G20 Summit in India: Modi's Personal PR Extravaganza?

[RiazHaq]

G20 Summit in India: Modi's Personal PR Extravaganza?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi successfully transformed routine rotational G20 presidency into an extravagant personal PR exercise th...

www.southasiainvestor.com

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi successfully transformed routine rotational G20 presidency into an extravagant personal PR exercise this week. The Indian mass media and the general public saw Mr. Modi's face plastered all over the Indian capital. Some analysts described it as the kickoff of the Indian leader's political campaign for national elections scheduled for next year. As Mr. Modi spoke of "one earth, one family, one future", his right-wing Hindutva allies continued their unhindered campaign of murder and mayhem against the Christian community in the Indian state of Manipur. Globally, too, Mr. Modi lived up to his reputation of "Divider In Chief" as the Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Russian leader Vladimir Putin chose to stay away from the gathering attended by all the western leaders. Both China and Russia stand in the way of the continuation of centuries-old unchallenged western hegemony of the world.

Modi: Hero of Hatred at G20. Source: India Today

After the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002, Narendra Modi made the cover of India Today magazine with the caption "Hero of Hatred". Modi was denied a visa to visit the United States. The US visa ban on Modi was lifted in 2014 after he became prime minister. Since then, Narendra Modi's image has been rehabilitated by the West as the US and Western Europe seek allies in Asia to counter the rise of China. However, Modi's actions on the ground in India confirm that he remains "Hero of Hatred" and "Divider In Chief" at his core. A recent two-part BBC documentary explains this reality in significant detail. The first part focuses on the 2002 events in Gujarat when Modi as the state chief minister ordered the police to not stop the Hindu mobs murdering Muslims and burning their homes and businesses. The second part looks at Modi government's anti-Muslim policies, including the revocation of Kashmir's autonomy (article 370) and a new citizenship law (CAA 2019) that discriminates against Muslims. It shows the violent response by security forces to peaceful protests against the new laws, and interviews the family members of people who were killed in the 2020 Delhi riots orchestrated by Modi's allies.

Modi Divider In Chief. Source: Time Magazine

In a recent piece for Nikkei Asia, Indian journalist Swaminathan Aiyar dismisses Modi's attempts to recast himself as "Vishwaguru", the teacher of the world. Here's an excerpt of Aiyar's piece titled "India's Modi is not the world's guru":

"Modi's notion of being the world's guru is just as ridiculous as his twisted history of "centuries of enslavement," which has been used to attack India's religious minorities. A guru is nothing without disciples. If India or Modi himself is the world's guru, who are the disciples? The least likely candidates are Western powers which believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are the true global gurus. It might seem that India's disciples would be most likely to come from its geographic neighborhood rather than distant lands. But even a cursory examination shows otherwise. Does Pakistan regard India as a guru? No, it is India's greatest foe. It has allied with China, India's other major foe, to try and put India in its place. No disciples there. What about Bangladesh, which India helped to achieve independence from Pakistan in 1971? There is now little gratitude for India's help, which is accurately viewed as a ploy to split and disempower Pakistan rather than an altruistic move to aid Bangladeshis. Sri Lanka? Many there harbor ill will toward New Delhi in the belief that it supported the development of the Tamil Tiger insurgency when Indira Gandhi was India's prime minister in the early 1980s. The insurgency became a civil war in which up to 100,000 were killed. Hard to find disciples there. What about Nepal, a predominantly Hindu nation? Ever since then-Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru intervened in a royal power struggle in 1951, Nepalese have viewed New Delhi as an imperial power to be feared. India has on more than one occasion blocked essential supplies to Nepal to try to exert political influence. Nepalese may be Hindus, but they are anything but Modi's disciples"

Cartoonist Mocks Modi's Answer at the White House. Source: Satish Acharya

President Joseph R. Biden and other western leaders are making a huge mistake by coddling divisive and dangerous Modi. While the western nations are seeking an alliance with India to counter rising China, the Hindutva leadership of India has no intention of confronting China. In a piece titled “America’s Bad Bet on India”, Indian-American analyst Ashley Tellis noted that the Biden administration had “overlooked India’s democratic erosion and its unhelpful foreign policy choices” in the hopes that the US can “solicit” New Delhi’s “contributions toward coalition defense”.

Earlier this year, India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar confirmed New Delhi's unwillingness to confront China in an interview: “Look they (China) are a bigger economy. What am I going to do? As a smaller economy, I am going to pick up a fight with bigger economy? It is not a question of being a reactionary; it is a question of common sense.”

