Omigod the Hatred!

08.15.08 | 9 Comments | Filed Under Indian Politics, Media Watch

Here is Outlook’s Seema Sirohi writhing in an orgasm pumped by hatred against American Hindus. I obviously didn’t read through the whole article; read it if you must. The choicest bits, for your reading pleasure.

Their essential thesis goes thus—Bharat is besieged from within and without, it is maligned and abused, and it must rise to defend itself. As soldiers stationed abroad, they wage the daily battle via the internet to defend all things Hindu, preposterous or perfunctory, ludicrous or legitimate. In the end, logic takes a backseat to hate and wisdom marks a striking absence. Chat rooms, message boards, blogs, petitions, protests and e-mails generated by the Hindutva-bathed Non-Resident Indians in America burn with an angry nationalism, a hypersensitive edge and a general sense of victimhood. [..] The plight of the Kashmiri Pandits touched him deeply. Then came the BJP government in Delhi and the anger found articulation, morphing into hate speech and laying bare a distinct anti-Muslim slant. The communication revolution of the internet helped distribute the anger. But mostly the NRI rants consist of pseudo-statistics and mendacious arguments, alarmist declarations—geography is demography—and phony fears. [...] And Hindutvawalas are just a part of the larger NRI community, now 1.3 million strong. But they are noticeable because they are loud and often obnoxious.

The tactics of the Hindutva brigade can be transparently intimidating. In the 11 years of journalism in Washington, I witnessed incidents that left me wondering if the academic freedom in US varsities was being misused to spread hate. Once at the University of Maryland while attending a speech by a BJP leader, the event ended in a meltdown after a student dared to question the perfectly made-up image of India. A seething office-bearer of the Overseas Friends of the BJP was at his throat shouting, "What do you know about India?" I wrote about it in The Telegraph, earning the wrath of the saffron brigade and blacklisting from future events.

(All emphasis, mine.)

Tags: , , ,

timeline

9 Comments

Leave your comment

You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

:

: