Modi held reception for social media trolls who use abusive language, they are there in PM's official residence: Shourie

In a major confirmation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi directly backs social media trolls who use abusive words against anyone criticizing him, BJP's top dissident leader Arun Shourie has said, Modi had “a reception for them” after they abused him for being critical of Modi in a TV interview with Karan Thapar.
Shourie said this in an interview with Swati Chaturvedi as part of her research for the book “I am a Troll” in response to the question as to how he felt when pro-Modi trolls abused him and his son, who suffers from cerebral palsy. The trolls had gone so far as to say that Shourie deserved his son's illness as his “karma” for criticizing Modi.
Worse, Shourie reveals in the interview that one can receive “the same fellows in the Prime Minister’s official residence”. One of them has been made “the chief of the BJP’s IT cell”, he says. Calling pro-Modi abuse online attacks “obviously … a governmental operation, a party operation”, he underlines, the trolls are “one of the many instruments being used to silence voices in the whole country.”
Characterizing what is happening in India today as "decentralized emergency”, where a “decentralized mafia state” operates, with “local goons” belabouring “anyone" who they think are doing something wrong. “The central people provide a rationale for the goondas at the local level, like gau rakshaks”, providing “rationale … to beat up anybody”, he adds.
The “big difference” with Indira Gandhi's emergency of 1975-77 and the one under Modi is that, says Shourie, while Gandhi “used” law, Modi doesn't. “Now it is not law. These people are acting outside law. This is true fascism”, he insists.
“All this action is being done outside the government, worse, things are being done inside the government to choke the existing laws – for instance the Right to Information (RTI) is being choked, the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) is being denigrated unless it’s in your favour”, notes Shourie.

Not just this, he says, “The judiciary is being denigrated, therefore you keep the vacancies going the same way, probably about a hundred vacancies. The judiciary keeps saying, and these people keep denying on one ground or another.”
“Anybody who opposes Modi is immediately embroiled in cases – like Pradeep Sharma, IAS official in Gujarat, and Teesta Setalvad”, says Shourie, adding, the same is being done with NGOs, who are being “put in the dock" and then are "intimidated and troubled.”
Shourie says, Modi refuses to “control” his ministers like Mahesh Sharma, as also “important party figures”, and here there is “a clear pattern”: “A statement is made, an incident is created. A campaign is launched. He remains silent. Everybody says, please speak. When the campaign has been milked or that abuse has been milked, then at last, three months later, he makes some ambiguous statement, like motherhood is good.”
Saying that Modi “will do anything to win elections”, Shourie says, whether it is Muzaffarnagar killings, or what happened in Kashmir, a situation is created in which the Muslims are being “reminded” that there is no place “for them here.”
Things have gone so far, says Shourie, that Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal “has been led to conclude” that he will be killed, and there are people who are “asking for his murder”, adding, “And those are persons being encouraged by Modi."

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog