New Delhi: Lynchings, forced chants of “Jai Shri Ram” or even any non-fawning critique of the government – all of the above found no mention on sites that wear their right-leaning ideology on their sleeves.
Instead, the spotlight remained on lauding the achievements of BJP government, how swiftly it is working on projects, on the alleged involvement of Christian organisations in forced conversions supposedly in retaliation to the Modi government’s crackdown on foreign funding, support for the poorly thought out triple talaq Bill and on how BJP MP Pratap Sarangi ‘nailed’ the opposition in his first speech in parliament.
Last week’s flavour of calling out the so-called hypocrisy of Arvind Subramanian’s GDP estimation methodology also continued unabated.
Also read: #RightSideUp: Arvind Subramanian’s Economic Somersaults; ‘Hate India Messaging’
The Yogi Adityanath government’s decision to issue press releases in Sanskrit was also reported with great fanfare.
Thankfully, neither the right nor the left had any kind words for Anjana Om Kashyap’s shameful conduct in a Muzaffarpur hospital after an acute encephalitis syndrome breakout took the lives of more than a hundred children.
Rapper Hard Kaur, who has been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code including sedition for posts on social media sharply critical of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, was also at the receiving end of harsh words from a few columnists who accused her of spewing “venomous Hinduphobia”.
“With her meltdown, Hard Kaur has only proved as to how desperate the left liberals have become after their Hinduphobia was blatantly rejected by the masses in the run-up to the 2019 elections.”
But if there is one article on the so-called hypocrisy of left liberals to be read this week, it is this rant from Mahesh Vikram Hegde, the founder of PostCard News, which has been caught one too many times peddling lies in the name of news.
You can read about the misinformation spread by the website here.
Hegde attempts to play the victim card the best way he can on how “freedom of expression is a one-way street for liberals”.
“No Lutyen’s lobby cried about Freedom of Expression or Freedom of Speech when I was arrested without a warrant or an FIR or any proof. Their target was to shut down my portal PostCard News which had rendered many sleepless nights in the Congress ecosystem They called us fake; they maligned us with fake stories and articles to stop all our income. Am I a criminal, a terrorist or a Naxalite or a Maoist? All because I speak for India, I speak for Hindus, I speak for nationalists.”
Kabir Singh, ‘an ordeal for ultra-feminists’
Kabir Singh has been branded as one of the most toxic films of the year for glorifying violence in the name of love and for failing every feminist ideal that women have fought for for centuries.
But for Animesh Pandey, a regular writer for rightlog.in, the outrage against the movie over its abusive male lead has only exposed the “double standards” of the “left liberal intelligentsia”.
Here’s his explanation of what the movie depicts as compared to those who have called it a “toxic mix of testosterone and patriarchy”:
“Kabir Singh is the tale of a self-destructive surgeon, whose life goes on a downward spiral after his girlfriend is forcefully married to someone else.”
Pandey gives a few examples of how badly the movie was panned by “ultra left feminists” for being everything love should not be:
“According to these people, through the celebration of ‘toxic masculinity’, Kabir Singh will revive the archaic, ‘patriarchy’ and ‘misogyny’ which, as a society, we have completely left behind.”
“Though Kabir Singh is not without its flaws”, Pandey writes, “the way elite critics have heckled the movie; it speaks for itself how hard their interests have been hit by the same.”
By “interests” here, Pandey obviously means the apparent “left agenda” of creating safe spaces for women, not glorifying violence, not emasculating men, and not endorsing misogyny – all of which the writer appears to be against with his apparent takedown of the “hypocrisy of left liberal critics”.
“They even had no objections when Shahid had played way worse character in Udta Punjab on the basis of morality, but went aghast when Kabir Singh portrayed an unapologetically foul-mouthed man with a self-destructive attitude.
These left-liberal critics have probably forgotten the old adage, ‘Forbidden fruit is the sweetest.’ The more you sermonise someone not to do something, the more that person is attracted towards doing exactly the same thing.”
In fact, Pandey wrote a review of the movie as well, where he spelt out why Kabir Singh is “not for the faint hearted”.
In an attack on “woke feminists”, which he spits out as though an abuse, who stand against making a hero of such a character, he writes:
“These are the same pseudo-feminists, who would whistle on movies like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Jab We Met, even when they advocate misogyny subtly. These are the same pseudo-feminists who would deliberately ignore the slaps of the heroine in the movie Kabir Singh but would go aghast on the slaps of the protagonist.”
As to who and who should not watch the movie, he says:
“Anyone who believes in the Swara Bhaskar brand of feminism should not even try, for Kabir Singh, armed allegedly with ‘toxic masculinity’, is bound to scare them much more than what The Conjuring would have done.”
With the movie inching towards picking Rs 100 crore at the box office, it’s obvious that Pandey’s views are endorsed by a large chunk of the public for whom toxic masculinity is still very much so a selling point.
Also read: ‘Kabir Singh’ Review: There’s Some Movie in This Misogyny
Rahul Gandhi is no simpleton
Vinod Sharma, a not so regular writer for Swarajya who has written off and on since 2013, says that “Rahul Gandhi should not be dismissed lightly“.
Sharma, for whom no biography is provided, was clearly irked by the “visuals of Congress president Rahul Gandhi playing with his mobile phone for 24 minutes during the president’s address to parliament”.
In fact, he was so rattled by this moment that other visuals of BJP MPs heckling each and every opposition member while they were taking their oaths were lost on him.
No, decorum in parliament seemingly only matters for Sharma when it comes to the Congress dynasty’s son, Rahul Gandhi.
“Fresh from another unprecedented rout which has reduced Congress to a shocking 23 seats outside Kerala and Tamil Nadu, a personal defeat in Amethi, and a ‘victory’ gifted by Muslim League in Wayanad, why did Rahul Gandhi want to be seen exhibiting the kind of arrogance that he showed when he publicly humiliated former prime minister Manmohan Singh, when the latter was on a foreign tour?”
Sharma waxes eloquent about why Rahul, much like his mother, only saw “Dr Manmohan Singh as no more than one of his many employees in the Congress”. This, he says, is why it was “unthinkable” that Rahul would ever serve under him, and this “same attitude informed his relationship with presidents Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee”.
Getting to the crux of what truly exasperates him, Sharma writes:
“As the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru and son of Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul has probably grown up believing that he has a divine right to rule India and Indians.”
Sharma brings it back to how his mother was an Italian citizen and how it was from her that Rahul “learnt about India during his formative years, when his father was busy and mostly away”.
“So when he uses BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as key target of attack, it probably flows from an irreconcilable ideological hate, and not from the politics and values he inherited from his father and paternal grandmother.”
He moves on to talking of how Rahul celebrates those who slaughter cows, and is never to be seen with “Hindu victims of cow smugglers”.
Sharma bemoans the fact that the Gandhi family has actually stood up for the right of people “to slaughter cows for food”.
“That he is not bright is clear as daylight, but what is evidently not so is that Rahul Gandhi is not a harmless simpleton brimming with love. It doesn’t really hurt him when people call him ‘dumb’, ‘pappu’, ‘budhu’ etc. A simple man with heart of gold can always move people to vote for him, particularly if the main opponent is not as brilliant and connected and trustworthy as Modi is.
So, while making fun of ‘pappu’ is a good pastime, it has the effect of concealing the oppressive dynastic entitlement and an alien ideological bias that defines the man, and makes light of the havoc he will create, should he ever drink the intoxicating poison of power again.”
