“One of the reasons India’s performance is less admired than it might be is that people are reluctant to highlight it lest they be seen as endorsing Mr Modi.“
Okay, so The Economist said the quiet part out loud. What happens now?
For supporters of Prime Minister Modi, this may feel like a moment of vindication. After all, India is the world’s fastest-growing major economy. In fact, it has held that distinction for six out of PM Modi’s eight years in office. The only exceptions were 2019 and 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Our exports have touched $668 billion. The Indian Rupee has gained almost 10% versus both the Euro and the British pound in the last year. We manufactured our own vaccines and vaccinated over a billion people with an efficiency that surprised the world. Look at the tremendous expansion in infrastructure, sanitation, water supply, gas connections, everything. Isn’t it time somebody said something nice about India?
Well, they just did. And they even admitted that they were holding back because they hate our Prime Minister so much. So you might feel something like this.
Not so fast. Before we celebrate, let us take a moment and think. Why would they say the quiet part out loud? Since when did the liberals start playing fair?
Think about it. Why would our enemies suddenly decide to be nice to us? Yes, I used the word “enemy” for them. It is about time every single one of us used it as well. For the last several years, the liberal elite has been busy labelling our great democracy as a fascist state. They treat Hindu leaders as tyrants and common Hindus as terrorists. They even see our gods as criminals. Remember how liberals elites began an international uproar over Hanuman stickers? The only words they used to describe us are fascist and Nazi.
Over there in Europe, Putin began a war. Why did he do it? Because the West fattened him up for decades by buying oil from him. They are still buying oil from him. But when Putin decided to invade Ukraine, who did they blame? India. Do you think these liberal elites would have a sudden change of heart about India? Think again.
Only the other day, the Chinese puppet organization WHO came up with another smear against India. They knew the death registration system in India was flawed. There is no way they didn’t notice all the big jumps and falls in death registrations in various states over the last 5 years and more. But they decided to use it anyway to spin a fake story about “4.7 million covid deaths in India.” By the way, how many Covid deaths in the US? 1 million. But India’s population is 4 times as much, so we are almost even on a per capita basis. Despite the Chinese puppets doing their worst, this is all they could do…accuse India of handling the pandemic as badly as the USA!
So what did they do? They got the media to spin it into meaningless headlines. “India has the most covid deaths in the world.” Yeah, and India also has the second most number of people in the world. And those who have the highest population in the world paid for this survey, so you can imagine.
And you think these liberal elites who hate us would have a sudden change of heart? No way.
So what do our enemies want?
It’s a trap. They want credibility. They want you to think of them as your friends.
The liberal elites have been playing this game for a while. They know how to play it. If you keep calling people Nazis and fascists, the effect begins to wear out over time. We know we are not Nazis. The first time they called us Nazis, we fought back. We tried to argue and debate with them. When they called us Nazis the second time, we again tried to argue, but we were losing patience. Now many of us don’t even care anymore. Because we see them as enemy propaganda. Let them bark.
I call this “post-anger.” At a certain point, the lies and vilification don’t hurt anymore. We don’t take the Lashkar or ISIS seriously when they describe us as the scum of the earth. Why would we take for instance the New York Times any more seriously? Is their attitude towards India and Hindus any different from that of the Taliban?
But the liberal elite is more sophisticated than the Taliban. They can sense that they have reached the point where most Indians treat them with “post-anger.”
They know what to do. The vilification has reached a saturation point. The marginal utility of each new anti-India hate piece has dipped. And not just in India. It is also abroad. Common folks in the West are reading every day that Modi’s India is the same as Hitler’s Germany. Common folks in the West may not know a whole lot about India, but they are not stupid. Back in the day, they used to have one anti-India hate piece in like six months. They didn’t think much about it, and just believed whatever they read.
But now, there is an anti-India hate piece in a major western newspaper almost every day. This barrage is forcing Western readers to think about India a lot more. And before long, they will figure out the most obvious thing. The liberal press lies every day about everything else. They lied about the lab leak theory, about Hunter Biden’s laptop, about everything. So of course they are lying about India as well.
To be effective, the liberal elites realize they must win back a shred of our confidence in them. So what better way than to write the occasional article praising India and pretending to be fair. The sense of validation will bring back Indian readers from their “post anger” phase. Western readers who might be puzzled by the constant vilification of India would be reassured. The liberal media is fair to all sides. See?
Don’t fall into this trap. The enemy is just baiting the hook, putting a bit of cheese on the mousetrap. They are trying to get us to bite. They are going to hit us with propaganda that is a hundred times worse. And they will use one or two such articles to create a facade of fairness. It is a show trial. They want us to take the defendant’s chair and act like they are giving us a fair hearing. They want us to validate them as the arbiters of truth and justice.
Don’t play their game. Because they are our enemies.
