An imprtant 🧵Communal harmony may have been put at risk by mischievous elements in India
There's a rumour circulating on @X which claims that beef and pig fat may have been used in the making of the famous Tirupati Temple Prasad Laddus.

There is a Twitter Spaces run by @IntConfused where speakers are starting from the position that this is absolutely proven (that Tirupati Laddus contain beef fat, prok fat and fish oils) and that Hindus have been betrayed and must rise up. See this

I.N.D.I. Alliance or INDIA alliance? Why is India's R/W ecosystem going insance over the @RahulGandhi clip where allegedly he was caught out when he said that the term "INDI Alliance was a BJP framing" that it was INDIA. So what's the truth?
A 🧵 1st there is a difference between an abbreviation (as in DNA = stands for de-xyribose nucelic acid) where you speak out D, N, and A; and an acronym (OPEC the word substitutes for Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), where you make a word out of the letters.

What is the dumbing down force that makes even people of some eminence put out stupid posts on social media. Posts that mislead, misinform and pander to a prejudice? Like this one from @sanjeevsanyal ? Mr Sanyal is not some cheap troll. He served as India's Prin Econ Adv 6 yrs And is now on the PM's Econ Adv Council. He is a published author and commentator and has a huge @X. So why do I take issue with that tweet of his about Sweden's support for migrant's who want to go back elsewhere?

Of all the claims that @palkisu made in her fanciful @OxfordUnion debate on India under Modi, the most egregious was the claim about how, in the much dreaded queue at the UK Border Agency at Heathrow she observed throngs of Indians proudly presenting their INDIAN passports. No longer did they have to shamefully and hesitantly reveal their Indian-ness. The implication was that before Modi arrived on the scene (and forced us to defend Indian democracy), all of us did precisely that - hide our passports as we slipped in shamefaced and embarrassed.

This #50WordEdit from @ShekharGupta really takes the biscuit. He seems to have swallowed the usual Govt hype and self-praise about the recently concluded India-EFTA trade deal, and its description as a 100 billion USD deal. Let's delve behind the deal a bit shall we? I presented an analysis of this deal in this twitter thread done a few weeks ago when it was still under negotiation.

https://x.com/GorwayGlobal/status/1755959732018319632?s=20

Tucked away in the new Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita is Sec 148, under which a policeman can order
"any assembly of five or more persons ..to disperse;..." They need not be doing anything wrong. It's enough if the policeman thinks it is likely they will. If they don't disperse as commanded, Sec 148(2) provides for the policeman to call up members of the public to assist him in making them disperse (These could potentially be goons from some saffron dal).

I think the Opposition is missing a trick. Instead of sitting on the steps to some side entrance into Parliament, they should run a 'parallel' parliament session. debating issues, considering bills clause by clause and passing resolutiions maybe even voting down bills. It'll have no effect of course but it would make for good theatre. Put it on @YouTube. Invite journalists and experts for select committe style enquiries into policy issues, I am sure there'll be enough volunteers to provide secretarial support.

I currently have family over from India, on a visit. Educated, well off. Totally unaware of current affairs; claim they never bother with news, neither TV nor magazines. But that doesn't mean they have no opinion on issues that matter. So for instance, they assert that: 1. After 70 years in which nothing happened, India is suddenly now a world power.
2. By 2050, Muslims will take over India.
3. Hindus are discriminated against in favour of minorities esp Muslims and Christians who have the upper hand because of past vote-bank politics.

India has officially rejected @JustinTrudeau's allegation. They had no other option. They could hardly have said, हमने कनाडा में घुस के मारा साले को.
From the moral high ground it once occupied, India has been reduced to the level of Pakistan which routinely issued such denials. This is a foreign policy failure for which I blame the weaponisation of the #GodiMedia which has been encouraged to turn every official statement of the Govt into a Modi MasterStroke.
The Private conversation between Mr Modi and Mr Trudeau should never have been broadcast.

A Thread.
Met a retired banker in my local temple. Lives in #Bengaluru. Visiting daughter's family in Essex. She's 'in software'. After the usual where? How long? he volunteers the opinion, "too many Blacks and Muslims in Britain"
I replied, "They're immigrants too just like us" "We are all here, your daughter and most of us Hindus here in this Temple, black people from Africa n the Caribbean, Muslims from India and Pakistan and whats now Bangladesh, etc bec. of Empire. We're all from ex-colonies. We're all the same, aren't we".

