In the late 90s, at a dank Ganpati Pooja celebration in Nagpur, people were sitting around all tensed up. The veriety entertainment night was stopped abruptly.
One person had just come running to the venue and screamed, "Chaddi Banyan Gang is coming!"
For us kids, this was terrifying. I mean sure we made fun of "Chaddi Baniyan" gang. That they rob people in their underwear, because wtf lol.
But on this night, the fear was very real. Soon, a colony-president-type uncle screamed, "TURN OFF THE LIGHTS!"
Darkness.
We cowered in that dark venue, only the diya in front of the Ganpati murti was visible. Some uncles and auntys crawled to the idol and started doing a silent aarti.
One of my friends had a genius idea: "Let's find this gang! I was to see if they really wear only chaddi-baniyan."
In June 2020, while India was dealing with COVID-19 as the cases were ramping up, 9 top Ministers were holding meeting after meeting to discuss how gormint can improve its image better.
Priorities.
Here's the glorious list of the "prominent personalities" they met to take feedback on how the govt can communicate better.
This report is truly wild!
.@sighyush spoke to a few people in this list and they told him that the meetings were supposed to be a debrief on Galwan. They had no idea what was happening.
I mean, the kind of stuff attributed to some of them is quite bonkers, so I'm not surprised. newslaundry.com/2021/03/05/bog…
#EXCLUSIVE: We spent more than 2 months observing the Hindu Ecosystem group formed by Kapil Mishra.
And without us asking, were added to bigger splinter groups which work day & night to create misinformation, hateful content and fake Twitter trends. newslaundry.com/2021/02/15/we-…
These groups share PDF compilation files which are full of sharable hate content. Here are three titled "Sikh Terrorism" which were circulated last month.
"BestMediaInfo found that more than 40 of the country’s top brands (names withheld) had stopped advertising on Republic Media Network between October and December 2020."
"किसानो की अंतर्राष्ट्रीय षड़यंत्र का आज खुलासा हो चूका है. आइये करते है इसका DNA टेस्ट. आज हमने देखा की इंटरनेशनल सेलेब्रिटी Rihanna, जिसे गाना गाने के सिवा कुछ आता नहीं है, वो कैसे किसानो के बारे में बात करने लगी है."
"आप ही सोचिये. ये Rihanna जो की एक आलीशान बंगले में रहती है, जो की ऐसे वैसे गाने के वीडियो बनाती है, क्या उसे हमारे किसानो के पीड़ा का अंदाजा हो सकता है? ये जरूर भारत के खिलाफ एक षड़यंत्र की तरफ इशारा करता है."
"फिर चलते है Greta Thunberg की तरफ जो की महज़ एक बच्ची है जिसे पूरे विश्व ने सर पर चढ़ा रखा है. स्कूल जाने की उम्र में ये अलग अलग देशो में जाके गुस्से से 'How Dare You' कहती है, भाषणबाज़ी करती है. क्या इस क्लाइमेट एक्टिविस्ट की बाते हमें सुनने की जरूरत है?"