Rolling South Asia News Thread

Good news for Gautama at least.

What's a reliable source for Indian news? Not knowing the media landscape there, I tend to only read about it in the Guardian.

Ha, yeah, "except for Buddha" jumped out for me too.

Awful news from Sri Lanka. Three hotel and three churches bombed, it looks like. Reporting at least 137 dead.

Horrible. Forgive my ignorance, but have there been significant tensions between religious and/or ethnic communities lately?

Not as far as I know, it seems comparatively out of the blue.

How awful.

My quartier has a large Sri Lankan population, mostly Tamils. Many go to mass with us, and people were lamenting this Easter morning.

I read somewhere that the police were warned of an imminent church attack last week, but I'd imagine it wouldn't have been the first time. Lots of predictable Islamophobic shit coming from the usual suspects and I'm reading it might have been committed by Bodu Bala Sena - the Buddhist extremists.

Another explosion.

2 police officers confirmed dead in 7th blast.

8th blast. Fucking hell.

wtf.

there is going to be a nationwide curfew that begins in 3 hrs and a shutdown of all social media and messaging services.

The seventh and eighth bombs seem to have been set off as the attackers were being chased down by the police. They were not high-profile targets like the others.

death toll up to 207 now.

So awful

Is there a reason why Bodu Bala Sena would want to kill tourists? Serious question.

it probably wasn't them. But lots of ppl seemed quite sure who was responsible literally 20 mins after the first few blasts occurred. The usual suspects though.

Jesus. All my Sri Lankan colleagues seem to be ok but someone from our US office visiting them was killed at the Cinnamon Hotel.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/29/indonesia-election-270-officials-die-as-overwork-takes-toll-in-huge

wtf! I thought there might have been an erroneous extra zero, but everyone else is reporting the same.

BJP set to win 300+ seats. All I'm hearing from Indians are lamentations: ppl decrying Rahul Gandhi; debate about whether the Congress party even has any future; lots of concern about possible electoral fraud; ppl pointing to the state of the media & coarsening of discourse. Amartya Sen has spoken of Modi's magic, his magical thinking and his way of tricking ppl with over-hyped policies like his healthcare bill and demonetization. Seems that the Indian right have been v successful in getting ppl to vote not on governance or the economy but on identity and security.

300/543 seats for one party is wild when there are, what, 30 parties in the Lok Sabha? Even wilder when the economy is actually doing badly. I will be surprised if the party of Nehru and the Gandhis never recovers. I don't really know why they stuck with Rahul after 2014, though. Good for the South for resisting the right wing tide, I guess, but the overwhelming global rightward shift continues to be worrying.

https://www.theonion.com/india-continues-surge-towards-status-as-first-world-nat-1834980952

866k people in Bhopal voted for Sadhvi Pragya, currently on bail for a string of charges related to the 2008 Malegaon bombings.

This is quite good on the roots in the decay of Indian democracy, mapping it back to its beginnings:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/indira-gandhi-long-undeclared-emergency/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/15/india-millions-stateless-assam-red-tape-illegal-immigrants

this is some next level hostile environment volkisch nationalism from the BJP, trying to make millions of indians stateless

Yep, and as the article points out, Assam is only the first stage. The long-term objective is going to be 200m, not 4m.

I'm wondering what the people who have thought about it actually expect to happen to all these people

i.e. do they expect to expel people en masse (and if so how many) or do they expect ppl to stay and treat them however they like?

'Ends > means' is likely the full extent of their pangs.

Or, as Ion Antonescu put it, 'I don't care if we go down in history as barbarians'.

I strongly suspect the objective is a system where Muslims are largely politically disenfranchised but are not actively deported - just left to live as second-class residents. If you want to combine democracy and exclusionary ethno-nationalism, Israel would be the model to copy.

Jesus. Fuck the BJP.

What happened in London today Is least of India’s concerns. Only country that should worry about this is UK. UK is fast becoming terror hub and they won’t be able to save themselves

— Sunanda Vashisht (@sunandavashisht) August 16, 2019

the total lack of any real disagreement that the UK is on the verge of being ruled by fundamentalist jihadis in the comments on threads like these is incredible, not really sure how you go about addressing it without getting immediately dismissed

State propaganda has lost nothing of its effectiveness in the internet era…

See also: Russian 'documentaries' about the 'no-go zone' that is Paris.

Wait, is this a reference to the stabbing in front of the Home Office? Does that have anything to do with Islamic terrorism? I can't find any other major news stories about attacks in London.

Thread = insane tho

Oh, is it about 10 people being arrested for the killing of a police officer in Berkshire? I don't see any news about a major terror attack on the BBC or Guardian pages. This is surreal.

We saw videos from the Indian high commission in Britain-istan. Their capital city London-istan is ruled by one Caliph Sadiq.

— Shailendra Mishra (@tweet2ssm) August 16, 2019

It's not about a specific terrorist event. The mindset is very similar to that of the 'Eurabia' boosters on the European far-right, the fiction that Europe is being taken over by Muslims resonates with the idea that India is losing its Hindutva due to a (very marginally) higher Muslim than Hindu birth rate.

