'No Discrimination' in India Claimed Jaishankar But Assam CM Says BJP Doesn't Want 'Miya' Votes; When Indians Reprimanded Mahatma for Addressing RSS Rally

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A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia and Tanweer Alam | With inputs from Kalrav Joshi and Anirudh SK | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal

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Snapshot of the day

October 2, 2023

Pratik Kanjilal

Today is Gandhi Jayanti. In Amrit Kaal, the anniversary is a bit lost. 

(Source: https://twitter.com/sajithkumar) 

While Mahatma Gandhi’s ideology is respected the world over, Ram Puniyani traces the fate of the concepts of truth, non-violence and communal harmony in India today. 

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar bluffed his way through an answer to a question raised by an audience member at a think-tank in Washington about discrimination against religious minorities in India. “I defy you to show me discrimination. In fact, the more digital we have become, the more faceless the governance has become…Actually, it’s become fairer.” The Wire fact-checked him, as did The Telegraph. But the best check came from fellow BJP leader and Assam Chief Minister, who has declared that his party does not even want Muslim votes.

“When elections come, I myself will request them not to vote for us. When you will follow family planning, stop child marriage and shed fundamentalism, then you vote for us," he said on Monday about Assam’s Miya community. For the record, child marriage, fundamentalism and the absence of family planning are problems in other communities too. By Sarma’s own account, half the people arrested last year in a crack-down on child marriages were “our own people”, i.e. Hindus.

An event at the National Law Institute University in Bhopal on “wokesim” and “the Bhartiya ways of law and governance” became a place to villainise many leading academics and political thinkers. Posters calling eminent thinkers “Ravaanas heads” were put out outside the conclave venue. Among those villainised were academics like