Gary Denton wrote: > The thing I was surprised at was the implied criticisms the > reporters who covered the story here in the US had of > Gandhi's Congress Party and the election results. BJP had > become: borderline racist, religiously intolerant, tax cuts > for large corporations and the wealthy, nationalistic, > beholden to corporate interests, fawned over by the press... > Hmm, sounds similar. I guess maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.
*chuckle* I wouldn't comment on the attitudes of the US press [though Rushdie did write a nice article, with an excellent line in there] but there are a few things I'd like to add: BJP rose to power on the basis of religious intolerance. It was the Ram Janambhoomi issue which catapulted BJP to national prominence. BJP's sister organisations are openly racist - they routinely quote Himmler and Hitler, display Hitler's photographs in their offices and, of late, have started insisting that anybody whose blood isn't 'purely Indian' is ineligible to hold any of the higher constitutional offices. BJP tacitly supported the stance - at least that is what I assumed since they neither forbade their party members from defining Rahul and Priyanka as outsiders/foreigners, nor made their position on the issue clear after raising the same. Still, all that hard work hasn't gone unrecognised and VHP and RSS have proudly claimed their rightful place in the top 20 racist organisations of the world. Ritu, who is always happy to see hard work rewarded appropriately
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