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Jan 17 • 11 tweets • 6 min read
Hindu pride and India's 'Soft Power must not be based on and cannot be built upon lies and fakery. Hinduism is bigger and better than that. A thread.
@NDTV ran this story
It showed a tweet on the occasion of #Pongal (#Sankranti) by British Prime Minister @RishiSunak (see pic), and claimed that the PM hosted a meal for his staff that was served by men in #veshti on banana leaves in the traditional style.
The original source for the story in @ndtv appeared to be a tweet by the BJP Rajya Sabha MP, Sonal ManSingh.
She is a noted Odissi classical dancer. She tagged the Indian prime Minister and her Party's official handle. It uncertain who she meant by "UK PM Office and defence"
Not just NDTV but many other Indian news outlets ran similar stories. here's Money Control and India Today's
Shubhi Mishra.
Free Press Journal fell for it too. No body seemed to ask why Rishi Sunak did not himself appear in the video. They obligingly posted a file picture of Mr Sunak along side to create the illusion that it was his party
Indian and Indian origin Twitter users were delighted to be fooled
Until boom live pricked the balloon. With this story.
boomlive.in/fact-check/fac…
Reporter Hazel Gandhi told us that the video that had by now gone viral in desi websites and internet and whatsapp chats was part of an elaborate hoax. yes there was a pongal meal served on banana leaves but it was in Waterloo, in Ontario Canada in a community hall!!
Conclusions of the story: quite a few.
1. If the story is too good to be true it probably is
2. Thai Pongal is an important festival in the Hindu calendar. Our culture is our culture. We do not need the white man's valdiation of our culture.
3. Important people like @sonal_mansingh got taken in and in their haste to curry favour with Power tagged the Prime Minister.
4. More to the point several news outlets got carried away and did not do basic sense checks.
Now I fully expect some dumbfuck ass-hole to ask me: "So You bloody Urban naxal what is so wrong if @RishiSunak serves @10DowningStreet staff a #Pongal meal on a #bananaleaf? Um UMM?"
Answer: Nothing, except that it didn't happen.

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More from @GorwayGlobal

JayEnAar Profile picture
Jan 15
This view is WRONG.
But it is hugely popular among many educated Indians.
We need to combat such simplistic thinking that
a) mixes up cause and effect
b) attacks the socially marginalised groups on the basis of a populist trope.
The fact is:
India is not poor because not enough people pay direct taxes.
Rather
Not many Indians pay direct taxes because India's economy leaves them too poor to come anywhere close to the income threshold at which they are liable for income tax.
Such inversions of cause and effect are not at all unusual in popular thinking. For instance we think that pearls are expensive because men have to dive in deep waters to find them. Think a bit: men risk their lives and dive deep for pearls BECAUSE they fetch a high price.
Read 9 tweets
JayEnAar Profile picture
Jan 14
If India's expanded purchases of Russisn crude at heavily discounted prices led to cheaper fuel for Indian citizens, that could at least be justified as 'enlightened self interest'. BUT, I understand the rise in purchases of Russin crude parallels the export of refined petrol
The biggest Refinery is in '#Jamnagar owned and run by Reliance. Are they the only ones to benefit from India's Russian crude adventure?
Here is my evidence
Read 7 tweets
JayEnAar Profile picture
Dec 31, 2022
Earlier in August my top tweet was this:
and the cartoonist Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) was my top follower.
And in September, my top tweet was this:
Anf my top fpollower was Sumanth Raman, (@sumanthraman)
November 2022 saw the 6th anniversary of the Dreadful Distaster that was #DeMonetisation. I wrote this account of the evidence that it was a flawed move from the word go.
newslaundry.com/2022/11/08/dem…
Read 9 tweets
JayEnAar Profile picture
Dec 30, 2022
So what did I do in the year 2022?
In January, I must have been seriously worked up about the statementss coming from leaders exhorting citizens to fulfil their duties. "Citizens have rights, Governments and institutions have duties, I argued:
newslaundry.com/2022/01/24/is-…
earlier that month a 2-word tweet with an embedded link was my top tweet for the month:
here's the link to that tweet:
Read 14 tweets
JayEnAar Profile picture
Dec 29, 2022
WHO'S finding that Gambia deaths were caused by contaminated cough medicines is NOT an attack on India, NOR an attack on India's pharma industry.

Making it a party political issue and NOT taking safety seriously is a betrayal of the reputation of India's pharma sector.
Why would a BJP spokesperson come so vociferously to the defence of a particular small pharma company whose product MAY have been contaminated and thus implicated in these deaths in Gambia and Uzbekistan?
One reason COULD be that the company paid for protection. #electoralbonds
Testing fresh samples of cough meds cud be an irrelevance. Just because the samples tested by WHO labs in Gambia showed DEG contamination is not suff reason to expect these latest samples also to test positive.

Conversely,
Read 12 tweets
JayEnAar Profile picture
Nov 27, 2022
I have one and only 1 test of the worth and credibility of any economist / adviser who pontificates on India.
"Did you support #Demonetisation or did you call it out for what it was?"
That separates darbari economists who serve themselves from honest advisers who serve India.
Here, in 3 pictures is one who fails my test.
Read 6 tweets

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