Population control is Modi's big new idea and there was a proposal raised by a BJP politician (which Modi hasn't endorsed aiui) that Muslim family size should be legally restricted.

So "what happened in London today" = "a generally increasing Muslim population in the UK"? That's bizarre. Lol @ Indian Hindus being concerned about the white British population getting outnumbered, though.

What happened in London was just a protest outside the Indian Embassy

Oh, that's ridiculous.

"Make Tea Not War" is a quality slogan.

iirc it's an old peace punk slogan

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3558793968_16.jpg

(sorry for size)

the total lack of any real disagreement that the UK is on the verge of being ruled by fundamentalist jihadis in the comments on threads like these is incredible, not really sure how you go about addressing it without getting immediately dismissed

― ogmor, Friday, 16 August 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Just wondering how different is that from I dunno just having a bunch of Tories being in their own bubble on twitter or fbook? I've seen threads with almost no disagreement in the past.

The Indian population demographic shift scares have been around for a long time. I remember my aunt vividly talking about it way before Modi came into the picture on a visit to India.

This is purely anecdotal, of course, but my Indian neighbours are deathly afraid of setting foot in certain parts of the city I live in due to the mere presence of a 'visible' Muslim community there. Like ogmor said, it's almost impossible to have a reasonable conversation when this topic comes up; the animus is just too deeply embedded.

kingfish has been posting some good Mark Fenster quotes on FB(from Fenster's 2010 book on conspiracy theory), and this comes to mind:

‘By definition, conspiracy theory perceives itself to be continually dominated and manipulated by its more powerful conspira- torial adversary. This holds true even when conspiracy theorists have amassed enormous resources or the power of the state—even then, the conspiracy is always on the verge of complete victory. Thus, in govern- ment regimes based on the fear of a secret group, such as the Third Reich and the U.S. Congress in the throes of McCarthyism, the fear of a Jewish or communist conspiracy was based on the fear of a group con- sidered more powerful than the nation in peril. In contemporary liberal democracies, individual conspiracies may be exposed and condemned by society on a regular basis (for example, Watergate, Iran–Contra). By contrast, conspiracy theory as a totalizing phenomenon, as a whole way of life, continually finds itself frustrated by its inability to persuade and affect the political order.‘

I think that initial tweet was a follow up to a tweet about the protests. All these tropes have been in the air for quite a long time but there seems to be less pushback now and the state of political discourse on Indian social media seems as bad as anywhere

I liked how there was a lot of heated debate over Priyanka Chopra's tweet on kashmir

Awful: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49382682

Yes.

And so is this you can see where it's going:

How casually Hindu extremists in India call for ethnic cleansing of Muslims at a BJP rally. pic.twitter.com/0YztEo9znM

— Ashar Jawad (@AsharJawad) August 18, 2019

Ugh, that seems shockingly brazen, even for the BJP.

In other shockingly brazen, even for the BJP news...

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been put on notice in India and may cease to exist for failing to comply with Centre's new I-T Act. New social media rules to come into effect on May 26. @maryashakil shares more details with @ridhimb pic.twitter.com/wLvsSbbOqH

— News18 (@CNNnews18) May 25, 2021

The short version seems to be that they forged some documents suggesting Congress was planning to run a campaign that would ‘tarnish the image of the country’ over COVID, Twitter labelled it as ‘manipulated media’ when senior politicians posted it, the police raided Twitter’s offices yesterday and now they, and Facebook, have 24 hours to comply with new laws or face closure.

Wow.

I got a FB msg from a cousin in India today so I'm guessing they either complied or the rules aren't being enforced?

some follow up here: https://slate.com/technology/2021/06/india-silicon-valley-twitter-google-censorship.html

Finally read this; it's as depressing as I feared.

Went back to it after reading this: https://theprint.in/india/journalist-activist-jailed-under-nsa-for-45-days-over-cow-posts-in-manipur-its-not-unusual/684133/

Sometimes writing editorials is not required. Just the placement of news is enough pic.twitter.com/9tyP9JkMym

— Ghazala Wahab (@ghazalawahab) June 28, 2022

o_O

more on Zubair and Alt News: https://restofworld.org/2021/fact-checking-modis-india/

Protesters occupy President's residence, burn down PM's and force both to resign in Sri Lanka: https://www.nytimes.com/article/sri-lanka-president-protests.html

While I don't question that there are good reasons to want a revolution in Sri Lanka, it's v unclear to me what will come next and nothing I've seen suggests that the protesters have a clear idea themselves. Also, one thing I've not seen addressed anywhere yet is whether Tamils or Muslims are represented among the protesters.

Indian government accused of attack on democracy as 141 MPs suspended:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/19/indian-government-accused-attack-democracy-mps-suspended-modi-bjp

Really grim

Modi has done so many fascist things over the years, it’s so expected