Modi's 'War Rukwa Di' Claim on Gaza Belied by Death Toll, Indian Arms Exports; Another 'Exclusive' Interview, Another Fail By Big Media
Norway sovereign fund blacklists Adani Ports, Decolonising museums is not as easy as you'd think
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
Snapshot of the day
May 17, 2024
Siddharth Varadarajan
Prime Minister Narendra Modi made another astonishing claim today. In an interview to four editors from the India Today/Aaj Tak TV group, he said that he sent a special envoy to Israel to tell Benjamin Netanyahu to avoid bombing Gaza during the month of Ramzan. “And [Netanyahu] did his best to follow my advice. Only in the last few days was their fighting.” You can watch this tall story here. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval did indeed spend a couple of days in Israel at the beginning of Ramzan. Even if he conveyed the advice Modi claims he gave, the Israelis clearly did not follow it. In the first 10 days of the Islamic holy month alone, Israeli forces killed over 800 Palestinians.
But there is a more fundamental hole in Modi’s boast. His government has been busy authorising the shipment of lethal munitions to Israel to helps its bombardment of Gaza. Today it emerged that Spain has denied docking permission to a ship named the Marianne Danica, which local media reported is carrying 27 tons of explosives from an Indian company to Israel. The cargo was loaded in Chennai on April 8, i.e. before Ramzan ended, which means permission to export would have been granted weeks earlier.
Spanish law bars the country from allowing the shipment of weapons if they are likely to be used in the commission of genocide. There is, in fact, a second ship named the Borkum, which pro-Palestinian activists say also carried armaments from India and docked in Spain en route to Israel—though its manifest listed the destination as the Czech Republic.
“You all corner me on treatment of Muslims in India, but see what I did for Muslims in Gaza”, Modi boasted as the four TV editors nodded furiously. Not one of them raised a question about the documented export of Indian assembled drones by the Advani-Elbit JV in Hyderabad – which has been widely reported.
File under Vishwaguru: Even if one has to go with the Modi’s incorrect statement, it is now proven that his government succeeded in stopping war in Ukraine and Gaza but not in India’s own state of Manipur. Not only has the civil war not stopped, the BJP run state government continues to act in a partisan manner against Manipur’s tribal population. The latest report is that subsidised rice is not being delivered to them.
In the same ‘exclusive’ interview, Modi was asked why he does not address press conferences – he hasn’t held a single one during his entire tenure as PM – and only gives interviews to carefully curated media outlets. His answer: he has never refused interviews; he has chosen to work hard instead of setting a narrative using the media; he is answerable to Parliament and will “answer all questions there…” [Fact check: Modi did not answer a single question in parliament in the last 10 years either.]
Modi also said, “Today, journalists are identified with their own preferences. Media is no longer a non-partisan entity.” Among other things, he promises the India Today team that he will set the media right. The four journalists laugh gratefully, relieved that they too will be saved someday. The clip is reality as satire.
About the anchors who smilingly sat through Modi’s answer, Newslaundry writes: “The shame must run deep for them, though. Here they are, giving the PM unlimited airtime to say whatever he likes, and he tells them how flawed the media is, and they smile in response because what else do you expect them to say?”
The Congress has also claimed that all the interviews various TV channels have shown of Modi were filmed by the PM’s own camerapersons and that the channels were handed over a fully edited product for broadcast. This claim cannot be verified.
Meanwhile, in the ‘mother of democracy’, Doordarshan and All India Radio did not allow CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury to call the government a “communal authoritarian regime”, some laws as “draconian” and refer to the “bankruptcy” of its governance in speeches made on their airwaves – he was asked to replace the last word with “failure”, Liz Mathew reports. Yechury also said he was asked to delete references to electoral bonds, while All India Forward Bloc politician G Devarajan was asked to delete the word ‘Muslims’ when referring to criticism of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. A Prasar Bharati official cited Election Commission rules as the reason for this censorship.
Note the irony here: EC rules do not come in the way of Modi speaking about—and vilifying—‘Muslims’ in campaign rallies but when the opposition tries to criticise him for that, they are not allowed to use the M word on public television.
Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Hemant Soren – arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on January 31 hours after he resigned as chief minister of Jharkhand – will have to wait till May 21 before the Supreme Court hears his petition for urgent interim bail so that he can campaign for the ongoing Lok Sabha election. At which point there will be just seven of the state’s 14 seats which will have not voted.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear urgently at the end of the day an application filed by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms alleging inordinate delay in the publication of voter turnout data of the first two phases of polling in the Lok Sabha elections. The NGO said that, besides delay in publishing the voter-turnout details, there was also a sharp spike in figures from the initial voter turnout percentages released by the Election Commission (EC), raising alarm bells in the public’s minds about the authenticity of the polling data available in the public domain.
The issue acquired added salience in the light of continuing misgivings about the surge in turnout seen from the Election Commission’s ‘provisional’ and ‘final’ figures.
AAP MP and Delhi Commission for Women chair Swati Maliwal has alleged in an FIR that she was beaten by Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s personal assistant at the latter’s residence earlier this week. AAP leaders now deny this, and say that a video which has emerged of Maliwal arguing with the CM’s staff shows nothing of the sort. AAP’s Atishi Marlerna alleged that Maliwal’s allegation is part of a BJP conspiracy. But the video is incomplete and unless the entire footage is made available and verified, it is impossible to verify claim and counter-claim.
Many Dalits in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki and Faizabad constituencies, which will vote on Monday, May 20, believe that the BJP does not like reservations and wants to change the constitution, Supriya Sharma finds. She adds that it is not yet clear whether the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance or the Bahujan Samaj Party will benefit from this sentiment. But foremost on Dalit voters’ minds is cows – that how, now that it is illegal to slaughter them, marauding older cows eat their crops and exacerbate their economic hardship.
The BJP has been in power for 10 years but if elected to a third term, Amit Shah now says the government will ban cow slaughter across the country. In keeping with the religious election the party is fighting, Shah is also promising a ‘grand Sita temple’ in Sitamarhi, Bihar.
The vibe in western UP was different this election compared to 2022 and the last two general elections, says Ashutosh Bhardwaj, who reports that this may be because of RSS workers unhappy about defectors in the BJP and worried about Adityanath possibly turning into a Shivraj Singh Chouhan or Raman Singh; infighting among the BJP due to new ticket distribution strategies; a powerful Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance; or less enthusiasm among ground cadres regarding the Ayodhya Ram temple.
On the “malign motive” behind the arrest of NewsClick website’s founder and editor Prabir Purkayastha by the Modi government, The Hindu has an excellent editorial. It writes, “It is also an indictment of the clandestine manner in which the police sought to obtain his custody. As if invoking the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act against the web portal was not malign enough — the case seems fictional in its entirety, and establishes no overt act that can even be described as unlawful, much less a terrorist act — the police seemed to have resorted to what the Court called a “blatant attempt to circumvent the due process of law””. Sriram Panchu writes that stringent laws have made prolonged detention the norm.
Kapil Sibal has been elected president of the Supreme Court Bar Association by a reported (and tentative) margin of 377 votes. See Watch Out below for his speech during the contest.
Though the Union government has pumped in almost Rs 40,000 crore into the flagship Namami Gange programme since 2014, several concerns – including dysfunctional sewage treatment plants and bad governance – abound. Aathira Perinchery reports, noting the Ganga still runs dirty and its water is undrinkable.
After Asian Paints CEO Amit Syngle apparently doubted the authenticity of India’s GDP growth numbers – he had spoken of trying to find out what the “real GDP” is and that data for “the core sectors”, including the cement and steel industries, were “nowhere … correlating” with GDP growth figures, the company has sought to douse the resulting fire. The Telegraph reports that it claims in a regulatory filing that Syngle was actually talking about a weakening correlation between GDP growth and the paints industry. If Syngle did indeed raise concerns over GDP figures, he wouldn’t have been the first to do so.
A replica of the Chinook combat helicopter made by the Defence Research and Development Organisation and displayed at the 2020 Defense Expo in Lucknow, has reportedly disappeared, reports Lokmat Times.
After it was pointed out that an episode of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight from 2019 covering the Indian general election and espousing a critical view of Modi was available on JioCinema – despite Disney+ Hotstar, which broadcast the show in India then, choosing not to air the episode – the Reliance owned streaming platform has done its due diligence, Aroon Deep reports.
Norway excludes Adani Ports from wealth fund due to alleged ties with rights violations
The Norges Bank Investment Management, the central bank of Norway, has announced that it would exclude Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited from its sovereign wealth fund in view of the “unacceptable” risks posed by the company’s alleged ties to human rights violations in war and conflict zones. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is valued at $1.7 trillion. It is the world’s largest single sovereign wealth fund in terms of total assets under management.
On Adani Ports, the Council on Ethics that advises the Government Pension Fund Global on whether investments in financial instruments issued by specified issuers are consistent with the wealth fund’s ethical guidelines, said the company had been under observation since March 2022 due to its “business association with the armed forces in Myanmar”. “In May 2023, APSEZ [Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited] disclosed that it had sold its port-related operations in Myanmar to Solar Energy Ltd,” read the statement. “No information on the buyer is available, and APSEZ has stated that it cannot share any such information on the grounds of confidentiality.” “In a situation in which extremely serious norm violations are taking place, this constitutes an unacceptable risk,” Bloomberg reported the Council on Ethics as saying.
