Last week I visited the War Remnants Museum in Vietnam and clicked some pics: a thread 🧵

Trigger warning: US imperialism “There was considerable pressure from some of the staff to continue the Christmas truce for a few more days. But I disagree completely. In fact, I personally ordered one of the biggest bombing raids for December 26: 116 B-52 sorties were flown against targets in the Hanoi and Haiphong area."

Excerpt taken from The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

Today's press conference by Kerala CM @pinarayivijayan was a political masterclass where he launched a full-fledged attack against Sangh Parivar's fascist politics and tore into Governor Arif Mohammed Khan who has been acting as a Sanghi puppet.

Thread with key excerpts👇 "Kerala's general public and the Left have a definite attitude towards the RSS. It is based on a strong realisation that they are advocates of communalism, hatred and sectarianism."

Decoding Kohli vs BCCI: a brief thread.

1. In Sep, Kohli announced his resignation from T20 captaincy claiming too much work-load. In Oct, he stood up for Shami who faced islamophobic attacks. In Dec, BCCI unceremoniously sacked Kohli as the ODI captain via a tweet. 2. Few days ago, BCCI President Ganguly claimed that he had requested Kohli not to step down as T20 captain, but since he did, they had to remove him as ODI captain because they "can't have two white-ball captains". Kohli today clarified that no such conversation happened.

Gender-neutral uniforms in schools is definitely the way to go and kudos to Kerala schools for getting the ball rolling. Gender-based clothing is a social construct that needs to be disassembled, especially as it is riddled with the oppressive binary of men vs women. The argument that gender-neutral uniforms in schools go against the student's individual freedom doesn't quite hold water because the idea of uniform in itself is against individual freedom but it is justifiably mandated to create a sense of equality and unity among students.

It would be foolish not to acknowledge that many more Hindus (and even Christians) in Kerala are indeed gradually buying into Sangh Parivar’s communal narratives (both Hindu supremacism & Islamophobia) even though they don’t vote for BJP yet. 1/n This is why INC had to take a position indistinguishable from that of BJP in Sabarimala case to appease their vote base. Or why Shashi Tharoor flaunts his Nair legacy. Or why politicians across the spectrum came to defend the Bishop who recently made Islamophobic remarks. 2/n

“Arranged marriage” is basically child marriage for older children based on caste. It has to be abolished. Aren’t the “older children” adults? Then how is it “chid marriage”?

For parents, their children will always be children, whatever their age. So as long as parents arrange the marriage for their child, it is a child marriage irrespective of age.

"The crisis-generating machine that we call our government is incapable of leading us out of this disaster. Not least because one man makes all the decisions in this government, and that man is dangerous – and not very bright."

Arundhati Roy writes.
theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/… "Grim as those numbers are, they give you a picture of the India-that-matters, but certainly not the India that is. In the India that is, people are expected to vote as Hindus, but die as disposables.

'Let’s try and not be a cry baby.'"

If you are genuinely curious to learn about the Centre's vaccination policy and its complex ramifications, read the below three threads authored by Prof. @ramakumarr 👇🏽 1. This thread critically analyses the Centre's vaccination policy that was announced on April 19th in detail and calls out its dangerous consequences 👇🏽

https://twitter.com/ramakumarr/status/1384168451443355654?s=20

"Amit Shah has always been the epitome of communalism. Even though he later became the Home Minister, his nature hasn't changed at all!"

Relevant excerpts from Kerala CM @vijayanpinarayi's response to Amit Shah 👇🏽 "BJP is a party which fuels religious divisiveness based on the RSS's ideology. Amit Shah is a prominent leader of that party. He comes to this land, which is known for its religious harmony and its infallible commitment to secular values, and dares to make these communal rants."

