An advertisement for a business correspondent in South Asia in the New York Times said, "Mr Modi is advocating a self-sufficient, muscular nationalism centred on the country's Hindu majority." "The government's growing efforts to police online speech and media discourse have raised difficult questions about balancing issues of security and privacy with free speech," wrote an indignant Shashi Shekhar. He thinks that the NYT has an "inherently prejudicial view of India". Perhaps, Shekhar should talk to Indian citizens who are not Bhakts. Like Disha Ravi, for instance, who was arrested from her home in Bengaluru by Delhi Police for sharing a toolkit by the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, BBC. "Of the 78 ministers in the Cabinet, 42 percent have declared criminal cases against them with four having cases related to attempt to murder, according to a report by poll rights group ADR," Economic Times (ET). "When Narendra Modi uttered the famous slogan 'Na Khaunga, Na Khane Doonga' (neither will I indulge in corruption, nor allow anyone else to indulge in it), the nation was thrilled," wrote NKA Ballal. "Very conveniently (Arun) Jaitley started a dubious opaque system of Corporate Bonds which ensured that Corporates secretly donate and not declare it too." Clearly, there is some confusion between honesty and morality. The glib excuse for appointing suspected murderers is that they are 'innocent until proven guilty'. But then, so is journalist Siddique Kappan who has been in prison in UP since 5 October because he was on his way to Hathras to report a case of gang-rape and murder of a Dalit girl, The Week. The same UP Police has been denying that the young woman repeatedly mentioned on video that she had been beaten because she had resisted "zabardasti", which is the Urdu word for 'rape', BBC. The police forcibly cremated the body in the middle of the night after forming a chain to keep family members and journalists away, BBC. The arrest and inhuman treatment in prison of 84 year old Stan Swamy, with Parkinson's Disease has certainly made India famous all over the world, CNN. "The United Nations says it is deeply disturbed by the death in pre-trial detention of Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Indian rights activist and Jesuit priest," reported Al Jazeera. "What led to Swamy's death is the normalised routinised evil of bureaucracy documented by Hannah Arendt and terrifying in its banality -- of cogs in a machinery encompassing the police, prisons and courts that never strayed from their carceral imperative enough to see the patent injustice of Swamy's incarceration. It is also the evil of leaders old and new, of a collapsed system that asks critics to keep the faith. The evil, unfortunately, is enacted in our name," wrote lawyer Nitika Khaitan. The evil is being committed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) which allows the police to keep anyone in prison for any length of time without having to prove guilt. That charges under UAPA are bogus is proved by, "Less than 2% of the people arrested under UAPA across the country in five years till 2019 were convicted, according to data compiled by the National Crime Bureau (NCRB)," ET. It should bother Shekhar that Indian citizens are wasting precious years of their lives and even dying after being imprisoned on false charges, Live Law. "Indeed, a 2% conviction rate shows how, in an overwhelming number of cases, it is the process that is the punishment," wrote lawyer Gautam Bhatia. "Clearly, it is time for the western media to introspect and course correct when it comes to factually accurate reporting and unbiased editorials about other countries, especially diverse and pluralistic democracies such as India," fulminates Shekhar. Just holding elections is "no guarantee against tyranny of the elected" and their should be space for both "reasoned and unreasonable" public discourse, said Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, Times of India. The foreign media will respect the Indian government only when it starts respecting Indian citizens. They have the same contempt for other autocratic states, like Turkey, Nicaragua or Russia. Which also hold regular elections.
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