Modi's India is driven much more by a desire to bring back what the right-wing Hindus see as the "glory days" of India through "Hindu Raj" of the entire South Asia region, including Pakistan. The arms and technology being given to Modi will more likely be used against India's smaller neighbors, not against China.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Can Modi's India be Trusted with Nukes?

Balakot and Kashmir: Fact Checkers Expose Indian Lies

India's "Hindu Nazis" Join Forces With Western Neo-Nazis to Threaten World Peace

India is the Biggest Winner of Ukraine War and US-China Competition

Modi's Blunders and Delusions

Modi Coopting Chandrayaan Success For Hindutva Propaganda

Pakistani-American Journalist Questions Modi About Minorities in India

G20 in Kashmir: Modi's PR Ploy

Can Washington Trust Modi as a Key Ally?

Are India's Leaders Uneducated?

Vast Majority of Indians Believe Nuclear War Against Pakistan is Winnable
Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

G20 Summit in India: Modi's Personal PR Extravaganza?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi successfully transformed routine rotational G20 presidency into an extravagant personal PR exercise th...

www.southasiainvestor.com

 

[SoulSpokesman]

@RiazHaq

Brofessor sb,

Between CY and G20 ModiGee has been keeping you engaged these days. Lets hope he comes back to power in 2024 and keeps you busy for another 5 years.

Regards

 

[LeGenD]

When much of the focus is on negativity of India and "perceived" Western hegemony instead of Indian growth and capacity to hold summits like G20, how will Pakistan grow?

When is Pakistan holding a G20 event?

Putin is not attending international events due to ongoing Ukraine - Russia War. Putin's reputation has nosedived due to Russian efforts to "liberate" Ukraine for peace and prosperity of mankind. Russia has joined the ranks of nearly isolated countries in the process.

Nevertheless:

Russia hails unexpected G20 'milestone' as Ukraine fumes

The world's leading economies issue a joint statement shorn of direct criticism of Moscow's war.

www.bbc.com

Chinese economy is slowing down and Xi is not attending summits. Whatever became of Chinese pragmatism.

Nevertheless:

How India and the U.S. Succeeded at the G20 Without China’s Xi

The result showed that Washington is finally learning the language of the so-called Global South, with India as its principle guide.

time.com

 

[Skull and Bones]

Modi won’t spend this amount of money to do PR of Eleven Xing Peng, baniyas know business.

 

[N.Siddiqui]

India will not fall to the US ploy of being used against China, most likely India will leverage US to the fullest in portraying herself as a bullwark against China, get the maximum benefits from US.

So it remains to be seen who uses each other to the fullest.

 

[RiazHaq]

#India is a country of 1.4 billion. But the only face you see everywhere in the capital these days, after 2 days of hosting world leaders for #G20 summit, is that of PM #Modi. From monuments to food, India’s diversity was denied a stage. #G20SummitDelhi https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/11/g20-summit-what-india-showed-the-world-and-what-it


What you don’t see in the videos is also telling. You don’t see the Jama Masjid, one of the most iconic sites in the capital. I didn’t spot any churches. The Taj Mahal, India’s most famous landmark and heritage site, built by the Mughal dynasty that is reviled by the rulers of today, gets only a photo on one of the walls. The Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of Sikhs in India, gets a tiny video clip.



--------------------

You see him (Modi) not only at the airport and at the grand venue that was recently constructed to host the summit, but on practically every road, every few feet. Sometimes, two car lengths, at most. It’s a one-man show.


Having spent many of my growing and working years in New Delhi, the changes in the city for this mega event stand out.

Schools and offices were shut for the summit, roads blocked for so-called VIP movement. Sometimes you had to wait 15 minutes to cross a street as police cars barricaded them.

Vendors, otherwise ubiquitous on Indian streets and selling everything from fruits and vegetables to clothes, shoes and household items, were missing the past few days. They need a daily income from their sales to survive – but clearly don’t figure in the Modi government’s agenda to push India as the voice of the long-suffering Global South.

On some streets, there aren’t even the stray dogs that are a staple of all neighbourhoods. They, too, were rounded up.

But if Modi was the hero of the diplomatic extravaganza, monkeys were the designated menace. Life-sized cut-outs of langurs have been put up to scare the monkeys that can run rampage in Central Delhi, which hosts most major embassies and hotels, and is close to the summit venue.

The relatively heavy rain cooled temperatures in the capital but the partly flooded
roads also showed that you may spruce up the city but until you really fix the infrastructure, things are not really going to change.

It’s at the venue, however, that the deep stamp of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – which will stand for national elections next year – was most visible.

The old exhibition halls at Pragati Maidan – which means “field of progress” in Hindi and previously hosted anything and everything from international trade fairs to book fairs and auto shows – have been replaced with a grand new convention centre called the Bharat Mandapam. It’s a Sanskrit name, where Bharat refers to India, while a mandapam is the front porch of a Hindu temple.

Just with that name, the exhibition ground moves away from its secular, humdrum past.

The grounds are supposed to be the biggest exhibition space in the country. And as the official information tells you, there are more seats than the Sydney Opera House. But it’s next to one of the busiest roads in the city and near the Supreme Court of India, so it’s not really easy to get that many people to visit in one go anyway.

Unless the government pulls out all the stops to do just that.

The cavernous, warehouse-like halls have barren grey walls, currently hidden behind large G20 billboards and video clips of the different cultural trips the delegates and their spouses have undertaken in the past year.

The billboards are covered with images of the lotus flower. That is India’s national flower but it is also the BJP’s election symbol. And it is everywhere. Even in the official logo of the G20.

The video clips playing on the walls tell a story too. They show glimpses of Hampi – a UNESCO World Heritage site which was also the capital of a 14th-century Hindu empire – of Khajuraho temples and of the Nathdwara temple dedicated to the Hindu god Krishna’s avatar.

 

[CallSignMaverick]

You don’t see the Jama Masjid, one of the most iconic sites in the capital. I didn’t spot any churches. The Taj Mahal, India’s most famous landmark and heritage site, built by the Mughal dynasty that is reviled by the rulers of today, gets only a photo on one of the walls. The Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of Sikhs in India, gets a tiny video clip.

Summit happened in Delhi in Pragati Maidan not in Agra or Amritsar lol. I know you remain butthurt but please throw logical arguments. You won't find temples and gurudwaras in your capital city at all, fix that first.

Vendors, otherwise ubiquitous on Indian streets and selling everything from fruits and vegetables to clothes, shoes and household items, were missing the past few days. They need a daily income from their sales to survive – but clearly don’t figure in the Modi government’s agenda to push India as the voice of the long-suffering Global South.

Lol no they were not, only in New Delhi they were removed for few days for the summit, everywhere else in Delhi was normal.

mandapam

Mandap/Mandapam literally means a covered structure dumbo.

The billboards are covered with images of the lotus flower. That is India’s national flower but it is also the BJP’s election symbol. And it is everywhere. Even in the official logo of the G20.

Lotus is our national flower dumbo

What is CY?

Chandrayaan

 

[Menace2Society]

A mass murderer.

 

[N.Siddiqui]

Read, US is constructiing the biggest consulate in the world in India, new Delhi.

US will fight China to the last Indian.

It's dangerous to be enemy of US, absolutely fatal to be a friend.

 

[Abdul Rehman Majeed]

US will fight China to the last Indian.

Unfortunately Indian veggie eaters are not good at fighting.

Indians have been invaded by the Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Afghans, Turks, Mongols, Europeans, Pakistanis and the Chinese.

They will fold and roll at the first sign of a battle or war.

They got independence from the British after begging by Indian Congress party leaders like Gandhi and Nehru.

US should learn from the history and not bet on India to fight the Chinese.

 

[Laozi]

A mass murderer.

imperfect job. people still roaming around calling names.

 

[Cheepek]

Yes, btw @RiazHaq do you know India and US had 7 disputes at the WTO till May 2023 and by Sep 2023, they have 0 WTO disputes b/w them?

 

[SoulSpokesman]

@N.Siddiqui

Siddiqui sb,

US will fight China to the last Indian.

US may want to fight China to the last Indian, but Indians wont. As brother Abdul Rahman Pajeet says (above) vegetable eating Indians wont fight and would rather roll over.

@RiazHaq

Brofessor sb,

stray dogs that are a staple of all neighbourhoods.

That is China and Korea, not India. Unless you are confusing dhoklas with stray dogs.

Regards

 

[RiazHaq]

#Modi’s #India no Friend of the West . Biggest aspect of #Hindutva is “xenophobia. It may be muted “when and where the military and political strength of the foreigner” is overwhelming but thrives on an “incessant campaign of slander and denigration" #G20

by Pankaj Mishra

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/11/modi-s-new-india-won-t-be-ally-to-the-west/439e5764-50f4-11ee-accf-88c266213aac_story.html

India is, suddenly, Bharat, and it could be asked, as Shakespeare wrote, what’s in a name? But Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who embraced the Sanskrit name for his country in the same week that he played lavish host to the G-20 summit in New Delhi, is trying hard to project India as a “vishwaguru” (guru to the world). It is time to examine his claims more closely, and also to see the present and the future of his “New India” without comforting illusions.

