You know that the toolkit has been activated again when some NRI/foreign celebrities suddenly start tweeting in concert about the so-called oppression of Indian Muslims. And this time, people like Padma Lakshmi, Ilhan Omar, Mehdi Hasan and Mesut Özil have simultaneously started stating that Muslims in India are in danger.
All these journalists, celebrities, supermodels, politicians and footballers are getting together to make patronising remarks about the Indian society without any rhyme and reason. However, the reality is quite different from what they think or say.
Padma Lakshmi’s patronising remarks
You know that the anti-India tweets suddenly propping up against India are staged when the former wife of Salman Rushdie, the same man who was given death threats for writing an innocuous book by Islamist extremists, starts denying extremism in the first place.
The toolkit actually started playing out with Padma Lakshmi’s comments claiming ‘Hindus are not in danger’. She tweeted, “Sickening to see the violence against Muslims celebrated in India. The widespread anti-Muslim rhetoric preys on fear and poisons people.” And then she added, “Fellow Hindus, don’t succumb to this fear-mongering. There is no threat to Hinduism in India or anywhere else. True spirituality doesn’t include any room for sowing hatred of any kind.”
Her appeal to “fellow Hindus” is perhaps an attempt at playing up her own Hindu identity. But who is she to say that there is “no threat to Hinduism in India or anywhere else”? She can try telling this to a Kashmiri Pandit who hasn’t been able to get resettled in the Valley three decades after being thrown out of his ancestral home or to a Pakistani woman who was kidnapped from her marriage, forcibly converted to Islam and married off. Forget the subcontinent, try telling Hindus who get mobbed and shot at in the US that they are not in danger.
But you will never see issues like attacks on minorities in Pakistan or Bangladesh figure in the priorities of the so-called social activists. You will not even read about blatant Hinduphobia in the US, because it runs counter to their fabricated narrative. Padma Lakshmi should keep her patronising advice to herself and should be ashamed for jumping into the anti-India bandwagon alongside sympathisers of Islamic extremists.
Erdogan’s best friend concerned about safety and well-being of Muslims in India
If you are friends with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, you should perhaps be bothered about your friend’s plans to alter international boundaries, recreate the Ottoman Empire, convert the ‘Hagia Sophias’ of the country into mosques and use armed proxies to wage wars all across the Middle East.
However, German professional footballer Mesut Ozil is busy lying about India. The footballer, who has faced criticism back home in Germany for his close ties to Erdogan, tweeted, “Praying during the holy night of Lailat al-Qadr for the safety and well-being of our Muslim brothers and sisters in India. Let’s spread awareness to this shameful situation! What is happening to the human rights in the so-called largest democracy in the world?”
Ozil’s tweet again exposes how invisible forces are working in unison to create a wrong perception of India on the global stage. The propaganda of these forces has no basis in reality. There is nothing to show that there is any denial of religious freedoms to any minority community in India, but once the toolkit gets activated, you get to read such condescending remarks about the safety and well-being of Muslim citizens in India by people who have literally no knowledge about India.
The global conspiracy
Had it not been for Greta Thunberg’s silly mistake to publicly give reference to a toolkit during the anti-farm agitation last year, we would probably have never been able to unmask the global conspiracy to decry India. We would not have understood why international celebrities like Rihanna, Mia Khalifa and Greta were suddenly concerned about the farmers’ protests in India.
But now that we understand how the global conspiracy works, we do understand why Padma Lakshmi, Mehdi Hasan and Ozil have tried to condemn India in unison. We also know that their ultimate goal is not the ‘safety’ or ‘well-being’ of any community, but discrediting India at an international level.
In fact, we know how different lobbies are propping up against India in different parts of the world like Canada, the US, Turkey and Qatar. In the past, we have seen the Muslim Brotherhood target India and make a well-planned smear campaign against the country. We have also seen the pro-government media in Turkey express strong displeasure at the construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. And within the US, we see organisations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Indian American Muslim Council talk about things like fictional ‘genocide’ and Islamophobia in India.
For these motivated organisations, it is pretty easy to start talking about bulldozers and other legal action without any context, make generic claims about the genocide of 25 crore Indian Muslims and then get some celebrities to tweet about those general allegations.
If there is any deviation from the law of the land and the law takes its own course, or there is an expression of popular opinion against extremism, then it doesn’t mean that a “genocide” is underway. It is simply how a democracy governed by the rule of law works. Now such a silly debate would normally be out of the question, but India is up against sinister lobbies that do not care for the facts and are focused solely on the goal of destabilising India and mobilising global opinion against it based on lies.
To make it amply clear, there is no State-sponsored discrimination in India. In fact, if there is any discrimination, it is positive discrimination for the upliftment of all religious minorities, including Muslims. Over 2.35 crore Muslims received scholarships between 2014 and 2019. The government spent a total of Rs. 22,000 crore on scholarships to religious minorities during this time period and the Muslims were the biggest beneficiaries.
The Indian State is therefore actively working to ensure the socio-economic upliftment of an entire generation of Muslims.
In fact, while you see international celebrities express concern about Indian Muslims, the Indian government has released a 15-point welfare programme for all of India’s minorities including Muslims. This includes priority lending, skill development, employment training, fellowship schemes, housing and free coaching.
The present government is that much more careful about ensuring equitability in its welfare schemes because it faces a well-planned and unjustifiable smear campaign from invisible forces across the world.
Going ahead, you may see many more such toolkits unfold. However, the forces driving them are getting unmasked and every single time such a campaign unfolds, the futility of the anti-India conspiracy becomes more and more apparent.
Akshay Narang is a columnist who writes about international affairs and developments in the defence sector. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
Read all the Latest Opinions here
Comments
0 comment