A short tweet thread about #5Trillion Dollar GDP
It was back in 2019, not long after the General Election win, that the Prime Minister set India a target for India to grow to become a USD 5 TRillion GDP by 2024. i.e in 5 years time.reuters.com/article/us-bri… Under the headline, "Modi says wants to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2024", @Reuters reported that
"India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that his country aims to be a $5 trillion economy by 2024, in remarks to leaders at a BRICS summit on Wednesday [Nov 13].

#Ayurveda again. In 3 tweets.
Some pictures from the Focus section of The Week magazine, India, from March 12.
A 'Focus' feature means it is a "paid for marketing / PR initiative" One of the 2 "Ashtavaidyan's" was quoted as saying

A tweet thread
Re: A (desparate) search of some scrap of evidence for "Hinduphobia".
The latest is an epidemic of hyperventilation in the Indian news media about a "shocking level of Hinduphobic attacks in Britain's schools."
Let's examine where this comes from. (1) If you google, as I did just now, "hate against Hindus in schools in UK", you'll get scores of hits of Indian news portanls and videos of panel discussions about the topic.

Stand by for some interesting findings re the Uttar Pradesh Global Investor Summit and and at least one of the Companies that is said to have signed up to an investment of 1 lakh crores (1 trillion rupees= 12.5 billion USD) to manufacture Electric vehicles. All very dodgy. Okay here goes. The UP Global Investor Summit was organised bu the UP Govt in India between Feb 10 and 12, 2003. The President of the Union of India, no less, graced the occasion. #Rakshamantri Rajnath Singh talked about it.

India's scientists are forced to do research in areas such as cow urine and 'cow-pathy'. They waste precious talent, time and research budgets on coming up with amazing results such as this. But no matter their findings, cow-piss will still sell, such is the power of blind faith. The fundamental problem is that India lacks the most elementary of attributes required for a "scientific temper" - scepticism. The burden of proof should be on those who promote cow-urine as an 'effective' remedy for some disease or condition.

From the US State Department, @StateDeptSpox .
At the routine Press Briefing by US State Dept in Washington yesterday 27 March, See here:
state.gov/briefings/depa… There was a question asked about India. After a series of Questions about the Israel situation, dealing with accusation by Israeli PM Netanyahu's son that the US was funding/backing the unprecedented huge protests there (@StateDeptSpox denied it) and the Israeli decison to close their embassy in DC, the Q turned to IND

From the news archives. this day 3 years ago, 26 March 2020.
The lockdown was int its secoind day.
Finance Minister @nsitharaman announced a 1.7 Lakh Crore (= 21.25 Billion USD) package of assistance.
pib.gov.in/PressReleasePa… What was in that package:
1) Insurance cover of Rs 50 Lakh per health worker fighting COVID-19 to be provided under Insurance Scheme.
2) 80 crore poor people will to get 5 kg wheat or rice and 1 kg of preferred pulses for free every month for the next three months

From exactly 3 years ago today
25 March 2020. The Covic pandemic became the cover for postponing the 2021 Census. Those further orders have yet to come.

Whatever the visiting #G20 dignitaries may say in public, the Prime Minister's Office, Ministers and others in the Indian Govt must be under no illusion, about what they must be thinking in private about the regime that makes so much about #G20Presidency This was most aptly put by @AndrewMMacLeod when he spoke frankly in the famous @TimesNow panel dicussion. Every G20 embassy in Chankyapuri must have sent a diplomatic cable back to their capitals and Chancelleries detailing events of the recent days.

The political nature of the "criminal defamation" case against @RahulGandhi should be obvious to anyone who followed the timeline of the legal proceeding.
See:
thewire.in/law/rahul-gand… The plaintiff in tghis case, Mr Purnesh Modi, sought, and won, a High Court ordered stay in the case for 11 months.
April 16, 2019: case first filed
June 24, 2021: Rahul Gandhi appeared in Court to record his statement before Chief Judicial magistrate AN Dave

This day 3 yrs ago, India, URL of Press release in next tweet,
"The Prime Minister announced that from midnight tonight onwards, the entire country shall go under complete lockdown, a total ban is being imposed on people, from stepping out of their homes for a period of 21 days" pib.gov.in/PressReleasePa…