Take, for instance, the booklet, “Bharat, the Mother of Democracy,” presented by Modi’s government to visiting dignitaries at the G-20. According to it, ancient Hindu sages and kings were partisans of equality, inclusivity, and harmony. Even modern feminism was anticipated by the 5,000-year-old bronze statue of an “independent and liberated” dancing girl.

Such claims are part of an elaborate narrative that is decisively shaping the outlook of many Indians today — one in which a once-dynamic Hindu civilization was ravaged by vicious Muslims and exploitative Westerners.


In Modi’s own account, Hindus were enslaved by Muslim invaders for 750 years and then for an additional 250 years by white British colonialists — a version of history used in India today to justify the degradation of Muslim and Christian minorities, the destruction of mosques and British-built buildings, the purging of textbooks, and now the unofficial renaming of India.

Modi’s own popularity, unconnected to his party’s variable fortunes, stems from what is a potent promise in a country full of humiliated peoples: to destroy the corrupt old political order and, as he put it in his Independence Day speech last month, to ensure a fully modernized New India enjoys a “golden” period “for the next 1,000 years.”

Such millenarian bombast — also echoed in the speeches of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping — belongs to a longer tradition of anti-Western demagogues proclaiming themselves heirs to distinguished ancient civilizations, including the Germans and Italians who sought to build the Thousand-Year Reich and the Third Rome, respectively.

It is a common mistake to suppose that German and Italians Fascists rejected modernity in favor of an idealized past. On the contrary, they pursued, often with help of Western nations they derided as “decadent,” ultra-modern technologies, modernist architectural plans, advanced transport systems and awesome public works. Like Hindu nationalists today, they used mass media, sporting events, and scientific breakthroughs to raise the pitch of collective emotion and project the image of a united and resurgent people.

Of course, since technological and military power still clearly lay with Britain, France and the US, the peoples failing to catch up with the West tried to feel superior to it in the realm of culture and philosophy. Invoking their great ethnic or racial past even as they sought grandiosely to supervise the future of the modern world, they became exemplars of what the American historian Jeffrey Herf has called “reactionary modernism.”

Presenting ancient Indians as pioneering democrats and feminists (also, the world’s earliest plastic surgeons), Modi belongs to this extended family of catch-up nationalists. His nation, too, seeks to blend neo-traditionalism with modernization while measuring itself, with volatile feelings of insecurity and resentment, against a weakened but still superior West.

It is no accident that Modi is a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an organization that has, since the 1920s, deliberately modeled itself on the organizational structures and propaganda modes of anti-Western authoritarians. Moreover, nine years of BJP rule have confirmed that Hindu nationalists seek to remake Indian society as a forceful civilizational repudiation of Islam and the West.

This won’t change. Those hoping to recruit Modi’s Bharat as a Western ally should consider the plain historical fact that, as the scholar Nirad Chaudhuri wrote in 1954, the most ineradicable aspect of Hindu nationalism is “xenophobia, both personal and ideological.” The sentiment may be muted “when and where the military and political strength of the foreigner” is overwhelming but nevertheless thrives on an “incessant campaign of slander and denigration.”

Thus, there was nothing extraordinary about an Indian official effectively taunting Western countries on X, formerly known as Twitter, for the G-20’s failure to condemn Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Sweeping denunciations of the West as selfish and arrogant, deserving of a comeuppance, are now routine in India. More remarkably, as Modi’s ministerial colleagues as well as social media trolls go after George Soros, India is openly participating, for the first time in its long history, in the global networks of anti-Semitism.

Certainly, neither of the two main commonplaces about the world’s most populous nation — that it is a rising, vibrant democracy or that it is descending into authoritarianism — will seem adequate in the treacherous months and years ahead. More historically grounded analyses will be needed as yet another batch of reactionary modernists rises in the east.

