There is a narrative, and it reaches a cacophony of hysteria whenever there are elections in India, because the intent is to rally the faithful against the allegedly fascist BJP
Image used for representational purposes. AFP
Why is there a veritable fusillade of anti-India commentary in the West these days? Why has there been a sudden upsurge of communal tension in coastal Karnataka? How come a bunch of MNCs including Hyundai, KFC, etc, endorsed Pakistan’s claims to all of Jammu and Kashmir? How come the tragic story of Lavanya, who committed suicide because of pressure to convert, has suddenly been pushed off the front pages?
The answer, my friend, as Bob Dylan once put it, is blowin’ in the wind. There is a narrative, and it reaches a cacophony of hysteria whenever there are elections in India, because the intent is to rally the faithful against the allegedly fascist BJP: “The Mudi sud rejine.” Well, elections in Uttar Pradesh have begun, so you can expect the baying to reach a crescendo soon. UP, they well know, is the prize. If they can defeat the BJP there, suddenly Modi is vulnerable.
UP shows a dramatic contrast exists between the utter fecklessness of the Congress years, and the tremendous improvement in the Yogi years: In law and order, in infrastructure, in how suddenly the state is a power to reckon with in its state GDP and industrial prowess. I received a book from Garuda Prakashan about Yogi in the mail. Personally, I am hopeful about the upward trajectory of UP and Bihar, and distressed by the downward trajectory of Kerala, Bengal and Punjab, as I wrote in ‘Punjab phenomenon is devastating psychologically, but is it just reversion to the mean?‘
Whenever there are important state elections, the ‘toolkit’ is activated, sleeper cells are given the go-ahead, and there is a plethora of stories in the compromised Western media about how things are going to hell in a handbasket in India. This is yet another reason to hold synchronised elections every two-and-a-half years rather than what appears to be endless politicking the entire time.
My friend Gautam Sen connected the dots on Firstpost.com in his essay ‘Why there’s a sudden surge in international efforts to destabilise Modi government‘. I too wrote about this some time ago in an essay.
So, lesson number one is that, internationally, India has no friends; no, not in the West, despite the honeyed words and the snake-oil salesmen. Just about the only two countries that we have common interests with are Japan and Vietnam, who are just as threatened by China as India is, but the one has the money and skills that we lack, and the other has the actual experience of defeating the Chinese in battle.
It is telling that it was Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe who suggested the idea of the Quad. It is also telling that a Democratic US president, presumably on the insistence of the Deep State, eviscerated it by doing a side deal called AUKUS, basically a celebration of Atlanticism, which has been long dead and should be given a decent burial. Isolated and increasingly impoverished Britain is hardly the ally anyone wants or needs.
Even Russia, which some of us consider an all-weather friend, is no longer reliable. An allegedly state-related entity named redfish advertised a documentary with a clear bias in favour of the Pakistani point of view. They too, probably, are caught up in the Sino-Pak axis, and Chinese propaganda that India is getting too close to the US. In reality, India is in the unfortunate trisanku position of choosing between Scylla and Charybdis.