There is a disturbing tendency among groups in the diaspora to religionize what are fundamentally political reactions to political actions. This religionizing creates a binary where every political actor & policy is necessarily pro-x or anti-y. 1/n
In this paradigm, abrogation #Article370 is anti-Muslim ignoring KP's and its anti-terror ramification. #CAA a pro-persecuted minority amnesty law is anti-Muslim, and the protests glorified. Now the #FarmersBill is portrayed as a anti-Sikh and protests romanticized. 2/
The protests are, in fact, merging, as anti-CAA #Dadi & a Dalit political party head join the farmers. But when roads & highways are blocked for months on end, at some point, commuters will demand roads are opened. But the religionized context-artificially constructed-means 3/
any such action is anti-x religion. This is where the Western media-that eagerly laps up the false religious positioning, plays a role. We know religionizing is rooted within a colonial, white-savior interpretive paradigm, so a complex unpacking is off the cards. So who will? 4/
The @nytimes has a Bret Stephens or Tom Friedman and had Bari Weiss to seriously/sympathetically bring perspectives rooted in Jewish awareness. There is Wajahat Ali to bring a positivist Muslim lens to contemporary issues. Who interprets India with a sympathetic lens? 5/
Who speaks for India in the Western press? Rana Ayyub in @washingtonpost. Basharat Peer in @nytimes Dhume in @WSJ Mukherjee in @business. None would be accused of a sympathetic disposition to contemporary India. Until that changes, media coverage will be predictably predictable.
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