The fund is also excluding US-based L3Harris Technologies Inc. and China’s Weichai Power Co. over concerns related to their involvement in military equipment sales to Russia and Belarus.
Stricter measures in UK on Indian spice imports after contamination allegation
Amid reports of contamination with ethylene oxide, a carcinogen, against Indian spices sparked concerns among global food regulators, the United Kingdom’s food watchdog has imposed stricter control measures on all spice imports from India, becoming the first to do so after contamination concerns with MDH and Everest. The UK’s Food Standards Agency is enforcing these measures due to concerns about pesticide residues. Similar actions have been taken by Hong Kong, which banned and recalled certain spices from Indian brands Everest and MDH, and Singapore, which recalled Everest’s fish curry spice mix. Investigations are also underway in New Zealand, the US, and Australia. “The use of ethylene oxide is not allowed here and maximum residue levels are in place for herbs and spices,” Deputy Director of Food Policy James Cooper told Reuters. In 2022 Britain imported $128 million worth of spices, with India accounting for almost $23 million, data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity website shows.
SC outlines State’s duty before acquiring private property in landmark ruling
On Thursday, the Supreme Court underscored the constitutional safeguards required before the State can acquire private property, highlighting the necessity of adhering to fair procedures and upholding the rights of property owners under the Indian Constitution. A bench of justices PS Narasimha and Aravind Kumar held that the deprivation of any person’s immovable property must follow a fair procedure of law, a principle enshrined in Article 300A, which states that “no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law.” The authority of law is not just the power of eminent domain but includes procedural safeguards to ensure fairness and transparency, underscored by the bench, clarifying without a proper procedure, even with compensation, compulsory acquisition would be unconstitutional.
The Long Cable
Decolonising museums is not as easy as you'd think
Hemanth Kadambi
Museums in former colonial powers face challenges in calls for decolonising their collections, but the issue acquires a different hue in India.
When India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, announced the building of the “largest museum in the world” in Delhi, the objective was to celebrate bharatiya sabhyata (Indian civilisation) and its 5,000-year existence.
This grand enterprise will be called, ‘Yugey Yugeen Bharat’, or, ‘Bharat, the epochal, the eternal’.
India already has a National Museum in the capital city, to showcase Indian civilisation’s heritage and glory. It boasts collections and displays of unique Indian objects and artefacts from the last 5,000 years.
However, Mr Modi’s vision for the country is driven by a new assessment of India’s civilisation and, consequently, what is represented by the existing National Museum in Delhi is deemed insufficient in showcasing the “new” ancient India, that is Bharat.
As we mark International Museum Day on May 18, this “new assessment” remains a bone of contention among scholars and the public.
The current political dispensation views its tussle for supremacy as inherently a struggle for the cultural supremacy of Bharat, which, in its view, has been inadequately represented or misrepresented to Indians and the world.
No longer are the National Museum’s exhibits adequately representative of ancient Bharat’s singular achievements (e.g. pioneer in the sciences, technology and applications, or STEM fields).
The Prime Minister's proposed new museum is meant to be a symbol and architectural representation of an Indian, or more appropriately, Bharatiya museum, rather than what the National Museum is seen to be: a continuation of a colonial legacy in architecture and representation.
It is no surprise that this view of Indian civilisation portrays religions and religious communities, not birthed in the Indian subcontinent, as foreigners or invaders.
Mr Modi’s announcement of this new museum, therefore, has brought into sharp focus what is at stake.
Scholarship has been interrogating the site of the museum as quintessentially a colonial space.
The museum was imagined by colonisers, and former colonising nations, as the space containing the knowledge of the world – the world they ruled.
This perspective, for example, is used to justify to this day, the British Museum’s claims over the stewardship of the Parthenon Marbles or the non-repatriation of the Koh-i-noor diamond by the British Government.
Their appeal to a “cosmopolitan” impulse for this stewardship is deeply rooted in the old colonial imaginary of “we tell better stories because we have the objects with us, we research them or allow the best scholars to research them”, and (this is the kicker) “which were acquired ‘legally’.”
Increasingly, the scholarly call to decolonise museum spaces has taken root.
Movements like ‘bring down the statues’ against racist colonial administrators in Africa, Asia, and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement for racial justice in North America, have conditioned the public who go into museums to look for more sensitive portrayals of histories.
A vast scholarly literature on decolonisation has accumulated over the last two decades. The field of art history and its close ally, museum studies, is developing vibrant approaches, in large part, thanks to critical interventions by scholars to understanding authorised heritage discourse within critical heritage studies.
Historian Prasenjit Duara remains an early and influential contributor on decolonisation. He stated that, despite a large part of the 20th century seeing political sovereignty transferred from European colonial powers to Asian and African peoples in the name of nationalism, and a lot being written about these transfers, hardly anyone had noted how indigenous peoples characterised their pasts and futures.
