These new terms are being dropped like birthday toffees by columnists, social media influencers and assorted jihad sympathisers and the anti-India cabal
File image of Nupur Sharma. ANI
“Fascism” and “genocide” are pass?. India’s Islamists, Leftists and so-called liberals are coming up with and circulating newer terms to use against nationalism and Hindutva.
Unsurprisingly, most of these words or phrases are being used to cover up for the Islamist barbarism on full display on Indian streets since the month of Ramzan and right up to the latest controversy over deposed BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s comments on Prophet Mohammed on television. Just like ‘fascism’, a word associated with the mass murder of millions which is flimsily invoked daily in college debate-level attempts to win an argument, the new glossary is full of laughable hyperboles, sidestepping tactics, and plain lies.
These new terms are being dropped like birthday toffees by columnists, social media influencers and assorted jihad sympathisers and the anti-India cabal.
Some of these have been used in the past, but the frequency of their misuse has lately shot up in India. The agenda is to embarrass India internationally, tug at the Western liberal heart strings, invite global isolation, and ultimately bring back the days of unbridled, ugly Islamism in the name of secularism in India.
Here are 10 such terms and phrases.
Punching up/punching down: In a desperate attempt to justify the indefensible Islamist aggression and street violence after Friday prayers over Nupur’s remarks, some started suggesting that Muslims should get some leeway because as a minority, they were ‘punching up’ at majoritarianism. They conveniently failed to mention that Muslims in India are a politically powerful, socially aggressive group of more than 200 million people, supported by a global Ummah of nearly two billion.
Dehumanised: Indian Muslims are apparently being dehumanised by being looked upon only as a violent group and not individuals. A 15-year-old who died in police firing in Ranchi during a violent Friday protest should be treated as a martyr, they argue. Projectiles were being thrown from that ‘protest’ at murderous velocity, and the boy was very much a part of it. It is sad, but why shouldn’t police personnel who have repeatedly got killed or wounded during such violence get such sympathy?
Semi-citizenship: Muslims, apparently, have been reduced to semi-citizens. Never mind the long list of benefits they derive from their minority status, or the adulation they get as film stars of cricketers, or the absurd personal laws they enjoy as if they are super-citizens.
Ethno-supremacist: This term is being dropped quite often to make Hindus seem like the monsters they are not. It is used by Islamists’ conduits in the West
Apartheid state: Any action against a Muslim who has done something wrong, and loud cries of “apartheid state” go up. When the UP government brought down young Islamist protester Afreen Fatima’s father Javed Mohammed’s illegally built house, the liberals were outraged. They failed to mention that Mohammed was served notice, and that illegal weapons were recovered during the demolition.
Bulldozer justice: The Yogi Adityanath government’s use of bulldozers to demolish illegally built houses, especially of criminals and lawbreakers is now the biggest sore point. Op-eds are being written, and podcasts made on it. Their tenuous logic: Why must the government go after lawbreakers whose properties are also in breach of law?
Baby factory: A Wall Street Journal column derisively referred to north India as “baby factory”. Why does north India regularly get such love from ‘liberals’? Because the BJP is relatively stronger there.
Termites: A columnist called Indians from the diaspora “termites”. What is their fault? Many of them have been vocally Narendra Modi and Hindutva supporters. Hence the frustration.
Godi Maulanas: Overground Islamists in the media, whose dog-whistling social media posts brought about the chilling calls for beheading Nupur, had to do monkey-balancing and find a scapegoat after a Hindu backlash began. They found one: Hardline Muslim panellists on TV. They even seek to link Modi with these panellists, who ironically abuse the PM daily.
Speaking truth to power: It is a platitude reserved for only those who abuse the Narendra Modi government. Critics of all other forms of power — Islam, liberal elitism, non-BJP governments, for instance — are exempt from such praise. Nupur Sharma getting open death threats for merely quoting from the Hadiths or journalist Arnab Goswami roughed up and jailed for criticising the government are just recent examples of the liberal inversion of that phrase into ‘speaking power to truth’.