Satire and the Plain Question

One of the Middle East’s smallest countries, Lebanon, with a total population of less than six million, continues to pay the largest price for a war started by others. In the roughly three-month period between the end of February this year (which was when the US and Israel attacked Iran, and Israel resumed its attacks on Lebanon for not disarming the pro-Iran Hezbollah) and the 25th of May, more than three thousand Lebanese (3,185 to be precise) were killed in Israeli attacks, and 9,633 Lebanese injured. The figures are from the website of the country’s health ministry. 

Over 1.2 million Lebanese, more than one-fifth of the entire population, have been displaced. God knows how many homes and buildings have been blown up. In the name of defending northern Israel, Israeli forces have taken possession of much of southern Lebanon and bombarded eastern Lebanon as well. Israeli losses from Hezbollah’s replies include 25 deaths and over a thousand wounded. 

We don’t know whether any US-Iran “deal” will really materialize. If, as the world hopes, it does, will all of Lebanon return to Lebanese hands? 

The US and the Middle East cannot get all the credit for our world’s wobbly state. More than four years after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russia is still firing missiles into Ukraine. 

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Reasons for unease about the right of India’s people to their conscience are getting stronger by the day. For one new thing, West Bengal’s fresh BJP ministry has made it mandatory for madrasa students in the state to sing, during morning assembly prayers, the 19th-century patriotic song, Vande Mataram, which this column has discussed more than once. 

Some verses in the much-loved song exalt Hindu goddesses. Compelling Muslim children to recite these verses is surely unacceptable. It would be like forcing Hindu children to sing lines where Jesus is hailed as God’s only son, or where Islam is saluted as humanity’s only true religion. The order not only goes against the universally accepted right to one’s conscience, it violates solemn articles of the Indian constitution. 

Across India, roughly 1.5 to 2 million poor to very-poor Muslim children – comprising about three to four percent of all Muslim children in India -- go to these madrasas, where schooling is traditional, Islamic, and, given poverty levels, quite basic. Following the West Bengal ministry’s order, the madrassa children in the state are to be coerced into singing obeisance to Hindu goddesses. 

The step will whet the appetite to coerce. On the other side, it will sharpen a sense of being degraded. Sad and troubling picture.

BULLYING THE HUMANE 

Viewers of this column will not be glad to learn that a man whose courageous stand in the hilly state of Uttarakhand won praise earlier this year is facing difficulties. On January 26, it may be remembered, a 38-year-old man called Deepak Kashyap, who runs a gym called “Hulk” in Kotdwar town, was in the shop of a 70-year-old Muslim friend afflicted with Parkinson’s Disease when a right-wing pressure group from out-of-town arrived to harass the friend. As Deepak stood up to protect the old man, he was asked, “What’s your name?” “Mohammed Deepak” came the reply. 

A video of Deepak’s loyalty to his friend went viral, but the domineering groups demanded a town-wide boycott of Hulk. Defying pressure, defenders of Uttarakhand’s benevolent culture, and of India’s laws, backed Deepak, and many Kotdwar residents retained their membership of the gym. However, the Indian Express of May 25 reports that the intimidators may be gaining their objective. Evidently Deepak is finding it increasingly difficult to pay the large rent for the gym’s space. 

In today’s India, it seems too much to expect civil servants or the police in BJP-run Uttarakhand to apply the law or safeguard the interests of citizens who stand by their neighbors.

WHAT IS “G RAM G”? 

An old and valuable program of guaranteeing paid work to India’s rural unemployed, for decades named after Mahatma Gandhi, has been given a new short name and acronym, “G RAM G.” Various Hindi words starting with the five capital letters describe the program. If unemployed Muslims or Christians lining up in a village for work under the program are asked why they’ve come, they would likely say G RAM G, i.e. Jee Ram Ji, which is indistinguishable from Jai Ram Ji Ki, a popular Hindu greeting in much of Hindi-speaking India, addressed to friends and strangers alike. The greeting means something like “Victory for Lord Ram.” 

Muslims thus obliged to voice homage to the Hindu god Ram may console themselves that many Indians take Ram to also mean anyone’s God. However, the intent behind the clever new set of alphabets does not seem to be a noble one. 

COCKROACH PARTY 

Another new name has taken India by storm: the Cockroach Janata Party, or the CJP, rhyming precisely with BJP. After the chief justice of India was widely quoted as saying that some young Indians were behaving like cockroaches, Abhijit Dipke, an ingenious young Indian currently studying in Boston, instantly launched the CJP on the net, displaying, with AI’s aid, a cockroach in most colorful attire. Within hours he won MILLIONS of followers. 

