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.
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.
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).
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 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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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"
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?
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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!
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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”.
“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]
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".
> 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
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.
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.
This discussion like most HN discussions are hijacked by extremist agenda pushers who keep throwing in out-of-context words like nationalism, caste, religion, etc irrelevantly. A simple search shows why Indian govt froze the bank accounts.
Amnesty International continues to violate Indian laws (FCRA) time and again by not disclosing their source of funds. They were investigated a decade ago by the previous government too for money laundering (for people crying hoarse on current government), and Amnesty International halted all it's work then too.
All foreign funding/donations needs to be approved based on FCRA act. Instead of obeying the laws, Amnesty channeled money through various private or other sister orgs, claiming it is remittances for services exported. They lost the case in the State courts couple of times and my guess is they didn't want to risk going to the Supreme court and lose again. So instead of complying with the law, it's time to spin the story against the Indian government.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is a big big news. Very sad that Amenesty is halting its work. It could be the case that Amenesty really had some problems in its Indian org, I am not a judge, not going to jump to any conclusions, but if the BJP led government is really trying to curb the work that Amenesty is doing by using central agencies that's very very scary.
I feel India is going on a wrong track, it was doing okay in regards to Democratic values until Modi came to power, and since then it is on a downwards trajectory in that department. I have not seen any media house putting out any news which condemn decision that Modi makes, all are just praising Modi for god knows what reason. This ain't even a news in India, they are all running behind Bollywood celebs.
I feel Indian people are one-two generation(s) away, most of the Indian people can't really digest democracy at the moment.
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.
Since whistle blower protection in India is inadequate/inefficient proliferation of TRUTH is stopped in the name of loyalty, discipline, patriotism, job security, national security, intellectual property etc https://archive.is/VWFSC
"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.
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.
> 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.
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).
Unfortunately, the BJP's notorious troll army (also known as the "IT cell") has invaded HN also, and pop up whenever our government's misdeeds are discussed.
Remember that this is the same govt that has restricted the speech of the state of Jammu and Kashmir by cutting off their Internet access completely and later, restricting them to a mere 2G connection and to "approved" websites. [1]
It modified the UAPA law to basically designate any Indian citizen a "terrorist" and hold them indefinitely without bail. And used the law to arrest and detain people protesting against a controversial law. [2]
The same government that set up a "donation fund" called "PM Cares", ostensibly to help people affected by Covid-19 and lockdown, but then refused to divulge details under our RTI - Right to Information Act - claiming it was not a public authority. [3]
But then exempted this fund from the same draconian FCRA rules [4]
Oh, if that's not enough, this government also passed a law exempting political parties from scrutiny in foreign funding under the FCRA. Want to guess which is the richest political party in India now? Google it. [5]
Did I mention they also introduced "electoral bonds" to allow anonymous corporate funding for political parties? [6]
Amnesty International was drawing too much attention to the human rights abuses of the government, so the state has come down with all its might on it.
Also surpression in Kashmir seems to have escalated over the past year with removal of local governance and blockade of internet access.
It is not a good combination: Escalating human rights abuses, an economy in freefall, pandemic, border skirmishes with China, nationalism, crackdown on ethnic minorities ...
I think in the context of India it is unfair to call 10% population as Minority. 10% of Indian population is ~135 Million, that is more than the population of several countries.
This is a false argument. Muslims were majority in Kashmir before the exodus of Hindus. Your wiki link states that 300,000 to 600,000 Hindus left Kashmir due to the targeted violence. Muslims were in majority even if you include a Hindu majority Jammu. (https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/share-of-muslims...)
The reason of the violence against Hindus is the Indian government's desire to fully integrate Kashmir into India and deny the special provisions Kashmir was given as precondition to merge into the Union of India.
Muslims first came into Kashmir as refugees when they were fleeing the caliphate.
Muslims got Pakistan and were through in ethnically cleansing the country.
Kashmir & Pakistan is a lesson for the rest of the world, particularly Europe on why Muslims can not be trusted.
Where they are in majority, they have no problem carrying out genocides and ethnic cleansing.
When they are in simple minority they carry out riots and secession.
When they are in small minority they cry "Islamaphobia" and want minority privileges.
This above seems to be universal and is said to be inline with their teachings.
Sadly a soft government has proved time and again its inability to protect its citizens from Islamic genocide.
Well, if you go far enough back in history, it went frmo 0% Hindu and random other tribal religions to mostly Hindu, right?
That's the problem with "going far enough back in history", depending on how far you go, you can get rid of anything (even people), so you either need to provide bounds on how far you go back and why, justifying it, or you might as well not bring up that argument at all.
Islam as with Christianity was a one man, one book affair from the relatively recent time.
The older traditions much of which do not exist thanks to the two above religions, were timeless and pluralistic.
Hinduism has no known history and is assumed to be evolved through the ages, like food or music - Hinduism is unbounded and untethered.
Islam in Pakistan or Kashmir specifically has ethnically cleansed almost all non-muslims, imposes urdu at the cost of local languages and culture, and is now targeting smaller denominations as not being Islamic enough.
No, Islam is an evolutionary offshoot of Christianity. Christianity is an evolutionary offshoot of Judaism. Judaism in incorporated many aspects of Zoroastrianism.
If you're going to make some claim that Hinduism has no discernible stages that can be tracked anthropologically over history that we can look to, that would make it unique among human inventions and beliefs. Such an extraordinary claim needs strong evidence to be accepted.
Hinduism is a jungle anything can grow on its own merit.
Christianity is a strawberry farm with a farmer for whom anything that is not strawberry is weed.
Islam is a corn farm with a corn farmer.
Both farmers want to slash and burn the jungle to expand their farm. And just because the charred remains of the jungle add nutrition to the soil does not mean it is being "incorporated".
There are very few Zorastrians in Iran, the greatest numbers live in India.
I did read the entire article, which documented a pattern of back and forth communal violence stretching back decades. My point was that it's odd to focus on the one wave of refugees and ignore the others. Reparations for historical wrongs shouldn't be restricted to just one group.
> Idol-worshippers like Hindus are considered beastly and low-life. So don't expect foreigners to accept what Hindus says as our moralities are going to cut through their doctrinal abhrahamic morality though they are separate religions.
Once you start telling people your opposition's views, you're stepping into territory that weakens your own argument. This is a textbook example. All you've done is spread the rhetoric of your own side about how the other side views you, which is propaganda.
In the US, this would be akin to BLM stating that anyone that disagrees with their movement is racist and sees them as sub-human, or the police stating that the defund the police movement is about disbanding the police entirely. While there are obviously subsets of people that do believe those things, those are not the stances of the respective groups and do to convey the overall aims of each.
Why should your self-serving statement that vilifies your opposition be viewed any differently?
seriously? Someone who's generally considered to have been very racist is your reference for what people think today? Not exactly a good argument for why you should be taken seriously.
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
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.
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.
> OpIndia is an Indian right-wing news portal founded in 2014 by Rahul Raj and Kumar Kamal. The website has published fake news and anti-Muslim commentary on multiple occasions, including a 2020 incident in which it falsely claimed that a Hindu boy was sacrificed in a Bihar mosque.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Amnesty international and other Western NGOs are moral sticks of rich countries to browbeat erstwhile colonies for not maintaining high living standards post exploitation.
NGOs typically do a lot of harm. They're the means by which high income countries enforce policies that keep developing countries in debt to them, in order to extract resources.
The 2011 book "The Dictator's Handbook" does a good job of detailing how this works.
