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Comment by recroad | Hacker News Reader

India for all intents and purposes is now an ethno-national state with no press freedom, severe persecution of minorities, and human rights violations aplenty.

I grew up in India when it was a relatively secular state. For example, when the Babri Masjid (mosque) was destroyed by Hindus in the early 90s, the national magazine, India Today and major newspapers led with the headline, "India's Shame" and acknowledge how bad that was for Indian secularism.

Less than a month ago the same mosque was now converted into a Hindu temple and the press and government led the cheerleading.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/22/why-is-indias-ram-t...

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1. No press freedom: what explains the presence and popularity of the wire, scroll, news minute, the quint, etc? Traditional print media that’s critical of the current party in power includes The Hindu, Telegraph etc. That there’s no press freedom is false.

2. Ethno-nationalist state: what ethnicity are we talking about here? BJP loses often in elections locally, and majority of their opponents are Hindus.

What India has always been is illiberal. You are weakening your point by exaggerating the current conditions.

Moreover this prosed ban is because we have an overzealous bureaucracy that doesn’t understand technology and does not care to. It’s got nothing to do with what India has become.

As a data point, the previous government that grandparent speaks of also has been involved in actual suspension of democracy, abolition of press rights, and jailing of opposition leaders[1].

Indian administrations have always have had an authoritarian bent regardless of who has been in power.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emergency_(India)

Tangential to the article being discussed, as this is not about secularism.

Not all the facts provided, just a one sided view that is parroted repeatedly in online forums with the intention of claiming a moral high ground when the facts are far more complex and intricate.

> the facts are far more complex and intricate

Exactly.

The mosque was converted by a judgement from India's Supreme Court. But yes, the administration's stunt of overtly participating in religious conflict by having the PM and country leaders inaugurate the temple sure leaves a bad taste.

Thankfully, religion as a whole is becoming increasingly irrelevant among new generations as Western individualism takes over. This incident will hopefully be remembered just as an appeasement tactic for old to middle-aged people and not an escalation.

>The mosque was converted by a judgement from India's Supreme Court

Many would say that doesn't change anything because they think that Indian supreme court is just another tool in the hand of Modi's government [1] [2] [3].

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/12/27/i...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/02/wh...

[3] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/india-s-justice-system-...

Yes, many would say that and they'd be correct in saying that.

Many would say that regarding this decision, yes. But they'd be overlooking the kind of exceptional dilemma the court faced in this case - it was not just about determining what club gets a legal right over public property, but about defusing a several generations-long historical and religious conflict of vastly higher scale. In the end they had to pass a judgement that antagonized the least number of people and prevented large-scale disruption and violence. We can debate how right or wrong it was all day, but that won't take away the fact that there was no other way of resolving this without messing up social harmony.

Whether or not Modi's government has undue influence over the judiciary is still up for debate, but in this particular case, I fail to see how it could have made a difference either way.

Isnt it just convenient. To hell with due process and law and justice and equality.

Give a judgenent that offends least number of people, be it right or wrong.

You know how that sounds like? A corrupt judiciary that's at the whims of satisfying the ego of masses.

Btw

>The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender.

This quote from an actual judgment made by supreme court of India literally says so. To satisfy collective consciousness of masses, a man must die

That literally is the point of much of how the justice system functions all over the world.

Part of the factors they have to consider is for the people to be sufficiently satisfied that justice was done. After all, the system relies on the people having confidence that the system works. The perpetrator of a brutal rape and murder not being given the death penalty when the entire country is out on the streets demanding his blood, would be a grave miscarriage of justice (as long as he was indeed the perpetrator).

Especially with the case of the masjid, there wasn't going to be a right answer either way, as Hindus also made a historical claim to the land.

> ethno-national state

Arguably the most diverse country in the world is an ethno-national state?

Well, it’s a very diverse “ethno”

Such claims have absolutely no relevance to the story. The block request came from Tamil Nadu police where major politics is on the opposite end of the spectrum. I wish I could go back to the time where people actually read the article and stay on point.

> I wish I could go back to the time where people actually read the article and stay on point.

Has such a time ever existed?

India is illiberal and authoritarian, but boiling down the extremely complex issue of the Babri Masjid to "Hindus tore it down and replaced it with a temple" is very disingenuous. The case remained unaddressed - even through the rule of more secular parties - for decades for good reasons.

Plus, India has a long record of kneejerk censorship. There was the incident with GitHub back in 2014, and even before then there have been many cases of the national or state governments censoring material that could be construed as criticizing them or material they could construe as supporting a terrorist movement.

Yes, India is not liberal and Yes, India has leaders who concentrated power in their hands overrode the States. On the other side of the spectrum if you have lived experience of the 80s, you would understand chaos and anarchy of multiple ethno-insugrencies. As a man who grew up in South India, I am proponent of State's rights etc. But it's not magic, India's geography and demogrphics compel, this cycle of powerful center that is near authoritarian to weak center that is a monumental chaos. In between there are periods of some balance. That was the nature of India since the Mahajanapadha period.

Yeah not like they won a case in supreme court or something. Do you honestly believe they couldn't have done that with violence in all these years?

I don't understand, some people here just really have a beef with India/Hindus.

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