When this perfect satire, turning insult into honor, collided with India’s current climate of unbearable inflation-cum-joblessness, the result was an internet sensation with major psychological and perhaps, who knows, political implications. On May 21, according to a BBC report, the CJP’s Instagram account had crossed 10 million followers, overtaking the official account of the BJP, which has around 8.7 million Instagram followers. 

After the account found 22 million followers, it was hacked by the government, and Dipke was prevented from posting anything. The CJP’s website too was terminated. The Modi government obviously felt it had to arrest a tide. It also blocked CJP’s X account, which had attracted 200,000 followers. A major BJP leader has alleged a foreign conspiracy!

Seasoned political commentator Yogendra Yadav has told YouTuber Ajit Anjum that as of now the CJP is neither a political party nor a movement. Nonetheless it has uttered, says Yadav, a nationwide “Ah,” a cry of disapproval, unhappiness, and protest.

Abhiji Dipke calls the CJP a “front of the youth, by the youth, for the youth.” Gen Z seems to be a major factor in the phenomenon, as it was in the surprising victory in recent elections in Tamil Nadu of movie star Vijay’s new party. And in Nepal’s elections in March this year. And in September last year in the immense breadth of grief in Assam when the singer Zubeen Garg suddenly died. 

Following CJP’s launch, Dipke has received death threats. His parents have not been spared. The Indian Express quotes Dipke, who was evidently raised in a Dalit family in Maharashtra, as follows: 

“I do not want anything to happen to my family because this is a choice I made, not them. Nobody’s family should be hounded like this just for expressing their opinions.”

Asked about his visa status in the US, Dipke said, “I have a full visa. Currently, my visa gives me the option to stay till July. I have no tension till July, but I will have to return to India sometime.” 

Asked if he had a plan, Dipke replied, “I had not made any plans at all since I had not anticipated that something like this would happen at such a level.” Gen Z “are exerting a lot of pressure on me, like, ‘don’t back off, now you have started something’... [L]et’s see what [people] say... we are going to take suggestions.” 

Earlier, a senior government official told the Indian Express that the Cockroach Janata Party’s X handle was posting “inflammatory” content. “In particular, the concern stemmed from the fact that the account’s content was gaining traction among young people,” the official said. 

Dipke’s counter is this: “We have clarified that we are very democratic people and whatever we will do to express our dissent will be within the rights of our Constitution and in a very peaceful manner.” 

Responding to The Telegraph of Kolkata, Dipke observed: “Why is the government so scared of cockroaches? But this dictatorial behavior is opening the eyes of India's youth. Our only crime is we were demanding a better future for ourselves. But you can't get rid of us that easily. We’re working on a new home right now. Cockroaches never die.” 

NO ANSWER GIVEN 

Prime Minister Modi’s latest (as of writing) international visit took in the UAE, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Italy, in that order. His meetings with these countries’ leaders covered wide ground but subsequent comment has focused on a single question with which Norwegian journalist Helle Lyng, who has been writing on international affairs for the Oslo paper Dagsavisen, confronted the visiting prime minister. 

“Why don’t you take questions from the press?” asked Lyng. Modi walked away without answering, and the videoed incident went viral.

In most capitals that Modi visited, the host prime minister took questions from journalists. The guest did not. Though the contrast found no mention on India’s loyal TV channels, it was discussed by brave YouTubers like this one. 

And while assailed on India’s TV channels for her cheek, Lyng herself, who is 28, has expressed gladness that her unanswered question to Modi generated stories on press freedom across the world. 

GABBARD RESIGNS 

Tulsi Gabbard, 45, who has just resigned from Trump’s cabinet, where she was Director of National Intelligence, is unusual for more than one reason. She is an American from Hawaii with links through her father to another Pacific island, American Samoa, which has been a US territory from the 19th century and has a population today of around 45,000. After her Europe-descended mother converted to Hinduism, Tulsi became a Hindu at the age of 14 and has remained one since. 

Representing Hawaii in the US Congress for eight years (from 2013 to 2021) as a Democrat, she was a Bernie Sanders backer for a short time. In the 2020 Democratic primaries she briefly ran as a presidential candidate before dropping out in Biden’s favor. In 2024 she became a Republican and endorsed Trump. She now needs to be, she has said, with her husband who has cancer.

Her departure removes an intriguing personality from the DC scene.