A bit about the history of #InternationalWomensDay: THREAD

1. The earliest Woman's Day observance can be traced back to 1909 when the Socialist Party of America organized a Women's Day in New York City. 2. After a year, in the 1910 International Socialist Woman's Conference, the German delegates like Clara Zetkin proposed that a special Women's day be organized annually to promote equal rights including suffrage for women and the proposal was greeted with unanimous approval.

THREAD: International support to farmers' protest in India 👇 Rihanna

https://twitter.com/rihanna/status/1356625889602199552?s=19

THREAD: Key highlights from @kunalkamra88's statement in Supreme Court.

"The public’s faith in judiciary is founded on the institution’s own actions and not on any criticism or commentary about it." "To believe any institution of power in a democracy is beyond criticism is like saying migrants need to find their way back home during an ill-planned, nationwide lockdown: it is irrational and undemocratic."

The #FarmerProtests seem to have put the BJP govt on the back foot because here it's the farmer who they need to dehumanise and vilify. But unfortunately for them, there is no popular prejudice in the public consciousness against farmers, unlike say Islamophobia. 1/ We know most of the times it is Islamophobia that is used to dehumanise the opposition, whether it fits the story (CAA, NRC, "Love Jihad") or not (it was forcefully invoked even to distract from the failure to appropriately deal with a religion-agnostic pandemic a while ago). 2/

🔥

Islamophobia is the irrational hostility to a religion and not people and hence, accurately named. It is used to refer to the corrupted public consciousness about Islam and this manufactured prejudice has played a huge role in fuelling anti-Muslim bigotry across the world.

https://twitter.com/khemta_h_jose/status/1330892753291538433

There may be hostility towards Hindus, Christians or others in many parts of the world where they are minorities. But that doesn't mean "Hindu-phobia" or "Christian-phobia" exists. That is why the word Islamophobia exists as it's not merely about hostility towards minorities.

Kerala Police Act Amendment Ordinance 2020 by the @vijayanpinarayi goverment is a draconian, ill-conceived move that gives the state indiscriminate powers to attack people's freedom of expression. Hopefully the SC will strike this down soon enough. Kerala govt claims that this law is meant to tackle the menace of cybercrimes especially against women. While the problem is very much valid, this is no solution as this section poses grave risk of being misused to curb dissent.

Governments will come and go but laws will remain.

Islamophobia is so normalised in this society that someone like Owaisi is "counter-radicalising" the people, but Mayawati is representing the oppressed people and giving them a voice. So, the former will always be accused of "vote-cutting" but never the latter. If you take the example of Bihar elections alone, you will find the ridiculousness and duplicity of this argument.

Check out this thread which examines all the 20 seats contested by AIMIM and whether they hurt MGB anywhere.

Spoiler alert: They didn't!

https://twitter.com/AnonyMallu/status/1326166172182568960?s=19

1. Liberals are strongly opposed to conservative values in all cultures across the world. But in a culturally diverse society, there exists an added layer to this opposition which is based on misperceptions about the foreign cultures. 2. Liberals from one culture tend to feel more strongly opposed to the conservative values of other cultures because they don't fully understand the social intricacies of the foreign culture. Thus, a part of their opposition arises out of ignorance and a phobia is generated.

"Rather than curbing the power of caste, then, economic liberalisation has exacerbated caste differences because it has exacerbated inequality in a society stratified along caste lines."

This is a must-read. amp.scroll.in/article/975766… "It is certainly the case that in liberal democratic societies, the formal equality of individuals serves as a convenient alibi for obscuring collective histories of advantage and disadvantage."

Thappad: 7.5/10
Halal Love Story: 8/10 The Trial of the Chicago 7: 8.5/10

While ideas like secularism and pluralism are undoubtedly the goals which we must work towards, we must recognise the fact that these words have never had much to do with the reality of this society. Even the most progressive thinkers in the mainstream often fail to realise this. Those who've been marginalised by the oppressive power structures in this society will invariably mock the facade of those in the mainstream calling themselves "secular" or "plural". It is crucial to realise that this mockery isn't coming from a place of ideological opposition.