Afzal Guru openly hit the streets of Delhi. And we saw their images passed around in major newspaper as heroes (and ‘sheroes’) of liberation!
The global elite has never cared much about Indian lives. Their infantry in India couldn’t care less. But even by their standards, the attack on India seemed excessive.
Was it a higher power pulling the strings?
Tell me who benefits the most from tearing India’s image to pieces. Sure, Pakistan does benefit, but that’s all psychological. Pakistan will never be a credible military, diplomatic or economic opposition to India.
And more importantly, Pakistan simply does not have the money to buy this many infantry.
But there’s someone else. How about Pakistan’s sugar daddy?
We tend to forget that when India removed Article 370, Pakistan was not the only country to protest. There was another, much more powerful nation that was opposed to India “unilaterally” altering the administrative setup on the ground.
They have both motive and resources. If the world gets the impression that India has done something terrible and anti-human in the Jammu – Kashmir – Ladakh region, they are in a position to take advantage of it. With actual troops on the ground. And right now, they may be doing just that.
And they have the resources to buy up global and domestic opinion in bulk. Think of all the prizes, awards and honours they have doled out for defaming India in Kashmir. Think of the sponsored vacations for intellectuals and activists and all the loaves and fishes they are getting from international media and academic bodies. Most of those prestigious institutions are full of spies anyway, who are receiving lakhs of $$$ stashed away in secret foreign bank accounts. Coronavirus has exposed at least that much.
In India, we often marvel at the power and reach of the so called ‘ecosystem.’ It often goes something like this:
Day 1: Some previously unknown X puts up rumor on Twitter accusing India of some crime against humanity in Kashmir
Day 2: X gives interviews to at least 5-6 foreign media channels.
Day 3: X gets an invitation to speak at some top foreign university.
Day 4: X receives some prestigious journalism award.
In five days, X is all set. He or she goes from having debt with the local kirana store to being a highly paid international superstar. So called “dissenters” who sit in five star hotel lobbies tweeting about how terrible their lives are under Modi’s ‘fascist’ regime.
Well, guess who can make all these goodies appear with their pocket change?
I would say take a look around. Look again at every person with any level of institutional power who has been oddly incensed about Art 370 in the last several months. An intellectual, an activist, a writer, a filmmaker, anything…
Take a moment and ask yourself: what would this man or woman do for 1 lakh rupees? Maybe the person is too well off to care about 1 lakh rupees. Ok, how about 10 lakh rupees? How about 1 crore rupees? How about a million dollars?
You know which country could afford to spend even one billion dollars and not even notice? That’s 1000 chunks of one million dollars each..
So take a look around and ask yourself how many of these people could have been purchased. Some of these folks are so cheap they don’t even want any money. They’d be suckers for some title or award or even a laudatory tweet from some foreign institution. The former can be arranged for less than $1000. The latter would cost under $10.
I know ‘kudrati’ biryani became a punchline to many jokes in right-wing circles after some low IQ liberal protester gave a particularly hilarious interview to a reporter. How can biryani drop from heaven? But perhaps the simpleton wasn’t so wrong in his observation after all. Perhaps ‘kudrati’ biryani really did come from a ‘higher power’ — how about a superpower? It’s time to take this even more seriously.