As Duara says in the introduction to his edited volume Decolonisation, “…decolonisation refers to the process whereby colonial powers transferred institutional and legal control over their territories and dependencies to indigenously based, formally sovereign, nation states.
Decolonisation represented, not only the transference of legal sovereignty, but a movement for moral justice and political solidarity against imperialism. It thus refers both to the anti-imperialist political movement and to an emancipatory ideology which sought to or claimed to liberate the nation and humanity itself.”
Some museums in the former colonial countries echo Duara’s take on colonisation by explicitly calling for decolonising their exhibits and collections to transfer this ‘sovereignty’ to postcolonial states in Asia, Latin America and Africa. This includes repatriation of stolen antiquities, illegally obtained antiquities, and recognition of indigenous ancestral communities and their ‘silences’ within museum collections.
However, museums are not equipped to deal with confrontations by the public regarding uncomfortable pasts.
They face difficult choices such as whether to showcase all histories – glorious and inglorious, ugly and celebratory – in their spaces, and whether only the current dominant national perspective, such as the Hindu nationalist “new assessment” of India’s past, must be showcased.
This “new assessment” counts as a decolonial narrative if it only means rolling back British colonial influences, though it may exclude other “Indian” narratives.
Decolonising the museum space is not a straightforward enterprise but is fraught with myriad considerations of representation, identity, historical knowledge and layered sensibilities that have accrued over time within communities and institutions.
It is worth remembering that Yugey Yugeen Bharat is hardly going to resolve fractious debates within recently developed understandings in India’s conversations of its history.
Hemanth Kadambi is an archaeologist and Associate Professor in the Department of History and Archaeology, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi-NCR
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.
Reportedly
Is there ‘quiet unrest’ in the ranks of the RSS which is leading them to sit out the ongoing election campaign?
Deep dive
The BJP cannot be understood purely on the basis of its majoritarian politics. Its financial decisions too are integral to any sensible attempt to comprehend the party. Deep dive into this piece from M Rajshekhar on how the BJP slips economic benefits to its funders and friends.
Prime number: 6.7%
Joblessness in Indian towns and cities increased to 6.7% in the fourth quarter of the last financial year, as per the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data, released by the National Statistical Office (NSO). Notably, the PLFS data highlighted that the unemployment rate among women declined slightly to 8.5% during the quarter while the jobless rate among men went up to 6.1% from 5.8% in the previous quarter. Further, the survey showed that the jobless rate for youth (15-29 age) increased to 17% in Q4 from 16.5% in Q3.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
How do Modi’s 10 Big Election Promises stack up for an ordinary voter? Harshita Kalyan does the audit.
Communal polarisation and targeting of Muslims is an old trick in Modi’s playbook, says Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
‘A stout denial of “doing Hindu-Muslim” is followed by a claim that the UPA government wanted to set aside 15 per cent resources for Muslims. The statements by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his interviews and public rallies stir up heat and dust in the campaign. But how do we decode this inconsistency,’ asks Suhas Palshikar.
“India’s ruling BJP sailed through the last general election in 2019, winning every parliamentary seat in six states, all but one seat in three states, and all but two seats in two states. This time, however, the ship appears to be riddled with leaks and at risk of sinking,” writes Shashi Tharoor.
The interim bail for Delhi CM underscores the critical importance of fair elections in a democracy, says Harsh Jagtiani looking at three important Supreme Court verdicts in recent weeks that point to the upholding of democracy.
Gillles Verniers looks at why India’s incumbent candidates struggle to win elections.
Apoorvanand says that “it is not that this idea of Brahmin superiority has grown in the last decade. But the fact that is being expressed brazenly is definitely new – and it is linked to the rise of Hindutva politics.”
‘Even though the Chief Justice of India’s past record gave the nation hope for transformative judicial reform to uphold constitutional morality and fortify fundamental rights under attack from the executive, his tenure has thus far been marked by one letdown after another’, writes Toshan Chandrakar.
Listen up
John Reed breaks down the “cult-like appeal of Modi” in a podcast on The Financial Times. Listen here.
Watch out
Kapil Sibal, one of India’s foremost advocates, has been elected the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association for the fourth time. Watch this debate between the six candidates battling it out for the presidential post, which apart from Sibal included Adish C Aggarwala, Priya Hingorani, Pradeep Kumar Rai and Advocates Tripurari Ray and Neeraj Srivastava.
Over and out
“The… sari fabric thrown over the left shoulder streams behind like brightly colored flags as the divers slice through the waves”. Kamala Thiagarajan has an amazing story on India’s women seaweed divers.
Curry connoisseur Meenakshi J has sampled varieties of the dish found in places ranging from Japan to Mauritius. Read her mouthwatering account here.
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.