 

[hembo]

#Modi’s #India no Friend of the West . Biggest aspect of #Hindutva is “xenophobia. It may be muted “when and where the military and political strength of the foreigner” is overwhelming but thrives on an “incessant campaign of slander and denigration" #G20

by Pankaj Mishra

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/11/modi-s-new-india-won-t-be-ally-to-the-west/439e5764-50f4-11ee-accf-88c266213aac_story.html

India is, suddenly, Bharat, and it could be asked, as Shakespeare wrote, what’s in a name? But Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who embraced the Sanskrit name for his country in the same week that he played lavish host to the G-20 summit in New Delhi, is trying hard to project India as a “vishwaguru” (guru to the world). It is time to examine his claims more closely, and also to see the present and the future of his “New India” without comforting illusions.

Take, for instance, the booklet, “Bharat, the Mother of Democracy,” presented by Modi’s government to visiting dignitaries at the G-20. According to it, ancient Hindu sages and kings were partisans of equality, inclusivity, and harmony. Even modern feminism was anticipated by the 5,000-year-old bronze statue of an “independent and liberated” dancing girl.

Such claims are part of an elaborate narrative that is decisively shaping the outlook of many Indians today — one in which a once-dynamic Hindu civilization was ravaged by vicious Muslims and exploitative Westerners.


In Modi’s own account, Hindus were enslaved by Muslim invaders for 750 years and then for an additional 250 years by white British colonialists — a version of history used in India today to justify the degradation of Muslim and Christian minorities, the destruction of mosques and British-built buildings, the purging of textbooks, and now the unofficial renaming of India.

Modi’s own popularity, unconnected to his party’s variable fortunes, stems from what is a potent promise in a country full of humiliated peoples: to destroy the corrupt old political order and, as he put it in his Independence Day speech last month, to ensure a fully modernized New India enjoys a “golden” period “for the next 1,000 years.”

Such millenarian bombast — also echoed in the speeches of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping — belongs to a longer tradition of anti-Western demagogues proclaiming themselves heirs to distinguished ancient civilizations, including the Germans and Italians who sought to build the Thousand-Year Reich and the Third Rome, respectively.

It is a common mistake to suppose that German and Italians Fascists rejected modernity in favor of an idealized past. On the contrary, they pursued, often with help of Western nations they derided as “decadent,” ultra-modern technologies, modernist architectural plans, advanced transport systems and awesome public works. Like Hindu nationalists today, they used mass media, sporting events, and scientific breakthroughs to raise the pitch of collective emotion and project the image of a united and resurgent people.

Of course, since technological and military power still clearly lay with Britain, France and the US, the peoples failing to catch up with the West tried to feel superior to it in the realm of culture and philosophy. Invoking their great ethnic or racial past even as they sought grandiosely to supervise the future of the modern world, they became exemplars of what the American historian Jeffrey Herf has called “reactionary modernism.”

Presenting ancient Indians as pioneering democrats and feminists (also, the world’s earliest plastic surgeons), Modi belongs to this extended family of catch-up nationalists. His nation, too, seeks to blend neo-traditionalism with modernization while measuring itself, with volatile feelings of insecurity and resentment, against a weakened but still superior West.

It is no accident that Modi is a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an organization that has, since the 1920s, deliberately modeled itself on the organizational structures and propaganda modes of anti-Western authoritarians. Moreover, nine years of BJP rule have confirmed that Hindu nationalists seek to remake Indian society as a forceful civilizational repudiation of Islam and the West.

This won’t change. Those hoping to recruit Modi’s Bharat as a Western ally should consider the plain historical fact that, as the scholar Nirad Chaudhuri wrote in 1954, the most ineradicable aspect of Hindu nationalism is “xenophobia, both personal and ideological.” The sentiment may be muted “when and where the military and political strength of the foreigner” is overwhelming but nevertheless thrives on an “incessant campaign of slander and denigration.”

Thus, there was nothing extraordinary about an Indian official effectively taunting Western countries on X, formerly known as Twitter, for the G-20’s failure to condemn Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Sweeping denunciations of the West as selfish and arrogant, deserving of a comeuppance, are now routine in India. More remarkably, as Modi’s ministerial colleagues as well as social media trolls go after George Soros, India is openly participating, for the first time in its long history, in the global networks of anti-Semitism.

Certainly, neither of the two main commonplaces about the world’s most populous nation — that it is a rising, vibrant democracy or that it is descending into authoritarianism — will seem adequate in the treacherous months and years ahead. More historically grounded analyses will be needed as yet another batch of reactionary modernists rises in the east.

That's exactly what we have been shouting and demonstrating by buying Russian oil, starting port project with Iran etc.

Par kya Kare,

Ye West hain kai maanta nehi! (In the tune of the song, Ye dil hain ke manta nehi).